Description

I Could See Him Very Plain: Henry Green Boyle

After hearing President Brigham Young call for volunteers to join the Mormon Battalion in June 1846, Henry Green Boyle determined to enlist. He wrote: 

“We were mustered into service the 16th of July 1846. We are now on our line of march from Council Bluffs to Fort Leavenworth.”

Henry continued the march with the battalion into New Mexico and across Arizona. On December 18, 1846, he wrote the following:

“This morning at 4 o’clock my nose commenced to bleed and did not stop for 7 hours. We took up our line of march and traveled six miles to Tucson Creek and there we watered our animals and filled our canteens for the desert, except my messmate unfortunately lost my canteen…and thus I had to start across the desert…and traveled 30 miles…The next day we continued our march at sunrise, finding no water all that day.

“I traveled nearly all that night, having been left some distance behind. I was weak from loss of blood, from hunger and thirst and from the fatigues of our long journey. None but ourselves will ever know how much we suffered. When traveling I became so weak and exhausted that I lay down by the side of the trail to rest and soon went to sleep. 

“I dreamed of being helped to three cups of water from a hole by the side of the trail. I awoke and then went to sleep and dreamed the same thing over again and when I got up to pursue my journey again, I thought my thirst caused me to dream of water, but the dream had made such an impression on my mind that I could not avoid watching that side of the road. 

“Sure enough I saw a man in the act of dipping up water with a cup. I approached him and he dipped up and passed three cups of water to me from a hole on the right side of the road just precisely as I had dreamed. I did not speak to the man, nor him to me. I thought he was a stranger as I did not remember ever seeing him before, for it seemed to me I could see him very plain with all his features and impression of countenance, although it was dark and no moon, it being about one o’clock in the morning of the 20th. I did not think the circumstances were strange at the time it was occurring, but I have been thinking about it all day and the more I think it, the more I marvel. When I arrived at camp, I was not thirsty.”

The Lord once said:

“I will go before your face. I will be on your right hand and on your left, and my Spirit shall be in your hearts, and mine angels round about you to bear you up.

Sources:

https://www.familysearch.org/tree/person/memories/KWJ8-JM1

DC 84:88