The Official Website of Author James Reger

Endorsements:

"Reger brings the Civil War vividly
to life in this excellent first novel."
- Stephen Coonts, Flight of the Intruder

"A great read! Jim Reger's Baptism
at Bull Run is an important addition to any Civil War library. Mr. Reger reminds us that before the celebration of victory comes uncertainty, terror, bleeding, and death. This is a book that
graphically describes the horrible sacrifices made in America' s most costly war."
- Gerald La Russa, historian

"Written in the tradition of Civil War novelists such as Jeff Shaara, Reger's contribution lies in his psychological insight into the war's great personalities -- their motivations (both personal and professional), their zeal and reluctance, and their human foibles and heroic greatness. Reger's book allows readers to become immersed in the war's human side, thereby revealing that the course of history is nothing more than people acting on what they think and believe."
- Bonnie Szumski, publisher of Greenhaven Press

"James Reger blends a masterful knowledge of history with penetrating psychological insights along with the sights, sounds and smells of battle. His account of the savage fighting at Mathews Hill is unsurpassed in conveying the
horror of hand-to-hand combat. A great read for both buffs and first-timers."
- Philip E. Comer, professor emeritus at West Virginia University

Harbor House Publishing
Tel: 706-738-0354
harborbook@knology.net

Chapter 10, "Near Martinsburg, Virginia, June 16, 1861, Mid-Morning",
pp. 55-56.
   And then the Colonel gave it, the most dreaded and craved of all commands: "Chaaarge!!"
   Reacting, not thinking, fearing not aggressing, Jacob spurred his mount to a surging, wildly whipping tumble of leather and steel, hooves and horseflesh, pounding thunder
and a galloping gait. He could hear Stuart laughing, "Charge, boys! To glory! To glory!"
With an impulse, not a thought, Jacob sensed he would be dead in the next instant. He screamed out in the vague, numbing hope that his straining, bursting throat would somehow blunt the pain of death. He quaked and trembled, shook and shuddered.
Shock ripped through every nerve. His hat flew off. His scabbard clanged. His ganglia burned red-hot.
   "Chaarge! Chaarge!" Stuart cried out.
Jacob clenched every muscle to stay on his horse, to keep on screaming. "Chaarge! Chaarge!" He almost fell off. Trampling hooves flashed up in his face. "Chaarge! Chaarge! Chaarge!!"
   Chaos roared in his ears. A gray-green murk mired his mind. Half blind with sweat
and panic, he saw nothing beyond his horse's pumping head. The field blurred beneath him. The trees flashed by him like a kaleidoscope. He smelled grass, dirt, sweat, and fear. He tasted blood in his mouth. He heard himself shout, "Chaarge!"
   He did not slow down. He could not slow down. He spurred his terrified horse to full speed. Flecks of fire sparked in the murk up ahead. A mount somersaulted down beside him. "Chaarge!" he yelled. "Chaarge!"
   Horses appeared through his fogged spectacles. Blue smeared in. "My God! My God! Yankees! Yankees!" A wave of blue rushed toward him like ground to a falling man. He cringed to receive the blow and smashed into them, colliding, nearly ejecting into their solid wall of men and horsemeat, Yankee men and Yankee horsemeat, all screaming
and neighing and straining.
   Jacob went mad, whirling his sword in every direction. He hit something here, something there, but what it was he had no clue. He heard clanging and thudding,
yelling and cursing. He swung and slashed and thrust. He kicked and parried, lunged
and ducked. He choked and gagged and cried.
   Jack O'lantern faces swarmed around him like ghouls. He fought one away, then two and three. "Yee-iiiiiiiiiiii!" he screamed, driven and driving. He lashed out and slashed
out at anything he could reach, anything close enough to reach him. He rasped and scratched to kill the killers who were trying to kill him. "Yee-iiiiiiiiii," he cried again and again and again.
   The clangorous fight might have lasted a minute; it might have lasted a day. But
it finally ended. The darkness around him faded. The sun re-appeared. He was panting, amazed to be alive.

Chapter 24, "The Union Encampment Centreville, Virginia, July 20, 1861, 11:00 p.m.", pp. 128-129.
   Private Billy Anderson, the chubby boy Ol' Mex had taken under his wing at the barricade in Washington, tossed his playing cards and French nude carte-de-visites into the pulsing fire where they curled into blackened wisps of smoke and ash. Dressed in an over-sized blue uniform, he said, "I ain't takin' no chances on angering the Lord tonight. I'll admit I've been runnin' a mite crazy these past few weeks, what with them being the first time that I was ever away from Ma and all. But I'm turnin' back to the Lord right
now and I don't give a good Goddamn what nobody says about it."
   "That ain't a bad idea," Ol'Mex said, still wearing his powder-blue Mexican War uniform. "I was gettin' more than a bit concerned about your eternal soul the way you was sinnin' in whole cloth. Here, take a read on this a while. It'll do you good." He handed the boy a weathered Bible.
   Billy leaned to accept the book, tears glistening in his eyes. "I reckon I h'ain't never been scared the way I am right now, Mex. There don't seem to be nothin' I can do to make it stop neither."
   "That's the way it is, son," Ol' Mex said. "And it's gonna get worse before it gets better. That's the way I found it to be anyways, down in Mexico. And believe me, I'm just as scared as you are right now. It don't make no nevermind how many times you've seen the elephant, it just don't never get easier."
   Billy hid his tears. "I reckon you're right. I just hope I ain't the only scared one here tonight. I mean to tell you, I'm down right ashamed of how scared I am."
   "Don't worry none on it, boy," Ol'Mex said. "I guarantee you, you ain't the only one here that's scared."
   "But you don't understand," Billy whispered, hanging his head. "You don't know how scared I am."
   "Oh, I reckon I do."
   "But you h'ain't never done what I've gone and did," Billy said, a tear streaking down his dirty face.
   Ol' Mex reached over and clasped the boy's shoulder. "What in the hell are you talkin' about Billy, you ain't no worse off than me or any of the rest of these fellers here tonight."
   Another tear broke free and ran. "Oh, yes I am. Yes I am."
   "What are you goin' on about, boy. What are you cryin' for?"
   The boy looked both ways and whispered, "Because I done pissed my britches clean through. Clean through, I tell you. I know there ain't nobody else around here that's gone and did that." He turned away from the fire and began to sob.
   Ol' Mex took a closer look and saw the evidence. The stain in the boy's trousers was dark and spreading. "Don't you worry now, son. You'll dry out and ante up when the
time comes. You mark my word you will. I've seen better men than both of us do worse than that in their drawers before a battle." He patted Billy's shoulder until the crying stopped and the boy had steadied himself. Then he cocked his nose away from the stench and heard the drum roll sound at last.

