The Krag is, after all, a weapon. But I found what appears to be the first death by one. Unusual. Appears that there was an Army deserter shot at Fort Sheridan in around 1895. I am not sure if this was an execution or if it was guards trying to stop a deserter. The head wound was studied as this was a first for knowing the devastation of this weapon. There was much concern over the humanity of it. I believe we are way beyond that issue today. Probably after The Great War, actually. There were also many studies by Army surgeons on this subject, but I won't go into it. Just too far and in depth for this forum. But here it is from a hardware periodical of all places, which originated from the Chicago Record.

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Here is the link to the hardware periodical it came from.

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r+fort&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwj9qsaT9-_gAhVq64MKHdIsA_UQ6AEIKDAA#v=onepage&q=krag
%20jorgensen%20deserter%20fort&f=false

The text says: "... chance firing by guards ...".

A 'firing squad execution' would likely be multiple shots in the chest area.

An interesting 'window on the era'.

More to the story.

Read the attached PDF.

Listed below is the website where the article was found:

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Neat find! - Thanks Knute & Local Boy.

Two deserters at Ft. Sheridan, Chicago, shot escaping. The dead man, Coffey, had been at Leavenworth.

The other, Williams, was wounded, but, escaped!

" ... Williams was from Ft. Wayne, near Detroit".

(This probably means, he had been stationed at Ft. Wayne, the Detroit fortification and not from Ft. Wayne, Indiana).

'Psteinmayer' and I will keep an eye open for Williams!

Dang! Chicago's a tough town.

I spent a day at Ft. Wayne (Detroit) in 1966, with a bunch of my high school classmates.

Most of us were freshmen in college and were notified to report for our draft physicals.

A Bus took us there from the local draft board.

After a battery of inane questionnaires and testing of aptitude and knowledge, we spent three hours in our underwear, "hopping like frogs" and submitting to other diagnostic medical analysis.

Although, I was not 'anti-war' and maybe mildly interested in the military, a day of being rudely treated like crap wonderfully clarified my thinking.

My country certainly had the power to draft me, but, I sure was not going to volunteer (or screw up my student deferment).

Sadly, that was the last time a lot of us saw each other. We didn't appreciate that, at the time. 

p.s. After it was turned over to The City of Detroit and became a museum, I had some great adventures at "Historic Ft. Wayne".

Here is his grave. There is a disagreement with the spelling of his name. I'll go with the name "cast in stone" at Fort Sheridan's cemetery. The date of death matches with the newspaper account. So Thomas Caffey it is of Company F, 1st Regiment Cavalry. Long forgotten until now.

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Private Williams appears to be as elusive now as he was back in 1895. He can now hide behind his common last name like he hid in the vegetation in northeast Illinois.

I could find no more about Private Caffey and why he deserted. In the early 1890's Company F of the 1st Regiment Cavalry was at Fort Grant in Arizona. There was little interaction between the Army and Native Americans. There was, however, a Native American named Apache Kid that killed three soldiers as he escaped from a possible wrongful arrest. Apache Kid was blamed for many incidents in Arizona that stopped in 1895 when he possibly died or simply moved on to Mexico. There was a $15,000 reward on his head, rather large for the times. So I can only imagine reasons for Caffey's desertion. Perhaps it was just the life in Arizona and wanting a better life. He could have been at Fort Sheridan for sentencing if it hadn't been issued before his death. He may have been facing execution if not many years of imprisonment.

Kind of off the topic of the Krag rifle. However, Private Caffey is part of the Krag story, as far as I am concerned. He did not do it voluntarily or knowingly. His death brought to light evidence of what the Krag rifle could do before it was used in war.