Civil War Oddities

Odd facts and trivia have long fascinated us in the moviehouse, and, oddly enough, this year’s observance of the 150th anniversary of the start of the Civil War has sparked renewed curiosity in not just the textbook history but, as well, in the sub-historical footnotes.

The late Webb Garrison, a former associate dean of Atlanta’s Emory University and president of McKendree College in Labanon, Illinois, wrote a number of popular books specifically about Civil War trivia, including Civil War Curiosities: Strange Stories, Oddities, Events and Coincidences, More Civil War Curiosities, Strange Battles of the Civil War, Curiosities of the Civil War and Civil War Trivia and Fact Book.

Among the intriguing minutiae culled by Garrison and other like-minded miners of lore is the true-life saga of Keith and Sam Blalock, Union sympathizers who joined the Confederate Twenty-sixth North Carolina Regiment as brothers, 20 years apart. It was only months later that "Sam" revealed herself as Sarah Blalock (above), Keith’s wife, who had successfully posed as a man to remain at his side. They ultimately deserted and joined pro-Union guerrilla raiders in the Appalachia region of North Carolina, mercilessly marauding, pillaging and tormenting Confederate supporters. After the war, the couple spent the rest of their lives as farmers and raised four children…

…Three members of the same family had lost their lives on the same horse. After the horse was given to Ohio’s Ninety-eighth Regiment, three officers were subsequently killed as they rode the unlucky animal…

…Confederate General Thomas "Stonewall" Jackson (above) had an extraordinary appetite for lemons, often sucking on the fruit on the battlefield. Speaking of Jackson, shortly after the Confederate victory at the Battle of Chancellorsville, he was wounded by friendly fire. As a result, his left arm had to be amputated. He soon succumbed to pneumonia and was buried at his family home in Lexington, Virginia. His severed arm had already been properly buried, with military honors, near the field hospital in the Wilderness of Orange County, Virginia…

…Lieutenant Colonel Ely S. Parker (above) was a member of the Seneca tribe (once allies of the British during the American Revolution) who became an attorney and served as General Ulysses S. Grant’s military secretary. He was responsible for creating the articles of surrender signed by General Robert E. Lee at Appomattox Court House on April 9, 1865. Lee allegedly said, "I am glad to see one real American here," in response to which Parker simply stated, "We are all Americans." Later promoted to brevet brigadier general, Parker became the first Native American Commissioner of Indian Affairs under President Grant…

…In June 1865, two months after Lee surrendered, Cherokee leader Stand Watie (above) became the last Confederate general to stand down to Federal troops in what is now Oklahoma…
The feature presentations in the moviehouse are themselves exceptional curiosities in the already unique genre of Civil War cinema.

As the final season of the ‘60s cult-favorite TV series "The Twilight Zone" wound down, host Rod Serling presented, for the first time in the show’s five-season run, a story produced independently from the program, a French short film titled "An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge."


During the Civil War, Union soldiers march onto a railroad bridge in preparation of the hanging of a Southern saboteur. Literally at the end of his rope, his life is spared when the hangman’s hemp snaps and he plunges into the river below. After a harrowing, barefoot escape, dodging bullets and cannon fire in the water and running headlong through the woods, he finally stumbles through the gates of his home plantation, where, in an eerily prolonged series of repeated shots, he rushes to embrace his beaming wife. At the instant of her touch, his body violently arches, and suddenly his corpse is revealed to be hanging from the bridge.

The stark, black-and-white production, directed by Robert Enrico, is nearly a silent film, except for ambient nature sounds, distant shouts from the Federal troops and reports of gunfire. The soundtrack features a wistful off-screen ballad and a frenetic, jazz-like riff on a snare drum.

Variety observed that the tale "fits perfectly into the ‘Zone’ format." As a short film, it won an Academy Award and the Palm d’Or for Short Film at the Cannes Film Festival. (A few years earlier, the story was loosely adapted and expanded for a 1959 episode of "Alfred Hitchcock Presents." The cast included a young James Coburn as a Union soldier.)

Rod Serling had previously exhibited an interest in the Civil War in a unique trio of tales from "The Twilight Zone’s" early seasons. "Back There" threw Russell Johnson (best known as the "Professor" on "Gilligan’s Island") back in time in a frantic race to save Abraham Lincoln from the assassin’s bullet. In "Still Valley," Gary Merrill ("Twelve O’Clock High," "All About Eve") played a Confederate soldier who stumbles across a black magic spell capable of literally freezing Union troops in their tracks. "The Passerby" was a particularly poignant story of a lonely Southern woman waiting for the return of her soldiering husband. The dusty road by the burned remnants of her mansion becomes peopled by wounded souls of both blue and gray, among them James Gregory (familiar to TV viewers as the obnoxious Inspector Luger on the ‘70s sitcom "Barney Miller") as a grizzled Confederate sergeant. Last in the parade of spectral passersby on the dirt road "littered with the residue of broken battles and shattered dreams" is, fittingly, the somber presence of President Lincoln.



