My great-great grandfather, Hardeman Carroll Simmons, served as a private in Company K, 5th Mississippi Cavalry. Sometime late in the war, probably in 1864, he got word that my great-great grandmother was gravely ill. Unable to obtain leave, he went AWOL to see about her. By the time he reached their home in Tunica County, she had died and been buried. He took my great grandfather, Willie, then 5 years old, to stay with his late wife's family while he returned to his unit. After the war, in Nov. 1865, he married a widow named Fannie Lindley Harris whose husband, Monroe M Harris, never returned from the war. Imagine my surprise when I ran across this article from a New Jersey magazine that was published in 2010.

http://njmonthly.com/articles/lifestyle/a-long-way-from-home.html