A comment by Ralph Peters alerted me to the possibility that I ought to restore the anecdotes I've cut to get my manuscript down by 30,000 words as the publisher requested. It looks as if I can cut enough verbiage, plus an unnecessary chapter and two unnecessary appendices, to restore the two anecdotes I cut and add a couple more.
One of the anecdotes I cut was essential, because both the soldiers involved appear later in the book. I cut it and another because they seemed saccharine, but in retrospect I realized many soldiers put a happy face on their war experiences. Both anecdotes cut were from garrison duty in Norfolk in 1861.
My father served as a clerk for a field hospital near Le Mans in 1944 and 1945. He left a memoir of his service from his induction until November 1944, when his unit was at Le Mans. The memoir described the location of the field hospital so clearly that I was able to visit the site in 2007 on my way to see my elder daughter, who was studying French in Tours, about an hour away. My father wrote his memoir in a very light, jocular tone--so light and jocular that my son, a Marine, can't stand it. But I think my father's attempt to make light of his service was very similar to the reaction of the 12th Virginia's soldiers to their service in 1861. In person, my father told stories that were not so light. He remembered being issued a rifle and reclassified as an infantryman during the Battle of the Bulge, though he was not called to the front. He told us of boxcars full of German wounded frozen to death on the journey to the hospital. He mentioned that a German prisoner named Richard Horn from the Rhineland said our surname was common there.
My father-in-law, a young Marine who served as a cook in the Pacific, also made light of his service. The only story he told was of falling into a vat of chocolate pudding. He could never stand chocolate pudding afterward.
The anecdotes I may add are ones that I cannot forget, which I think is a pretty good criterion for adding material.
History is an art, not a science. The Greeks gave history her own Muse, Clio. But don't worry. I'm not going to get carried away and go billing myself as The Artist Formerly Known As John Horn.
P.S. Even in the part of the 12th Virginia's story that space constrains me to post on this blog, I have restored one of Bernard's vignettes of the closing days of the war.
One of the anecdotes I cut was essential, because both the soldiers involved appear later in the book. I cut it and another because they seemed saccharine, but in retrospect I realized many soldiers put a happy face on their war experiences. Both anecdotes cut were from garrison duty in Norfolk in 1861.
My father served as a clerk for a field hospital near Le Mans in 1944 and 1945. He left a memoir of his service from his induction until November 1944, when his unit was at Le Mans. The memoir described the location of the field hospital so clearly that I was able to visit the site in 2007 on my way to see my elder daughter, who was studying French in Tours, about an hour away. My father wrote his memoir in a very light, jocular tone--so light and jocular that my son, a Marine, can't stand it. But I think my father's attempt to make light of his service was very similar to the reaction of the 12th Virginia's soldiers to their service in 1861. In person, my father told stories that were not so light. He remembered being issued a rifle and reclassified as an infantryman during the Battle of the Bulge, though he was not called to the front. He told us of boxcars full of German wounded frozen to death on the journey to the hospital. He mentioned that a German prisoner named Richard Horn from the Rhineland said our surname was common there.
My father-in-law, a young Marine who served as a cook in the Pacific, also made light of his service. The only story he told was of falling into a vat of chocolate pudding. He could never stand chocolate pudding afterward.
The anecdotes I may add are ones that I cannot forget, which I think is a pretty good criterion for adding material.
History is an art, not a science. The Greeks gave history her own Muse, Clio. But don't worry. I'm not going to get carried away and go billing myself as The Artist Formerly Known As John Horn.
P.S. Even in the part of the 12th Virginia's story that space constrains me to post on this blog, I have restored one of Bernard's vignettes of the closing days of the war.
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