5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
Echo of Frontier Campaigning in Former Blockbuster, December 18, 2003
This review is from: Campaigning with Crook (Western Frontier Library) (Paperback)
Charles King is an interesting read. His "Campaigning With Crook" follows his months of hard service in pursuit of the Indians who brought Custer to earth.
Their campaign was brutal. Across 1500 miles of trails, 2,000 cavalry and infantry tried to bring their foes to battle. They had to travel light to have any chance of catching their supple enemy. Light travel meant no tents, light equipage, few overcoats, scarce rations and no oats for the horses. As a result, men traveled and slept in the rain (once for eleven consecutive days), shivered in the cold and drenched themselves in northern streams and rivers crossing fords that reached chin level in some places. Only two Indian fights of note occurred for all their efforts and in the end the men lost over 2/3 of their horses to overwork, starvation and the need to fill their own bellies (we do learn that captured Indian pony meat is much sweeter and less stringy than horseflesh).
This is a fascinating book. The author is in high bravado and so are his comrades. War work, the actual fighting, seems like sport to some of the men. Bravery and coolness under fire abound. Convinced of the nobleness of their cause, these soldiers suffer none of the introspection, war weariness, confused morality or lack of certainty of their right that one associates with modern war literature (at least as portrayed by Charles King). The first person account of hard life on the trail is a wonderment; I couldn't imagine many people, professionals or otherwise, suffering the privations and elements today the way these soldiers did -- they almost expected such chance and treatment and bore up incredibly well in body and attitude.
The book gets a few dings for what now reads like antiquated writing style (and very prevalent in late 1800 prose. I admit this is probably because a modern audience has not been raised on this style). Pasted together like associated magazine articles (I wondered if this had originally been issued in installments), the story is jumpy and disconnected in many parts. There is much dialogue with the reader that is largely absent from today's writings (ie, "and now, dear reader, I take you to an incident that could have been mentioned before during the description of our starting out, but for want of brevity of that narrative was delayed until now...." -- I'm paraphrasing this, but examples like it are found throughout the book).
This is a book rich in details that fascinate. It is not well assembled and lacks flow, but for first-person historical remembrance, it does a nice job.
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