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Military Images, Jul/Aug 1999 by Beck, Michael, Valentine, Scott, Lyon, Robert, Fitzpatrick, Michael, Et al

Milton M. Holland 5th U.S. Colored Troops

First Sergeant Milton Holland won the Medal of Honor on September 29, 1864. At the battle of Chaffin's Farm, Virginia, he was wounded in the assault on the Confederate works but remained on the field to lead his company. He is shown here wearing on the right the Medal of Honor and on the left the Army of the James medal designated for U.S. Colored Troops by General Benjamin Butler. Moreover, Butler recommended Holland for a captain's commission but this request was denied by the War Department on account of Holland's color.

-- Robert Lyon

Reuben R. Myers 30th Indiana Infantry

Reuben Myers was an eager seventeen year old from Fort Wayne when he enlisted in the Union Army in 1861. Three months shy of his eighteenth birthday, Myers listed his occupation as "blacksmith" when he lied about his age and signed the papers that put him in Company A of the 30th Indiana Volunteers. The Hoosier regiment saw action almost from the beginning, with Shiloh, Corinth and Perryville listed among its early battle honors. Myers survived them unscathed. Then on the first day of the fight at Stone's River he was shot through the right leg below the knee. The bullet tore into the soft tissue of his calf, clipped the bone, and put him out action for three months. When he returned to duty in March of 1863, he was promoted to corporal.

At Chickamauga in September, Myers was wounded again, this time by a shell fragment that struck him in the chest. Again he was absent recovering for three months. In January 1864 at Whiteside, Tennessee, Myers re-enlisted with most of his comrades, giving the regiment the right to carry the title of Veteran Volunteers.

On May 9, 1864, during the Union Army's next push into Georgia, the Hoosiers went into action at Buzzard's Roost, near Dalton. Unlucky Myers fell wounded once again, this time shot in the right shoulder. He spent the next two months in hospital and missed the successive battles leading up to the siege of Atlanta. Myers was made of tough fiber, however, and yet again returned to duty to fight at Franklin and Nashville. Along the way the indestructible Hoosier was promoted to sergeant and then firstsergeant of his company.

In the summer of 1865 the 30th Indiana was assigned to garrison duty in Texas, where they finally were mustered out at Victoria on November 25, 1865. Reuben Myers, a thricewounded veteran, returned home at last. -- Michael Fitzpatrick

Berkley P. Blewitt

20th Pennsylvania Infantry, 88th Pennsylvania Infantry 24th Regiment, Veteran Reserve Corps Berkley Blewitt's original enlistment was in Co. B of the 20th Pennsylvania Infantry, a three-month regiment which served under the ineffectual General Robert Patterson in the northern Shenandoah Valley in 1861.

Following uneventful duty under Patterson, the 20th returned home and was mustered out. Blewitt then enlisted in Company B of a new threeyear regiment, the 88th Pennsylvania Infantry, on September 9, 1861. He was subsequently absent sick from his company for much of his service with that regiment. On March 15, 1864, Blewitt transferred to Company C of the 24th Regiment, Veterans Reserve Corps (VRC) and was assigned as a hospital steward at Wisewell Barracks Hospital in Washington, D.C.