Singleton writes of the day that a veteran has to borrow his brother's cork leg

Battle of Gettysburg

(For decades, local historian and paranormal investigator George “Buster” Singleton published a weekly newspaper column called “Somewhere in Time.” The column below, which was titled “It’s not every day that you borrow someone else’s leg” was originally published in the Sept. 10, 1992 edition of The Monroe Journal in Monroeville, Ala.)

There has never been a time in the history of our country, or perhaps even in the history of the world, when the tide of unusual happenings unfurled as it did during and after our Civil War.

One could spend an entire lifetime in the study of this tragic time in our history and never completely cover it in its entirety. Many tragic events took place in the five years that shook our country to its very soul, and even today, more than 127 years later, we continue to feel some of the after effects from it.

Not everything that happened during this period was brutal. More than 5,000 battles and skirmishes were fought between the North and the South, and out of these, some events turned out to be ironic and amusing.

The date was July 1, 1863. The Battle of Gettysburg had started, and some of the fiercest fighting of the entire war was beginning to take place. The 13^th North Carolina Regiment was among the first to come eyeball to eyeball with the Union troops on that hot July day.

Two brothers, Jack and Jasper Walker of Charlotte, N.C. was among those of the 13^th Regiment. Jasper, the younger of the two, was a color bearer for the regiment. He was the fifth color bearer of the day; the other four had been shot down in the fierce fighting that had taken place earlier. Jack and Jasper had been separated during the bitter skirmish, and neither knew just where the other one was.

In trying to advance, the 13^th North Carolina Regiment suffered heavy casualties. Jasper, while trying to advance with the regiment’s colors, suffered a serious wound in his left leg. Unable to move, he was left with many others as the 13^th Regiment began to retreat from the battlefield.

As his regiment retreated, the advancing Union army took those alive as prisoners of war; Jasper was among these. Brother Jack did not know what had happened; it was every man for himself.

Due to the great number of dead and wounded, the survivors of the regiment were doing everything they could to put as much distance as possible between them and the advancing Union forces.

In the hasty retreat from the bloody fighting, Jack, too, was seriously wounded in the left leg. Like the others, he was left for dead by his fellow soldiers. He, too, was taken prisoner as the Union army followed the retreating Rebels.

In the shuffle of prisoners, Jack was sent to one Union prison camp and Jasper was sent to another. Neither knew whether the other was still alive.

During the next two days, the left legs of both brothers were amputated by Union army surgeons due to blood poisoning.

Jack and Jasper Walker were to spend the remainder of the war in separate Union prisoner of war camps. As the dreadful war came to a close and General Ulysses S. Grant and General Robert E. Lee drew up the surrender agreements, the prisoners of war on both sides were released and told that they could go home. Only when the Walker brothers returned home did they know that the other was alive and that they had both lost their left legs in the fierce fighting at Gettysburg.

Even though handicapped, the Walker brothers worked hard and became prosperous citizens in the town of Charlotte. They were a familiar sight as they stumped around on the streets of the North Carolina town on their cork legs.

As the brothers prospered, love came into the life of Jasper, the younger of the two. As time passed, the sounds of wedding bells could be heard on the distant horizon. Much thought and effort was put into the planning of this special event. The big pot was going to be put into the little pot on this special day; it would be a wedding that would be remembered for many years by the citizens of Charlotte. Many guests would be present; those in the 13^th North Carolina Regiment who survived the dreadful war were to be guests of honor.

As the hour approached for the wedding, Jasper was rushing around trying to get everything in order. He stumbled and fell. As he surveyed the damage, he was to find that his left leg, his artificial leg, had been broken. Not having time to get another one made, Jasper was at a loss as to what to do. He didn’t want to have to stand in the wedding ceremony on his one good leg; it would be very embarrassing to him and his bride.

But the good luck that had followed him and his brother in the years after the war was not to let him down now. Jack, upon hearing that Jasper had broken his cork leg, came forward to loan his leg to his brother so that the wedding could take place. It was a perfect fit.

Jack and Jasper Walker were fond of telling this story to the youngsters of Charlotte. This was the only case on record in which one man was married while standing on the leg of another.

(Singleton, the author of the 1991 book “Of Foxfire and Phantom Soldiers,” passed away at the age of 79 on July 19, 2007. A longtime resident of Monroeville, he was born during a late-night thunderstorm on Dec. 14, 1927 in Marengo County, graduated from Sweet Water High School in 1946, served in the Korean War, worked as a riverboat deckhand, lived for a time among Apache Indians, moved to Monroe County on June 28, 1964 and served as the administrator of the Monroeville National Guard unit from 1964 to 1987. For years, Singleton’s column “Somewhere in Time” appeared in The Monroe Journal, and he wrote a lengthy series of articles about Monroe County that appeared in Alabama Life magazine. Some of his earlier columns also appeared under the heading of “Monroe County History: Did You Know?” He is buried in Pineville Cemetery in Monroeville. The column above and all of Singleton’s other columns are available to the public through the microfilm records at the Monroe County Public Library in Monroeville. Singleton’s columns are presented here each week for research and scholarship purposes and as part of an effort to keep his work and memory alive.)