WOUNDED CONFEDERATE PRISONER

Among the wounded brought to the rear was a boy in gray, Private Thomas J. Roberts, of Company I, Twelfth Georgia. We lifted him from the ambulance, and, having spread a blanket on the grass and laid him on it, I called a surgeon. 

A minie ball had struck him in the groin, and but a slight examination was enough to show that the wound was fatal. He was a mere boy, and I can still see his really beautiful face as he lifted his dark, lustrous eyes to mine. It was little that I could do for him, but I spoke such words of comfort as I could command. He showed fortitude and cheerfulness for one in so sad a situation, and he told me about his friends at home, speaking also of those from his own family circle who had already been killed in the war. 

While we were talking he asked for a drink of water. I brought it, and as I raised him to a sitting posture, so that he could drink, he leaned his head forward upon my shoulder, and without a struggle was dead. We could give him only the rude burial of a soldier, but over his grave was lifted the prayer that the God of all comfort would tenderly support those far away who would wait in vain the return of the boy of their love and hopes.

Often since that night have I thought of that Southern soldier lad who died actually in my arms, as if in a mother's embrace, and I pen this reminiscence that possibly it may make known to some surviving comrade or dear one that in his last hour what little could be done for him was tenderly performed.

Chaplain Norman Fox, Seventy-Seventh N. Y. V. Morristown, N. J., September 4, 1898.
Confederate Veteran, Vol. VI, No. 11 Nashville, Tenn., November, 1898.

WE LOST LOTS OF GOOD YOUNG BOYS IN THE WAR...I don't know if the one pictured survived or not