בס"ד
Memoir written by Robert H. Little about his service in Company A ("Newman Guards"), 1st Georgia Infantry Regiment. This section contains the account of the senseless murder of Pvt. Bernard Meyer, who according to the database was killed at Manassas...And we entrained the next day for Staunton, Virginia, and on the way up we were
shown Thomas Jefferson's old mansion. We arrived at Staunton and camped in the suburbs of
the city and started next morning on a hike of 106 miles for Laurel Hill. We marched 10
miles and halted for dinner and here we met the best people in the world with carryalls
loaded with the best of eatables and we could not eat all they had and they followed us to
Buffalo Gap, our night camp, but this was the last time they were able to do thus gratis
and now our route is mountains and valleys all the way, our road was a macadamized stage
and toll road and there were inns or taverns at intervals and these places kept and sold
whiskey in those days. And a man of another company taken on too much at one of these and
we did not go more than a mile and struck camp and about a 11 o'clock, this fellow, Stokes
by name, taken a notion to go back for more whiskey and walked up against one of my
company, Meyer (1) by name, a Jew, on camp guard and Meyer halted him and Stokes went back
to his tent and got his gun and returned and Meyer halted him again and Stokes shot Meyer
through the femoral artery. I was asleep and the report of the gun woke me and about all
the others, thinking the bushwhackers [were] upon us. I heard before I left my tent a man
was shot and I got there as quick as I could and I discovered it was Meyer and [he] was
dead. They put Stokes under guard and sent him back to Staunton, with Tom Tutt, who
started [to] load his gun to shoot the quartermaster for ordering him down from a wagon,
and if Stokes was ever court-martialed for killing Meyer, I never heard of it... |