The Battle at Pine Grove:

Battlefield Journal

of

Pvt. Mark A. Thomas, C Company

 5^th Virginia Infantry Regiment

August 2^nd through August 4^th

“1862”

December, 1996 - This story is dedicated to Theresa and her shoemakers at the Fall Creek Suttlery, who produced a pair of custom-fitted Confederate brogans in record time and made this adventure possible.

Preface

Target shooting has been a favorite pass-time since I was eight, and as an adult, I found a passion for the old black-powder guns that played such a large part in American history up to the mid-1870’s.  Another passion is making things, especially making things as people used to make their own possessions and necessities, by hand and with lots of Yankee ingenuity.

My adventures back in time began as I toured through a gun show at the Arizona State Fairgrounds.  I was fair game for Steve Davis, Captain of G Company, First Arkansas Volunteers, a group of American Civil War buffs who reenact that great struggle as Confederate infantrymen in mock battles and living history demonstrations here in Arizona, and once a year at one of the great Civil War reenactment “events” held back East on or near the actual battlefields of that war.  Participation in this group, for the non-wealthy, involves making all sorts of things in the old-fashioned way, from sewing an authentic wool uniform to making leather cartridge pouches and scrounging things like tin mugs and nineteenth century eyeglass frames out of antique stores and catalogs.  Some things you pretty well have to have made for you, like authentic Civil War army brogans (LPC’s or Leather Personnel Carriers as Corporal Cullum calls them).

This new hobby also gave me a perfect excuse to buy a reproduction of the .58 caliber 1853 pattern British Enfield rifled musket , ten pounds and 56 inches of steel, walnut and brass.  With its slim, triangular bayonet fixed, the weapon is 74 inches long, and fires a hollow-based bullet the size of your thumb out to as much as a thousand yards in the hands of an expert rifleman (and with accuracy out to as much as twenty-five yards in mine).  In mock battles, however, it’s loaded only with powder and not so much as a wad of paper to accidentally injure another reenactor or spectator.  It goes off with a big puffing bang and a cloud of smoke, and as I learned during my first mock battle, the rifleman’s only reason for existence is to lug this beast from place to place, tend it, feed it, stack it, un-stack it, have it inspected and get yelled at for not keeping it immaculately clean.  Oh, and once in a while, usually in noisy, chaotic surroundings, shoot it off generally in the direction of some other fellows, which generally seems to irritate them into shooting back and occasionally running toward you making ferocious noises.

In order to carry out this elemental function, the rifleman must sleep on the ground under a single blanket and (if he’s wise) a rubberized sheet (no high-density foam pad, inflatable mattress or folding cot), and eat only what he can carry - food which cannot be kept cold, and may NOT come in little foil pouches from the gourmet rack in the camping store, and for authenticity’s sake should be rudimentary - dried fruit, beans or corn, “hard tack” crackers, beans, coffee and perhaps  some brown sugar.  He must do this eating and sleeping in the open, with a campfire as his only light and heat at night.

The following is an account of my first Civil War reenactment event, August 2 - 4, 1996, in the Mormon Lake area southeast of Flagstaff, Arizona.

August 1^st  -  Eve of Battle

I have packed my gear one hundred times to check and make certain such and such an item was not omitted, or to find some better means of stowing it.  The motions are automatic now, rolling and tying up my blanket roll, putting the poke-sacks of necessities in my haversack in last-in, first-out order.  Everything is in order - I hope.

A month from today, I will be 49 years old.  Half the load in my haversack is medication for Parkinson’s Disease and related symptoms.  What am I trying to prove?  That Parkinson’s can’t stop me from living a vigorous life?  Probably.  That being forty-eight, divorced and alone isn’t the end of life?  Probably.  Or am I just plain crazy??  Maybe . . . we’ll see.

August 2^nd

In camp - 8:00pm.  About noon, we drew three day’s rations - one pound of rice, one pound of parched corn, and a stack of “hard tack” crackers (which ought to come with a legal release form in case of dental injury).    We drilled for a while, more or less successfully, to merge units from several Western states into a cohesive battalion of infantry.  Then we marched off down the road into the past, one hundred and thirty-five years, into a time-travel adventure like nothing I’ve ever experienced.  Every single detail of our equipment is made authentically, and we will have with us only what we carry on our backs - no motorized re-supply except water - for the next three days.  We are going to go back in time and live through a Civil War campaign in the field, doing battle with the Yankees, eating and sleeping in the open with no more comforts that the Confederate soldiers of that era had.  As Captain Davis said, we’re going to reproduce everything just as it was so long ago, except the lice, the dysentery and the battle wounds.

