My g-g-g uncle, a well digger, fought at Shiloh, Atlanta, made the March To The Sea, and in various other engagements. I never knew him, but I did know his daughter. She said he would never, ever, talk about it. He was buried in his "faded coat of blue" and his gravesite would have been lost had not my brother done the paperwork and gotten him a headstone from the VA. All of the other graves in his part of the old cemetery are now unmarked, although cemetery records show who should be buried where.

The Camp Butler cemetery in Illinois, outside Springfield, is quite a sight and it is very possible that those who were buried there -- Union and Reb -- now reside together in an old coal mine that runs under the cemetery.

All veteran's cemeteries, no matter where they are, are special places. There's no gas, no barbed wire, no guns firing now....