Excerpt:

The first thing which a visitor to the Grounds was likely to notice was how numerous the old soldiers were, and how hale and hearty they seemed.

There were indeed a good many of them. This particular Home was built to accommodate twenty-four hundred men, and it was usually full to capacity.

All the National Homes were under the same management and were run in essentially the same way. But Bebby’s Home was one of the most popular. Perhaps the sightliness had something to do with it; certainly the officer personnel counted heavily.

Now and then a familiar face would disappear for a season: old So-and-so had taken a transfer to some other Home, generally to the Tennessee or the California Branch, where the winters were so much milder. But after a few months he would reappear; and if Papa or the Governor encountered him about the Grounds and asked, “Back again, Joe?” the answer was almost sure to be, “Yes, sir. Back home.”

Their excellent physical condition was not hard to account for. They were of sturdy stock to begin with. In the Home they had substantial food, comfortable quarters, medical attention to their slightest ailments, and—most important of all—nothing to worry about. Entrance to the Home probably prolonged most of their lives a good many years.…

The second thing which a visitor to the Grounds regularly remarked on was that, although there might be hundreds of them in sight, each individual old soldier kept as much as possible to himself.

One would amble along a path, while another ambled five feet behind; but the second never caught up and the first never waited for him. When they assembled in the theater for a show they never occupied adjoining seats until all the singles were gone.… they made their avoidance of one another explicit: each man referred to the others collectively as “the old soldiers,” and somehow managed to feel himself an exception.

Sometimes a new member of the Home, hailing usually from a small-town G.A.R., would announce that he had come here “to be with the boys.” The “boys” made short work of that illusion.

— from Chapter Three: The Home Grounds

The wider availability of this resource will be welcomed by scholars of the Civil War era. But many others will also find value in Out at the Soldiers’ Home. It is nostalgic but never cloying, breezy but not glib, a reflection of an earlier time, but with modern sensibilities. It honors “those who have borne the battle” by providing a loving but honest look at their lives long after the battle was over.

—James Marten in the Foreword

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256 pages, paperback, 52 photographs, $19.95
ISBN: 978-0-87946-363-2

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