Singular Fidelity of a Dog on the Battle-Field
Gettysburg Compiler
January 12, 1863
Singular Fidelity of a Dog on the Battle-Field:
On Monday last, as Hon. John Covode, in company with a number of officers,
was passing over the battle-field beyond Fredericksburg, their attention was
called to a small dog lying by a corpse. Mr. Covode halted a few minutes to see
if life was extinct. Raising the coat from the man's face, he found him dead.
The dog, looking wistfully up, ran to the dead man's face and kissed his silent lips.
Such devotion in a small dog was so singular that Mr. Covode examined some
papers upon the body, and found it to be that of Sergeant W. H. Brown, Company C,
Ninety-first Pennsylvania.
The dog was shivering with the cold, but refused to leave his master's body, and as
the coat was thrown over his face again he seemed very uneasy, and tried to get
under it to the man's face. He had, it seems, followed the regiment into battle,
and stuck to his master, and when he fell remained with him, refusing to leave him
or to eat anything.
As the party returned an ambulance was carrying the corpse to a little grove of trees
for interment, and the little dog following, the only mourner at that funeral, as the hero's
comrades had been called to some other point.
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