Excerpt from Contributions to a History of the Richmond Howitzer Battalion: Pamphlet No. 1

Of the six hundred who from first to last were enlisted under the banner of your corps, how few remain to gather here to night on the occasion of your chosen anniversary to rekindle the camp fires of memory; in the bivouac of life to reillume the beacon lights of other days! Pile on the rails, my lads! Come, gather around the blaze and warm your souls. The grand old woods, plaintive with the distant cry of the whippoorwill; the road-side, with its eternal ruts and everlasting mud-puddles; the sedgy old fields of the Peninsula, with their melancholy pines; the blue vault of heaven with its crescent so pale, and all the bright stars which shine o'er the vale, where the Shenandoah brawls along, or the Rappahannock rolls its tributary tide to wards the sea; or by the historic York, where your fathers fought their Opposers from the old world, where you fought those from the new; or amid swamps and marshes, whose stagnant waters seemed to be the very bed of that sentimental patriotism of which you used to hear so much, which knew no North, no South, no East, no West, so little inclined did they seem to flow anywhere. These are the scenes, once so vivid in your recollections, my comrades, which I wish to revisit with you, and with these our friends, who have honored us on this occasion with their presence. Ido not propose to fight in detail any battles to-night. Night, as you know, is a bad time for such bloody work. The poet of battle-songs warns us that the bugles sing truce when the night Clouds have lowered, and the sentinel stars set their watch in the sky. The song - the sergeant's story - the corporal's oft-told jokes - some poor fellow's sorry pun, made with a kind heart and a good intention - these have served their turn, the fleeting Cynthia of the hour. While the logs burn bright, and the night wind whispers a requiem over some fallen comrade's shallow grave, let us Open the records of the Howitzer history, and read a page here and a page there.

About the Publisher

Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com

This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.