Company Aytch

Samuel R. Watkins

Nob 1999 · Ibinebenta ng Penguin

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Told from the point of view of an ordinary foot soldier, this personal memoir has been hailed as one of the liveliest, wittiest, and most significant commentaries ever written on the Civil War.

Among the plethora of books about the Civil War, Company Aytch stands out for its uniquely personal view of the events as related by a most engaging writer—a man with Twain-like talents who served as a foot soldier for four long years in the Confederate army.

Samuel Rush Watkins was a private in the confederate Army, a twenty-one-year-old Southerner from Tennessee who knew about war but had never experienced it firsthand. With the immediacy of a dispatch from the front lines, here are Watkins' firsthand observations and recollections, from combat on the battlefields of Shiloh and Chickamauga to encounters with Stonewall Jackson and Robert E. Lee, from the tedium of grueling marches to the terror of fellow soldiers' deaths, from breaking bread with a Georgia family to confronting the enemy eye to eye.

By turns humorous and harrowing, fervent and philosophical, Company Aytch offers a rare and exhilarating glimpse of the Civil War through the eyes of a man who lived it—and lived to tell about it.



This edition of Company Aytch also contains six previously uncollected articles by Sam Watkins, plus other valuable supplementary materials, including a map and period illustrations, a glossary of technical and military terms, a chronology of events, a concise history of Watkins's regiment, a biographical directory of individuals mentioned in the narrative, and geographic and topical indexes. 

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Samuel "Sam" Rush Watkins (1839-1901) was a Confederate soldier during the American Civil War. He is known today for his memoir Company Aytch: Or, a Side Show of the Big Show, often heralded as one of the best primary sources about the common soldier's Civil War experience. Of the 120 men who enlisted in Company H in 1861, Sam Watkins was one of only seven alive when General Joseph E. Johnston's Army of Tennessee surrendered to General William Tecumseh Sherman.
 
Soon after the war ended, Watkins began writing his memoir, now heralded by many historians as one of the best war memoirs of all time. Watkins captures the pride, misery, glory, and horror experienced by the common foot soldier. Watkins is featured and quoted in Ken Burns' documentary The Civil War.