Cara’s Blog

The first thing that struck me about Co. Aytch was the colorful character whom told the story. As he introduces himself Sam Watkins tells the reader that his story was of the “little misconception of there being such a thing as a north and a south.” He was careful in the first chapter to refer to the Northerners and Southerners by the way their water courses ran. As the story went on Sam Watkins found that Patriotism was different upon enlisting as it was in the actual war. Men eagerly signed up for the War of 1812 only to find the blood shed and hardships to suck all the spirit of ’76 of out them. This was the case also with the main character in the novel Across Five Aprils. In this story a young man, Jethro Creighton joins the Union Army thinking that war will be fun and full of expressive patriotism. After seeing his brothers and his cousins die in battle Jethro has to grow up quickly and realizes that War was nothing like he imagined.

Many things surprised me in the Co. Aytch. In the two wars we’ve already studied we had learned that there were hardships. One could assume that the modern army would have learned from some of these mistakes. Men freezing due to lack of proper clothing, brutal punishments from within their own troops, and high rates of deserters seemed a little too familiar to me. Since this is a confederate soldiers memoir perhaps some of these accounts do not apply to the Union Army which was more organized and run by the President. The bravery of some men I found remarkable. Watkins recollects a time when one of his soldiers grabbed the reins of Union army’s horse and told him to surrender. The man pulled out his gun quickly and shot the confederate. Surely he must have known this could have happened yet he still remained loyal to his troops.