When Charles Bieger, a St. Louis trunk salesman, died in 1930, he was buried beneatha family headstone that bore only his last name. Nothing more indicated that this man was decorated for heroism during the Civil War.

There is now a new tombstone on his grave.

I encourage folks to read the article, as it talks about some fine people who work to make sure that every Medal of Honor winner has his heroism commemorated. It also provides a really interesting bit of history about the award.

But the most interesting part of the article is this.

Descendants of Bieger don't know why his grave wasn't marked. The Post-Dispatch obituary on Bieger mentions the medal in its headline and says he was buried with military honors.

Surviving evidence also suggests that Bieger was modest about his bravery. An article on his exploits that was published in 1927, when he was 83, notes that the reporter had to keep directing the interview back to the fateful battle. Bieger wanted to talk about how he helped police crack open an old trunk that was used to hide a body in a notorious murder downtown.

"It required about 27 direct questions to worm this interesting information out of the veteran," reporter Robertus Love noted in his article in the old St. Louis Globe-Democrat.

Bieger, a native of Wiesbaden, Germany, immigrated to St. Louis with his family in 1857 and joined the Union cavalry in 1862. He was 19 when he accompanied an unsuccessful thrust from Memphis, Tenn., into Mississippi in February 1864.

The column was supposed to meet Gen. William T. Sherman's infantry at the rail junction of Meridian, Miss. But halfway there, the cavalry ran into a force led by the wily Confederate Gen. Nathan Bedford Forrest.

On Feb. 22, 1864, the two sides fought a series of galloping clashes near Okolona, Miss. At Ivey's Hill, nine miles northwest of town, Capt. Frederick Hunsen was unhorsed and surrounded.

Bieger rode through gunfire, offered his horse to Hunsen and steadied the captain's wounded mount. Together they fled to safety.

The fight was a Confederate victory. The cavalry limped back to Memphis, forcing Sherman to withdraw from Meridian.

"Forrest licked us that day. Licked us good and plenty," Bieger said in 1927.

He returned to St. Louis after the war ended and eventually opened a trunk shop at Broadway and Market Street. (Forrest returned to Tennessee, where he briefly served as the first grand wizard of the Ku Klux Klan.)

In 1895, Hunsen wrote a letter detailing Bieger's exploits. Congress awarded him the Medal of Honor in 1897.

T learn more about the Congressional Medal of honor and the heroes whose actions are honored with the nation's highest military honor, visit the Congressional Medal of Honor Society.

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