Page:Journal history of the Twenty-ninth Ohio veteran volunteers, 1861-1865.djvu/27

 Drum-major Gurley G. Crane, Cuyahoga Falls, Summit county.

Leader regimental band Chauncey Brainard, Gustavus, Trumbull county.

During the interim came the easy days of soldier life. Ah! those happy, golden days of camp life, when, with guard mount, battalion drill, and dress parade, the time passed swiftly away, and each heart beat high with patriotic desire for early marching orders; days looked back to from the dreary bivouac in the snow, tentless, and with clothing in tatters, scarce covering the form from the bitter, cutting winds of winter, or in the drizzling rain on the lonely outpost when sharp-eyed rebels only waited for the opportunity to send the leaden messenger of death whizzing in your direction. Sometimes the "boys" thought the rations were not sufficiently "gilt-edged," quite too plain in fact, for the savers of the country's honor, yet how often, while trying, almost in vain, with the half-pint of raw meal to keep the soul and the poor emaciated body together in those hell devised starvation traps—Libby, Belle Isle, Andersonville, and Salisbury—did the brave fellows turn with longing hearts to the bounteous commissary at old Camp Giddings. Fears were oft expressed lest the war would close before the Twenty-ninth should be permitted to add its mite to the support of the flag. How needless they were the rolls show; more than one-third (five hundred and forty) of the one thousand five hundred and thirty-two members of the regiment, were either killed, wounded, or missing in action, and one hundred and fifty-seven died of disease. The colors, too, which waved so grandly in the sharp winter air, that long agone Christmas morning in 1861, are now in shreds, rent and torn by the leaden