This is the first regimental history of the Thirteenth Pennsylvania Cavalry, also known as the 117th Regiment of Pennsylvania Volunteers. This is not a tale of the romance of war and the women they left behind. It is about men who become bored with routine camp life and freezing nights in tents without heat. Men who learn first to care for the horse and then for themselves. Men who learn to be accustomed to hunger and sickness and death, long before fighting their first battle!
When the first bullets fly they react as men could be expected to react. Confused and led by some men who may not have understood the new way of war, the outcome of the first encounter is predictable. Later, in one of the lesser-known battles of the Gettysburg Campaign, the regiment is ordered in front of enemy artillery during a midnight ambush and suffers casualties of almost half the regiment. But they learn, and they prevail, and when Grant turned the Union army into the Wilderness in 1864 the regiment knew what they had to do. And they did it well, serving with Gregg, Sheridan, Custer, Hancock, and others. When Grant asked for "One Good Regiment" of cavalry for an assignment, the Thirteenth was chosen.
Using letters, diaries, photos, and official correspondence, some of which are published here for the first time, the author traces the lives of cavalrymen at war. With brutal honesty, humor, and humanity, the men struggle to survive sickness as well as the hail of bullets and cannonballs. They'll tell you how they felt about the life they lived, and the bond with their friends and fellow soldiers that they were dying for.
Harold "Sonny" Hand was born in southern New Jersey in 1952, and became fascinated with the Civil War in 1960, at which time he started the research on this regimental history. He is a Civil War reenactor and living historian, bringing hands-on Civil War education to the general public and into elementary and high school classrooms. Reenacting battles and encampments helped the author to understand more accurately the life of the Civil War soldier, as well as ensuring a more authentic living-history presentation and enabling a more accurate regimental history of the 13 th Pennsylvania Cavalry. In New Jersey, Sonny attended the local schools and played in local bands until his musical inclinations delivered him to the Berklee College of Music in Boston, Massachussetts. From 1970 until the present time he has played drums and percussion in every style of music including nightclubs, casinos, percussion ensembles, jazz, rock, and country & western. He has taught drums and percussion privately and in studios since 1972, and spent seven years on the faculty of Atlantic Community College in Mays Landing, New Jersey. Leaving the family construction business in 1983 he was employed by a Fortune 500 corporation, transferring to Northern Nevada, where his percussionist-son Jonathan was born in 1992. Sonny continues to teach and perform music whenever the opportunity presents itself in Nevada, and in Idaho. The research for this regimental history has been ongoing.