Grenville Mellen Dodge.
Birth: April 12, 1831.
Death: January 3, 1916.
Burial: Walnut Hill, Cemetery, Council Bluffs, Pottawattamie County, Iowa.
The following was taken from the history of the seventh Iowa Veteran Volunteer Infantry, by H. I. Smith Plub. 1903.
Private Cahill, Co."I," a little Irishman, was shooting through the hole. I told him to step to one side and let Gen. Dodge look through,and he did so. I looked first to see if all was clear, and stepped back and the general stepped in my front, and just as he was looking through, a minnie ball came through the loop-hole and struck the general in the forehead, peeled a ribbon off his scalp laying his skull bare; glanced off the top of his head and went through the top of his black slouch hat he wore. He fell across my feet pinning me fast in the ditch; he quivered and bled, and I supposed he was killed. I sent two men to the rear for a stretcher, and the men released me and we watched him with no expectation that he would ever revive.
After the general was taken off I picked up a piece of his scalp with the hair on it, and after the war brought it home and kept it a number of years. The look-out hole in the works was made by splitting a piece off the corner of an empty pine cartridge case, V shaped, laying it on top of the works and covering it with dirt. The bullet struck the pine board and glanced to the general s head, which saved his life, as the force of the ball was partially spent when it struck him.
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