It’s
breakfast time and I’m sitting in a motel room in north Atlanta, here visiting
family to celebrate my mom’s ninetieth birthday. In my e-mail in-basket this
morning sat a message from a lady in San Antonio who I’ve never met. I don’t
know if she’s seventeen or seventy, but she’s an e-mail friend with whom I’ve corresponded
about a topic of mutual interest. Our shared topic of interest being the men of
the real “Alamo Rifles,” the militia company from San Antonio in the 1850’s.
Historically,
those men became Company K, Sixth Texas Infantry Regiment, after the Civil War
started. Back then, whole companies were formed of friends, family, and
neighbors from the same community. It made for tightly-knit companies of men
who cared for each other and would be more likely to help each other through
the hard patches, of which the Alamo Rifles encountered their fair share.
My first novel, Whittled Away, follows
the historical path taken by the Sixth Texas Regiment, the book title coming from
the Alamo Rifles steady loss of men, going from fifty-six soldiers who marched
out of San Antonio in the spring of 1862, down to two soldiers who were present
for the final surrender of their regiment in April of 1865. A steady whittling away of the young men
through three years of war.
In real
life, only two members of the Alamo Rifles lasted until the final laying-down
of their muskets at the war’s end. One of the two was a young fellow named
Antonio Bustillos. I’d heard that one of Bustillos’ letters home, written while
he was soldiering in Georgia, resides in the archive collection of the Alamo.
Going to see the letter has been one of those things I “need” to do. Perhaps
I’ve not done it because I figured there’s a good chance that the letter is written
in Spanish, a language I don’t read or speak.
Regardless,
my first happy surprise for the week was the e-mail message from my "virtual friend" with transcriptions
of two letters Private Bustillos wrote home to family in San Antonio. One of
the letters was written in May, 1864 in Dalton, Georgia, and the other in
August, 1864 in Atlanta, Georgia, just a few miles from where I’m sitting at
this moment.
Civil War
soldiers wrote lots and lots of letters home. Military historians value
soldiers’ letters as “primary sources,” - words put to paper by men whose eyes
had actually seen the battles and events they describe.
However, the
reality is that most soldiers’ letters, Bustillos included, addressed things
nearer to the hearts of soldiers than the battles they’ve fought or the
hardships they’ve endured. They wrote about the welfare of friends who were
also soldiers, inquired about family, and routinely wrote things like, “Tell
Sweet Mary and Mama I miss them.”
So letters,
even as primary sources, tend to be of spotty value to military historians. But they are still fun to read if you are
trying to get into the heads of men who lived 150 years ago in order to bring
their personalities to life in a novel. Now, I wish I’d read Bustillos’ two
letters before I wrote Whittled Away, because I’d have
included him as a likable character- and one I wouldn’t have to kill off along
the way.
The second
happy surprise this week came from my brother, who is also in Atlanta for our
mom’s birthday celebration. Brother John is a retired teacher and volunteers
one day a week teaching a class about religion at a prison in north Georgia.
The prison sits just across the highway from the Chickamauga National
Battlefield Park. The battle at Chickamauga is a big part of the story in Whittled
Away, the first mega-battle where the Alamo Rifles were engaged.
A few months
ago John asked if I had spare copies of Whittled Away and Tangled
Honor that I might send to him to share with the prison inmates in his
class. I sent six copies, three of each title, and forgot about it. Yesterday,
John told me that the books are popular with his students, and are being passed
around.
There’s not much religion in my novels, except for the lightning strike
that killed some soldiers during a revival service being held in a thunder
storm-an event that really happened. But the inmates can perhaps connect
somehow to the fact they are pretty much living on top of the battlefield
featured in Whittled Away.
It’s not a
big deal, nonetheless I am very happy that my novels are being read in that
most unlikely of places, by such an unlikely audience. So, my thanks to John
for being his brother’s “bookman,” taking a couple of good war tales to men who
are serving hard time in prison for poor choices made somewhere along the way.
If the
stories of Jesús and Bain, and Captain McBee, Levi, and Faith, can entertain, maybe
teach a little American history, and make some of those fellows’ long days pass
faster, then those are six book copies being darned well used.
Finally, I
have to thank Brother John a second time for giving me a quick tutorial on
sword drill - fencing. John used to fence and coached high school fencers for a
decade or more. I told him I need to write a scene involving sword drill for
McBee and the other company officers in the regiment, men who were elected to their
positions, but had never been to a military
academy, yet were now expected to carry swords every day, and actually fight
with them if needed.
So, John and
I stood in his son’s living room with ten-inch long plastic straw swords so he
could show me what “closing your line” means, and how to “bind” your enemy’s
sword before he pokes you through the heart. Fun stuff like that.
I wrote the
sword drill scene this morning and he gave me a brotherly stamp of “it’ll do.”
And that’ll do for me. Talk to you next week
sometime.
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