[85] asked to narrate some of these incidents, but the old soldier felt constrained, fearing that what he might say would be considered prompted by egotism. When the reporter succeeded in removing these scruples, Colonel West spoke interestingly as follows:
General W. H. Lytle, commanding a brigade of Sheridan's division, McCook's corps, was killed about noon, September 20, 1863, by the troops of the Twenty-second Alabama Regiment of Deas' Brigade in Hindman's Division, commanded in that action by General Patton Anderson.1
This command captured between 600 and 700 officers and men of Lytle's Brigade. After the charge, which resulted in the rout of this division of Sheridan, General Anderson ordered me, as Inspector-General of his command, to take charge of those Federal prisoners, then under fire from their own friends, and put them in a place of safety and turn them over to the provost guard, and rejoin my command.
Whilst engaged in this duty of collecting the men under an amphitheatre in their rear, an officer of the Federal army, wounded, Achilles-like, in his heel, limped up to me and asked me to save his General, who had fallen, and was then lying near the Federal breastworks, which, together with the dead leaves in the forest, were burning from the artillery fire on both sides.
I asked him: ‘Who is your general?’ He replied: ‘General Lytle.’
I asked him whether he was the officer riding a small, dark horse, who was so active in rallying his men. He replied that doubtless he was.
I then said: ‘Get four or five of your most stalwart men, not wounded, and take them with you to the spot, and I will follow you.’
The distance was short from where we were holding this conversation, and just across their breastworks, hastily constructed of felled and rotten timber, we found the body lying in the leaves. His face was upwards. He was bleeding from three wounds—one of which, I know, was in the neck; one in the leg, and I have forgotten where the other was. He was dressed in full regulation uniform, but was minus his sword, his scabbard and belt being still on his person. My first exclamation on looking down upon his graceful and manly form, so perfectly dressed and accoutred, was:
‘I am dying, Egypt, dying!’
