Volunteer Cavalry

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 New Jersey in 1952, where he attended 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 imaginable, 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 in 1991. Sonny continues teaching and performing music in Nevada, and is a percussionist in the Ruby Mountain Symphony Orchestra. Since 1990, Sonny has been 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 has helped the author to understand more accurately the life of the Civil War soldier, as well as ensuring a more authentic regimental history of the 13 th Pennsylvania Cavalry. The author currently lives in Spring Creek, Nevada, with his wife Jacqueline and their son Jonathan, who was born in 1992.