The first impression represents itself to me is that of a young man who was just twenty-one, with a fair complexion, bright, beaming blue eyes and hair of the color called auburn; he was so beautiful that I never looked at it -- and I have observed it millions of times with pleasure and delight -- without recalling immediately those fine lines of Ferguson --

"My own Dawn's hair is like a thread of gold spun
Daylight, without it's brown in the shadows and yellow in the sun."

His height was medium, his figure burly, his step firm and determined. (An) observing … eye could discern a bearing and a carriage of the person which told as plainly as so many words that JOHN O'CONNELL JOYCE had a keen and true sense of his dignity as a man and as an officer, and that he was determined at all hazards to maintain it. You should have seen his steady, cool brave bearing on picket, his dashing, and dauntless courage in battle when he was ever within a heartbeat of eternity. I have known Jim intimately since the fighting before Richmond -- previously to that not, not so thoroughly.

Like a murmur, it waved up to the right of his company that one of his men -- Private Collins, I think, was mortally wounded, killed indeed. "Captain," said one of the men to Joyce, "poor Collins is dead." To which, in his full, strong voice, he replied: "God rest his soul. He died the death of a good soldier and never disgraced ourselves or one another." When the rebel flags planted on the brow of the hill up which we were marching first appeared in view, he yearned and longed and labored to take them. "Attention, Co. C, steady -- right dress -- forward -- march" and on they went, every man -- a terrible fire raining down the slope on them.

These were the last words I heard from him -- the last sight I had of him. Half an hour after I was looking at Dr. Reynolds dressing Lieutenant Mackey's wound down near the hospital, … some one told me Captain Joyce was shot through the head. So it was. The news was as unexpected as it was grievous. The best and the bravest seem to be carried away oftenest. Many will mourn him. All said, God rest his soul.

John OConnell Joyce