From the April 4th Augusta (Ga) Chronicle by Kyle Martin.
In 1917, the Georgia Confederate Veterans Battalion assembled for a review before President Woodrow Wilson in Washington, DC. One of them was 74-year-old Berry Benson, former sergeant wearing his old uniform and holding the rifle he had at the end of the war which he never surrendered.
President Wilson's boyhood home was in Augusta and in the city's heart stood a 76-foot tall monument to the Confederacy. At the corners of the memorial were statues of famous Confederates, but way up at the top was an anonymous Confederate soldier. That soldier was based on Mr. Benson.
Sgt. Benson was born in Hamburg, South Carolina, a village that once was located on the other side of the Savannah River from Augusta, near the current Fifth Street Bridge.
He joined the Hamburg Minutemen at age 17 along with his 15-year-old brother. They were mustered into the 1st South Carolina and were part of the Edgefield Battery at the Battle of Fort Sumter. After that, they fought at Second Manassas, Antietam, Fredericksburg. Berry was shot in the leg at the Battle of Chancellorsville.
More to Come. --Old B-Runner
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