Unnamed Soldiers in the University Grays

In Absalom! Henry and Bon enlist and serve in the Confederate company organized at the start of the Civil War by "their classmates at the University" (69). According to Mr. Compson, its men come from across the entire class spectrum: "rich and poor, aristocrat and redneck" (97), and the flag they carry toward the fighting was sewn a few stitches at a time by "the sweetheart of each man in the company" (98). The soldiers in this company are seen again near the end of both the novel and the war as "gaunt and ragged men sitting or lying about" the campfires in the bivouac in Carolina (280). The University Greys - spelled in the novel as "University Grays" (273) - was a real military unit, part of the 11th Mississippi Regiment; every man in it was either killed or wounded in Pickett's Charge at Gettysburg.