"A cavalry officer's revealing recollections of the Civil War and the wild and woolly early days of the Arizona Territory, The Memoirs of Charles Henry Veil is an authentic eyewitness account of the War Between the States and the American West, all told with wit and charm and full of historical surprises. Charles Henry Veil, born in 1842 near Johnstown, Pennsylvania, joined the Union army, where he served as orderly to General John Reynolds. He was the only eyewitness to the untimely death at Gettysburg of General Reynolds, the highest-ranking Union officer killed on the battlefield. Receiving an officer's commission in the 1st Cavalry as thanks for rescuing Reynolds's body, Veil served throughout the rest of the war with the likes of Sheridan and Custer, and he tells of a gruesome encounter with Mosby's raiders. Veil was then posted to Arizona Territory, based near Phoenix, "for service in subduing the Apache Indians." His story is full of Indians, outlaws, settlers, ranchers, swindlers, and deserters. Veil's life in the West had all the ingredients of a Ned Buntline dime novel. Defending himself, he once killed two deserters with a single pistol shot. Unarmed, he faced down an angry desperado by shaming him for being drunk. Veil provides a rare first-person description of a meeting with famed Apache leader Cochise. He offers a hilarious account of his brief but disastrous attempt at hog farming. And he brings home the danger of those times by describing several instances where he missed by mere moments being the victim of Indian ambushes. Veil's recollections are peppered throughout with the fascinating details of everyday life in mid-nineteenth-century America that only an eyewitness could provide"--book cover notes.

Personal recollections and reminiscences of the Civil War -- Arizona adventures, 1865-1871 -- Arizona anecdotes, 1871-1891.