Shepherd Green Pryor, known as Shep, was elected first lieutenant of the Muckalee Guards, Company A, 12th Regiment, Georgia Volunteer Infantry. After surviving a cold Virginia winter atop Allegheny Mountain far from his home in Sumter County, Georgia, he guarded Fort Johnson in the spring of 1862. Through letters home to his wife Penelope, he expressed his loneliness for home and reflected on how the war had changed or ended the lives of the young soldiers who once kneeled in these trenches.