Into the Woods to Connect the Dots

The great Civil War battle at Chickamauga Creek in Georgia in September, 1863, is the only time the central regiments in my two novels, the Fifth Texas and Sixth Texas Infantry regiments, fought in the same battle. Since the woods and fields at Chickamauga are the only “common ground” ever shared by the two outfits, I’m writing this post about my visit to the Chickamauga Battlefield National Park last March.

As National Park Battlefields go, it’s one of my favorites. Chickamauga Creek flows just a few miles south of Chattanooga, Tennessee, and is about eighty miles north of Atlanta. The battlefield park is still a rural setting, just the opposite of the “lost” battlegrounds in modern Atlanta to the south and modern Chattanooga to the north.

The new twenty-minute video in the park visitor center is nicely written and the actors portraying soldiers in the film actually look like the original photographic images of Civil War soldiers. In other words, they are not portly middle-aged guys.

I visited Chickamauga on a weekday in the spring, so the roads were not overcrowded and the trails were pretty much empty. The ground is more wooded than most of the Civil War battlefield parks, Shiloh in Tennessee perhaps being the exception.

Being alone and not having to accommodate anyone else’s interests, I was eager to walk part of the paths taken by both the Fifth and Sixth Texas regiments. I armed myself with a good map from the visitor center, parked the car and headed into the woods right away.

I first wanted to see where the Sixth Texas stood their ground, and where their Brigade General Deshler was killed by a cannonball. That action is described in Whittled Away, as Chickamauga was the first big battle for the Sixth Texas after their exchange as prisoners of war.

I left the parking lot to soon be surrounded by trees and bushes, alone in a forest. After only walking fifty yards or so, I realized that creating a battle scene in a novel, at a location only pictured in one’s imagination, and later walking the actual piece of ground, can be a bi-polar experience.

When I reached the patch of woods designated as the area where Deshler’s Brigade fought, I sat on a log and just looked around. I wished I had a copy of Whittled Away in hand so I could re-read the Chickamauga chapter to cross-check my vision with the actual ground –even if it was 150 years later. I had no idea if what I wrote reflected what I was seeing. Even if Whittled Away is a done deal, on sale now for over a year, it mattered to me that I might not have portrayed the setting accurately.

I stood at the cannon ball pyramid that marks the site of General Deshler’s death and tried to imagine the chaos of battle in that peaceful hidden piece of woods.  I tried to picture the young general, down on all fours, trying to peer under the thick layer of black powder smoke to see what was happening in front of his soldiers.

I tried to visualize, painfully, the instant when Deshler was struck in the chest by a solid iron cannonball, ripping through his torso, killing him instantly. That makes me shiver even sitting here in my study, safely typing on a keyboard.

After a reflective time where the Sixth Texas held the line, I went to find where the Fifth Texas maneuvered and attacked.

The path the Fifth Texas took was through more open terrain and covered a much longer distance. That Texas Brigade was on loan from General Lee’s army as part of Longstreet’s Corps. They were in the spearhead that broke through the Union line and enabled General Bragg’s Confederate army to eventually win the battle.

I wound up on Horseshoe Ridge and Snodgrass Hill, where many Union regiments were rallied by General Thomas, “the Rock of Chickamauga,” holding onto the high ground while the rest of the army retired from the battlefield and retreated back towards Chattanooga.

When I had previously thought of Snodgrass Hill, I had mentally pictured a gently sloping ridge. It isn’t gentle. It’s steep and the high ground curves around, making a prime defensive position. Standing on top makes it easy to see why the Rebs never quite cracked that nut.

Not in McBee’s Bloody Boots, because it is set in 1862, the year before Chickamauga, but in the still unwritten second volume of the McBee saga that will be set in 1863, I intend to find a way to cross the paths of Whittled Away’s main characters, Bain Gill and Jesse McDonald of the Sixth Texas, and Captain John McBee of the Fifth Texas, and his man-servant, Levi. I haven’t a clue yet just how I’ll do that, but it’s going to happen. That sort of thing is one of the joys of writing historical fiction novels instead of straight history books.

More importantly, since it’s still in manuscript phase, the first big battle in McBee’s Bloody Boots is the 1862 battle at Gaines’ Mill, outside Richmond, Virginia. This week I’m travelling to Richmond to take part in a Civil War reenactment there. On Friday, before the reenactment, I’m going to walk the path of the Texas Brigade at Gaines’ Mill. With a map in one hand and my manuscript the other hand, I’m going to make sure the topography dots connect between the ground under my feet and the words in my novel. It matters.

