Adventures and Reminiscences of a Volunteer; Or, A Drummer Boy from Maine — Reading Companion

A Self-Aware Narrator, Not a Hero

Ulmer's preface sets a deliberate tone: he expects no glory and jokes that writing the book might get him killed for audacity. This self-deprecation continues in the excerpts. When a shell explodes near his company, he runs "on the dead run for the rear," then fears he has stumbled into Confederate lines. He finds two "big Johnnies" behind a hen-house who ask for food. The scene is comic and vulnerable—Ulmer is "most scared to death"—and he does not edit out his panic. The catalog label "personal narrative" is accurate, but the excerpts show a memoir that leans into embarrassment and luck, not battlefield prowess.

Campfire Debates and Opinions on Command

Ulmer portrays himself as a talkative soldier who "kept posted on facts and the topography of the country." He criticizes generals who were selected "not for their qualifications in military tactics alone" but for pluck and honesty. He singles out Custer's brigade as wasting time on minor operations. In one campfire scene, Colonel McArthur asks what he would do if given supreme command. Ulmer replies he would take Richmond quickly with a dream team of generals—Grant, Sherman, Sheridan, Custer, and others—prompting cheers. The excerpt reveals a young man with strong, if naive, strategic opinions, and a regiment that indulged his debates. This is not a standard personal narrative of suffering; it is a record of a soldier who argued politics and tactics.

The Drummer Boy's Voice and Audience

Ulmer dedicates the book to the Grand Army of the Republic and addresses "some of his comrades" who might recall similar incidents. The excerpts show him as the "midget" of the regiment, called upon for oratory. His language is colloquial: he "needed money" selling papers, he "forgave himself" for false shouts, and he "made up his mind" he was inside rebel lines. The catalog subject "biography-memoir" fits, but the excerpts emphasize a specific readership—fellow veterans who would recognize the mix of fear, humor, and opinion. Ulmer does not claim to represent all soldiers; he offers one "unimportant career" as a way to introduce himself as a comrade.

Readers should approach this memoir as a deliberately unpolished account. Ulmer warns that dates may be approximate and that he is not writing a history. The excerpts reward attention to his voice—self-mocking, opinionated, and occasionally terrified. His criticisms of generals and his campfire debates are as central as the combat scenes. The book is best read as a personal artifact of how one young soldier remembered the war, not as a comprehensive narrative.

That rainy afternoon, the drummer boy’s blunt words about sleeping through cannon fire made me think of the wide-eyed children hearing those same sounds for the first time across the ocean. The personal gave way to the distant. I found myself drifting afterwards through The Childrens' Story of the War, Volume 1 (of 10) From the Beginning of the War to the Landing of the British Army in France — Context and Discussion, wondering how any of them kept their innocence.