Where has the time gone?

It seems like yesterday that I was a rifle-toting groundpounder, following Captain Ray Oakes into mischief and battle. Those were some good days with the Danville Grays and all our brother units that comprised the Corps. A lot of events have come and gone in the twenty-two years since that sojourn began for me, and for us. In that time I have made some of the best and most steadfast friends a man could hope to acquire.

More faces have vanished into the abyss of time, than I can recollect. Gone are the days when Privates Mike Philyaw, Dave Cornett and myself were young bucks, inseparable and irrascible, in camp and in battle. The world was ours and only work and family got in the way of our, and countless others' martial hobby. To borrow words from General D. H. Hill, "We were lavish of blood in those days...." We thought little of the future of re-enacting, only living for the thrill of the moment, whether it was charging with Captain Frank Webber through tick-infested fields at Staunton River Bridge, or watching Sergeant Vic Middlekauff teach us all how to do skirmish drill at Petersburg.

Little did we know that one day some of our pards would not return to ranks, for various reasons. Like leaves from a tree, the scythe of time reaped a harvest of our friends and comrades, leaving our hearts sad and our camps and ranks delolate. I think it must have been like that, for all those stalwarts of 1861, who making it to Appomattox still alive, must have looked back upon those halcyon years of carnage with chagrined memory over those never again to be heard from or seen. I feel like a lost child, over twenty years later, and I miss all the fellows who helped make me welcome and proficient in this hobby.

Time, illness, divorce, bankruptcy, even death itself, have all caught up with many of our pards, and I now think I have at least a glimmer of how the old boys in gray must have felt. Don't get me wrong, we could never do what they did, no way, no how. It's just the pathos I understand a little better now. The old ranks can never again be reassembled. The trails of two hundred campaigns have left ragged the once youthful visage of my bright-eyed comrades, and in the words of the poet, Yeatts, "I grow old. I grow old. I shall wear my trousers rolled."

We will not see each other very often once we hang up the tunic that last time, just an occasional visit to the camps, no longer seeing many familiar faces. There shall be for us no "old soldiers' home" where we will while away the hours, regaling each other in tales of glory and hilarity. Yet in each other's minds, we shall be young, fervent, and happy, each of us our own sleeping Merlin, to be awakened by some future generation that needs some sort of heroes. We may some day no longer be able to march in step, or even keep time, yet we will have the memories that will keep us forever young, reminding us of the magical seasons we spent together.......once upon a time.

To the sacred memory of all our comrades whom we shall see on the other side.

Colonel Gallion