Tales of Soldiers & Civilians by Ambrose Bierce

 

The fighting of the day before had been desultory and indecisive. At the points of collision the smoke of battle had hung in blue sheets among the branches of the trees till beaten into nothing by the falling rain. In the softened earth the wheels of cannon and ammunition wagons cut deep, ragged furrows, and movements of infantry seemed impeded by the mud that clung to the soldiers' feet as, with soaken garments and rifles imperfectly protected by capes of overcoats they went dragging in sinuous lines hither and thither through dripping forest and flooded field. Mounted officers, their heads protruding from rubber ponchos that glittered like black armor, picked their way, singly and in loose groups, among the men, coming and going with apparent aimlessness and commanding attention from nobody but one another. Here and there a dead man, his clothing defiled with earth, his face covered with a blanket or showing yellow and claylike in the rain, added his dispiriting influence to that of the other dismal features of the scene and augmented the general discomfort with a particular dejection. Very repulsive these wrecks looked—not at all heroic, and nobody was accessible to the infection of their patriotic example. Dead upon the field of honor, yes; but the field of honor was so very wet! It makes a difference.—“One Kind of Officer”

Tales of Soldiers & Civilians first appeared on the scene in 1892 with 16 tales, more were added later. This volume contains the rightly famous and well-known “An Occurrence at Owl creek Bridge.”

I decided to feature a lesser-known story so that one could get a feel for the fact that Mr. Bierce was no one-trick pony.

His own harrowing wartime experience and dyspeptic [realistic] view of life is to the forefront in this tale.

The war images smack of the real. No romanticism. Stark—terse, brutal.

The interactions with humanity come off no better, perhaps worse in this tale.

What never fails is Bierce’s gimlet eye.

Captain Ransome sat motionless and silent on horseback. A few yards away his men were standing at their guns. Somewhere—everywhere within a few miles—were a hundred thousand men, friends and enemies. Yet he was alone. The mist had isolated him as completely as if he had been in the heart of a desert. His world was a few square yards of wet and trampled earth about the feet of his horse. His comrades in that ghostly domain were invisible and inaudible. These were conditions favorable to thought, and he was thinking.

Many a fine critic has offered that Bierce’s Civil War tales are the best example of American war writing, exceeding that of Stephen Crane and Hemingway [Clifton Fadiman being a dissenting opinion—I myself, dissent from Fadiman—so much is done with so little text, it’s rather remarkable.]

In the next offering there is a cynical humor in this muddled exchange made all the more, well, horrifying, when one has read the tale and understands the import of what is being communicated and horrifyingly ignored.

Here, during the hottest of the fight, he was approached by Lieutenant Price, who had just sabred a daring assailant inside the work. A spirited colloquy ensued between the two officers—spirited, at least, on the part of the lieutenant, who gesticulated with energy and shouted again and again into his commander's ear in the attempt to make himself heard above the infernal din of the guns. His gestures, if coolly noted by an actor, would have been pronounced to be those of protestation: one would have said that he was opposed to the proceedings.

All told, brief tales, sparsely written, dripping with a cynicism likely borne of experience.

The only heroic characters here are the peripheral ones who must suffer the mistakes of those who point and say, “Go.”

Strong brew.