THE REMINISCENCES OF CARL SCHURZ
of the dropping of a shell right into the midst of a regiment which caused some uneasy commotion, I thought it my duty to get upon my feet and look after it. I found that it had a very steadying and cheering effect upon the men to see me quietly walking up and down in front smoking a cigar. I could not speak to them, for the incessant roar of the cannonade would not let them hear me. But I noticed that many of them returned my smile in a sort of confidential way when I happened to catch their eyes, as if to say: “It is not jolly, but we two will not be frightened by it.” Indeed it was not jolly, for I felt as if the enemy's projectiles rushing over me were so near that I might have touched them with my riding-whip held up at full length of my arm. But observing the good effect of my promenade in front, I invited, by gesture, some of the regimental officers to do likewise. They promptly obeyed, although, I suppose, they liked the stroll no more than I did.
Many years later I found in Tolstoy's great novel, “War and Peace,” a description of the conduct of a Russian regiment at the battle of Borodino, which had to remain motionless under a fearful fire of French batteries, the men sitting on the ground and diverting their minds under the deadly hail by braiding the blades of grass within their reach. It reminded me vividly of what I saw on the cemetery of Gettysburg, where, while that tremendous cannonade was going on, some of the men occupied their minds by cleaning their gun-locks, others by polishing the buttons of their uniforms, still others by sewing up rents in their clothes. Evidently Tolstoy wrote from the personal experience of battles.
I had the good fortune of saving in a curious way the life of one of my aides, Captain Fritz Tiedemann, one of whose daughters more than thirty years later was to become the wife of one of my sons. During an interval between two of my
[ 29 ]
