John R. Kelso’s Civil Wars:
A Graphic History - Episode 18
More on the text
Teacher, Preacher, Soldier, Spy, 234-6. On May 29, 1864, Kelso led a scout of thirty men down into northern Arkansas. He filed his official report of the expedition after he returned to his post at Neosho on June 2. To set that report alongside his recollection written two decades later for his autobiography marks the distance between a chronicle of military activities and the emotional resonance of lived experience.
Following form, the report is written as a letter to the reporter’s commanding officer, in this case, Capt. Henry D. Moore. It describes where the troops went, what they did, and what resulted from their encounter with the enemy— supplies and horses captured, men wounded or killed. It closes with commendations for the men generally and of particular soldiers for specific accomplishments. These reports, though, are not just bare recitations of facts, or alleged facts; they are narratives, not infrequently containing rhetorical flourishes that convey hints about the author’s character.
Twenty years later, some of the report’s specifics had faded from memory. Yet other details come into view in the memoir’s richer narrative. Missing entirely from the report is the soldiers’ discovery of where the bushwhackers’ women had gotten those uniforms. They had been stripped from the bodies of the ambushed Federals-- probably Sgt. Isaac T. Jones and two dozen men of the 11th Cavalry, Missouri Volunteers, who were attacked and “cut to pieces” a few months before. None of Kelso’s meditations on death and pain and loss, prompted by the discovery of the skeleton with the photograph in its hand, of course, were part of Kelso’s official record of his detachment’s scout into northern Arkansas.
More on the Illustration
Hands again. In this case, there are two hands, Kelso’s and the skeleton’s. Kelso’s hand holds the photograph of the woman, and the skeleton’s hand had just held it a moment before. I wanted the way Kelso held the photograph to be endearing. He doesn’t know who the person is, but he’s imagining it as the dead man’s wife, daughter, or girlfriend. He’s imagining some kind of sentimental relationship. The photograph links Kelso and the dead soldier in the composition. I felt it was important to focus on it to represent all the loss and tragedy in this story. An earlier draft didn’t have Kelso’s hand and the photo in it at all, but they are crucial to the whole feeling of the piece. This was one of those illustrations that evolved through conversations with Chris. Feedback encouraged me to come up with and try out new ideas.