After sleeping on it, I am not inclined to depart from
my custom in dealing with attacks upon me.... Besides, to give a
correct relation of the Reno altercation would be to disparage an
officer who died in battle a few days after the affair, and who
cannot now give his side of the controversy.
One of the brigades of the division was commanded by General Crook
and another by General Scammon, both regular army officers
conspicuous for attention to strictness of discipline. General
Scammon was at the time still colonel of the Twenty-third. The
regiment on that march repeatedly reported, as I was glad to do, not
a single absentee on the first roll-call immediately after the halt.
The altercation, in its general facts, was as you recall it. But the
occasion of it was this. The regiment halted to bivouac in a
stubble-field. The men got bundles of straw, or possibly of wheat
unthreshed, from a stack in the field to lie upon. General Reno saw
it. I was temporarily absent. The general, as you say, "in a rough
way" accosted the men, and as I returned, I heard his language and
retorted in behalf of my men, not in my own case at all, for he had
said nothing to me.
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