The command is Present Arms, not Lob Scimitars

[gary]

Col. Paine of the 4th Wisconsin thought highly of Lt. Col. Bean and related one of their early parades:

"At our dress parade that evening Lieut-Col. Bean was greatly exhilarated. He was so small that his long cavalry saber, even when hooked up, dragged on the ground. When I gave the order which required officers to draw their swords, he pompously threw his out with such force that it escaped his grasp and, flying up in the air, came down more than ten feet from his own position, and stuck straight up in th sand, where it remained to Bean's discomfiture and the great amusement of everybody else, until the parade was dismissed."

Bean was killed at Port Hudson when he joined a sharpshooter in a forward foxhole. Bean kept looking over the edge and was pulled down by the sharpshooter to protect him. He was cautioned not to look over the foxhole. Still he persisted and received a leaden pill to the forehead when his curiousity got the better of him.