We marched two miles into a no-vehicles-allowed wilderness area along a horrifically rutted, rocky path to a large meadow where we would bivouac, and then another mile cross-country through the woods over ground carpeted with sharp, loose stones, pine needles and pine cones and down a steep slope to a little valley which held another meadow.  There we found  the “Federal” forces concentrated around their supply wagon.  I was gasping my last when we reached the meadow.  We had marched three miles at an altitude of  7,000 feet in the August heat over the nastiest footing I ever saw, in wool uniforms and lugging an average of forty-plus pounds of gear.

The Battalion went immediately into line-of-battle formation (two ranks deep, and three companies wide) and advanced on the Yankees who were either spread out in the tree-line ahead as skirmishers or clustered around their supply wagon.  I was assigned to the front rank, being an FNG (Foolish New Guy).  Rear-rank men need experience and a cool head in battle to hold their rifles just so over the front-rank man’s right shoulder so the muzzle and the lock of the piece are equidistant from the front-rank man’s left hand on the fore-stock of  his rifle and his ear.  If he stands too far back, and the rear-rank man’s muzzle-blast will burn the front-rank man’s hand.  Too close, and pieces of  the rear-rank man’s percussion cap could strike the front-rank man’s ear.  With cotton in my ears, the blast of the rifles thrust forward beside my head from the rear rank was not too loud, as I had feared it might be. 

We advanced a few yards, halted and fired a volley, advanced again, and halted for another volley, and so on for about a hundred yards.  I was much less excited than I had hoped, concentrating mainly on keeping “dressed” (in line with the rest of the front rank), loading and priming my rifle in time with the others, and in sucking great, heaving lung-fulls of air.  The march into the battle area carrying a ten-pound rifle and thirty-five pounds of gear, had exhausted me utterly.  At every rest halt on march in, I would fall to the ground in complete collapse, and then stumble along with my platoon from there to the next halt.  By the time we went into battle, I was done in.  Rather than being excited, I was moving like a robot, loading and firing, keeping dressed on the man to my right, Private Ron Fox.

Somehow, we in C Company ended up attacking the Federals by ourselves,  A and B companies having gotten involved with Yankees on our right flank.  C Company carried forward the attack and ended up out by it’s lonesome, and seriously outnumbered.  The Yankees charged us, and after letting go with a final volley, most of the boys “skedaddled”.  Private Fox and I were too pooped to move, so I touched off my rifle over the nearest Yank’s head, rolled over on my back and raised my hands.  Ron tried to get up to run, but his knees locked and he was caught, too.  The fellow who stopped to guard us was decent enough to give me a drink from his canteen, and when we were paroled shortly after, we parted from our Yankee “host” most amiably.

In the advance, I had twisted my right knee, and straggled back to camp an hour or more behind the Battalion with Private Keith Pierce, who also hurt his knee - far worse than I, it turned out, and C Company’s Second Sergeant, Shamus Donnegan who suffered from anoxia due to the altitude.  Keith had to be evacuated this evening for medical treatment, and Shamus (much to his own embarrassment) left too.  He offered me a ride out in his four-wheel-drive vehicle, but I declined.  It seems likely that I am crazy for trying this - it took every last drop of stubbornness I have just to keep in ranks until the attack, and then hobble back to camp, but I couldn’t give in after just one day.  I had to stick it out.

Side note: I learned after the battle that “Shamus Donnegan”, an utterly marvelous Irish sergeant,  is a character invented and portrayed by Steve Holderby.  Even semi-comatose with altitude sickness and exhaustion, Second Sergeant “Donnegan’s” Irish accent never slipped.  What a marvelous actor!  He added a wonderful character - the immigrant Irish professional soldier - to an already wonderful adventure.  I certainly hope “Shamus” will lay off the cigarettes he cursed on our hike back to camp and come to next year’s event.

The National Guard was supposed to arrive with a water tanker, but did not.  We marched all day in authentic wool uniforms, then fought a battle, sweating rivers all the while.  We were all down to part of a canteen of water for cooking and all other water needs.  Until water was brought to us, the Battalion was at a stand-still and we suffered mightily from thirst.

