Phillip Bryant’s book is not your everyday Civil War story. It personalizes the war following the human journey of an artillary battery and an infantry troop from opposite sides of the engagement. The last major war fought by troops that lined up and fired on one another the cost in human life and mysery is incalculable. Compared with cruise missiles and drones launched from vast distances and sniper rifles that can shoot from a mile away this war was up close and personal. A don’t shoot until you can see the whites of their eyes kind of war.
Yes there are battles but as we switch back and forth between North and South, Union and Rebel it is the human touch that assumes importance. Waiting for coffee to brew. Looking for the bodies of missing comrades, burial details, camp life, bravery and cowardice. A wounded or dying man knows no side nor does he care from whence cometh his aide. The common soldier supports his unit; the cause matters little in the long run. The man he kills is not all that different from himself. In this war they may even have been neighbours. In death and injury they rest together.
Yes there are battles but as we switch back and forth between North and South, Union and Rebel it is the human touch that assumes importance. Waiting for coffee to brew. Looking for the bodies of missing comrades, burial details, camp life, bravery and cowardice. A wounded or dying man knows no side nor does he care from whence cometh his aide. The common soldier supports his unit; the cause matters little in the long run. The man he kills is not all that different from himself. In this war they may even have been neighbours. In death and injury they rest together.
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