March 14, 2003
Incident
At Pittston Crossing
By
C. Burton Nelson
Helm Literary Publishing, 2002
Reviewed by G. E. Rule
Incident at Pittston Crossing is advertised as “a Civil War adventure
novel”. While the author is somewhat coy about when/where we are, it appears
the field of battle is in southern Illinois in the summer of 1862. A fictional
engagement, the battle is brought on by a surprise raid of a southern army of
ten thousand intent on sacking a lightly defended Union supply depot,
shattering public equanimity about the relative safety of the Northern states,
and hauling huge amounts of military booty back to the Confederacy.
Pitched into the maw of this juggernaut is Captain Michael Ellison, USA,
company commander of Company A of the 117th Illinois infantry.
Ellison is given a quickie promotion to Major, and he and his men are sent to
die gloriously–but as slowly as possible—so as to buy time for the commanding
general to get reinforcements for the defense of the depot. It is estimated
that a week will be required to insure the safety of the depot at Taylorville,
but Ellison and his men will almost certainly be wiped out long before then.
Hurrying his troops to Pittston Crossing, a naturally strong defensive
position astride the best road in the region, Ellison makes a series of
brilliant decisions that will serve his men well in the days ahead. Ellison is
authorized to co-opt any troops in the immediate region for the defense of
Pittston Crossing, and the author cheats a bit on his behalf, providing one of
the first sniper platoons in the U.S. Army camping nearby for Ellison to
co-opt. The local militia who will also add to his command are well-armed and
well-trained, and even the civilian population has been trained to know what to
do in case of an invasion. Well-armed and trained militia was rare enough, but
a trained civilian population was practically unheard of then & there.
Some other small units join Ellison, including what has to be one of the
first African-American companies (explained as a “training unit”) in the U. S.
Army in the Civil War. This is pushing the envelope of history pretty hard, as
the actual dates of African American units would suggest that Burton is a few
months early here. By its peak, Ellison’s little command of one hundred has
grown to over six hundred; still outnumbered by better than 10-1 compared to
their adversaries.
While Incident at Pittston Crossing is billed as an “adventure novel”,
it reads more like a thought experiment. One can imagine the author sitting
down with the idea, “Hmm, what would happen if a small unit Civil War commander
used modern infantry tactics instead of the line-‘em-up-and-bowl-‘em-over
methods that were actually used during the war? How good could he do in a
naturally strong defensive position?” Burton, a WWII Airborne veteran, answers
“quite well indeed”.
Ellison is pedantic at times, but it is necessary for him to explain the
features of this new way of fighting. Instead of just building fortifications
and lining his men up behind them, Ellison has individual “Ellison rifle pits”
for each man, with a “head log” with a firing port beneath it. This allows the
men to fire while completely protected from small arms fire. Each has a smaller
piece of wood to stuff in the firing port while he reloads, thus protecting him
against a stray shot from the enemy during this time.
Interlocking fields of fire, hidden booby-traps, multiple weapons for each
man to increase firepower, innovative use of artillery, intentional
disinformation, counter-espionage, and above all the sniper unit play a role in
Ellison’s defense of the “Notch” at Pittston Crossing. I was half expecting
Burton to come up with an Air Force to complete Ellison’s combined arms tutorial
before the campaign was over.
The author’s characterization of his actors is much richer on the Union side
of the ball. Ellison himself is likable, and most of his officers are
identifiable as individuals and not just stick figures. Major Thurman Harris (an
“Old Army” retiree living in the area who is dragooned back into service by
Ellison) is a particularly enjoyable crusty—and fearsomely competent—addition to
the book. Burton’s Southern characters, on the other hand, are not drawn with
any sympathy at all. The Confederate officers tend to be either stick figures,
stereotypes, or both; not all that unusual for the “bad guys” in a novel of this
kind. Skeeter Moss, a poor local fisherman of flexible morals and loyalties, who
is just trying to survive in the path of the invasion—possibly at a small
profit—was a well-drawn subplot.
The language of these Civil War soldiers sounds a bit more modern than
accurate, with mention of “all-weather roads”, “assets”, and military “red
tape”. This last, placed by the author in the mouth of Jefferson Davis, might
just possibly be accurate. “Red tape” became well known after the Civil War; old
soldiers traveling to Washington to prove their right to a pension found their
service records bound with the stuff. Possibly red tape was used at the War
Department when Davis was Secretary of War in the ‘50’s, but it sounded odd.
Ellison’s Union officers also have a fondness for puns—good, bad, and
terrible—that matches my own experience with friends who have served in the Army
much more recently; perhaps this tradition goes back further than I had
suspected. At any rate, a little more 19th century English would have
added to the verisimilitude of the book.
“Thought experiment” or “adventure novel”, Incident at Pittston Crossing
held my attention right to the end. Civil War buffs of Pro-Union proclivities
and those who like military fiction in general, will probably enjoy this book.
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