What I’m reading this week: Lt. Col. King Bryant of Hood’s Texas Brigade by Michael Dan Jones, and The Last Battle of the Civil War: Patmetto Ranch by Jeffrey Hunt.

The Memoir of Campbell Wood

This past weekend a reenacting friend named Pete Gunn, who is an avid genealogy researcher, gave me a big envelope containing an unexpected gift. The envelope was sent to Pete by one of his online genealogy research contacts. It contained a stack of documents about the Wood family, of which one member served in the Fifth Texas Infantry during the first three years of the Civil War.

The man’s name was Campbell Wood, and he enlisted in the Confederate army in 1861 as a 19 year old straight from a military school in LaGrange, Texas. 

The treasure in the envelope among the family tree charts and correspondence was part of the unpublished memoir that Campbell Wood wrote in 1908 for his children. I say “unpubished” as the only place online I can find reference to the memoir is that a paper copy, or maybe the original, is housed in the library at Emory University in Atlanta.

After the war Campbell Wood became a medical doctor who for decades served  the small, now long gone, community of Cherokee, near Johnson City, the location of LBJ’s ranch.

The introduction to the memoir includes this short letter that Wood ascribes to his father, who sent his son these instructions:

“My dear Son,

I hand you herewith a check on W.M. Rice of Houston. Pay your bills, come home and join the army.”

Affectionately, your father,

Green Wood

Now that is a clear piece of writing, and son Campbell did as father Green directed. (Green’s parents had to have had a sense of humor to name a new-born baby Green Wood.) Campbell joined the new Confederate army company that was in training in Grimes County.

Several pages of the memoir focus on Wood’s service as a Confederate officer, first as a company lieutenant during the early months of the war, then as the adjutant of the whole Fifth Texas Infantry Regiment.

Wood relates the train ride on open flat cars from Houston to Beaumont, Texas, in route to Virginia. The tracks were poorly laid causing the cars to bounce and sway dangerously and many of the soldiers were drunk and made sport shooting at the alligators seen in the ditches along the track.  He mentions alligators again during the march through west Louisiana towards New Orleans, as the column would encounter the gators on the road and have to fire their six-shooters at the beasts to move them off the road.

Adjutants were the office managers of a regiment during the 99% of the time the regiment was not engaged in a battle. During a battle, the regiment’s adjutant took a position on the very right end of the regiment’s battle line and served as a guide, the man who set the location where the right-most company needs to be. Being the regiment’s adjutant was a dangerous job, as the guide was usually plainly visible to the enemy who were firing at the regiment, and as an officer his uniform and sword would draw extra attention.

With that background about the combat duties of the regimental adjutant as a context, one section of the memoir describes Wood being wounded in the foot during the attack on Devil’s Den and Little Round Top at the Battle of Gettysburg in July, 1863. That part of the memoir reads like a good war novel.

I’m still pumping my fist in joy that friend Pete gave me the envelope containing the war portion of the memoir. In writing both of my first two Civil War novels, I’ve leaned heavily on commercially published memoirs to add the spark of truth and credibility to my descriptions of life as a Civil War soldier.

Some of those memoirs are long out of print, but Amazon has been a great source to find used copies or to buy a cheap paperback print-on-demand reprint. But the short Campbell Woods memoir is the first I’ve had access to that is not in the general published body of memoirs by Texas Confederate soldiers.

To have handed to me an unpublished memoir of a junior officer, a piece of primary source history about the very regiment on which the second novel’s action is based, is absolute serendipity.

I probably shouldn’t have been so surprised to discover that the memoirs of soldiers, usually written long after the war ended, often contain more exciting anecdotes than the fictitious vignettes I could think up for my characters.  On reflection, I suppose it makes sense, because as time passes we forget the mundane everyday details of life, but we do remember the unusual and unexpected and dangerous things that happen to us.

Having my attention suddenly drawn to Campbell Wood, who I knew before only as another name on the regimental roster, also serves another good service. He is a perfect guy to form a peer-friendship for John McBee, my main character.

Wood is not sidekick material, but rather another officer whose duties as the regimental adjutant give him “inside information” that the ten company commanders in the regiment would not learn about as quickly, if ever.

Until his battle wound forces him to leave the regiment, Lieutenant Wood will also be a useful guy for “data dumps,” as my writer circle friends call the scenes where necessary background information is passed along to the reader by one of the characters.

Look for Lieutenant Wood in McBee’s Bloody Boots and the next as-yet-untitled volume in the McBee trilogy.

