The two photos below were the starting point for Private Captain.
My husband and youngest son went to a Gettysburg anniversary reenactment and came home with pictures. Looking through them, I spotted two shots with a yellow dog marching and running with the troops on the battlefield. I knew there was a story there.
Animals of all descriptions, from the eagle mascot of Company C., 8th regiment, Wisconsin Volunteers, to a sheep named Dick with the 2nd Rhode Island, were joined by widely varied mascots including: a donkey, various horses (most notably, Confederate General Robert E. Lee’s horse, Traveller) a bear, a camel, a raccoon, and a badger.
Studying the photos my family brought home, I began to think about human characters. Ben, the main character in Captain, is really my youngest son, Josh, who became a Civil War re-enactor himself. I added an annoying young cousin, Danny, and a cow named Mavis (Josh’s nickname on his high school swim team) as the strange companions on Ben’s quest to find his brother.
One of the most important parts of Captain concerns the crossing of the bridge in Columbia, PA. It was really the only way for Ben to go west to try to find the Union Army. But he was worried something would happen to the bridge before he could cross it. And he was right to worry.
Part of the Confederate Army was moving east, towards Philadelphia, and the Lancaster County home guard (students from Franklin & Marshall College, men too old for service on the battlefield, and wounded veterans who’d been sent back home) had hurried to Columbia to stop the Rebs. The plan was to burn the mile-long wooden covered bridge across the Susquehanna River.
They tried to set fire to the bridge, but eventually had to plant explosive charges to get the blaze to catch. That left Ben and his small crew no choice but to ford the treacherous river.
The bridge between Lancaster and York counties was the real “high water mark” in the Reb’s quest for success in the North. The fire, thanks to many buckets of crude oil sloshed onto the wood, really got going, sweeping east towards Columbia and the home guard that had set it.
But then, the wind changed and the fire rushed westward towards Wrightsville. Ironically, the invading Confederates stuck around and helped the panicked citizens put out the fires that leapt from the bridge to nearby waterfront buildings. Then the grey-coats backtracked to meet the rest of the Rebel Army.
And, as it turned out, the Union Army. In Gettysburg.
