"Soldiers Heart" by Gary Paulsen

Gary Paulsen is a three time Newbery Honor winner; "Soldiers Heart" is a very good book, but it might be a little graphic for younger readers. The story is about a boy named Charlie Goddard, who had never seen anything very much outside of Winona Minnesota. Charlie was 15, too young to enlist, but managed to get into the First Minnesota Volunteers. He didn't know what a shooting war was all about, but was about to find out.

Charlie experienced first hand the horror of combat, and managed to survive. As I was reading this book it made me think of just how tragic it all was. Archaic weapons causing terrible suffering. Charlie knew the rules; when a man went down he was on his own, and to be left alone, even if he was your brother, especially if it was a belly wound. A sad story is told of Nelson, a man that Charlie did stop for, who had a belly wound. Nelson knew that the rebels would be back, he had Charlie load his gun pack the wad and take off his shoes so that he could take care of things. Charlie did not want to leave Nelson alone; the shot rang out after Charlie turned to catch up with the sergeant.

In the First World War it was called shell shock, In World War II the mental damage and stress was called battle fatigue. In Vietnam and the Gulf Wars we know it as Post Traumatic Stress Syndrome, but after the years of Civil War no one really understood what it was. People just said that a person had, a "Soldiers Heart". I have often wondered if the trauma experienced by soldiers caused by fighting and surviving the Civil War was the reason that the westward expansion was so violent; shootouts in saloons and the fighting depicted in all of the westerns that we watched as kids. Were many of those, men with Soldiers Hearts, that were on the run from their past? Maybe.