TANKOBITE'S BLOG
Finished Co. Aytch
Monday, March 10, 2008 6:04 PM
Finished Company Aytch on the ride back from Branson (much sooner then I expected) and so here’s some of my thoughts (and a mini-review):For those who don’t know, Company Aytch is a memoir of a private soldier in the Army of Tennessee, Sam R. Watkins, who enlisted in it at the beginning of the war and served with it until its surrender in 1865. Of the 119 other men who enlisted with him at the start, only six others came back home with him at the end. Sam was wounded (not severely enough to be sent home) several times and one of his final wounds was (if nse of horror and fear he must have felt that day.
Sam isn’t a professional writer and while that is evident, it isn’t really a problem. To me it came across as just an average guy trying to tell his story; he never makes himself out to be a hero and I respect him for it. That’s not to say I agree with everything he says (or that I think he’s completely correct).
For example, he’s writing about some action after the Army of Tennessee has abandoned (and set fire to) Atlanta and he makes a claim that (paraphrasing) “Other then Lookout Mountain, we’d licked the Yankees”, which is a bit of bullocks. If they’d won every battle except one, why had they been forced out of Tennessee and into Georgia and were now on their way up to the Carolinas? I can’t speak for Sam, but I think it probably has to do with the fact that he only saw his company’s point of view, so battles like Shiloh, where his unit was only in action the first day would seem to be victories (even though they lost it on the second). I also disagree with him on his views on the war and the Union, but he fought against it and that’s to be expected.
All in all, I liked the book a lot. One of the best things about Co. Aytch is that most of the story isn’t the battles, but the stuff that happens in camp or on the march. Of course there are the battles, but most of a soldier’s time isn’t fighting and this book is spot on for that. The book is good on showing what an average soldier’s point of view was of the fighting, but I won’t be able to use it as a stylistic guide for writing it (I may try the sort of serial in a newspaper approach).
Now I’m starting The Highland Brigade in the Crimea . We’ll see if I finish it as quickly; I was worried that I was picking too many books, but I may have a shot since I finished the last one in less then a week.
I had originally planned to outline some of the challenges ahead, but I think I’m stopping here for now and I’ll give myself sometime to think that part over. Fundamentally, the biggest challenge is understanding the universe (times, dates, planets, how the military will function) and I’m sure there’s resources out there, I’ll just have to find them.
As promised, here are the lyrics to the Civil War song "Short Rations", transposed from a Bobby Horton CD and a google book.
Short Rations-Dedicated to the Cornfed Army of Tennessee
Lyrics by Ye Comic, Music by Ye Tragic
Fair ladies and maids of all ages
Little girls and cadets howe’er youthful
Home-guards, quartermasters, and sages,
Who write for the newspapers so truthful!
Clerks, surgeons, and supes—legislators,
Staff officers, (fops of the Nation,)
And even you, dear speculators,
Come list to my song of starvation!
Chorus
For we soldiers have seen something rougher
Then a storm, a retreat, or a fight,
And the body may toil on and suffer
With a smile, so the heart is all right!
Our bugles had roused up the camp,
The heavens looked dismal and dirty,
And the earth looked unpleasant and damp,
As a beau on the wrong side of thirty;
We were taking these troubles with quiet,
When we heard from the mouths of some rash ones,
That the army was all put on a diet,
And the Board had diminish’d our rations!
Chorus
Reduce our rations at all?
It was difficult, yet it was done—
We had one meal a day—it was small-
Are we now, Oh, ye gods! To have none?
Oh, ye gentlemen issuing rations,
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