Chapter 32, "Matthews Hill 9:30 a.m." pp. 153-154
   From the crest, Shanks Evans watched Roberdeau Wheat's five hundred New Orleans dock ruffians pour down the slope waving Bowie knives over their heads. "Look at 'em go, the sons of bitches! Look at the magnificent bastards go!"
   His jaw dropped as the Zouave hoodlums rushed headlong toward the Union line, baying like wolves and brandishing their razored blades. He saw some toss their rifles away altogether as if they were mere encumbrances to the expression of their rage.
They ran, leapt, and screamed, surging down the hill. The Yankees fired. Some Tigers went down but the rest kept going. Forty yards, thirty yards, twenty and closing, the butternut Zouaves roared on, until they crashed into the Yankees like a hurricane wave, slashing and stabbing and clubbing with rifle butts.
   Through his field glass, Colonel Evans could see steel slice faces, chests gush blood, and fingers getting lopped off to spurting stubs. Victims yowled hideous screams as cold blades were plunged into warm bodies. Men crumpled, vomiting blood from gashes to stomachs, lungs, and throats. Fists slammed noses, rocks crushed skulls, and soldiers yelped like scalded dogs. Even the most hardened of soldiers might have recoiled from the sight but Evans licked his lips hungrily and said, "Yes, Wheat! Yes!"
   He watched the Zouaves grapple hand-to-hand and boot-to-boot with the enemy for fifteen demonic minutes but the Yankees would not yield and the wharf toughs would
not relent. The slain bodies underfoot began tripping those left standing. They kicked up from the ground and wailed. Then, amid the roar of cannon and musketry, Evans saw a flanking Federal regiment enter the fray and the Louisianian survivors begin to recede. He marveled at their heroics, how they dragged their bleeding friends back up the hill with dangling limbs of their own.
   A stunned calm settled over the smoking battlefield. The rifles stopped. The silence chilled Evans like a night without whiskey. Then the cries of the wounded arose with the haze, filling the air with a tastable misery. The air went humid with anguish, permeating men and boys like their sweat and urine had not.
   Evans could not shut out the moaning, the crying, the praying of the wounded, the thrashing about and the pleas for help: help to crawl, help to drink, help to plug their draining wounds. The most pathetic of them moaned for their mothers or begged to be mercifully shot.

Chapter 50, "Henry Hill" pp.211-212. "Victory" charge
   Slim Cochran was charging through the high grass as fast as his legs would carry him. He was screaming and yelling, rejoicing in every way known to rejoice on a battlefield where artillery shells were still exploding. He tripped and fell many times, the dips in the pasture and the lumpy meadow preventing him from displaying the grace he felt in his soaring heart, but he bounded up each time and kept pressing gloriously onward.
His senses rushed and his joy effervesced. He saw Southern banners fluttering and
heard Southern voices cheering. He joined in, shouting wildly, "We won! We won! Praise God Almighty, we won!"
   He dropped his musket and almost left it. He wouldn't need it again, he thought, and
he feared he would miss the great celebration ahead. He retrieved the weapon, though, at a sergeant's insistence, and caught up with the surge of unwashed humanity, the racing mob advancing beyond anyone's ability to control it.
   Stray Federal shells detonated here and there but to no great effect that Slim could see. Nothing could stop the unbridled momentum, the overwhelming wave of Confederates chasing the tails of heir prey. Slim yowled and yipped and grinned like a jack O'lantern, leaping over rocks and logs and dead bodies. "Come back here you
damn Yankees!" he bellowed. "Come back here you damn cowards!" A shell went off to the left and then to the right of him. But he felt invincible, protected by the hand of God. He ran on and on. He was nearly to the edge of the hill, past the burning white house
and the abandoned Union guns they had been fighting over all afternoon. He reached
the edge of the hilltop and saw the Unionist army panicking in the valley below him. He shrieked to the heavens, "Hot damn! We's truly won! We's truly won! We got you now, you bluebellies! We got you…!" But suddenly the earth convulsed with fire and fury, hurling him into the air like a rag doll. He crashed to the ground and all went black.