Charley leaves Winona on foot to enlist at Fort Snelling, hiding his age to join the army.

Charley trains at Fort Snelling with endless repetitive drills and struggles to fire his musket accurately.

The First Minnesota Volunteers are summoned south and travel by steamboat and train for the first time.

Charley's regiment passes through Confederate territory, encountering poverty and the institution of slavery for the first time.

At Bull Run, Charley is paralyzed by shock and forgets to fire his weapon during the entire battle.

Lieutenant Olafson orders a retreat and Charley forces himself to walk calmly toward the tree line.

Returning to the Bull Run meadow the next morning, Charley's regiment finds the Rebels have fled overnight.

Charley's regiment is stationed in Washington D.C., receiving blue wool uniforms and their first army pay.

New soldier Nelson joins the unit as a replacement, confidently predicting the Rebels will be easily defeated.

Confederate soldiers charge with a Rebel yell in the second battle and Charley's unit cuts them down.

Nelson is shot in the stomach during the second battle, a wound both men know is fatal.

Charley loads Nelson's rifle at Nelson's request, then walks away as a gunshot rings out behind him.

After months of camp, Charley's unit marches toward a third battle and fights off two waves of Rebels.

At Gettysburg, the First Minnesota Volunteers are ordered to charge the Confederate line hand-to-hand.

Years after the war, Charley limps to the riverside in Winona and contemplates suicide with a Confederate revolver.

Fifteen-year-old Charley Goddard leaves his Minnesota hometown and enlists underage in the First Minnesota Volunteers, expecting an exciting and short war. His first battle at Bull Run shatters that illusion, leaving him in a state of shock as he watches men die around him. Through subsequent battles, Charley transforms from a paralyzed boy into a driven fighter ruled by self-preservation, losing his innocence along the way. A fellow soldier named Nelson's fatal stomach wound and self-inflicted death illustrates the brutal hopelessness some men faced on the battlefield. Charley fights through a devastating third engagement before the charge at Gettysburg, where he is finally shot and believes himself dead. Years after the war ends, Charley sits broken by the river in his hometown, his body ruined and his mind haunted, contemplating whether life is worth continuing.

Charley Goddard's journey from eager volunteer to broken veteran.

Charley's mother reluctantly lets him go, reassured by newspapers that the war will end in only months.

Charley is given black pants, a hat, and a red flannel shirt instead of a proper military uniform.

Charley writes letters home to his mother and brother Orren complaining about the poor quality of army food.

Girls hand Charley candy and crowds cheer as the regiment marches through St. Paul to board the steamboat.

Soldiers on the train discuss how poverty-stricken southern communities look too weak to put up a real fight.

Charley hears frequent profanity from fellow soldiers and quietly vows to keep his own speech and thoughts clean.

Lanterns flicker across the Bull Run battlefield at night as soldiers from both sides search for the wounded.

A stream where Charley fills his canteen is revealed to be pink with blood from bodies upstream.

Charley sends most of his first army pay home, then spends the rest on two whole pies he eats alone.

Marching south, soldiers steal fruit and livestock from Confederate farms to supplement their meager rations.

Charley suffers a digestive illness and spends time in a disease-filled hospital before returning to his unit.

A rumor spreads that a full regiment deserted; the truth is only four men fled and were caught and shot.

Charley stops befriending fellow soldiers during the long camp, not wanting to grieve men who will likely die.

A small group of Confederate cavalry charges Charley's unit and is quickly driven back with few Union casualties.

After the third battle, a doctor examines blood-soaked Charley and finds no bullet wound anywhere on his body.

Behind the major battles, a series of smaller but significant moments reveal how the war steadily erodes Charley's youth and optimism. His mother lets him go believing the conflict will last only months, and Charley himself sets off full of excitement for parades and train rides through a country he has never seen. The mundane hardships of camp life — poor food, disease, rumors, and scarce supplies — chip away at morale between engagements. Charley's encounters with the enemy are not always violent; one quiet nighttime conversation across a river reveals that the men on both sides are more alike than different. As the war drags on, Charley shields himself from grief by withdrawing from his fellow soldiers, and the physical toll of service accumulates in ways that go far beyond bullet wounds. These secondary moments collectively trace how an ordinary farm boy is reshaped by the grinding reality of prolonged war.

The overlooked details and side moments that shaped Charley's transformation.

Charley persuades his reluctant mother to let him enlist, using his quickness with words to overcome her misgivings.

An enslaved woman gives Charley a sweet roll and thanks him tearfully; a white woman then pulls her roughly inside.

Charley prays in desperate confusion during the Bull Run retreat, questioning how God could allow such killing.

A sergeant orders Charley back onto the Bull Run battlefield and Charley feels certain every step could be his last.

Charley's muscle memory from months of repetitive drilling kicks in and he reloads his weapon automatically before marching.

After crossing the Bull Run battlefield, Charley discovers he wet himself and sees that several other soldiers did too.

Charley recognizes in Nelson's eager confidence the same foolish certainty Charley himself held before his first battle.

Charley's survival instinct overtakes fear in the second battle and he charges ahead of his entire unit.

A sergeant physically grabs Charley to stop him from chasing retreating Confederate soldiers alone into enemy fire.

On guard duty, Charley trades coffee for tobacco with a young Confederate across the river and learns they are both farmers.

An officer reprimands Charley for speaking with the enemy; the next night a different Confederate guard fires at him.

After the third battle, Charley and a doctor's assistant pile corpses to build a wind barrier and Charley sleeps beside it.

Firing from behind a protected wall at Gettysburg, Charley thinks that this is the right way to fight a battle.

Charley is shot twice during the Gettysburg charge and sees a red veil descend, certain he is finally dead.

Post-war Charley, aged beyond his twenty-one years, lives alone in a shack on the edge of Winona with little purpose.

Charley's war is not only fought on open meadows but inside his own mind, where each experience leaves a permanent mark. From the moment he convinces his mother to let him leave to his first glimpse of the enslaved woman's tears, Charley's worldview expands in ways he is not prepared for. The shock of Bull Run and the mechanical reflex of his drilling expose the distance between who Charley thought he was and who combat is making him. Encounters like recognizing himself in Nelson's naive confidence, or sharing a quiet trade with a young Confederate across a river, reveal the strange intimacy and absurdity of war. By the third battle, Charley is no longer afraid in the same way — he is something more frightening, a man driven purely by the instinct to kill or be killed. The war's final accounting finds him alive but irrevocably altered, physically broken and mentally haunted, living on the outskirts of the world he once left so eagerly.

The key decisions, discoveries, and emotional shifts that define Charley's inner journey.

Gary Paulsen

Novella

Fiction

Guide