The battle stopped for a fist fight

J. Mark Powell
jmp.press@gmail.com
Posted 6/26/19

I’ve never been in a battle. I have read a small library’s worth of books about military history and have seen far too many war movies to count. Yet I do know this much: once a battle starts, the …

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The battle stopped for a fist fight

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I’ve never been in a battle. I have read a small library’s worth of books about military history and have seen far too many war movies to count. Yet I do know this much: once a battle starts, the fighting almost never stops until one side is defeated. 
An exception happened during the Battle of Kennesaw Mountain outside Atlanta. A brief truce was declared as Northerners and Southerners worked together to save wounded Union soldiers from burning to death inside a forest that had caught fire. 
But one incident was completely unlike anything else during the War Between the States. Not only did the guns fall silent in the middle of that engagement, but something very peculiar followed. This is what happened when a battle stopped just so both sides could watch two men duke it out.
May 4, 1864 was an important Civil War date. At daybreak that Wednesday, Union General Ulysses S. Grant set the Army of the Potomac in motion, sending his 125,000 man military machine marching toward the Confederate capital of Richmond, Virginia. About 65,000 men under command of the brilliant Robert E. Lee stood in their way.
Lee responded quickly to the threat. He moved his army into a rural area called The Wilderness. It was the perfect name for the large chunk of land filled with woods and tangled underbrush. One man had difficulty walking through it; maneuvering thousands of men through it was a nightmare. Which made it the ideal location for Lee’s troops, because the dense woods gave them a fighting chance to hold off the superior force.
Except for one spot. Union troops massed at a patch of open farmland known as Saunders Field. They launched a massive attack the next day, charging with rifles blazing and cannons booming. The Confederates swiftly counterattacked.
As the battle seesawed back and forth, one Confederate jumped into a gully for protection. He was stunned to discover a Yankee solider was also hiding there.
At first, the enemies looked at one another in disbelief. As the shock wore off, one told the other he was now a prisoner. No, that man replied, you’re my prisoner. With a fierce battle raging all around them, the two spent several minutes bickering over who had captured whom. Unable to settle the matter with words, they opted for the method men have used to settle differences since the beginning of time: their fists.
John Worsham, a Confederate soldier in the 21st Virginia Infantry, was watching and describes what happened next. “They decided they would go into the road and have a regular fist fight, the winner to have the other as his prisoner. While both sides were firing, the two men came into the road about midway between the lines of battle and in full view of both sides around the field. They surely created a commotion, because both sides ceased firing!”
The guns fell silent as the blue and gray took a mid-battle break to watch a good old-fashioned brawl.
 “When the two men took off their coats and commenced to fight with their fists, a yell went up along each line,” Worsham recalled. “Men rushed to the edge of the opening for a better view, cheering on the soldier from their side. The ‘Johnny Reb’ soon had the ‘Billy Yank’ down; the Yankee surrendered, and both quietly rolled back into the gully.”
With the show over, the two armies picked up where they had left off and resumed trying to kill one another.
Back in the shelter of the gully, the soldiers waited till nightfall and then crawled out into the darkness. “The ‘Johnny’ brought the Yankee into our line as his prisoner,” Worsham concluded. “Such is war!”
Such is war, indeed. You can’t make this stuff up, folks.
Have comments, questions or suggestions you’d like to share with Mark? Message him at jmp.press@gmail.com .

holy cow history, history, battle, fight, fist fight, civil war

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