Adventures and Reminiscences of a Volunteer; Or, a Drummer Boy from Maine

He was fifteen going on twelve, a barefoot newsboy from New York with a talent for selling papers that didn't exist and a burning desire to wear blue. When his mother died and his father relocated the family to a farm in Maine, young George Ulmer saw only one escape: the Union Army. The recruiters laughed at him. The uniforms looked like they could dress an entire family. But Ulmer was street-smart, stubborn, and small enough to slip through every barrier the military put in his way. He became a mascot for the Maine giants of the 8th Regiment, a champion forager who used his newsboy cunning to keep the company fed, and eventually a soldier who saw action at Fort Powhatan, Cold Harbor, and Petersburg. This is war remembered by a man who still sees himself as that mischievous boy, telling his story with disarming humor and total candor. The result is neither glorification nor tragedy, but something rarer: a soldier's memoir that reads like a love letter to his own youth, even as it shows what that youth survived.