[139]
 |
| Confederates of 1861: the clinch rifles on May 10th next day they joined a regiment destined to fame On the day before they were mustered in as Company A, Fifth Regiment of Georgia Volunteer Infantry, the Clinch Rifles of Augusta were photographed at their home town. A. K. Clark, the boy in the center with the drum, fortunately preserved a copy of the picture. Just half a century later, he wrote: ‘I weighed only ninety-five pounds, and was so small that they would only take me as a drummer. Of the seventeen men in this picture, I am the only one living.’ Hardly two are dressed alike; they did not become ‘uniform’ for many months. With the hard campaigning in the West and East, the weights of the men also became more uniform. The drummer-boy filled out and became a real soldier, and the stout man lying down in front lost much of his superfluous avoirdupois in the furious engagements where it earned its title as a ‘fighting regiment.’ The Confederate armies were not clad in the uniform gray till the second year of the war. So variegated were the costumes on both sides at the first battle of Bull Run that both Confederates and Federals frequently fired upon their own men. There are instances recorded where the colonel of a regiment notified his supports to which side he belonged before daring to advance in front of them. |