In 1965, a year after "Twilight Zone" was canceled, Rod Serling created a new TV series, "The Loner," starring Lloyd Bridges (below) as a former Union cavalry officer roaming the West. According to author Marc Scott Zicree in The Twilight Zone Companion, "With its emphasis on character and motivation rather than gunplay, the series was generally well-received by the critics, who particularly applauded Serling’s unconventional scripts." Executives at the network, however, weren’t pleased with Serling’s approach and pressured him to tailor the show more like other western series of the time, demanding more "chases, running gun battles, runaway stagecoaches, etc." An unhappy Serling grumbled, "Some weekends I wish Friday would move into Sunday and skip Saturday so there wouldn’t be any ‘Loner.’" Halfway through the first season, "The Loner" was canceled.


When "The Twilight Zone" showcased "An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge," Rod Serling introduced the episode as "a haunting study of the incredible, from the past master of the incredible, Ambrose Bierce." Ambrose Bierce was, in fact, the only American writer of renown who fought in the Civil War. His influence on subsequent authors exploring American war experiences, including Stephen Crane (who, despite writing what many regard as a seminal Civil War novel, The Red Badge of Courage, never saw a moment of battle), Ernest Hemingway and Norman Mailer, is undeniable.

As a short story author and journalist, Bierce’s preeminently cynical take on the folly of human nature (his motto was, "Nothing matters") and unbridled vehemence as a social and political critic earned him the nickname "Bitter Bierce." Bierce once advised his detractors, of which there were several, to "continue selling shoes, selling pancakes, or selling themselves," while he himself would "sell abuse."

Impelled by an exceptional surge of patriotism, an 18-year-old Ambrose Bierce enlisted in the North’s Ninth Indiana Volunteer Infantry Regiment on April 19, 1861, a little more than a week after the Confederates fired on Fort Sumter. "At one time in my green and salad days," he later wrote, "I was sufficiently zealous for Freedom to engage in a four years’ battle for its promotion."

What would become Bierce’s singular literary motifs of dark, grotesque imagery, seemingly improbable circumstances, and macabre, ironic twists would be inspired by the earliest of his war experiences. Passing a wayside littered with the covered corpses of slain Union scouts ("some things," in his words), a morbidly curious Bierce lifted "the blankets from their yellow-clay faces. How repulsive they looked with their blood-smears, their blank, staring eyes, their teeth uncovered by contraction of the lips!" The next day, Bierce and his comrades were surprised to see that the bodies had been moved and had thrown off their shrouds, only to discover that feral pigs had eaten the faces off the dead men.




During the Battle of Shiloh (pictured above), Bierce came upon a deep ravine in which hapless troops of the Fifty-fifth Illinois had been cut down by Confederate riflemen. He "obtained leave to go down into the valley of death and gratify a reprehensible curiosity." Hundreds of Federal soldiers, wounded or already dead, had been burned to ashes by a brush fire ignited by the sparks of gunfire. Bierce looked over the charred remains, "some in the unlovely looseness of attitude denoting sudden death by the bullet, but by far the greater number in postures of agony that told of the tormenting flame. Their clothing was half burnt away - their hair and beard entirely…Some were swollen to double girth; others shriveled to manikins. According to degree of exposure, their faces were bloated and black or yellow and shrunken. The contraction of muscles which had given them claws for hands cursed each countenance with a hideous grin."

"Gloomy and saturnine to begin with," author Roy Morris Jr. noted his outstanding 1995 biography of Bierce, "he discovered in the war a bitter confirmation of his darkest assumptions about man and his nature…"

Over the nearly four years of his service, Bierce was promoted to sergeant, second lieutenant, then first lieutenant, when he was assigned to a brigade staff as an expert "topographical engineer" (a glorified title for a mapmaker), and finally, brevet major. He would later recount being in the first ranks of "hardened and impertinent man-killers, to whom death in its awfulest forms is a fact familiar to their everyday observation; who sleep on hills trembling with the thunder of great guns, dine in the midst of streaming missiles, and play cards among the dead faces of their dearest friends." As for their Southern foes, Bierce noted, "They were brave and courageous…having little in common with the political madmen who sent them to their doom," causing him to question if he had fought on the right side.

"Both Bierce and Hemingway took for granted their physical courage," biographer Roy Morris Jr. remarked. "Bierce, however, never felt the need to advertise his." Having survived three of the bloodiest battles in American history - Shiloh, Stones River and Chickamauga - Bierce, according to Morris, "viewed the world through a kind of invisible screen, with himself and his fellow soldiers on one side of the partition, and the rest of the world, in its safe civilian cocoon, on the other."


In a June 8, 1864, letter, Bierce stated, "I am getting very tired of my present life and weary of the profession of arms." He would often say that a part of himself had died in the war, believing that he and other veterans lost a significant part of themselves by "hiring out as killers" for the Union cause.

