Battle: The Nature and Consequences of Civil War Combat
Edited by Kent Gramm

Endnotes, index, 147 pp., 2008. The University of Alabama Press, Box 870380, Tuscaloosa, AL 35487-0389, $26 plus shipping.

Reviewer: Blake A. Magner
Blake A. Magner is the Book Review Editor of Civil War News. He makes his liv­ing as an editor, writer, car­tographer and photographer of Civil War history. He is author of At Peace With Honor: The Civil War Burials of Laurel Hill Cemetery, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.

Review:
Ask the average ground-pounder what he remembers of a battle and other than the two guys on either side of him and fear he is probably is going to answer, “Nothing!” The generals have an idea of the overall operations of a battle, but your normal combat soldier is more worried about what is going on in his immediate vicinity and, given the smoke, noise and enemy bullets, he is likely too busy to notice what is happening.

The basic premise of Battle is to look at the common soldier, what happens to him in battle, and what happens if he is wounded. The volume is comprised of six essays which examine various aspects of combat, specifically looking at the American Civil War.

The first essay written by World War I expert Paul Fussell is on the culture of war. He makes one extremely valid and important statement — that the word “combat” is used mistakenly because it dredges up the thought of heroics. War, he concludes, is “… brutal, man-to-man fighting. And you had better win, if you expect to come home — win by any possible method, fair or foul.”

 he second essay written by Gettysburg expert D. Scott Hartwig, “It’s All Smoke and Dust and Noise,” describes the experiences of the fighting man during the battle of Gettysburg. Hartwig discusses the armies at Gettysburg, the soldier’s perspective, physical background of battle, the operations of the infantry, artillery and cavalry. He also covers what it was like to become a prisoner and, though thought to be a major factor but was actually rare, hand-to-hand combat.

The essays include being wounded and the medical care one might receive, as well as the finality of dying, by Bruce A. Evans. Eric T. Dean then covers the shock and rage of battle. Alan T. Nolan discusses the national consequences of battle and debunks the myth of the Lost Cause.

Editor Kent Gramm then does some numbers crunching, indicating that by modern standards the deaths that occurred during the Civil War in today’s numbers would top 6.5 million.

He also points out an interesting fact related to why, if so many men were firing at each other at perhaps 100 yards or less, there weren’t significantly higher casualty rates. He concludes that only 15 to 20 percent of the men firing were aiming to kill or wound the enemy. The rest of the unit was either not firing or aiming high. Why? Simply the Sixth Commandment, “Thou Shalt Not Kill” (reviewer’s comment).

This is a well written and edited volume that will raise points that many Civil War, or war, aficionados would probably never have thought of. I highly recommend it.