Under the Stars and Bars

For the gratification of my old comrades and in grateful memory of their constant kindness during all our years of comradeship these records have been written. The writer claims no special qualification for the task save as it may lie in the fact that no other survivor of the Company has so large a fund of material from which to draw for such a purpose. In addition to a war journal, whose entries cover all my four years service, nearly every letter written by me from camp in those eventful years has been preserved. Whatever lack, therefore, these pages may possess on other lines, they furnish at least a truthful portrait of what I saw and felt as a soldier. It has been my purpose to picture the lights rather than the shadows of our soldier life. War is a terribly serious business and yet camp life has its humor as well as its pathos, its comedy as well as its tragedy, its sunshine as well as its shadows.