The Kentucky Advocate, Danville, Boyle County, Kentucky

Thursday, July 20, 1911

Old Soldiers

Civil War Veterans at Perryville Celebrate the Birthday of a Comrade.

Last Friday at Perryville there was a gathering of gray-haired men that should go down in history.  The occasion was the sixty-eighth birthday of Mr. G. M. Hardy, and it was a reunion of the remnant of the Civil War veterans at that place – gallant men who were in their prime when the great battle of Perryville was fought, October 8, 1862.

One by one the warriors who took part in that strife are starting on their last long march, and the world-spent comrades left behind will not be long in joining the ranks.  Powder and gun-shot and battle-cry seemed far removed from the gentle old men who circled the board, but the fire in their breasts only smoldered, for camp tale and war story stirred them like a bugle call, and many reminiscences and personal experiences of those by-gone days made them forget that the snow was on their temples and the spring of youth was gone from their feet.  Of the memories awakened some brought laughter, but many a tale there was that brought tears for a fallen comrade, or one, who later on, dropped out of the ranks and started along, silently, on that long, lonesome march.  The day was one never to be forgotten by the grizzled veterans and their wives, who were once the girlish sweethearts of these ‘soldier boys.’

Not many years from now there will be another reunion, not of the little handful, but of a larger number and it will be in the ‘land that is fairer than day.’

The veterans who enjoyed the elegant dinner and helped Mr. Hardy to celebrate his birthday were Messrs. I. L. DeBaun, aged 81; Captain Whitehouse, 77; E. Harmons, 67; J. H. Minor, 70; L. A. Pipes, 69; J. W. Isom, 68; Napoleon Gabhart, 66; W. R. Myers, 66; Nelson Dunsmore, 73.  Mr. and Mrs. Herman Mayes delighted the guests with old time music and songs.