Stan, it's these terse little entries that speak volumes with their economy that really twist the emotions, even today. Certainly they were extremely common in the diaries and memories of both the blue and the gray. The voice of harsh experience reduced to mere syllables cannot possibly convey the enormity of what they experienced.

Oliver Wendell Holmes's quote, "In our youths our hearts were touched by fire" doesn't come within a country mile of telling it like it was.