We knew our great grandfather Alfred Edwin Baldrige had served in the Iowa 19th during the Civil War but we had no details about his service. This book tells in all its unvarnished truth what life was like during the war, not only for our great grandfather but for all the others in the regiment. After doing some more research, we found that the author, J. Irvine Dungan aka James I. Dungan, attended a small college in our hometown of Washington, Iowa. He was a 20 year old student there when he answered the call to service, and it is likely that he lived in a building used as a dormitory that was near the college. This dormitory (built in 1850) was later converted into a single family home, and was bought by my parents in 1969 and updated into the second house I lived in as a child. That house is no longer owned by anyone in our family, but it is fascinating to connect some of the dots in our family History.