Faces of the Civil War: An Album of Union Soldiers and Their Stories

Learning from Experience

117 Learning from Experience The Twelfth Indiana Infantry’s Company E despised its second lieutenant, Andy Milice. It was the way he talked to his men. He had a “style about him that repelled rather than won, and yielded a reluctant obedience to his orders,” reported the company historian.179 He became aware of his shortcomings as an of- ficer, and, after his regiment’s one-year term of enlistment ended in 1862, he brushed up on his interpersonal skills as he helped recruit volunteers from his hometown of Warsaw, Indiana. The men became Company A of the state’s Seventy-fourth Infantry, and they elected him first lieutenant. The regiment was dispatched to Tennessee, where he developed into an efficient and popular of- ficer and made captain. But his tenure as company commander was short-lived. At Chickamauga, Georgia, in the afternoon of September 19, 1863, the Seventy-fourth formed a single line of battle on the left flank of a three-regiment assault force. At 2 p.m., it advanced through dense woods, engaged the enemy, and drove them back for over a half-mile, suffering few casualties. Then all hell broke loose when Confederate reinforcements overwhelmed the little blue line, pounding it with devastating musket and canon fire.180 In the Seventy-fourth, men went down all over, and eleven of twentyfour officers were hit, including Milice, who was incapacitated by a bullet that slammed into his left shoulder and left a gaping wound after it exited his back. The injury caused severe muscle damage to his left arm, and field surgeons sent him to a hospital to convalesce. But he came down with hepatitis and symptoms that suggested typhoid. His face, hands, and feet started to swell, and he was unable to urinate for long periods. His condition went from bad to worse, and some 118 Capt. Andrew Staley Milice, Company A, Seventy-fourth Indiana Infantry Carte de visite attributed to J. H. Van Stavoren (life dates unknown) of Nashville, Tennessee, about 1863 119 believed his case fatal. His doctors sent him home to die, but he pulled through after two touch-and-go months. He ultimately made a full recovery from his illness but was permanently disabled by his shoulder wound and was discharged from the army. Back in Indiana, Milice returned to civilian life as a bookseller and stationer. He married in the spring of 1864 and raised a family that grew to include two boys and a girl. After his wife died in 1879, he remarried and relocated to Riverside, California, where he invested in an orange grove. Senility came upon him in the 1910s, and he died in 1919 at age eighty.181 ...