August 3^rd

In camp, 5:30 am.  The men of the 5^th Virginia crawled out of their soggy blankets to look at the mess our bivouac had become.  About 10:00 p.m. it rained very hard amid thunder and bolts of lightening.  The veterans sheltered under gum blankets or ponchos while most of us got wet to the skin and all our gear soaked.  I held my rifle, cartridge pouch and cap-box under my belly and so kept some rounds dry, but everything else was wet through. When the rain ended maybe an hour later (or less - but it seemed to rain forever), most of the battalion, myself included, spent the rest night crowded around log fires holding up their blankets to steam them dry, or trying unsuccessfully to sleep in the cold muck.  This morning we are exhausted and still wet.  Our gear is wet, and many rifles are orange with rust.  Mine spent a dry night under me, and only the ram-rod is rust-spotted, having parted company with the rifle in the dark as I tried to clean my piece after the storm.  Corporal Macintosh loaned me some steel wool to put my ram-rod to rights, and Private Rob Harding has shared his “moose milk” gun-oil/powder-solvent with me to finish cleaning the black powder fouling from the bore of my rifle in preparation for weapons inspection.

In camp - 8:00 am.  The water supply had still not appeared, so Private Randy England serenaded the Battalion on his banjo while Corporal Brook Gibson played the spoons on his thigh.  A private from one of the other companies came over with a pair of sticks he plays in time like castanets.

About 9:00 a.m., the officers could stand this idleness no more and passed the time drilling the troops.  An honest soldier might admit we need it.  I was struck by how much even the veteran privates must  know to go through all these evolutions correctly.  What a fund of knowledge even the Corporals must have!  I had barely mastered the art of keeping my elbows touching the fellows on either side of me and remembering who they are, so as to arrive more or less promptly where I was supposed to be upon completion of each maneuver.  Over and over, we shifted from line-of-battle formation (two ranks, each  two platoons wide) to column of platoons and back.  Then we practiced moving forward in teams of four (“companions in battle” - the basic Civil War infantry sub-unit) to act as skirmishers.

The water finally arrived, and about 11:00 a.m. the Battalion rushed off, back down the ridge we descended yesterday, to find the Yankees and attack them.  Federal skirmishers appeared first on one side and then the other, and the Battalion marched in line of battle or column of platoons first this way and then that way on the advice of our cavalry, who reported “sizable bodies” of Federal troops coming toward us from an amazing number of directions.  We privates exchanged the wisdom of generals, analyzing the blindingly obvious moves we believed the Federals were making to suck us into a trap.  Every last one of us had a thing or two to tell the Colonel if he should as our advice, which he seemed somehow too preoccupied to do.  We did all this advancing either in column of platoons, or in line-of-battle.  When we tried to move through the woods in line, it became a horrible scramble to carry a loaded and primed five-foot-eight-inch rifle and stay “dressed” in line while climbing  over boulders, ducking under branches, and swerving around trees.  Again, my lungs were heaving to suck in the thin air and I stumbled  with fatigue.  My right knee seemed well enough, however, and I could just manage to keep up with my company.

In a fortified Battalion defensive position - 1:00 p.m.        Finally, we crossed yesterday’s battlefield in the meadow and a road on the far side, where we built a U-shaped log breastworks backed up to a heavily wooded rise.  Today, let the Yankees come to us!  We propped our rifles against the logs and rested while  B Company sang stirring battle tunes.   I shared my dried fruit, jerky and nuts with Private Harding.

2:30 p.m.        We thought the Yankees would never come, but our cavalry reported the enemy in company strength to our left, and we saw Federals scampering one and two at a time from our left-front, across the bottom of the ridge line to a position in front of us.  Lucky A Company marched out to confront the threat from our left, while fortunate B was allowed to fire on the jack-in-the-boxes to the front.  Frustrated C Company sat, waiting for something to happen.  Some of the Federals were armed with old .69 caliber 1841-pattern smooth-bore muskets, which fire with a most impressive crashing roar and a cannon’s puff of smoke.

In camp - 8:00 p.m.  Not long before 3:00pm,  A Company returned.  The Yankees built a Gibraltar of stone and logs to hide in, much grander than our scraggly line of sticks, and they were so proud of it they would not come out, but insisted that we come and appreciate their work of military art.

