Marshfield News Herald Saturday May 28, 1938 Page 3

 

Loyal’s Two Civil War Veterans Decline Government’s Invitation to Gettysburg

“We cannot dedicate-we cannot consecrate-we cannot hallow this ground. The brave men, living and dead, who struggled here, have consecrated it, far above our poor power to add or detract. The world will little note, nor long remember, what we say here, but it can never forget what they did here.”

Three score and fifteen years have passed since the Blue and the Gray met at Gettysburg. Thousands of the young soldiers who lived to tell the story of that bloody fight have since joined the fallen in eternity, but in another month those who still live will meet again at Gettysburg

The ranks will be thin, however, for the youngest of those who fought with Grant and Lee are great-grandfathers now, and for all but a few of them Gettysburg is a long march - and they are weary of marching.

But they are proud, nevertheless, that they have been asked. Al Darton and Thomas Goodell, for instance, will tell you that they are grateful to the government they helped to save, for its invitation to attend the reunion at the little Pennsylvania town where Lincoln so humbly paid his tribute nearly 75 years ago.

Al Darton is 93 now, and if the truth be told, it irks him more than a little to stay home from June 29 to July 6, when some of the other Boys in Blue are getting together for a sort of diamond jubilee celebration.

And who wouldn’t be plumb disgusted, to have Uncle Sam offer free transportation and all the comforts of life for a trip like that, and provide expenses for someone to go along besides and sort of look after a fellow, in real style, and then have to turn the proposition down just because a fellow’s back gets acting up and making life miserable for him! Now, if it had been last year!

Tom Goodell, 89, is a little more philosophic about it. It’s a long trip he says, and his eyes aren’t what they used to be. Of course the government is willing to pay someone to go along with him, but a fellow could get sick, and Gettysburg is a long way from home.

So Loyal’s two Civil war veterans are going to stay home, with their grandchildren, and their great-grandchildren - and their memories.

Al Darton can blame his father for the fact that he served less than five months in the Union ranks, for it certainly wasn’t his own fault. But his father was one of those queer fellows who think that fighting is a man’s job. And then there was a storm, and because of the storm a train was late and - well, his father caught him before the train left, that’s all.

But let Mr. Darton tell the story:

“In December - I was 17 and I was born on December 5, 1844, so when would that have been? ‘Sixty-one? Doesn’t seem like that’s right but it must be, because I was 17.

“I had a schoolmate that came to spend the night with me and together we agreed to enlist in the Union army. That was at Hartford, in Washington county. So we made our plans, but my younger brother heard us.

“The next day we set off for school, but we didn’t stop there. We kept right on goingh to Hartford, and enlisted. But my brother followed us, and when he saw we didn’t go to school he ran back and told my father - and father came after us.

“I would have made it but there was a storm, and washouts, and the train was late. Mt father caught me at the station. ‘Get on this gorse,’ he said, ‘and get for home with him and give him some hay’

“But the recruiting officer said, ‘Here, that’s my man.’

“And my father said, ’Well, then you’re a better man than I am if he is.’

“The recruiting officer put his hand inside his coat and said he would put daylight through my father, and my father told him that if he didn’t keep his hand inside his coat he would knock his head off, and I can’t remember just how they made out, but I know I did go home. If I’d been 18 they could have held me.

“Pretty soon my father was drafted and was gone for a couple of years. I was the oldest boy, so I had to stay home. When my father came back he was a mere skeleton and it was two years before he was able to do anything. He was sick in the army and my mother went ‘way down to Memphis to see him.

“When he got back he said, ‘Now boy, if you still want to try it, go ahead.’

“So I enlisted in Company D, 45th Wisconsin Volunteers, at Fond du Lac. We were sent to Nashville, Tenn., and arrived there March 4, but the war was nearly over. So you see, I didn’t have much of a war record.

“Well, yes, I did do all they expected of me - but it wasn’t much.”

From there on it’s hard to learn a great deal about Al Darton’s was experiences. Most of the Boys in Blue are that way. They’ll tell you how they tried to get in because they didn’t know any better, but after they got in, well, they didn’t do any more than anyone else, they say.

