What was it like to be a soldier in combat during the Civil War? What was it like to be a poorly trained, ill-equipped, and un-uniformed militiaman in a state army trying to, literally, defend your own home? What was it like to be stuffed into a dank, dark, sweltering, three-foot-diameter iron tube, turning a crank to escape an enemy howling after you, all while thirty feet below the surface of Charleston Harbor? What was it like to be a Creek infantryman, slowly riding in to a Union post in the wilds of frontier Oklahoma, carrying the threadbare rags of what had once been your proud battle flag, knowing you were among the very last of the Confederates to surrender? What was it like to be a Prussian-born corporal, barely able to speak English, caught in the midst of a vicious street battle in Fredericksburg? This new book tells the untold stories of the men on the front lines of battle during the Civil War.