C Company, first platoon (Corporal Brook Gibson, myself, Rob Harding, Ron Fox, Jeff Farmer and Dean “Bacon” Hesterman) were sent out as pickets to keep an eye on the Yankees on the left flank.  Some of their skirmishers popped in and out from behind trees, but the Battalion executive officer was with us (worse luck) and forbid us to do any sniping at them unless they came out of the trees into the open.  Under these rules, I fired off only a couple of shots.  Like most of the other riflemen, I brought over a hundred and twenty rounds of ammunition, tediously hand-rolled in paper cartridges, and  had fired less than a dozen of them in yesterday’s attack.  Even losing a third of it to the rain, I had lots of ammunition and little opportunity to use it.  We were all frustrated that we didn’t get to shoot more.

 Finally we were called in and the commanding officers from each side held a parlay while a truce was called to permit canteen details from each company  to re-supply us from a National Guard tanker down the road.   Virtually chewing his hat with frustration, Col. Busic informed us that we must once again be the attacking force or sit in our position until dark.

The Battalion formed in column of platoons (four men wide, not counting the Corporals), and when we arrived at the Yankee “fortress”, he ordered us with deepest regret to attack in that formation rather than in line-of-battle.  In this way, the front ranks would absorb the full weight of the Yankee rifle fire and be wiped out, but the ranks of charging Confederates behind them would have a chance to storm the fort’s ramparts before the enemy could reload.   “Boys,” the Colonel said, “Soon A Company, and perhaps B, will no longer be with us, but come what may, you must attack without stopping for anything and go over that wall!”  With that and a few more inspiring remarks, he asked the chaplain to lead us in prayer.  We uncovered our heads, knelt in prayer, rose, . . .and charged.

Such a Donnybrook I have never seen in my life.  As expected,  the fellows in A and B are mowed down by platoons and there are bodies everywhere.  Some of  B and most of C Company reached the wall and some of  got over ( I was among the slain - three of the enemy discharged their pieces directly at me alone, when I was four feet from the wall).  Men were wrestling, jabbing each other with rifles, and generally going at it.  Private Kevin Schmidt went tail-over-teakettle over the wall with only his brogans aimed at the clouds to mark his fall. Corporal Macintosh was on his back when one brutish Yank decided to make certain this Confederate was “down for good” and started choking him.  Anyone in C could have told him that choking  Al Macintosh is a bad mistake.  The Corporal fed him a “knuckle sandwich” and sprang up again ready to fight.  After the battle, as we staggered back up the ridge toward camp, Col. Busic scrambled up the line calling, “where’s Corporal Macintosh?  I want Corporal  Macintosh.  Al tried to vanish down inside his blanket roll, but when the Colonel found him, he commended Al personally for the finest “shot” of the day.  “We don’t take that kind of treatment, by God.  No we don’t.  Sir, I congratulate you!”  Corporal Macintosh was a thoroughly confused young man, pumped up with adrenaline, half proud of being recognized as a scrapper, and half ashamed at losing his self-control in a mock battle and letting it become real.  Corporal Mike Cullum explained later to we new recruits that such hand-to-hand encounters are rare, and avoided specifically because of the possibilities of accidents and this kind of escalation into real conflict.

Once again, I had done my knee on these thrice-cursed rocks (this time my left knee) and blown my wind like a run-out horse.  I straggled back to camp yet again, this time with Corporal Cullum and a private from one of  the other companies who had medical training, and made sure I was not suffering heat-stroke.  This straggling-in business drains away my pride.  I poured every ounce of guts I have into keeping up with my company until the battles of the day are over, but on the way back to camp, I just can’t do it any more.  This time returning to camp didn’t  take so long, and I had time while it is still light to cook a meal, clean my rifle, listen to everyone’s version of the final assault and make up a “shebang” with Private Schmidt to guard us from another rain storm.  By then, however, I was bushed and fell onto my blanket.  I could only listen to the other fellows telling stories, and Private England playing his banjo while they sang.  The veterans told us the Yankees would most likely hit us tomorrow, and hit us early.  “You wait and see.  Come first light, those boys are going to be on us!  Yessiree, Bob, you’ll see.”

