William Marvel: Mentor from Maine

On the brink of the Civil War centennial, when I was not yet 12 years old, I found a Reader’s Digest volume of condensed books at my grandmother’s house that included John Pullen’s “The Twentieth Maine.” A watercolor sketch of Col. Adelbert Ames in a Union Army uniform first caught my attention. I had been interested in the Civil War for years already, but this was the first thing I had seen on common soldiers — and from right next-door in Maine, no less — so I begged for the book. Through the remainder of my sixth-grade year and the following summer, I fairly memorized the text. Later, when I discovered the unabridged version of Pullen’s book at the public library, I borrowed it repeatedly.

Pullen was originally from Amity, Maine, up in Aroostook County. He was the first person to come up with the idea of depicting the experience of Civil War soldiers through the microcosm of a single regiment, and he did it so well that his book launched a persistent genre. He chose the regiment that Joshua Chamberlain had commanded at Gettysburg, and his book resurrected Chamberlain from obscurity. Michael Shaara depended almost entirely on Pullen for his depiction of the fighting on Little Round Top in “The Killer Angels,” and Shaara’s novel provided the basis for the 1993 movie “Gettysburg.”