Reddit reviews Company Aytch: A Classic Memoir of the Civil War

I too am from the deep south. What is most frustrating is that poor rednecks associate themselves with the 1000 or so families that benefited from slavery and were not required to fight just as they align with people like Romney would could give 2 shits about them. Even confederate soldiers called it the "rich man's war fought by the poor man" and now they have associated with their abusers, both historical and contemporary.

The book is Thomas Hardy: The Time-Torn Man by Claire Tomelin. First heard about this from an article in The Fortean Times.

By the way, if anybody knows of any other weird excerpts in otherwise normal autobiographies/biographies/non-fiction accounts, please share. It’s a topic I love, and there are a few other strange ones I know about:

• In Sam Watkins’ memoir Co. Aytch, about his time serving in the Confederate army during the American Civil War, there are a couple of strange passages, such as this one where Watkins describes witnessing a “will-of-the-wisp”-type phenomenon in the chapter titled “Killing a Yankee Sharpshooter”:

> This is where I first saw a jack o'lantern (ignis fatui). That night, while Tom and I were on our posts, we saw a number of very dim lights, which seemed to be in motion. At first we took them to be Yankees moving about with lights. Whenever we could get a shot we would blaze away. At last one got up very close, and passed right between Tom and I. I don't think I was ever more scared in my life. My hair stood on end like the quills of the fretful porcupine; I could not imagine what on earth it was. I took it to be some hellish machination of a Yankee trick. I did not know whether to run or stand, until I heard Tom laugh and say, "Well, well, that's a jack o'lantern."

• Also in "Co. Aytch", from the chapter “The Death Watch”:

> At a little village called Hampshire Crossing, our regiment was ordered to go to a little stream called St. John's Run, to relieve the 14th Georgia Regiment and the 3rd Arkansas. I cannot tell the facts as I desire to. In fact, my hand trembles so, and my feelings are so overcome, that it is hard for me to write at all. But we went to the place that we were ordered to go to, and when we arrived there we found the guard sure enough. If I remember correctly, there were just eleven of them. Some were sitting down and some were lying down; but each and every one was as cold and as hard frozen as the icicles that hung from their hands and faces and clothing -- dead! They had died at their post of duty. Two of them, a little in advance of the others, were standing with their guns in their hands, as cold and as hard frozen as a monument of marble -- standing sentinel with loaded guns in their frozen hands!

• In the introduction of his book "Flying Forts: The B-17 in World War II", author Martin Caidin reprints the notes of British officer John V. Crisp, which details this odd occurrence (this one I found from a user on the Fortean Times message board):

> It seems that on 23 November 1944, an American B-17 landed roughly in a plowed field outside Brussels, near a British antiaircraft station. No one emerged, and the props continued spinning. "The Troop Commander put through a call to me at my Operations Room at Erps-Querps, near Cortonburg," writes Crisp. "Within twenty minutes I was examining the B-17 . . . The whole craft was devoid of occupants, although evidence of fairly recent occupation was everywhere." (p. 11). Crisp switched off the engines and studied the log; the plane had left Hertfordshire for a bombing run and had been returning when it crash landed. Code-books, flying jackets, and, strangest of all, a dozen parachutes were found in their places. The plane was undamaged except for the port wing, which grazed the earth upon landing. Attempts were made to locate the crew through assignments and identification numbers. "They have never been found," Caidin finishes.

Company Aytch by Sam Watkins? https://www.amazon.com/Company-Aytch-Classic-Memoir-Civil/dp/0452281245

Cracks knuckles. I, as what Tony Horwitz calls, "A Civil War Bore" (But also one for the American War of Independence) can give you some recommendations. You gotta read Gen. Grant's memoirs. Out of all the memoirs by the major players, Grant is the most readable of them all, it is so well written. Ken Burns' famous Documentary introduced me to the memoirs of two common soldiers. "Company Aytch" follows Sam Watkins as he fights in the Western Theater, from Shiloh to Nashville, and "All for the Union" by Elisha Hunt Rhodes follows one Federal soldier as he survives the entire war in the East, from 1st Bull Run to Appomattox. For a general history, "Battle Cry of Freedom" by James McPherson is the absolute best. For more detailed studies on the lives of the individual soldiers, the two classic works "The Life of Johnny Reb" and "The Life of Johnny Yank" are fantastic. Similar works and more modern works include "Fighting Means Killing", a detailed study on Civil War combat, and "The War for the Common Soldier", basically a general summary of the life of the common lad during the war. Now, if you want legacy, there is but one place to go: Tony Horwitz's legendary 1998 Magnum Opus "Confederates in the Attic." Over the course of two years, Tony takes you all across the American South, running into everything as varied as the KKK one county over from where I live in Kentucky (Yeah, I apologize on behalf of South-Central Kentucky in advance, but at least they're in Todd County and not Logan!!!), a Scarlet O' Harra impersonator in Atlanta, and a massive Civil War road trip in Virginia with a reactor buddy. Well written, Mr. Horwitz can make you feel whatever he wants. Tony is was of the best writers out there, and it is a shame we lost him in May. May he rest in peace.

Edit: Amazon Links

The Complete Personal Memoirs of Ulysses S. Grant

Company Aytch

All For the Union

Battle Cry of Freedom

The Life of Johnny Reb

The Life of Billy Yank

Fighting Means Killing

The War for the Common Soldier

Confederates in the Attic (If you buy no other book from this list, buy Confederates in the Attic)

There's always Shelby Foote's epic three-volume The Civil War: A Narrative. A huge work that took me months to complete, but definitely worth it. Told mainly from a Southern perspective, but Foote keeps his objectivity throughout.

From the Northern perspective, you can't go wrong with James McPherson's Battle Cry of Freedom or Bruce Catton's many works on the war, especially the "Army of the Potomac" trilogy.

Right now I'm reading Team of Rivals: The Political Genius of Abraham Lincoln and I'm digging it. One of the few books I've read that really gets into the social relations of the era.

From an autobiographical perspective, Sam Watkin's Company Aytch is one of the best memoirs of a Confederate soldier serving in the Western theater, even if you have to take some of his stories with a grain of salt. Or if you want to take a darker look at the world of the irregular troops fighting west of the Mississippi, there's the Autobiography of Sam Hildebrand for a confederate perspective or William Monks' A History of Southern Missouri and Northern Arkansas for the Union side of things. Monks' book is especially notable because it's the only first person account we have of a Union guerrilla soldier.

If you're looking for fiction, I love The Killer Angels by Michael Shaara about the Battle of Gettysburg. A more recent novel about Sherman's March, The March by E.L. Doctorow is also pretty stellar.

Funnily enough, this is pretty similar to a Civil War memoir