But Kershaw’s Brigade ... is much more than a recounting of military movements and the ordeals of battles.  It is at once a panorama of the agonies and the ecstacies of cold-steel war.  Few such narratives are so replete with quiet, meditative asides, bold delineations of daily life in camp and on the march, descriptions of places and peoples, and—­by no means least—­the raucous, all relieving humor of the common soldier who resolutely makes merry to-day because to-morrow he may die.  Thus, to young Dickert did the routine of the military become alternately matters grave or gay.  Everything was grist for his mill:  the sight of a pretty girl waving at his passing troop train, the roasting of a stolen pig over a campfire, the joy of finding a keg of red-eye which had somehow fallen—­no one knew how—­from a supply wagon; or, on another and quite different day, the saddening afterthoughts of a letter from home, the stink of bloated, rotting horses, their stiffened legs pointed skyward, the acrid taste of gun-powder smoke, the frightening whine (or thud) of an unseen sharpshooter’s bullet, and the twisted, shoeless, hatless body of yesterday’s friend or foe.

E. Merton Coulter, in his Travels in the Confederate States:  A Bibliography (1948), called Dickert’s “a well-written narrative, notably concerned with the atmosphere of army life,” adding that “there is no reason to believe that he embellished the story beyond the general outlines of established truth.”  Douglas S. Freeman considered Kershaw’s Brigade ... a reliable source for both his R.E.  Lee (1934-1935) and Lee’s Lieutenants ... (1942-1944), and Allen Nevins et al., in their Civil War Books:  A Critical Bibliography (1967), described it as “a full, thick account of a famous South Carolina brigade,” alive with “personal experiences of campaigns in both East and West.”

With these comments I agree.  The book is indeed intimate, vigorous, truthful, and forever fresh.  But, as I stated earlier, there is a third and personal reason why I am proud to have a hand in the republication of Kershaw’s Brigade....  My grandfather, Axalla John Hoole, formerly captain of the Darlington (S.C.) Riflemen, was lieutenant colonel of its Eighth Regiment and in that capacity fought from First Manassas until he was killed in the Battle of Chickamauga, September 20, 1863. (His photograph is inserted in this edition and Dickert’s tributes to him are on pages 278, 284-285.)

Two days before his death Hoole pencilled his last letter to his wife.  Previously unpublished, it frankly mirrors the esprit de corps of the men of Kershaw’s Brigade on the eve of battle.  En route from Petersburg to Chickamauga by train, the men of the Eighth Regiment passed through Florence, just ten miles from their homes in Darlington.  Upon arrival at Dalton, Ga. on September 18 Hoole wrote “Dear Betsy”: