I must say...Hey! Could we get up an award to give to this guy?...Mr. Arner's afterword commentary is thorough and masterful. Here's an example of the former:
The 129th then settled into camp for the next six weeks. From the description given in "Red-Tape", examination of maps, and discussion with individuals familiar with the area and its history, the camp of the 129th appears to have been in the valley that runs almost due south from the Steven Grove Homestead to the Boteler or Blackford Ford.
The detail he commands is masterful:
In the first days of November the Fifth Corps was assigned to Snickers's Gap (pp. 105-106, 108-113). Joshua L. Chamberlain of the Twentieth Maine...was there. On November 3 he wrote to his wife:
"What names they have in the land of Rebeldom! 'Snickers' Gap! what an undignified name for a battlefield.
Arner comments:
Perhaps Chamberlain would have been more impressed had he known that the gap was named for Capt. Edward Snickers, who served with George Washington in the Braddock expedition in the French and Indian War and was a recruiting officer in the Revolutionary War.
Check and mate.
Arner "translates" Armstrong:
On September 3 the 129th was placed in a brigade...under the command of Brig. Gen. Erastus b. Tyler--the axe-wielding and red-tape-cutting brigadier described on pages 12-13.
...
When they neared Martinsburg...,the members of the fictional 210th discussed the inadequacies of Gen. Robert Patterson who had opposed Gen. Joseph E. Johnston here a year earlier (pp.73-76).
Red-Tape and Pigeon-Hole Generals is almost as much his book as Armstrong's. Inexcusable that Red-Tape was missed by historians for 133 years; so much moreso that Arner's "translation" has not greater renown. It should have hit Civil War history like a bombshell. It and Arner should have been laureled. Instead, both remain comparatively obscure. If Arner put his name to a book with a photo of the Tall Man on the cover and only the letters L-I-N-C-O-L-N on its seven pages he'd have a best seller.
The 129th then settled into camp for the next six weeks. From the description given in "Red-Tape", examination of maps, and discussion with individuals familiar with the area and its history, the camp of the 129th appears to have been in the valley that runs almost due south from the Steven Grove Homestead to the Boteler or Blackford Ford.
The detail he commands is masterful:
In the first days of November the Fifth Corps was assigned to Snickers's Gap (pp. 105-106, 108-113). Joshua L. Chamberlain of the Twentieth Maine...was there. On November 3 he wrote to his wife:
"What names they have in the land of Rebeldom! 'Snickers' Gap! what an undignified name for a battlefield.
Arner comments:
Perhaps Chamberlain would have been more impressed had he known that the gap was named for Capt. Edward Snickers, who served with George Washington in the Braddock expedition in the French and Indian War and was a recruiting officer in the Revolutionary War.
Check and mate.
Arner "translates" Armstrong:
On September 3 the 129th was placed in a brigade...under the command of Brig. Gen. Erastus b. Tyler--the axe-wielding and red-tape-cutting brigadier described on pages 12-13.
...
When they neared Martinsburg...,the members of the fictional 210th discussed the inadequacies of Gen. Robert Patterson who had opposed Gen. Joseph E. Johnston here a year earlier (pp.73-76).
Red-Tape and Pigeon-Hole Generals is almost as much his book as Armstrong's. Inexcusable that Red-Tape was missed by historians for 133 years; so much moreso that Arner's "translation" has not greater renown. It should have hit Civil War history like a bombshell. It and Arner should have been laureled. Instead, both remain comparatively obscure. If Arner put his name to a book with a photo of the Tall Man on the cover and only the letters L-I-N-C-O-L-N on its seven pages he'd have a best seller.