And so, by persistence, you learn that Al Darton’s regiment was camped most of the time in the Cumberland mountains, and that he spent his time either on picket duty, train duty, or patrol duty.

His regiment, under General Thomas, whipped General Hood, but it was just his luck that his company was left out of the fight. He didn’t like train duty, and he didn’t get much to eat. He didn’t think too much of the Cumberland mountains because it took two locomotives to push six empty cars up the mountain, but he did get one square meal in the Cumberlands - a breakfast in a woodchopper’s cook shanty.

War wasn’t what it was cracked up to be - he found out. Now in the World war the soldiers had good quarters and good food, but in the Civil war, ugh! And picket duty in the swamp was no fun either, when a man had to pile up rails from a rail fence and spread his rubber blanket over them or else sleep in the water.

No sir, says Al Darton, his war record wasn’t much, but it took a year after he was back in July before he was any good again, and if they’d kept him there another month they probably would have brought him back in a box. But he was glad to do what he could, anyway, and if it hadn’t been for his brother, or a storm that delayed the train, he would have done more.

But he’d like to go to Gettysburg, and he would, too, if his back wasn’t bathering him every time he moved, And that isn’t the worst of it. Al Darton has always taken part in the Memorial day exercises at Loyal, but he’s afraid he won’t be able to this year. Unless that back of his perks up a little, he’ll just have to stay at home, with his grandson, Allie Drake, and the rest of the family, on Memorial day.

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Tom Goodell was just one of the “kids” who fought in the Civil war. He joined the Army at 15, but there was no trouble about it, as his folks were willing. So Tom Goodell is reticent to begin with.

“If you can get any more out of him than we can,” says his grandson, Howard, “you’re doing well.”

And that, you gather, means that Mr. Goodell doesn’t tell the family much about the Civil war, either. If they want to know about it they can read about it in books.

He lived in Fulton county, Ill., when the war broke out, and it was half over before he was old enough to enlist, if you think 15 is that old. Abraham Lincoln was virtually a local character in Fulton county long before the war, and Tom Goodell saw him before he aspired to the presidency, although Tom was just a little shaver then.

He enlisted in Company A of the 15th Illinois Infantry, and served the last two years of the war. He fought under Grant and he was with Sherman on the famous march to the sea. He found duty at the front safest, for he was never injured there, but while on guard duty at Davis Island he became a casualty - to measles!

It was no joke either, for measles killed many a soldier on Davis Island, he recalls, and he spent three months in the hospital. On guard duty there, he came in contact with Confederates as prisoners instead of as active foemen, and many of them, he found, were “fine fellows.”

At the front lines hunger caused at least as much annoyance as the Rebels. It sometimes too as much as three days to obtain enough rations for a full meal and nothing eatable was safe if there was a soldier around.

On one occasion, Mr. Goodell recalls with a chuckle, he saw a soldier who had managed to annex a loaf of bread and had been so unwise as to let it be seen. “There were about 20 men after him,” he says.

“But we had a lot of fun, too,” he adds. “When I got home it was quite a letdown. It was pretty lonesome. It wouldn’t have taken much to get me back again.”

“All we can get out of him about the war,” says his grandson, “is ‘War is Hell. Stay out of it if you can.’ ”

“You can’t, always,” admits the elder Goodell, “but we got a good government. Better’n any you’ll find anywhere else.”

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Al Darton doesn’t hear very well, and his back is giving him a little trouble just now. Tom Goodell’s eye’s aren’t of the best anymore: he broke his arm a while ago and its still a bit stiff, although not enough to keep him away from the Memorial day exercises that he’s never missed.

Those were mighty nice letters from the war department and they hate to turn down the invitation but, well - you see how it is. They’ll probably have a little reunion of their own on Monday, and talk it over together. They’re very happy to have been remembered, and the government may be sure that if they were able to lend it a hand again they’d be glad to.

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“The world will little note, nor long remember, what we say………..but it can never forget what they did………….”

Contributed by Ken Wood.

 

 


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