On the Road to Atlanta: An inglorious retreat

Soldier diaries are almost always highly engaging and entertaining, sometimes in ways you least expect. I rely on diaries a great deal, because those diarists track locations and activities on a day-by-day basis, which can be invaluable when trying to figure out a route of march or a sequence of events – memoirs and even letters are not always as reliable in the same way.

But men at war can find humor in the craziest places, and sometimes they take you along.

A case in point – Picket duty, 98th Ohio, July 16, 1864.

“Not all interactions were so friendly. Sometimes the playfulness took on a rougher tone. While picketing the river bank just below Pace’s Ferry, Pvt. George M. Patton and his comrades in the 98th Ohio of Jefferson Davis’s Federal XIV Corps division observed the occasional “Johnny” wandering around. “So we concluded to have some fun,” he wrote. “We let one fellow come out almost to the river without firing at him.” The yanks agreed that “some for or five was to shoot towards him but not to hit him, only one [of us] to shoot at a time. About the time he loosened his pants and was sitting down one gun was fired so as to strike the ground near him. Then about the time he got straightened up, another would let loose and so on until he got into his own works. It was quite funny to see him dodging & running and it also amused the Rebels for they yelled & cheered.” Patton soon found himself on the wrong end of the joke, however. After being relieved, “I concluded to try and get some blackberries . . . along the river bank. I was allowed to proceed some distance before being discovered. When all at once the Johnnys practiced the same game on me & I realized it made a great deal of difference on which side you were playing. . . . We had no way of finding out whether they were shooting to kill or for sport.”[1]

[1]“July 16,” George M. Patton Diary, UNC.