 

 

McBee's Bloody Boots - Battle of Gaines' Mill

This post is an excerpt from my second Civil War novel, McBee’s Bloody Boots.  I plan to publish the novel via Amazon by the end of next month, but a modern connection with the contents of this particular chapter make it a good time to put forth a preview of the book.

In a few weeks, I will join a hundred other reenactor-historians from Texas to take part in a ceremony to honor the Texas Brigade of the Army of Northern Virginia at the National Battlefield Park at Gaines’ Mill, just east of Richmond, Virginia.  The ceremony is being conducted in conjunction with a Civil War reenactment being held a short distance from the battlefield park.

The excerpt is Chapter 13 of the novel and describes the participation of the Fifth Texas Infantry in their first major battle – Gaines’ Mill on June 27, 1862.  I hope you enjoy it.

 

McBee’s Bloody Boots

Chapter 13

Gaines’ Mill

Southeast of Richmond, Virginia

June 27, 1862

 

“Josh, you see that water moccasin slide off the log up ahead?” Cal Gilbert said as he stood in green slime-covered water that reached to his thighs. He looked over at Corporal Hodges a few feet away, who was taller, but was still above his knees in the muck.

     “Yea, Cal. I saw it. Be careful.” The men could hear the sounds of the battle raging beyond them and were already nervous. They had seen General Hood himself lead one of their sister regiments across an open field, drawing heavy fire as they went. Their own regiment, along with the First Texas Infantry, had been directed to attack from a different tangent. Their path took them through a low marsh known locally as Boatswain’s Swamp and heavy brush hid them from the Union defenders on Turkey Hill.

     It was slow, arduous going. More than one man slipped or tripped on roots that were invisible under the opaque water. Some men fell, submerging their leather cartridge boxes in the swamp water, making the paper cartridges inside useless. Men pulled their stumbling comrades up by elbows and jacket collars, steadying each other as they waded forward, repeatedly crossing the detritus of fallen tree trunks. As difficult as their path was, the sense of urgency among the officers and most of the men was palpable.

     “Come on, Corporal Hodges, get your boys up with to that dry spot!” At that instant Hodges felt someone knock into his shoulder and force his way past. Then Hodges felt a whoosh of air as he saw the flash of a blade slash down into the water.  He saw a black form twist away from the shiny steel and disappear under water, leaving a dissipating circle of red.

     “No bullets to waste on a damn cottonmouth,” Captain McBee muttered as he raised his sword blade to rest on his shoulder. “I said move faster, Hodges, we’re getting behind.”

     “Yes, Sir, and thank you,” the corporal replied as he lifted one leg over a floating tree trunk.

     McBee looked back at Hodges and said, “Can’t let General Hood and the boys in the Fourth have all the glory,” and waving his pistol in his right hand, he added, “And these rounds are for those two-legged snakes up ahead.”

     Rafe Fulton glanced at the captain, saying, “John, you couldn’t shoot a damn wigglin’ mocassin with a pistol bullet unless you stuck it up his ass, which ain’t too damned likely.  I hope you find a slower moving yankeeboy to aim at.”

     McBee glowered at his old friend and growled at him, “Not now, Rafe.”

     Fulton nodded and plunged forward again.

     McBee’s men reached the edge of the foul water without taking any casualties, and joined other companies from the regiment gathering on a hillock that rose above the flooded marsh. The spot was dry, and dotted with small trees and low brush. One hundred and fifty yards ahead, near the foot of Turkey Hill, McBee could see a line of defensive breastworks stretching around the slope of the hill. He could see three red, white, and blue flags above the log and earth obstacles and see and hear muskets being fired from behind the works. Further up the hill he saw an artillery battery in action. Then McBee noted movement near the base of the hill, between them and the line of breastworks.

     “Absalom, you have young eyes, what are those scattered dark spots near the foot of the hill? They keep moving.” As he posed the question, both officers saw several puffs of white smoke from the area.

     “Captain, those are skirmishers, and I think they’re wearing green, not blue,” Daniels replied.

     “I thought so. It’s that sharpshooter regiment we keep hearing about. Well, they aren’t shooting our way. Yet. Glad about that, but not so good for the boys in the Fourth, I reckon.”

     McBee’s attention was then jerked away, “Captain, order your men to kneel while we collect the rest of the regiment,” called Lieutenant Colonel Upton.

