With Fire and Sword

The story of the 'last man standing'



There are many military memoirs from hundreds of conflicts stretching back over the thousands of years that man has been engaged in armed conflict. For those who are aficionados of such memoirs each one has merit, and some are considered truly outstanding. The American Civil War was particularly well recorded by its combatants. Many men who left accounts for posterity fought in pivotal engagements or were members of notable corps. This book, written by a Union soldier who kept a diary of his experiences throughout the Civil War, has to be, by the finite nature of these resources, of enormous historical value, but might not at first seem to be especially notable. However, Byers served as a private soldier, sergeant and adjutant of the 5th Iowa Infantry. His was a regiment that when it was mustered contained 1,000 men; it lost 775 of them in action or through disease. Eighty men, including the author, were taken prisoner and all but 16 of them died. Of the nine men from Byers' company captured only he survived; so this is truly a story of 'the last man standing'-a survivor of a regiment that always found itself in the maelstrom of battle and which quite literally fought itself out of existence. This is a remarkable story of battle, capture and escape which will enthral any student of the American Civil War.

Leonaur editions are newly typeset and are not facsimiles; each title is available in softcover and hardback with dustjacket; our hardbacks are cloth bound and feature gold foil lettering on their spines and fabric head and tail bands.