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Please click HERE for the audio version of this poem.

Us boys broke camp like we always done.

We boiled our coffee afore we seen the sun.

We could smell the fire and battle in the air.

We knowed the Yanks was a-waiting, up ahead somewhere.

Bye and bye Gen'l Rodes seen a gap in the Federal line

He sent Tarheels and Alabamians in, and they done fine,

But their Generals was too confounded slow.

Oh! We wish't he'd asked us Georgia boys to go!

Then Gen'l Doles,that fine, good man, he said:

"Fourth Georgia! On your feet! Let's move ahead!"

So we waded acros't a brook called Willoughby Run

Hot-blooded now, with fighting to be done...

I never told nobody I were scared,

Not even messmates. Instead I up and dared

To be the first young sojer a-breaking out of the trees

Sending up my rebel yell on the Northern breeze.

But then, so quick it were a crime, the Minies come.

Four hit me all at once't, and I were done.

Didn't even realize I couldn't stand or see...

Jest felt the life a-draining out of me.

"Dear Lord! This cain't be right!" I cried,

Then turned my face to the blood-soaked earth and died.

And that's all of it.

Jest that.

My war were through.

And I never knowed what it all were for.

Do you?

Jest sixteen I were.

And not a single girl

Did I ever kiss.

Instead, the violence of the world Rose up and sucked me under--

--me and other boys,

Afore we'd tasted life's most simple, precious joys...

The Yankee President come down, to see the Field preserved.

Then the Monuments went up, each one deserved.

But me and some other boys no-one could save

Was piled up like cordwood in a unmarked grave.

But before the buryin'

some looters,

bummers and such

(The one sort of human I never cared for very much)

Come creepin' around by night,

got my personals and truck...

Oh, well.

Jest hope it brought them some better luck.

The thing that don't lie right, though, leavin' all the rest,

Were the terrible pain in my poor, dear momma's breast.

To her dyin' day she set a-starin' down the Macon road

Looking fer the son whose fate she never knowed.

So the armies left.

In the end the South were whipped.

The battle flags and muskets,

they got bundled up and shipped To museums.

The quiet returned.

Again the songbirds flew.

But I never knowed what it all were for.

Do you?

Copyright 2003 By H. D. Bott Sr.
All rights Reserved.

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