On the Skirmish Line Behind a Friendly Tree: The Civil War Memoirs of William Royal Oake, 26th Iowa Volunteers

The American Civil War was slightly more than a year old—already having lasted longer than most had anticipated—when an eighteen-year-old named William Royal Oake left his family’s farm in Charlotte, Iowa, to join the Union forces.

He fought in a total of twenty major battles, was captured and incarcerated as a prisoner of war, and was wounded during his long odyssey as a soldier.

In the winter of his sixty-ninth year, Oake wrote a detailed and thoughtful memoir of his years at war from the moment he told his parents he had joined the army until the day the campaign-hardened soldier walked back to the farm and into their grateful arms.

Discovered 80 years after his death, this remarkable memoir brings to light the inner thoughts and experiences of an engaging storyteller.

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About the Editor:
A native "jayhawker" and graduate of the University of Kansas, Stacy Dale Allen is a twenty-year veteran of the United States National Park Service. Currently Chief Park Ranger at Shiloh National Military Park, Stacy manages interpretation, law enforcement, resource management, and historic preservation programs at the famous West Tennessee Civil War site, which also stewards prehistoric cultural resources associated with Shiloh Indian Mounds National Historic Landmark and a new National Civil War Interpretive Center located in Corinth, Mississippi.

Author of numerous articles on the Civil War, Stacy has prominent contributions in seven book and served as researcher/preparer on several National Park Service historic resource studies and management documents.