First combat tested the mettle of all regiments, no matter how small or large the engagement. The 150th Pennsylvania Infantry confronted the reality at Gettysburg just west of the McPherson Farm in the afternoon of the first day’s fight. James Monroe “Roe” Reisinger, 20, served as one of his regiment’s color corporals. He followed the flag with musket in hand, prepared to lay down his life in its defense.
He came close to making the ultimate sacrifice at Gettysburg. In a short period of time, he suffered three wounds. Years later, he detailed them in an affidavit.
“I was wounded at the first or second fire from enemy, being struck in the right foot by an ounce ball which shattered the bones of the instep leading to the base of the second toe and lodged in the ball of the foot.” The color sergeant and other members of the color guard urged him to go to the rear for treatment. “As were very hotly engaged, I refused. I tried my wounded food and finding I could stand on my heel, I kept my place in the ranks.”
Reisinger continued, “We fought for some time at the fence, then charged over it for some distance, but running into a strong force we fell back to the fence and made a stand there. Some troops came in on our left flank and we had orders to fall back, which we did in good order till past the McPherson house, where we again made a stand. We again pushed back to the fence and again made a fight there. The enemy came on in such heavy force that we again had to fall back to the house.”
BY this time, most of the guardians of the regiment’s flags had been wounded and left the battlefield. Color Sgt. Samuel Peiffer still stood, though he had been hit with a bullet in the arm. As Reisinger advanced with Peiffer from the McPherson House, “I was shot with a ball weighing over an ounce, in the back of the right leg, above the knee. It went deep into the flesh, back of the knee. The ball was battered against the bone. The second shot knocked me to the ground.”
Down but not out, Reisinger rose with the assistance of a comrade and followed as best he could when he felt the sting of a third bullet. “I was again wounded with a round ounce ball in the right hip, the bullet passing through the lower part of the hip and lodging in the flesh of the thigh, near the surface and close to the scrotum. I fell and was unable to rise. At the time I received this last wound I was so weak that I could hardly bring my gun to my face to fire.”
Reisinger finally fell back. His fellow Pennsylvanians continued the fight that afternoon and the two subsequent days. When it was all over, 260 of the 397 men present at the start of battle had been killed, wounded, or gone missing.
Reisinger spent a full year in recovery, first in a field hospital, facilities in Pittsburgh, Pa. and in Washington, D.C.
Some soldiers might have left the army after such an ordeal, but not Reisinger. His wounds healed and medical officials approved him for service in the Veteran Reserve Corps, established for soldiers capable of light duty but not for the rigors of campaign. Reisinger left the Corps to accept a First Lieutenant’s commission in the 114th U.S. Colored infantry and remained with the regiment until it mustered out in Texas in April 1867, almost six full years of military service.
Four decades later, in 1907, Reisinger received the Medal of Honor for courage in the face of the enemy at Gettysburg. He died in 1925 at the age of 82. His remains rest at Greendale Cemetery in Meadville, Pa. Reisinger outlived two wives, and two children survived him. His son, James W.H. Reisinger (1883 – 1936), graduated from West Point and served as a Lieutenant Colonel in World War I.
From: Anonymous contributor to 150th PA Vol. Inf. re-enactor group
Sources: J. Monroe Reisinger - Wikipedia
James Monroe Reisinger (1842–1925)
[ https://ancestors.familysearch.org/en/MZM5-MZ3/james-monroe-reisinger-1842-1925 ]
