John Johnson

He Lost an Arm but Kept Serving the Gun

John Johnson was born on March 25, 1842, in Toten, Norway. As a young man he came to the United States and was living in Wisconsin when the American Civil War began. On April 20, 1861, he enlisted at Janesville as a Private in Company D of the 2nd Wisconsin Infantry, beginning a military career that would soon place him in some of the fiercest fighting of the war.

Johnson’s formal Army rank remained Private, but his wartime duties changed significantly later that year. In November 1861, he was detached from the 2nd Wisconsin Infantry for service with Battery B, 4th U.S. Artillery.

There he became a cannoneer.

Artillery service demanded strength, speed, coordination, and discipline. A gun crew had to move ammunition, load and aim the weapon, manage its recoil, and keep firing while exposed to enemy infantry and artillery. When members of a crew were killed or wounded, the remaining men had to take over their duties immediately if the gun was to remain in action.

Johnson proved himself capable of doing exactly that.

On September 17, 1862, he was serving with Battery B during the Battle of Antietam in Maryland.

Antietam became the bloodiest single day of the Civil War. Around the northern part of the battlefield, fighting near the Cornfield and the Hagerstown Pike repeatedly brought Union and Confederate troops into extremely close contact.

Battery B was heavily engaged.

Johnson served as a cannoneer while casualties reduced the number of men available to operate the guns. As members of the artillery crews fell, he helped man their positions and kept the battery functioning.

At moments during the fighting, Confederate infantry advanced dangerously close to the Union guns. The artillerymen continued firing at short range in an effort to stop the attacks and prevent their pieces from being captured.

Johnson remained at the guns.

His courage at Antietam later became part of the record behind his Medal of Honor. The official recognition emphasized that while serving as a cannoneer, he manned the positions of fallen gunners.

It was a simple sentence describing an extraordinarily dangerous task.

Every fallen gunner represented another casualty around the weapon and another responsibility that someone else had to assume. Johnson continued moving into those positions and helping keep the artillery in action while the battle raged around him.

His service with Battery B continued after Antietam.

Less than three months later, Johnson entered another major battle.

On December 13, 1862, Union forces attacked Confederate positions at Fredericksburg, Virginia. The battle became one of the most costly defeats suffered by the Army of the Potomac, with Union troops repeatedly exposed to devastating Confederate fire.

Johnson again served with the artillery.

During the fighting, he was carrying ammunition for his gun when a Confederate projectile struck him with catastrophic force.

His right arm was torn away at the shoulder.

The wound was devastating and could easily have killed him immediately.

Yet Johnson did not simply collapse and abandon his position.

Despite the severity of the injury, surviving accounts record that he continued attempting to serve the gun until blood loss finally overcame him and he lost consciousness.

His survival was remarkable.

The wound permanently disabled him for further active field service, bringing his battlefield career to an end. Johnson had entered the Army as a nineteen-year-old Private and had served through a succession of hard campaigns before the injury at Fredericksburg changed the course of his life.

He remained hospitalized for an extended period and was ultimately discharged from the Army because of his wounds on April 10, 1863.

Johnson left military service without having advanced beyond the formal rank of Private.

His rank, however, gives little indication of the responsibility he had accepted in combat.

At Antietam, he had helped keep Battery B’s guns operating as other artillerymen fell.

At Fredericksburg, he remained devoted to his duties even after suffering a wound that cost him his right arm.

More than thirty years passed before those actions received the nation’s highest military recognition.

On August 28, 1893, John Johnson was presented with the Medal of Honor.

The award recognized his conspicuous gallantry in battle, including his service as a cannoneer when he took the positions of fallen gunners and the severe wounds he suffered during combat.

No additional clasp, bar, star, or other device accompanied his Medal of Honor.

After recovering from his wartime injuries, Johnson built a civilian life despite the permanent disability he carried from Fredericksburg. He eventually settled in Washington, D.C., where he worked for the federal government, including service as a clerk in the Treasury Department.

He lived for more than four decades after the Civil War, becoming one of the veterans who carried the physical consequences and memories of the conflict into the twentieth century.

John Johnson died in Washington, D.C., on April 3, 1907, at the age of sixty-five. He was buried at Rock Creek Cemetery.

His military story is defined not by high rank or command, but by endurance at the gun.

At Antietam, when artillerymen around him were falling, Private John Johnson stepped into their places and helped keep the battery firing.

At Fredericksburg, he was struck so severely that his right arm was torn away at the shoulder.

Even then, his instinct was to continue serving the weapon.

That determination brought his active military career to a brutal end, but decades later it earned him the Medal of Honor and preserved his name among the soldiers whose courage was measured not by rank, but by what they were willing to endure while remaining at their post.