     Captain McBee turned to acknowledge the order, noting that the colonel wore a brown flat topped hat with a big white cloth star sewed to hold up the hat brim on one side, and a long over-shirt that reached to his knees. Upton was not wearing a sword belt or carrying his sword, but he held a long handled black frying pan in his right hand.

     On McBee’s order, Company C of the Fifth Texas Regiment, the Leon Hunters, knelt in the grass and began to fire up the hill. The captain knelt behind his men, watching his sergeants and lieutenants, and keeping one eye towards Colonel Upton, who McBee expected any time to give the order to resume their advance.

     He saw a rider with the buff sleeve facings of a staff officer on his coat make his way out of the swamp, and stop near his company, all of whom were engaged, firing up the hill. Several of the men were reloading their muskets, and like McBee, noticed the staff officer as he reined in his horse and started shouting, “Stand up, boys! Don’t run! For God’s sake, don’t run, but die here!”

     Next they saw an enraged Colonel Upton stomp over to the horse and grab its halter. Upton shouted up at the mounted officer while brandishing his skillet above his head, “Who in the hell are you talking to, Sir? These are my men. They are Texans, by God, and they don’t know how to run! Now you leave here, or I’ll knock the hell out of you.”

     The staff officer jerked his horse away from the fuming lieutenant colonel and hurried off, looking for less prickly officers to berate. Upton, seeing that the rest of the regiment was now out of the swamp, shouted, “Rise up, Men! Forward, we’re taking those breastworks!”

     The men of the Fifth and First Texas Regiments advanced straight forward, taking fire from Union musketry and artillery.

     The Union troops of Morrell’s Division that faced the Fifth Texas Regiment were growing increasingly uneasy. They had been fighting for almost two days and were exhausted. The chaotic noise of the cannons and muskets, the shouting of their own officers, and the high pitched yells of the Rebs overloaded the men’s hearing. Even worse, a ripple of fear spread as Morrell’s troops saw the Union regiments manning the breastworks to their left begin leaving their trenches to retreat up the hill, and the Rebs attacking their own positions were coming fast.

     When the Texans were still fifty yards away, just starting to climb the slope of Turkey Hill, the Federal soldiers facing them began abandoning their breastworks. The Union officers tried to keep their men in orderly ranks, stopping to fire as they moved backwards uphill towards the support of their artillery, but  the fighting withdrawal quickly dissolved into a disorganized run to safety.

     Sergeant Stephens was having trouble keeping the men of Company C together. The sight of the fleeing Yanks excited them and individual men surged ahead, eager to climb the log barricade.  As the man right in front of him let out a whoop and started to leap forward, Stephens reached out and grabbed his back by his leather shoulder strap. “Easy there, Smith, let’s go over that wall all together,” the sergeant cautioned. 

     Smith complied as he and several other men jumped into the shallow trench in front of the earthworks and began climbing their way up the log obstacle. As Smith neared the crest, a man near him pulled himself to the top of the barricade and stood tall and pumped his musket in the air in triumph. Then he fell backwards, shot in the chest. He landed on his back next to Smith, eyes wide open in death, impaled on the stub of a broken branch.

     Private Smith swallowed hard, pulled himself up the last few feet, and eased his head above the top.  He saw dozens of blue clad soldiers struggling up the hill, many without their muskets. Other Union soldiers were taking the time to stop and shoot, trying to reload their muskets as they retreated.

     Smith clambered over the crest of the log wall and dropped onto the firing step inside the barricade. He raised his musket and fired at a man not far away who had corporal stripes on his jacket. He heard a pistol discharge right next to his head, and turned to see Captain McBee cock and fire another pistol round towards the fleeing enemy.

     “Dammit! Rafe was right, I can’t hit shit with this damned pistol.” McBee muttered to himself.

     Flashing his black powder stained teeth, Smith grinned at his captain, and together they climbed the back wall of the trench and joined in pursuing the broken troops up the hill.

     Colonel James Simpson had commanded the Fourth New Jersey Volunteer Infantry regiment since its formation the previous year. This day had been chaotic marching to the sounds of the fighting, and late in the afternoon the regiment had been sent to reinforce the troops in the breastworks on the slope of Turkey Hill.  The Fourth New Jersey never reached their assigned position, as the Rebs had flowed over the defensive line while the regiments in the New Jersey brigade were still shaking out of march columns into battle-lines facing the downhill enemy.

     Seeing no hope of turning back the masses of Rebs that were crossing the barricade, Simpson ordered his regiment to hold their position near the edge of the plateau that topped Turkey Hill. In the confusion and heavy smoke from the fighting, he didn’t see that the other Union regiments near the Fourth New Jersey were reforming their march columns and moving away from the battle. Without any awareness of the regiment’s growing isolation, the Fourth New Jersey became an island engulfed in the Confederate tide.

