Thanks to Don Lassen, Editor of of the "Static Line", the periodical publshed by and for All Airborne Troopers, for this! Visit his site at http://www.veteran-net.com

Here is the true story of Taps.

Prior to the introduction of more sophisticated methods of communication, the drum and bugle were the primary means by which a commander might issue orders to his troops. There were, and in no small degree still are, bugle calls for every imaginable aspect of a soldier's daily routine. The day starts with reveille, then there are, in due course and as needed, mess call, sick call, church call, pay call, the call to charge and in early evening the call to the colors followed by retreat. There were even bugle alerts to announce the uniform of the day. The longest call - tattoo - consisting of 28 measures of which the first part is the same as the French call for lights-out has long signaled the end of the soldier's day beginning during the war of 1812 and until 1862 was used also to signal the end of a soldier's life.

The word taps originated during the Thirty-Years war, 1618-1648. It was a bugle call sounded to stop the drinking of the troops every night and in no way resembled the melancholy notes that we today call taps. It was the signal for the sergeant-of-the-guard or the charge of quarters to tap the bungs into the beer barrels and chalk a line across them to prevent tampering.

In July of 1862, the Union Army was encamped at Harrison's Landing in Virginia. Maj Gen Daniel Butterfield, who commanded the 3rd Brigade of Major Gen George B McClellan's Army of the Potomac , weary as were his men after seven days of brutal combat, considered Tatto too formal and too long. He summoned his bugler, Otis Norton, to his tent and whistled a tune, reading the notes from an envelope on which he had written them. Norton listened, then blew them on his bugle. The two made a few changes and the general ordered Norton to use the new call in place of tattoo.

The men of the third brigade liked the new sound. It was soon adopted by nearby units and in time by the entire Army of the Potomac and eventually throughout the Army.

It was so well received during the war that even the South embraced it. When Confederate LtG Thomas J. (Stonewall) Jackson was laid to rest on 10 May 1863, men in gray uniforms fired three volleys and the bugler blew Taps.