Campaigning with the Irish Brigade: Pvt. John Ryan, 28th Massachusetts

Edited by Sandy Barnard. Terre Haute, IN: AST Press, 2001. 224 pp., $21.95 softcover.

Lt Col Harold E. Raugh, Jr., United States Army (Retd) reviews these books exclusively for DJ.

John Ryan is best known to Custer scholars and enthusiasts as the First Sergeant of M Company, 7th Cavalry Regiment, at the Battle of the Little Big Horn, 25 June 1876. Ryan's company was part of the three-company battalion commanded by Major Marcus A. Reno on that infamous day, and Ryan saw hard fighting at the banks of and on the bluffs overlooking the Little Big Horn River. After almost fourteen years of Army service, Ryan retired in December 1876 and returned to his hometown of West Newton, Massachusetts.
Ryan was known to have written a lengthy 700-plus page autobiographical manuscript chronicling his birth in 1845 and highlighting his military service from 1862 to 1876. Journalist and historian Sandy Barnard, prominent in the Custeriana field, had written a biography of Ryan in 1996 and was able to acquire Ryan's seemingly-lost reminiscences (and a duplicate copy with slight variations) in 2000. Using additional documents and records, editor Barnard was able to reconcile any possible discrepancies between the two texts. Moreover, it seems that Ryan had periodically "revised" his recollections over his long life based upon information he had read, and the editor notes perceptively that Ryan plagiarized a few incidents. Nonetheless, this volume, the portion of Ryan's reminiscences pertaining to his Civil War service, is important in providing details of soldiering in the Irish Brigade.
On 1 January 1862, Ryan enlisted as a private in Company C, 28th Massachusetts Volunteer Infantry Regiment. The 28th Massachusetts was an element of the near legendary Irish Brigade, and Ryan saw action with it in the Battle of Secessionville, James Island, South Carolina, in June 1862; at 2nd Manassas (Bull Run), August 1862; Chantilly and Antietam, September 1862; Fredericksburg, December 1862; Chancellorsville, May 1863; and at Gettysburg two months later. Ryan reportedly deserted his unit after Gettysburg, although he returned voluntarily to it in June 1864. He was wounded three times at the Battle of Reams Station, near Petersburg, Virginia, on 25 August 1864 and recuperated until his discharge on 19 December 1864. The following month, Ryan re-enlisted in the 61st Massachusetts Infantry and served with that regiment outside Petersburg until his final discharge on 16 July 1865.
As a private soldier, Ryan's knowledge of military operations would probably have been limited to what he could actually see and to what he was told by his chain-of-command. It is doubtful if he would have known, as he recorded, the identity of enemy units and commanders or the actions of divisions and corps. The merit of Ryan's memoirs is in the routine and perceptions of soldiering frequently neglected in the history books. Such items include the soldiers' diet, methods of cooking in camp and on the march, washing clothes, picket duty, and other details. It is interesting to read, for example, that dinner generally consisted of "bean soup or rice soup with a piece of meat" (p. 75), and that "on some occasions men were known to put their name, going into an engagement, on a piece of cloth or paper and pin it to the inside of their blouses so in case they were killed, they could be identified" (p. 83).
Private Ryan's interesting observations and recollections of Civil War soldiering in the Irish Brigade, enhanced by superb editing, numerous explanatory endnotes, and over seventy illustrations, deserve a wide audience. Ryan enlisted again in 1866, in the 7th Cavalry Regiment that time, and served with Custer through thick and thin on the Plains for ten years – but that's another story.