The two men [Robert E Lee and Joe Johnston] fell silent, seemed to be both enjoying the faint sound of a harmonica, muffled sounds of men moving about, fragments of conversation, all sounds of an army at rest.
"Look out there, all over the camp. Even the card playing is quiet. This is no party. They're preparing for it, every man looking deep inside himself, asking the same questions, making his own peace."
Johnston took his hat off, held it in his hands, stared at it. "No one plans this, Robert. No one says, 'I'm going to join the Army so I can fight a war.' you and I have been doing this for what? Eighteen years? After awhile you never expect to see something like this. Some of these boys are straight out of the Point, class of 1846, going straight from the classroom to combat. What will that do to them? They'll see the Army very differently than you or I do, Robert. War might even become... normal to them. You and I, we have lives to go home to, families. This war will end, and we will go back to doing what we always did before. But those boys, their lives will never be the same. All they'll know about life is fighting a war. Peacetime could be very dull."
-- Jeff Shaara, Gone for Soldiers: A Novel of the Mexican-American War
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