I MARCH THROUGHT GEORGIA

Robert Hale Strong was a rangy farm boy, almost 19, when he walked to town — Naperville,

Illinois — and volunteered for the Union infantry. Shrewd, observant, earthy, and witty, he lived through grim fighting in the Georgia-Carolinas campaign. The letters he wrote home told with brutal realism but unflagging good humor of humanity under fire, sudden death, military punishments, and the raw, unstinted American courage of both sides. His mother saved his letters and diaries, and later had him fill in more details. His granddaughter, Mrs. Jeanne Ross of Warren, Arkansas, subsequently put the account in manuscript form. It was published in

The Saturday Evening Post during the centennial anniversary of the Civil War in 1961 and later released as a book. The following excerpt is featured in our just-published collector’s edition,

Untold Stories of the Civil War. For information about ordering, please see our ad on page 2.

We were under fire every day for about a month between Buzzard’s Roost and Atlanta, Georgia.