On June 23, 1864, Bierce, leading a skirmish line at Kennesaw Mountain in Georgia, was wounded in the head by a Confederate sharpshooter. Although the injury left him prone to chronic headaches and sudden fits of fainting, he rejoined his corps three months later, medically excused from "severe mental or physical exertion." He resigned from service in January 1865 but was not officially mustered out until April.

He published his first pieces in 1867, but it would be nearly two decades after the Civil War before he wrote his first story based on his wartime experiences. Roy Morris Jr. observed, "As with Ernest Hemingway, whose work he influenced to an even greater degree than has been generally recognized, the war in Bierce’s stories kills the best soldiers first, while still managing to get around to the rest in due time."

If "An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge" is Bierce’s most famous short story, "Chickamauga" stands out as his most powerful. A child, deaf and mute, wanders into a dark forest, wielding a toy sword against "invisible foes," falls and asleep and awakens in the twilight amidst an endless procession of wounded soldiers, dragging themselves away from the battlefield of Chickamauga, "like a swarm of great black beetles." Bierce wrote, "They crept upon their hands and knees. They used their hands only, dragging their legs. They used their knees only, their arms hanging idly at their sides. They strove to rise to their feet, but fell prone in the attempt. They did nothing naturally and nothing alike, save only to advance foot by foot in the same direction." Unwittingly, the child mounts one of the casualties for a piggyback ride only to be flung aside by the man who "then turned upon him a face that lacked a lower jaw - from the upper teeth to the throat was a great red gap fringed with hanging shreds of flesh and splinters of bone." In the awful, shocking denouement of the story, the boy rushes home to come face-to-face with the reality of war as he discovers the body of his mother, mutilated by shell fire. He lets loose "a series of inarticulate and indescribable cries…a startling, soulless, unholy sound, the language of a devil."

Years after being discharged, Bierce reflected, "It was once my fortune to command a company of soldiers - real soldiers. Not professional life-long fighters, the product of European militarism - just plain, ordinary American volunteer soldiers, who loved their country and fought for it with never a thought of grabbing it for themselves…"

He noted, "When I ask myself what has become of Ambrose Bierce the youth, who fought at Chickamauga, I am bound to answer that he is dead. Some little of him survives in my memory, but many of him are absolutely dead and gone."



Deeply disturbed by his years in uniform, Bierce spent the last 50 years of his life attempting to disillusion his fellow Americans. By the fall of 1912, tired and preparing for the end, he made a final, nostalgic tour of the Civil War battlefields he had fought on. In a note from October 1913, he stated, "I shall be out of reach of letters."

In November 1913 he went to Texas and crossed into Mexico, where he presumably hoped to join Pancho Villa’s revolutionary army as a correspondent. His last letter, dated December 26, 1913, related his plans to follow Villa to the town of Ojinaga. He was never heard from again. He was probably killed at the capture of Ojinaga on January 11, 1914.

In one of Ambrose Bierce’s most enduring works, The Devil’s Dictionary (1906), he defined "history" as "an account mostly false, of events mostly unimportant, which are brought about by rulers mostly knaves, and soldiers mostly fools."

A recent version of "An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge" was included in an exceptional 2006 made-for-television movie, "Ambrose Bierce: Civil War Stories." The film’s framework posits a fanciful gathering in the drawing room of a San Francisco area hotel of Bierce, his protégée, novelist Gertrude Atherton, and young newspaper publisher William Randolph Hearst, with whom Bierce endured a two-decade love-hate relationship as a columnist for Hearst’s San Francisco Examiner.

Bierce has just published his anthology Tales of Soldiers and Civilians and reluctantly acquiesces to read three of the stories, which leads into atmospheric dramatizations of each piece. "One Kind of Officer" is an unsettling depiction of friendly fire set in the literal fog of war. "The Story of a Conscience," by far the most memorable - most emotionally haunting would be a better description - of the tales, relates the tragic consequences of a meeting between a Union officer and a Confederate spy with a shared past. The third story is Bierce’s most noted work, "An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge." This was actually a separate short film made a year earlier by a different director but adeptly woven into the movie’s fabric.



As Ambrose Bierce, Campbell Scott, with a seeming effortlessness, captures the writer’s confounding, contradictory cynicism and romanticism. The son of the late actors George C. Scott and Colleen Dewhurst, Campbell (below) has become a familiar face on television, with recurring roles in the series "Six Degrees," "Royal Pains" and "Damages." He won a number of awards as co-director, with Stanley Tucci, of the acclaimed 1996 independent film "Big Night."




The cast otherwise features little-known actors who bring an unmannered honesty to the stories, which are sincerely faithful to Bierce’s text. Director Don Maxwell (Brian James Egen directed the "Owl Creek Bridge" segment), from whom little has been heard since, does marvels with a limited budget, thanks to a team of dedicated craftsmen. A particular degree of authenticity is provided by the participation of several Civil War re-enactors.

"Ambrose Bierce: Civil War Stories" is a small, precious gem worth seeking.