Into Battle with a Frying Pan

:bounce:Another frying pan incident related by Earl Hess occurred at Ezra Church. As Manigault's Brigade was advancing Lieut. Col. C. Irvine Walker of the 10th South Carolina kept a close watch on a soldier who had behaved badly in the conflict on July 22nd. "Walker was pleased to see that he kept up with the rest, even though he held a frying pan in front of his head to calm his nerves."
 
Forrest didn't whale on anybody with a frying pan that I know of but there's a frying pan related story. Early in the war his men were in pursuit of a Union company and, one morning, knew they were close - bacon was in the air! Forrest caught a whiff and immediately ordered them to saddle up but they balked. "Can't we cook breakfast and eat before we fight them?" "No," snapped Forrest. "Kill the Yankees and eat their breakfast!"
 
There's not really much to this one, but in Walter A. Clark's memoir, Under the stars and bars, in his description of the battle of Bentonville he mentions overrunning a line of Federal works and discovering a frying pan, hatchet, and Enfield rifle left behind. He stuck the frying pan and hatchet in his belt, dropped his Austrian rifle and picked up the Enfield, and kept on fighting. At the time, he was in Co. A, 63rd Georgia Infantry.

https://archive.org/stream/01599363.3345.emory.edu/01599363_3345#page/n201/mode/2up
 
A frying pan might serve as a kind of protective armor if a soldier used his knapsack as cover. I seem to recall one or two cases at Gettysburg where wounded men lying on the ground did just that, and bullets struck the pan in their knapsack. But one such instance was described by Capt. C. A. Stevens in his book, Berdan's United States Sharpshooters, p. 340, in which a Federal Sharpshooter escaped injury thanks to his frying pan.
 
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