When he entered the army, being too young to be mustered in, he went with the regiment, the Twenty-second Michigan, as a volunteer, until the battle of Shiloh. When he was beating the long roll at the battle of Shiloh, a piece of shell struck his drum and sent it flying in fragments. He was after that called “Johnnie Shiloh.” He was afterwards mustered in, and served also as a marker, and with his little musket so served on the battle-field of Chattanooga. At the close of that bloody day, the brigade in which he was, being partly surrounded by rebels, was retreating, when he, being unable to fall back as fast as the rest of the line, was singled out by a rebel colonel who rode up to him with the summons, “Scoundrel, halt! Surrender, you ---- little Yankee!” Johnnie halted, and brought his gun into position as though he was about to surrender, thus throwing the colonel off his guard. In another moment the gun was cocked, fired, and the colonel fell dead from his horse. His regiment was pursued, and a volley was fired at that moment, and Johnnie fell as though he had been killed, and lay there on the field until it was dark enough for him to slip away unnoticed. At Chickamauga he was struck with a fragment of a shell in the hip. He was taken prisoner with others while detailed to bring up a supply train from Bridgeport, Ala. He fared hard as a prisoner. His sister, Mrs. Adams, says, “The rebels stripped him of everything--his clothes, his shoes, his little gun--an ordinary musket, I suppose, cut short--and his little cap. He said he did not care about anything but his cap; he did want to save that, and it hurt him sorely to part with it, for it had three bullet holes through it.” When exchanged he was given a furlough and sent home for a week. He was weak and emaciated from starvation, and his clothes were a bundle of rags. He had been absent about two years in the army, and was at that time in his twelfth year. I did not meet him at Shiloh, but became acquainted with him at Chattanooga, when he was in the hospital there, and saw him frequently when he was on General Thomas’s staff. He was a fair and beautiful child then, about twelve years old, but very small of his age. He was at that time only about thirty inches high and weighed about sixty pounds. At Atlanta, while in the act of delivering a despatch from General Thomas to General Logan, a ball struck the head of his pony obliquely, killing him, and wounding his little rider in the right ear. For his heroic conduct, he was made a sergeant, and his name placed on the Roll of Honor, and he was attached to Headquarters of the Army of the Cumberland. Shortly afterwards he received from Nettie M. Chase, the daughter of Chief Justice Chase, a silver medal inscribed:-- SERGEANT JOHNNIE CLEM, TWENTY-SECOND MICHIGAN VOLUNTEER INFANTRY, FROM N. M. C. which he worthily wears as a badge of honor on his left breast with other medals.