     “To the left oblique, Fire by battalion! Front rank only. Ready…Aim…Fire!” Union Colonel Simpson shouted as loudly as he could. Company captains repeated the order and a moving wall of flame spread from the colonel’s position in the center of the formation, through the five companies in each wing, out to the ends of the regiment. The nearly three-hundred muskets held by men in the front rank spat fire, smoke, and minie bullets in their invisible wave of death.

      Within seconds of the volley by the front rank, Simpson shouted again, “Rear rank, fire by battalion! Ready, aim…Fire!”

     The two volleys smashed into the left-wing companies of the utterly surprised Fifth Texas Infantry, Only because the Federal troops were firing downhill, causing most of the riflemen to aim over their targets, the Fifth Texas suffered only a dozen casualties in the two volleys. One of the wounded was Colonel Robertson, commanding the regiment, who took a bullet in his arm and passed command to Lieutenant Colonel Upton.

     “Left-wing companies, Left wheel, March!” Upton shouted as he pointed his steel skillet in the direction of the firing on their flank. The command was heard and echoed, but the men were no longer in orderly shoulder-to-shoulder ranks. The graceful swinging door motion of a parade ground wheel being executed by five well-aligned companies was replaced by the staggered turning of over two hundred riflemen to face the new threat on their left flank

     As the enemy’s bullets poured into his formation, Union Colonel Simpson looked all around watching more and more of his men crumple to the ground. Through the heavy white smoke that swirled all around, he saw nothing but Confederates and Confederate flags moving past his position on all sides. He now understood his regiment was alone and that continuing to fight would mean the death of most of his command.

     “Lower the flags,” Simpson called to his color sergeant. “We are not going to all die on this hill today. Drop the damned flags!” he repeated, his frustration apparent. “Companies will ground arms!”

     Lieutenant Colonel Upton, now commanding the Fifth Texas, approached the cluster of officers who stood in front of the Union soldiers. Upton was a short man and glared up at the taller officer, who stepped forward, sword in hand. The slender Federal Colonel was resplendent in a double-breasted tailored frock coat of fine blue wool, sporting two dozen large brass buttons, a crimson silk sash knotted around his waist, and on his head, a regulation black felt hat adorned with a shiny brass eagle and ostrich feather.

     Colonel Simpson stared in disbelief at the little man facing him, wondering why he was wearing a filthy brown over-shirt fit only for laborers, and was holding a greasy black skillet. Surely, Simpson thought, this little rooster is not in command of a regiment.

     Gathering his wits, Colonel Simpson said as humbly as he could, “Sir, please accept my sword, and those of my staff, in token of our capitulation. Our circumstance is clearly regretful, and I acknowledge that further resistance is futile, and would only unnecessarily cost more lives.”

     In a hoarse, drawling voice, Upton replied, “You mean Yankee lives. Your lives. All right. You can surrender. But keep you swords. Never had much use for mine, sure don’t want more.”

    Colonel Simpson countered, “Sir, that is unthinkable. My men are watching us, Sir. If they do not see their officers pass the emblems of our authority over to you, they will not believe we are now your prisoners, and many of them will keep fighting and needlessly dying. I insist.” With that Simpson reversed his sword to hold the blade and offered the hilt to the Confederate officer.

     Lieutenant Colonel Upton sighed, and again said, “All right. Hand them over.” He took Colonel Simpson’s sword by the hilt and raised his other arm to tuck the weapon under his armpit with the blade sticking out behind him. He still held onto his greasy skillet as he added the blades of the Fourth New Jersey’s staff officers to the one under his arm.

     “Sir, Sir!” Upton turned to see an excited lieutenant pointing to the left end of the captured Union regiment.

     Upton climbed onto a fallen log, still encumbered by several surrendered swords sticking out behind him like tail feathers, and still holding his skillet. He saw a big Confederate soldier cursing loudly as he tried in vain to keep several captured Union soldiers from sidling past him into the wood line.

     “You! Big John Farris! What the hell and damnation are you doing?” Colonel Upton hollered.

     The big Reb private yelled back at the lieutenant colonel, “I’m tryin’ to keep these damned fellows from escaping. Sir!”   

      “Well, let ‘em go, you infernal fool. We’d a damned sight rather fight’em than feed ‘em,” Upton replied, his East Texas twang grating on the ears of the officers from New Jersey.

