By my word, this is the truth I tell. When I was a young boy, I used to live at a secluded farm next to an abandoned railroad. The nearest town wasn’t for hundreds of miles; my father drove there once a week to get groceries for the week. One day, I was playing in the woods around our property when I heard a voice calling for help. I ventured deeper into the woods until I saw a man.
He was different though, with a beard and clothes that resembled my own, only in gray. I asked him, “What on God’s green earth are you doing in the middle of nowhere?” My Lord! Was I taken aback when he said he was separated from his men in Virginia and had walked here. This puzzled me. I asked him when he was separated, and he responded, “Earlier in the morning.”
I was shocked and asked him how he walked from Virginia to Texas in the span of three hours. I inquired what men he was speaking of. He simply replied, “The Army of Northern Virginia, under the command of General Robert E. Lee.” I said, “Dear Lord! That war ended a hundred years ago.” Then I recognized his clothes, a uniform of gray, signifying he was indeed a Confederate soldier.
Just as I was about to ask this lost man’s name, he was gone. In the blink of an eye, he vanished without a trace. I then returned to the farm and looked at my mantle. On it sat a photograph of my great-grandfather, a Confederate soldier taken in 1863. By God, that soldier was none other than the man I’d heard legends of.
Whenever I walk in those woods, I hear “Dixie” whistle above the pines and the marching of lost soldiers. God bless those veterans, the blue and the gray, they fought valiantly, and my woods hold their spirit.