Summary Of Behind The Blue And Grey Sparknotes

Behind the Blue and Gray

BY:Aayush Agrawal

In the book,Behind the Blue and Gray, Delia Ray claims that life during the war was gruesomely difficult. Fighting and surviving was a lethal occupation. It didn’t matter what side you were on. Ray describes that some struggles during the war were camp life, rations of food, medical treatment, nature, worries about family, punishments, and life after the war. The book provides evidence to a soldiers hardships. Ray explains, at the start of the war enlisting in the army was growing. The three main reasons that the men joined in the army were money, to preserve the Union, and for adventure. The first battle at Bull Run had cost many lives. Ray states,” …5,000 casualties at the Battle of Bull Run.” So this means that both sides were not prepared. After the big incident the Unions added a new general who promised to organize and make the army hardworking. He taught them manners, made them do drills again and again, and how to make use of the time by doing chores. This means that probably the soldiers knew what they were going to go through.

Because of the unsanitary camps and hospitals, diseases started spreading making soldiers sick. In hospitals, doctors and surgeons only went to school for two years. Sometimes they prescribed the wrong medicines or performed unnecessary surgery. One soldier wrote,” If a fellow has to go to the hospital you might as well say good-bye.” Ray describes that the government did not make a good decision by placing the injured people in prisons. Soldiers in the prisons did not get enough rations of a food. Each day or week they only got a handful or spoonful. So this means that the government didn’t take good care of their