Near Frederickburg, Va., January 7, 1863.

The New Year brings surprises.  

About noontime today I was seated at my desk 
copying reports, when a lieutenant came in 
and asked me if I would step outside and greet 
some volunteers who told him they would report 
only to General Longstreet.  The General and 
most of the rest of the staff were gone, and I 
turned out to be the ranking officer at 
headquarters, so I earned the honors.

I stepped outside the hut into the snow, and 
instantly heard the word of command.  A 
one-armed Major, mounted on a fine bay horse, 
ordered his small group to attention, and he 
saluted me with his sword.

"Parson's Georgia Battalion presents itself to 
General Longstreet for duty, Sir," said he.  
(I was wearing a heavy coat covering my insignia 
of rank, and the battalion commander mistook me 
for the General. I have been taken for General 
Longstreet before and it greatly pleases me when 
it happens!)

The officer dismounted and extended his 
remaining  left arm.  I quickly explained who 
I was and then asked him about any papers he 
might have assigning his unit specifically to 
our Corps.

"I have but one, Sir," he said, and handed me a 
note from some recruiting officer in the 
mountains of north Georgia, accepting the 
battalion and directing it to seek a place with 
Longstreet's men.  Our corps includes most of 
the Army's Georgia units.

It was all highly irregular and not according to 
procedure, but I welcomed them as warmly as I 
could.  Major Parsons, their commander, insisted
on me inspecting his troops, so I joined him in 
front of his line.  It was the oddest assortment 
of troops I ever saw.

The command did not exceed 60 soldiers, made up 
into three tiny companies.  I don't think there 
were more than a handful of men between the ages 
of l7 and 60 in the group.  The rest were old 
men and little boys.

"A" Company, commanded by a Captain Pelham, were 
all gray-bearded ancients. Pelham, though far 
younger than his men, was missing a hand, lost
in the 7 Days battles last summer.  His gathering 
of old timers included men without a tooth in 
their heads, one who was stone deaf, and one with 
a cock-eye.

"B" Company, under Captain Larch, was the same, 
and included one or two men who had volunteered 
from their home county's poor house. Larch had a
mangled right arm, from some battle in Tennessee 
that I'd never heard of.  The company, like 
Company A, was armed with shotguns and old farm 
muskets, and an occasional Kentucky long rifle 
that must have been 100 years old.

"C" Company, under Captain Rochelle, was the 
strangest of the lot. It consisted of about 25 
volunteers from a little Episcopal military 
school in the Georgia backwoods.  The boys had 
run away from the school in their uniforms, 
somehow took or found a cache of obsolete 
muskets,  and had elected Larch, their senior 
cadet, as Captain.  Larch was perhaps 16, and 
many of his sergeants and privates were no more 
than 13 or 14, though all insisted they were 18!  
The recruiting officer in Georgia must have 
either been blind, or had turned a blind eye to 
the entire company and signed them in. He 
probably needed to fill his recruiting quota!

Major Parsons told me that they had been 
marching north since November, and that only 
two or three of the oldest men had quit along 
the way.  He said that the rest grew stronger 
with the exercise every day.

Just about then, General Longstreet and the 
rest of the staff rode into view.  The General 
took one look at the battalion, which quickly 
came to attention, and then shot me a funny 
glance implying "Fairfax, what in God's name 
is this?"
 
But he greeted them courteously, ordered up 
rations for them and then sent them to report 
to General Benning's Georgia brigade.  So off 
they went, in perfect marching order. Their big 
homemade flag flapped in the bitterly cold 
breeze, and a couple of the little boys tooted 
away on wooden fifes alongside another boy 
beating a drum.

"Look into this, Major Fairfax," he directed me, 
just as they marched off, "we are short of 
soldiers, but I can't imagine that the Army has 
gone so low as to rob the cradle and the grave."

As he said this, I noticed that his uniform coat 
was covered with what appeared to be the marks of 
snowballs.  The Texas brigade in General Hood's
division had apparently pelted him as he rode 
past their camp, just as they have done several 
times since the big snowfall.  It was all in fun, 
of course, but as the General brushed the clods 
of snow from his coat, he made a remark that 
suggested he had had about enough of their game.

"They have superb aim," he joked, "but I think I 
will order them a little extra rifle practice to 
make sure their shooting is as sharp as their
snowballing."

..................................................
End Note:

This entry is almost entirely imaginary, but the
appearance of old men and boys became more common 
as the pool of other willing volunteers shrank, 
and the draft was instituted in the Confederacy.

The incidents with the snowballing of General 
Longstreet actually happened in early January 
1863.