← Back to the front page

The Tragic History of the U.S. Child Warriors

Khalid Elhassan June 9, 2020 34 min

13. “What a Foolish Boy I Was“

It was not long before Elisha Stockwell got his first taste of combat. It came during the second day of the Battle of Shiloh, April 7^th, 1862, when the child saw his first dead body. He also took part in a bloody bayonet charge against the Rebels, during which almost half of Elisha’s regiment were killed or wounded.

As Elisha described that come-to-Jesus moment, when he realized the difference between his fantasies and the reality of war: “I want to say, as we lay there and the shells were flying over us, my thoughts went back to my home. I thought what a foolish boy I was to run away to get into such a mess as I was in. I would have been glad to have seen my father coming after me“. Elisha did not go unscathed: he took a bullet in the shoulder, and was struck by canister in his arm.

Written by

Khalid Elhassan

A lifelong history buff, I developed a particular passion for WW2 history as a child, when I spent hours listening to my grandfather, enraptured, as he recounted his wartime experiences in the British East African Campaign and with the British 8th Army in North Africa.

I graduated with a history BA from George Mason University, then went on to get a JD from the University of Virginia School of Law. After lawyering for a decade, I moved to sunny Rio de Janeiro and a less demanding career, opening a tourism agency in Copacabana.

A big chunk of my free time is spent blogging (you can follow me on Quora https://www.quora.com/profile/Khalid-Elhassan ) or freelance writing, mostly about my favorite subject, history.