CONFEDERATE BIOGRAPHY:  TWO OLD JOHNNIES

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Submitted by Mary Love Berryman - marylove@tyler.net
14 April 2002 
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TEXANS WHO WORE THE GRAY by Sid S. Johnson 

TWO OLD JOHNNIES.
BY T. C. HARBAUGH.

Again for us the bugles play,
Again we don our suits of gray-
We're comrades still; the same old lines
Seem moving 'neath the crested pines;
I hear the mad guns' opening roar,
I see the foeman's rank once more,
I hear the colonel's "Charge!" and then
The onsweep of a thousand men.
We meet today, old comrade mine,
Not as we met 'neath oak and pine;
Hand clasped in hand, we silent stand,
The remnant of that gallant band.
Some comrades dear are camping ever
Where angels guard Potomac's river,
And some went down the day we stood
Id Chickamauga's fire swept wood.

We meet beneath the skies once more,
We stand together as of yore;
Our eyes are moist, our voices low.
I say: "'Tis Jim!" You cry: "'Tis Joe!"
Ah me, what sacred memories come
From out the past at tap of drum!
And in the bugle's stirring strain
We are not old, but boys again.

O comrade mine, the river flows
Where all are friends and none are foes.
Soon shall break this earthly spell,
And hear God's sentry: "All is well!"
Each year we spread the sweetest blossoms
Upon the bravest, truest bosoms,
Where sleeps the boys who formed the lines
Beneath the cannon-shattered pines.

They look at us and laugh and say:
"Just two old Johnny Rebs in gray;"
But, comrade dear, they can not know
The sacred ties that bind us so;
They can not see the graves that lie
Beneath the balmy Southern sky,
Nor know how in the past we stood
Where Mars strode through the wurstruck wood.

Ere long for us will beat tatto,
As beats it for the boys in blue:
No hatred in our hearts today,
Although we wore the Southland's gray;
And when they bear me to my rest,
The old, torn blouse upon my breast,
May some one's mother sweetly say:
"God rest the one that sleeps in gray."