"A rollicking adventure!"
The trilogy is now complete. I plan to publish Jack: Book 3, by August 1, 2017 as well as a separate volume with all three parts. Until then enjoy Books 1-3 here on Wattpad. I completed the trilogy on May 30, 2017. The c...
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Army of Northern Virginia
When we first joined we were assigned to the "Confederate Army of the Potomac" under the direct authority of Colonel J.B. Kershaw, who commanded the 2nd South Carolina division. This was In April, 1861.
We drilled and drilled on parade grounds in the rain and sun - all day, every day. Jack, Mike and I had been with the Army of the Potomac for over a year before it became the Army of Northern Virginia under General Robert E. Lee who assumed command on June 1, 1862.
But before that, we were about to see action in the first major battle of the American civil war. Southern President Jefferson Davis was consolidating the Army of Northern Virginia into the primary confederate army in the eastern theater.
Before we even had time to absorb the training lessons we were marching north to the battlefield, the initial one being the First Battle of Manassas which began on July 21, 1861. Three months of training and we all thought we were ready to conquer the north all by ourselves. The northern union armies named that first fight the First Battle of Bull Run. Each side received a rude awakening that day as to what that war was going to be about.
Both union and southern armies mostly were untrained and unready for battle but were thrust into the fray anyway. The south was fortunate to have squeaked out a victory after reinforcements arrived by train. It buoyed the men's morale as loud cheers from our side contrasted with the flight of the Yankees who ran in terror from the battlefield.
Even as we had our first taste of victory the three of us were scared to death - even Jack. All of us southerners, I guess, had to kill a man for the first time that day.
"Kill or be killed, sonny boy," said Jack to us. "Don't think about it. Just do it! I don't want to have to be a'draggin' your asses off the damn field - dead!"
Nothing had prepared us for the horrors of the battlefield and for the realization that whizzing musket bullets could take your eye out or worse and whining cannonballs could take your head off. Indeed, we all witnessed comrades and enemy soldiers mutilated by the weapons of modern war.
A year after First Manassas, Lee assumed command and Jack, Mike and I were excited as was everyone in our ranks to have General Lee as our general. It gave us hope that the war would soon end. Little did we know then. It would go on for three more years with increasing horror.
"Now we'll whip those Yankees,' Jack said on the day that General Lee rode his big white horse in front of our boys. We stood firm at attention, but were an already-ragged army of southerners whose tattered shoes and boots were beginning to the tale of the southern struggle for its new country, The Confederate States of America.
"Just wait and see. We'll whip 'em good now!" Jack predicted.
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First Battle of Manassas, Virginia, also known by the Union Army as First Battle of Bull Run. produced by the Florida Center for Instructional Technology, College of Education, University of South Florida.
