Do you wonder, then, that I love to call those comrades of mine "my
boys"? Whether they served in the Army of Northern Virginia or the
Army of Tennessee, they were all alike my comrades. Their precious
blood has often dyed my own garments. I have gone down with them to
the very gates of death, wrestling with the death angel every step of
the way, sometimes only to receive their last sighs as they passed
into the valley of the shadow, sometimes permitted to guide their
feeble feet once more into the paths of glory.
I have shared their rations, plain but plentiful at first, at the last
only a mouldy crust and a bit of rusty bacon. I have been upon an
ambulance-train freighted with human agony delayed for hours by rumors
of an enemy in ambush. I have fed men hungry with the ravening hunger
of the wounded with scanty rations of musty corn-bread; have seen them
drink eagerly of foetid water, dipped from the road-side ditches. Yet
they bore it all with supreme patience; fretted and chafed, it is
true, but only on account of enforced inactivity. I have packed
haversacks with marching rations for forty-eight hours, a single
corn-dodger split and with only a thin slice of bacon between the
pieces.
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