(This is the fanciest document in the Service Record of my Great Grandfather. The Union Army thought the war would be over long before the three-year enlistments for Volunteer troops would be up. It wasn’t, and they needed veterans to re-enlist. James did, but had second thoughts a few months later).

OK- this has been a painful part of the writing process. Oh, hell, everything has been painful lately. I am trying to write a book about love and war in the middle of the nation, just as a furor over who won, and who didn’t win, is raging. There is a lot of outrage about flags and the peculiar institution over which many people- me too, some days- think it was fought.

It was also fought by a couple million men about other things that had nothing whatsoever to do with it.

I know that for a fact, since I have been following the travels and travails of two young Irish lads who signed up on opposing sides. Neither participated in the peculiar institution, nor could be said to have much investment in America up until the war started, since both were born overseas and brought here by their parents, seeking a better life.

Great-Great Uncle Patrick was a garrulous fellow, and he left photos and a remarkable account of part of his adventures behind. Great-Great Grandfather James was much more opaque. He said nothing about what he saw, and left no photos. There are three separate spellings of his name, so I have suspicions about his literacy. His occupation at the beginning of the war is listed as So, I had to write away for his service record, and so long as I was at it, decided to request Patrick’s war record as well.

The records were waiting for me when I returned from the road this week, and Saturday seemed to be a good day to look at them in some detail for the scraps of evidence that might be contained within.

This was not the first time I had seen the record the Army kept on James. I registered as a researcher at the National Archives in the Federal district downtown years ago, a requirement to request documents, and knew the bare amount about his service. I took notes at the time, before I reluctantly gave the muster cards back to the archivist.

I mean, I thought they would give me a packet of microfiche to review on a machine. Not so. They produced the actual original documents in a little rectangular tan envelope, where they had been resting for more than a century. I am glad I gave them back at the time, since I was not nearly as efficient in my filing system as the Government was.

I remembered from the first look that there was not a lot of detail to be had. The enlistment document has him described as looking a lot like Uncle Harold- tall, at six feet in height, fair completion and hazel eyes. As a laborer, he would have had some muscle on him and little fat. He would have been a strapping likely lad in those days, and if Mom and her sisters are any indication, probably a fairly good looking young man.

Here is the record that summed up his service in the Descriptive List of Deserters, compiled before the disaster at Brice’s Crossroads in Mississippi, with one of the variants of the spelling of his name:



So, his war ended on April 6, 1864, when he failed to return from furlough and decided to stay with his future wife Barbara, the sister of Confederate Patrick Griffin. Not a bad record otherwise- he was at Shiloh, and Grant’s narrow victory that saved the Union in the West. He was then at the bloody sieges of Corinth, Vicksburg, and Jackson. That was the heart of the fighting in the west, and I also managed to secure the Unit Diary for the whole show, which should provide more detail than these spare muster cards.

It may strike you as sort of unusual, for a career military guy like myself, but I am glad he left when he did. The 72nd OVI was more than decimated at Brice’s Crossroads by Nathan Bedford Forest. Surviving prisoners wound up at Andersonville prison. The vets never forgave their commander for getting them into that mess, and if James had stayed, I might very well not be here to type this up.

So, here is to desertion and failure to honor an obligation. I am inclined to believe it was the love of a beautiful woman, and it all worked out for the best. It did for James, anyway, since he was not killed in action, or died in a fetid POW camp. He was never apprehended for his crime against the United States Army, and all the rest of the family got to be born.

We will get to Patrick’s record presently. Is this a great country, or what?

Copyright 2015 Vic Socotra

www.vicsocotra.com

Twitter: @jayare303