The Smoked Yank

While reading A P.O.W.’s Story, I learned that an entire body of literature exists about the time people spent in P.O.W. camps, concentration camps, and the like outside of the Holocaust and outside of the Soviet gulag.  Since man’s inhumane treatment of his fellow man seems to be as old as time, many of these works are also quite old, including a number exploring P.O.W. prisons during the American Civil War.  I have never been a huge Civil War buff, but I do hold an appreciation for the role it has played in America’s great history.  Some of that appreciation has been gained while visiting the famous battlefields like Gettysburg and Manassas.  Some has come from reading and coming to better understand the conflict and the stakes at hand.

The Smoked Yank by Melvin Grigsby (available for free from Google Books), tells the story of one soldier’s time in the Confederate P.O.W. prison in Andersonville, Georgia.  It is really the author’s entire wartime experience, so we learn about his role in the Union cavalry before being captured, his time in Andersonville and other prisons, and, then, his time on the run as an escaped prisoner.  The account is very interesting and quite adventurous as there are battles, chases, escapes, secret plots, first love, hide-outs, and a happy ending.  The author was a patriotic Northerner who believed that black people deserved better treatment.  He left school to join the army.  He fought honorably in the cavalry before being captured.  His initial few months as a P.O.W. were sometimes uncomfortable, but not too much trouble, as he and the other men were treated more-or-less humanely.  Some Southerners were even kind enough to provide supplies to the prisoners or lend them books.  Later, though, they were transferred to Andersonville.  The prisoners didn’t know what awaited them there, but they soon found out.  Hygiene was almost non-existent thanks to swampland that served as a latrine for a camp that often housed triple (or more) the number of people it was designed for.  Food was in drastic short supply.  Disease, which was the number one killer in the war, raged in the camp, too.  There were also executions of the Union soldiers, which the author didn’t seem to find too out of line, and Union-on-Union violence, which is one of the larger subtexts to the prison’s story in later academic studies of the prison.  Eventually, the author finds a way to make his escape, and then spends (if I was following things correctly) a few months on the road running from Rebels back to the North.  The story of the escape is just as intriguing as his time in Andersonville, if not more so.  He is helped at almost every turn by the slaves, who, with one notable exception, are grateful for the Northerners’ sacrifices in securing their freedom.  There are many close calls, a lot of time spent hidden away in the swamplands of the South, and a lot of risk.  Eventually, the author makes it back to his family in the North.

I enjoyed the book and, as mentioned, thought it had a nice mix of information and adventure in the telling of the story.  I was, maybe, a little underwhelmed by the author’s description of the infamous prison, but I think his experience, which was not as lengthy as that of many others, was a little different.  It was very similar to other stories in the same vein because Grigsby was someone who wasn’t going to let things just happen to him.  He was always looking for the next way out, the next work party join, or the next scheme inside the prison yard to stay active.  The story of his escape, which simply would not have been possible were it not for the help of what was essentially the Underground Railroad, although he never called it that, was a highlight for me.  It seemed the good in the human spirit was on display as so many people, who were still technically slaves, opened their homes to a white man and provided him with food, blankets, medicine, sometimes at great personal risk.  Like most good books, this one had a few good lessons packaged inside an intriguing and inspiring story of adventure.

This work, including all text, photographs, and other original work, is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial No Derivatives 3.0 License and is copyrighted © MMXIV John Pruess.

The Days of the Consuls

In fact, this was a continuation of last year’s disturbance

which had never altogether ceased, but smoldered on in muffled silence,

waiting for a convenient excuse to erupt again.

As soon as one learns anything about the ex-Yugoslavia (commonly, but rather incorrectly referred to in the West as “the Balkans”), one hears about the Yugoslav writer Ivo Andrić.  Andrić was born in Bosnia and Herzegovina while it was under Austro-Hungarian rule.  He later published a number of works, the most famous being The Bridge on the Drina, for which he was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature.  That book is usually thought of as part of a trilogy of books that tells all about the clash of civilizations that was a big part of Andrić’s life in Bosnia, home to four distinct ethnic groups who adhere to four different religious traditions, all under the reign of various foreign conquerors throughout history.

The Days of the Consuls by Ivo Andrić (ISBN: 978-86-6457-018-3), which has been published in English under the alternative titles of Travnik Chronicle and Bosnian Chronicle, fits right into Andrić's main motif, telling the story of the city of Travnik, which is medium-sized for Bosnia today, but was historically much more important as the seat of the Ottoman Empire in Bosnia, during a few short years while the Austro-Hungarian Empire and Napoleon’s France kept consuls in the town.  The story is told from an omniscient narrator point of view, but focuses largely on French consul, his entourage, and his interactions with the others in Travnik, be they local or outsider.  The French consul deals with being an outsider himself, shunned by the local Muslims and never really understood by the Ottoman representative, although their relationship was cordial.  He remains the enemy of the Austro-Hungarian consul, although he sees many similarities between the two men and carries on professional, if not friendly, relations with him.  The members of the consuls’ families and entourages are met with varying degrees of acceptance or disgust by those around them, including those from the local clergy.  The Muslim population seems to be the most vocal in their distaste for the outsiders, but the Orthodox, Catholic, and Jewish populations also steer clear and are distrustful of the changes the presence of the consuls seems to be ushering into their otherwise simple lives.  When Napoleon is finally defeated, the French no longer see the need for a consul in Travnik, and the French consul is recalled.  The Austrians also remove from Bosnia.  With all that has changed, all has remained the same.

I had always intended on reading Andrić’s so-called trilogy in the order they were published, but it didn’t happen thanks to the vagaries of translation.  I bought this book not being aware that it was the same book as the Travnik Chronicle.  All the same, I enjoyed it and still look forward to someday really pushing my brain to its limit by reading it in its original language.  More than once, while reading, I thought of Tolstoy and his sweeping historical epic, War and Peace.  This does not attain those heights, but I found the style to be very similar.  I enjoyed the thorough descriptions of people and place achieved through masterful use of language instead of relying, like so many modern authors, on cliché and overly vulgar and expressive language.  It might mean more to me because of my own extensive travel in the country and the familiarity inherent to reading about something one knows relatively well.  Andrić believed that Yugoslavia had a unique and uniquely turbulent past that presented many opportunities for learning, learning that would help people avoid the ethnic and religious conflict that has seemingly always plagued the region.  In the book, which is, in a way, plotless, as it simply chronicles the day-to-day lives of Travnik’s citizens, one can see this theme, but I would argue it is meshed with one that emphasizes similarities over differences, and that is the lesson, one that is, unfortunately, unheeded in modern-day Bosnia and Herzegovina, and unheeded elsewhere.  Slightly different approaches to the same fears, concerns, and goals hindered all parties in the book from a more mutually beneficial co-existence.

This work, including all text, photographs, and other original work, is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial No Derivatives 3.0 License and is copyrighted © MMXIV John Pruess.