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About Me
- Jim Buck
- I have written a novel about the 23rd New Jersey called Journey to Honor. The story is based on the unpublished diary of Josiah Crispin. In August 1862, he joins the 23rd New Jersey. The war is going badly. Confederate victories threaten to entice Maryland and other states to secede. The North needs a victory and the Army needs reinforcements, so Crispin and his friends are rushed to Fredericksburg without basic training. The 23rd arrives so ill disciplined and untrained that they are written off as a bunch of “Yahoos.” The Yahoos are honor-bound to serve nine months. They start an intense on-the-job transition from citizens to soldiers and learn the Rebels are not their only enemy. Incompetent officers, deadly new weapons, sickness and savage weather are just as lethal. Crispin keeps a day by day account of these events in his diary. But when Josiah is wounded and captured, he has only minutes to choose between losing the record forever and trusting an enemy soldier to send the diary home. Journey to Honor is the true story of the Yahoos' epic struggle for survival as seen through the eyes of the soldiers who lived and died in it. Available in fall 2008.