     Bugler Julius Sanders throat was parched dry from his long day of blowing commands on his horn, and he had emptied his canteen before the final charge up Turkey Hill.  As soon as the fighting evolved into corralling the captured Yankee soldiers, Sanders eased off down a ravine, hoping to a find a creek where he might refill his canteen. 

     “Don’t shoot, Reb! We surrender!”

     Sanders stared into the shadows and saw several Union soldiers.

     “I won’t shoot, but if you don’t throw down your muskets, I’ll blow this horn and ever’ Texan on this hill will come running and kill every one of you.

     “Now walk out here and line up. No muskets!” Sanders moved up the slope to stand behind the growing line of prisoners. When twenty-two men were standing with their heads down, Bugler Sanders commanded , “Right face, forward march.”

     Sanders led his captives out of the ravine, and turned them to the first officer who saw him. Then he hurried back down the ravine to fill his canteen.

 

 

 

Lord Nelson, Stonehenge and Hobbits

This is another post of “opportunity.” I’ve been silent for nearly a month because my wife and I spent the last three weeks in Europe. Travelling is one of those retirement priorities for us, and when I’m being a tourist, I really try to quit being a writer. No laptop to work on the novel. I don’t even journal. If I do, I wind up viewing remarkable sights through the wrong filter. 

While we were in London, we took a side-trip to Stonehenge out in the English countryside, arriving in the late afternoon and staying among the giant stone monoliths through the sunset. It was beautiful, and if one positioned himself just right, so that the nearby highway, fence, benches, and other tourists were not in your view, it was also haunting as dusk came on. 

But, if I had my writer’s filter clipped on the front of my eyeglasses, the power of those big gray rocks would have been knocked out, like sun glare through my polarized shades. Some sights are just too big, too strong, too everthing, to try to do mental wordsmithing while you stare at them.

That one day, only the second of over twenty days of travel, also held two utterly unexpected delights encountered on the way to Stonehenge:

First, at Windsor Castle out in the country, where our tour bus stopped for a couple of hours, we were challenged by our tour guide to find in the museum rooms the French musket ball that killed Admiral Lord Nelson during his great victory at the sea battle at Trafalgar. My wife spotted it, and then nearly got bounced from the castle for taking a flash photo, against all rules, of the wee lead ball, now encased behind glass. The photo is right here.

The musket ball was shot by a French soldier firing from up in the rigging of his ship. He was a good or a lucky marksman, for the ball passed through Nelson’s chest and lodged in a wooden deck plank. The round was carefully removed and saved after the battle, so my wife could snag a picture of it 200 years later.

Second, we also stopped at Oxford, mainly to see the dining hall of Harry Potter fame that is used every day by the students at Christ Church College. On the way through town, the guide pointed out a little hole-in-the-wall pub called The Eagle and Child Tavern and mentioned a couple of its more well-known customers. My friend Wayne and I bee-lined to the bar during the short free time we were allowed before we headed on to Stonehenge.

We quickly bought pints of cool dark ale and slipped into a wooden booth of equally dark wood, and toasted that we were in the same pub where Oxford profs and authors CS Lewis and JRR Tolkien met on Tuesdays, after classes, from 1946 until 1962, to drink their own pints and carry on about their writing. I can get weird thinking about sitting with those two as they burped beer and traded thoughts about their as yet unpublished sagas.

The two great writers and a few others were known as “The Inklings,” back when Narnia and Middle Earth were the “less-traveled” domains of young nerds like Wayne and I used to be, who ate up the wonderfully moral and adventurous fantasy tales. Now, films have taken Lewis’s and Tolkien’s heroes and villains to the masses, alongside a glut of zombie and vampire books and movies.

I find that sort of sad, although Peter Jackson certainly has done Tolkien right, at least through the Trilogy. I’m enjoying The Hobbit films, but Jackson appears to be feeling somewhat confined by the story as Tolkien wrote it, and is getting too loose with his add-ons for my purist tastes. On the other hand, my grown sons, who didn’t discover Middle Earth until they saw the films, call me a cranky old elitist. 

Our trip is now past, and my head is back in the 1860’s where I’m still copy-editing Book 2 and still wrestling with title ideas.

Oh, confession time: I did read Ralph Peters terrific new Civil War historical fiction novel, Hell or Richmond, during the down-times in Italy the last two weeks of the trip. Great book, about a key month of the war in Virginia in May and early June of 1864, that escapes the attention of many novelists and historians.