"Soldier Life" from the Voices of the Civil War Series by Time-Life Books

Updated on September 3, 2026: This has been sold.

Full title: Soldier Life: “Fancy the Comforts of Such a Life as This!” From the Voices of the Civil War series. Published by Time-Life Books.

Chronicles the daily experience of soldiers during the Civil War, focusing not only on battles and campaigns, but on the conditions, routines, hardships, and discomforts of military life.

The back cover features a passage from Private Randolph A. Shotwell describing camp life, including early morning roll call, wet blankets, bad weather, muddy water, and poor coffee.

“Fancy the comforts of such a life as this! Roused at dawn to crawl out and stand half-dressed in a drenching storm while the company-roll was being called; then return to damp blankets—or to rub the skin off of your knuckles, trying to start a fire with green pine poles in the storm; go down to the marsh to break the ice off of a shallow branch or rivulet, and flirt a few handfuls of muddy water upon your face, then wipe it off on the clean corner of a dirty pocket handkerchief, borrow a broken piece of comb (having lost your own, and having no money to replace it) and, after raking the bits of trash out of your stubby locks, devote the next hour to trying to boil a dingy tin-cup of so-called coffee.”

Part of Time-Life’s Voices of the Civil War series, which uses period accounts, photographs, illustrations, and historical narrative to tell the story of the war through those who experienced it.

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