August 4^th

In the Battalion’ s log fortification - 10:am.   I got up about 4:00 am, too sore and hungry to sleep, and made a breakfast of oatmeal and coffee in the coals at the edge of the campfire.  Then I relieved the private who was out in the cold on guard so he could get some coffee in him.  My left knee was still in a bad way, even wrapped in some cloth I got from Corporal Cullum.  Marching today will be impossible. 

Just after 5:30 or so, I got to challenge the Battalion Adjutant.  “Good Morning Sir!” I said in my most polite private’s voice.  “What’s the password?”  He pulled up short in confusion for a moment, unable on the instant to remember the correct challenge and counter-challenge.   A private’s dream come true!   But thankfully he did after a heartbeat or two, and neither of us had to deal with what could have turned from a private’s dream to a private’s nightmare - one must at all times remember it is dangerous to embarrass an officer.  To so and get away with it requires a great deal of luck.

He came with orders for C Company to go out as pickets against an anticipated Federal attack.  We got most of the two-man teams out of camp (though some were at the water-supply and not out on lookout yet), when a full company of Yankees came boiling out of the woods and were on the few of us still in camp before we got off  more than one or two shots.  Again, the boys skedaddled while I got captured.  Again.  I had got a load of powder down the spout and was fumbling for a cap when I was caught, and had to invert my rifle in sign of surrender and watch the powder - some of the powder I kept so carefully dry under my belly in the rain storm - pour out the muzzle onto the ground.

Our poor Captain was among the prisoners, having stayed to chivvy the last of us out of camp.  His embarrassment cut me to the heart, just to see him kicking himself for not having us in position where we should have been.  If Battalion had gotten up a bit earlier to order us out, or Billy Yank slept in another ten minutes, we would have been fine.  But Battalion didn’t, and Billy didn’t, and we were over-run.  At least I had been where I was ordered to be, doing what I was ordered to do (waiting for Private England to pack his gear so we could move out).  There’s twice in one day I was happy to be a mere rifleman, and it was only 6:00 a.m.  What else did the day hold?

Fortunately, the Battalion was wide awake now, and came boiling out of our log-walled defenses after a volley from this impudent company of Yanks, who must not have heard about Confederate “foot cavalry”.   A and B companies literally ran them down and caught the whole bunch of them!    

After watching the Battalion march triumphantly back into the “fort” with a full company of Yankee prisoners, C Company’s remaining few were posted on picket, where we stayed until about 9:00 a.m.  We were called in and the Yankees paroled and sent home.  Companies A and C formed up, and marched off to harass Billy Yank into attacking us for a change.   I was left disconsolately behind, unable to hobble let alone march - and probably run once the Yanks got good and stirred up.

I sat alone in our company position until Corporal Cullum and Private Schmidt of C Company trotted in to report to the officer commanding the engineers of B Company.  Our two boys had been among the first out of camp, positioned to the extreme left of the Battalion’s position, where they found a broad, smooth avenue of approach leading to the rear of the Battalion defenses.  They were dismayed to hear my tale of being over-run, and convinced the engineer lieutenant that it would be better for B Company to cover the rear as skirmishers and fire warning volleys to alert the Battalion of a sneak attack than to wait and be overwhelmed by superior numbers if such an attack did occur.  So B Company marched off too, leaving me to guard Fort Zinderneuf, as I thought of it, all by myself.  Just like Beau Geste in the novel.  Some glorious day dreams went through my mind.  Of course I would fall under the first wave of attacking enemy, but perhaps my solitary rifle-shots would bring the Confederate “foot cavalry” down on the Yankees.  “Now there was a hero, boys!  A regular ring-tailed  wild-cat.  Went down scrappin’, agin’ the whole durned Yankee army.  Banjo player, play that tune again, ‘The Hobbling Hero’.”

Alas, I had to divide my glory by two when a studious-looking  engineer in spectacles came strolling back to camp.  I suppose he had been lost in thought and in consequence lost track of his company.  At any rate, lost he got, so he came back.  We shared a companionable half-hour writing in our journals - being an engineer, his was a bound volume while mine was a mere octavo gathering of coarse paper sewn together and slipped into my cartridge pouch.  He was not armed, nor visibly war-like, so I decided that we needed a  survivor to tell my tale, and perhaps his fancy journal-book was a safer repository for the recording of it than some scraps of paper stuffed in among rifle cartridges I would doubtless spill in my hurry to get off as many rounds as possible.

