Monday, May 30, 2005

Keep The Coffee Coming: Taps

Keep The Coffee Coming: Taps: "In July 1862, after the Seven Days battles at Harrison's Landing Virginia, General Daniel Butterfield reworked, with his bugler Oliver Wilcox Norton, another bugle call, 'Scott Tattoo,' to create Taps. He thought that the regular call for Lights Out was too formal. Taps was adopted throughout the Army of the Potomac and finally confirmed by orders. Soon other Union units began using Taps, and even a few Confederate units began using it as well. After the war, Taps became an official bugle call. Col. James A. Moss, in his Officer's Manual first published in 1911, gives an account of the initial use of Taps at a military funeral:
'During the Peninsular Campaign in 1862, a soldier of Tidball's Battery A of the 2nd Artillery was buried at a time when the battery occupied an advanced position concealed in the woods. It was unsafe to fire the customary three volleys over the grave, on account of the proximity of the enemy, and it occurred to Capt. Tidball that the sounding of Taps would be the most appropriate ceremony that could be substituted.'"

Click the link to listen to or download Taps.

0 Comments:

Post a Comment

<< Home

Listed on BlogShares



Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons License.