Customer Reviews

Ambrose Bierce's Civil War

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I read this book when I was doing research about one of the taboos of warfare. That was the discussion of the Coup De Grace of a fellow soldier. During my research I found that virtually no one had ever written (either in books or screenplays) about this with the exception of Bierce. It is an interesting paradox to ask yourself whether you would have the capability to put a friend out of their misery rather than let them suffer if you knew that help was not available. In fact, Bierce's short story is entitled, "The Coup De Grace". You'll find it and 27 others in this volume. The most famous is, "An Occurrence At Owl Creek". A story that was made into a short film and was the Short Subject winner of the Cannes Film Festival in 1962, and earned an Academy Award in 1964 as best Foreign Film.

All of the stories you find in this book are told with the tight, economical style of Bierce and many have an O'Henry or Sterling twist at the end. They are told in the frank and bloody prose that Bierce witnessed (and physically experienced) first hand as an Officer in the Union Army. As one reads these stories you can clearly see the basis for Bierce's caustic and acidulous writing style that stayed with him throughout his life including as a columnist for William Randolph Hearst at the San Francisco Examiner and until he walked away into the Mexican desert in 1913. His demise is the source of great conjecture (as he would have wanted it) but that is for other books about the man and his writing.

Ambrose Bierce, a soldier in the Civil War, focused on the war in many of his short stories, which are truly phenominal. With the surreal and supernatural sensibilities of Poe and ironic endings worthy of O. Henry, Bierce deserves a place among our most treasured authors.

Ambrose Bierce's Civil War has everything you could ask for from a non-fiction, storytelling book about the Civil War. It is filled will all sorts of war memoirs and stories from his experiences and experiences of others throughout the Civil War. There are gruesome explanations of brains oozing out of a head in the war memoir "What I Saw at Shiloh," dead bodies covering the ground and endless thunderstorms. Alongside these dismal recounts of the Civil War, there are also stories of loyalty, family and courage. This contrast of the positives and negatives in the war makes this book very interesting. One page it will be raining and there are dead bodies on the ground. The next page is filled with sunlight and untouched and uninhabited forests. My favorite story would have to be "What I Saw at Shiloh," but there are several that are very good. All of them are extremely descriptive, too. No details are left out. Anyone who stays tuned to all of Grandpas old war stories would definitely like this book. It is filled with enough non-fictional material to keep you on edge for quite some time.

This book is divided into two sections. The first, "War Memoirs," comprises about one quarter of the book; the second, "War Stories," the remaining three fourths. I was really taken with Bierce's memoirs, so much so that I was sorry to see that section end so soon. I shouldn't have been, for, if anything, Bierce's war stories were even more interesting.

Much to my surprise, Ambrose Bierce turned out to be not only a great author but also a great story teller, and, having fought through the Civil War (rising from the status of a 19 year old volunteer private with a three month enlistment to become a Captain in topography by war's end) he developed an innate understanding of what it is like to fight a fratricidal war from the very bottom up. His powers of observation and memory are unexcelled, most likely honed by his duties as a topographical engineer on the field of battle. These give life to his memoirs and when coupled with his vivid imagination and writing skills produce some truly remarkable tales.

As I began reading those tales, it occurred to me that it was almost as if I was reading the scripts from Rod Serling's TV series "The Twilight Zone," for every story was brilliantly conceived and ended with a twist -- some unusual and totally unexpected event. Then I ran into a story entitled "An Occurrence At Owl Creek Bridge." Gee whiz! I WAS reading stories very much like "The Twilight Zone." In fact, that story was presented on "The Twilight Zone" and, to my mind, is the most memorable story that show ever produced. I couldn't help but wonder how many others of Bierce's stories Serling had adapted for his program, for those two men were obviously kindred spirits and had similar outlooks on life. (Serling got his while serving as a 5' 4" paratrooper fighting in the South Pacific during World War II.)

I have read a lot of military biographies, and some stories, by and about numerous military figures -- Generals Sherman and Patton, Chesty Puller, Sergeant York, Audie Murphy, Manfred von Richthofen, Jimmy Doolittle, Pappy Boyington, etc. -- as well as the writings of Ernie Pyle and others, but I have never read anything like the writings of Ambrose Bierce. His memoirs and stories put you right in the middle of the action during the great battles and smaller skirmishes of the Civil War as seen and felt by the men actually doing the fighting. So, if you want to understand military terminology; learn something about military operations and history; experience the fog of war; and read some really great stories, you don't want to miss this one. But keep your dictionary handy.

Ambrose Bierce's Civil War is a bit of a mixed bag; it contains a handful of non-fiction articles and a number of non-fiction `War Stories.' All deal with topics common to war, some specific to the American Civil War - there are tales of courage, obedience, the foolishness of generals and the effect of civil war on families. And, as William McCann puts it in his introduction to this volume, "in these creations his lifelong obsession with death and the macabre calamity were fruitfully and not incongruously employed."
That `obsession' becomes a little overbearing at times. In an otherwise pedestrian recollection in "What I Saw of Shiloh" the reader stumbles across this arresting image of a wounded Federal sergeant: "A bullet had clipped a groove in his skull above the temple; from this the brain protruded in bosses, dropping off in flakes and strings. I had not previously known one could get on, even in this unsatisfactory fashion, with so little brain. One of my men whom I knew for a womanish fellow, asked if he should put his bayonet through him. Inexpressibly shocked by the cold-blooded proposal, I told him I thought not; it was unusual, and too many were looking." You either laugh, cringe, or close the book for good when you come across passages like this. In similarly expressive terms, in both fiction and non-fiction, Bierce describes the effects of wild swine on dead and wounded soldiers. If you're squeamish consider yourself warned.
My objection to Bierce's `obsession' is that it tends to unbalance his work. The images are so strong they tend to drown out the larger themes. In a month I will hard pressed to remember much of anything he had to say about Shiloh, but I'll long remember the Federal soldier with the drooling brain.
Save for a sprinkling of startling images, the non-fiction pieces are undistinguished. You can go to a hundred other sources for more informative, and entertaining, reminiscences.
The fiction is another matter. Bierce's justifiably famous "An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge" is included. In the compressed space of the short story, and some of these stories are very short indeed, Bierce treats difficult themes with surprising deftness and sensitivity. In "Parker Anderson, Philosopher" a Rebel spy is interrogated by a slower witted Federal general. The spy treats the threat of his imminent death, he is to be executed at dawn, in a cavalier manner. With great economy Bierce takes this tale of the meaning of courage and turns it upside down.
My favorite piece in the book was "One Kind of Officer," a tale which literally and figuratively treats the fog of war. A weaker entry is "One of the Missing," a story of a sharpshooter in General Sherman's army who is pinned beneath a collapsed building with his loaded and cocked hair-trigger rifle pointed at his forehead. Bierce sometimes forces things and his work suffers for it. In another story it's more a disappointment than anything to discover that the cannoneer was bombarding his own home all the time, slaughtering his family because of orders from a twisted commander and a deeply ingrained sense of obedience. Too convenient, too contrived. It's an author going for the "Aha" moment, a cheap and manipulative trick that is beneath Bierce's talent.
Civil War buffs should enjoy Ambrose Bierce's Civil War immensely. There are plenty of gems, and even the common stones have their moments.