I had just re-calculated the engineer’s share of the glory down to one-fifth, if that, when all my calculations were ruined by the return of a limping 5^th Texas cavalryman whose horse had stepped on his foot.   Armed with twin .44 Remington revolvers, he was a walking arsenal compared to me with my single-shot .58 caliber Enfield.  Just as I reworked my remaining share of the glory as one thirteenth (his twelve shots and my one), when he wrecked my arithmetic yet again by proudly displaying a spare cylinder for his blasted pistols.  That put me down to one nineteenth!

Infantry privates have more time to think things out, however, unlike cavalry types who spend all their time galloping to and fro on their horses and skidding grandly up in front of the Colonel with the latest intelligence on the enemy’s strength and dispositions, or raiding the enemy’s baggage-train or whatnot.  We riflemen spend most of that same time clumping down some nasty, rutted road, or building log defenses we’ll march right out of, etc.  It gives a fellow time to develop deviousness.  “Listen to all that gun-fire, will you?” I commented as he lay down beside the engineer, who has having a nap.  “I can hardly stand it here, being left out.”  I let the comment lay there, and he too drifted off.  When the firing drew nearer, and the first of our troops fell back through the trees, I woke him up and as sure as sunrise, off  he limped with his brace of Remingtons to get into the fight.  “They won’t be expecting me!” he called, grinning.  I struggled to look both mournful and filled with admiration for his courage as my share went back up to four-fifths, or perhaps even nine-tenths, since the engineer was still sleeping despite the storm of musket-fire approaching us.  Of course, my odds of collecting any glory at all depended on some split-second timing by the enemy, hitting our rear while their main body pushed our Battalion back to our fort. 

Unfortunately, methodical as Billy Yank had been, he wasn’t up to such diabolical tactics.  No Yankees appeared behind us as all three companies of the Battalion performed a beautiful leap-frog withdrawl by companies, B Company’s engineers having found their way over to the main battle from their picket positions on the far left.  Each company in turn would fire a full volley into the enemy from the standard two-rank line-of-battle formation, face right and march briskly to the rear while the other companies fired their volleys in turn, by which time the withdrawing company would have reformed in line-of-battle formation once again for another volley.  In that way, the Colonel kept up a continuous company-level barrage of .58 caliber discouragement as he maneuvered the Battalion, company by company, back into our defensive positions.

I was glad to exchange my hypothetical glory for the company of my friends - especially when my last chance at notoriety fizzled as my rifle failed to fire.  It had been loaded too long and fouled the cone so the cap did not ignite the main charge in the barrel.  It was only as the Yankees came at us in their final assault that, after firing three or four caps I got the blasted rifle to emit a reluctant whoosh-bang at the charging foe.  Thankfully, an obliging Yank fell dead in response, as well he might since the Colonel had held fire until they were mere feet away and given them a shattering three-company massed volley which cut them down like wheat.  The Battalion was up and over the walls and on top of the survivors before they could look around to see who was left.  With that, the Battle at Pine Grove was over, two-to-one in favor of the Yanks in their view, one-one-and a tie in ours.

In a final moment of authenticity, a blue-coat with a white rag on his bayonet marched up to me, and (apparently having chosen to portray a German immigrant), demanded with Teutonic stiffness, “Wo ist ihr Offizier?”  (Where is your officer?) If he had intended to befuddle this ignorant Reb, I had to disappoint him.  “Daruber,” I replied, “Der Mann mit dem runden braunen Hut und kleinen Augenglaser.”  (Over there.  The man  with the round brown had and small eye-glasses.)  At that moment, Mark Kraatz, a private who had come alone from Utah to attend the event and joined us in C Company because his brothers had not made up their minds to come, approached us and greeted this “German” Yank in smooth “Pennsylvania Dutch”.  Two of  his brothers had come after all, but wearing blue!  Even here, it had been brother against brother.

The most fitting end to the adventure occurred when the Yank who had choked Corporal Macintosh sought him out from among  the two-hundred-plus Yanks and Rebs milling about, and apologized.  They shook hands, and even that unhappy bit of our little war was over.

The Battalions reformed, saluted each other, and marched away back to the present, leaving me to bounce along behind them in a National Guard six-by-six which came to fetch the water tanker.  It tore my heart to climb in that truck rather than march out with my company, but next time, gol durn it, next time . . .