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At Mulberry, Tenn., on August 25, 1914, Robert J. Small, a gallant veteran of the Confederacy and a prominent citizen of this community, passed over the river to the "bivouc on Fame's eternal camping ground." Responding to the call of the Southland, though but a boy, "Bob" Small enlisted in Company D, 8th Tennessee Regiment, Cheatham's Division, and participated in all its battles until the surrender. At Murfreesboro this regiment went into action with four hundred and thirty-six men and sustained a loss of three hundred and one killed and wounded, including its colonel and every commissioned officer. The charge in this engagement was made across a mile of open fields under a desolating fire. A six gun battery was captured and the Federal line swept away by their irresistable onset. The percentage of loss of the 8th Tennessee was greater than that of any other regiment during the war, save that of a North Carolina regiment in Pickett's charge at Gettysburg, and much larger than that in the famous "Charge of the Light Brigade" at Balaklava. Ever thereafter it was known as the "Bloody Eighth." At Chickmauga, Missionary Ridge, in the long campaign to Atlanta, and in the sanguinary battles around that city the "Bloody Eighth" gathered new laurels. In the feraful and disastrous battle of Franklin, that awful "Valley of Death," the intrepid boys of the 8th Tennessee, after a charge of a mile under murderous fire, fought the Federals across the earthworks with bayonets and clubbed guns. It was here that "Bob" Small mounted the ramparts, killed two of the enemy with a repeating rifle, and regained his side of the breastworks uninjured. When the tattered battle flags were furled over a nation prostrate and bleeding, he returned to his home and became an exemplary citizen. His wife, who was Miss Alice Shofner survives him. Gentle, genial, and lovable in his temperment, he was among the "bravest of the brave where all were brave."
SOURCE: Confederate Veteran Magazine, June, 1915.
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