The Derry Blues

By: Robert M. Farley

Prologue: A Soldier's Recollections

September 17th 1862, Sharpsburg, Maryland

Private Thomas Vineyard awoke with a startle at the rattle of equipment and the shouting of his company's Seargent, ordering the men to shoulder their muskets and form up to begin their march. As soon as he regained his senses, Thomas realized that he had drifted into a light sleep while leaning against a tree. His regiment, the 23rd Maine, had been awaiting orders to move forward and join the battle which was sure to come on this September day. Despite the way his breakfast sloshed around in his stomach, Thomas felt that he was ready for the coming engagement, which would be his first as a new soldier in the Union Army of the Potomac.

He was only a young man of 22 years, but he felt older than he should compared to some of his comrades, who were barely 17 or 18. When the war had broken out in the spring and summer of '61, Thomas felt sure that it would not last more than a month or so, and thus he was not among the groups of young men that rushed to enlist in the army. Certainly Thomas loved his Maine homeland, but he wasn't about to rush off to a war that would be over in no time. In his opinion, there was no way that the southern states would be able to win battles against the more populous and industrial North. Besides, he felt that it was his obligation to help his father at the family's homestead in Derry. His father William had needed the help after Thomas' mother had passed away three years earlier. However, the battles in Virginia during 1861 had gone badly for the Union armies and as Thomas and his father celebrated Christmas that December, the war was still far from decided.

Sitting beside the warm fire with his father on Christmas Eve, Thomas brought up the war and proceeded to inform his father that he intended to enlist in January of '62. William was a bit saddened, but agreed that Thomas had a duty to serve his country and especially Maine in this time of crisis and rebellion. And so with it decided, Thomas went to the local recruiting office on Neibolt Street in Derry about two weeks later and enlisted as a private in Company B of the 23rd Maine. The path to war had begun for young Thomas, and as he mounted his horse and rode off to the recruiting office to receive his uniform and equipment, he wondered if he would ever see his home in Derry again.