The Oxford English Dictionary, The Battle of the Wilderness and the Irish

Some of us arrive at information from peculiar sources.

I found a most coherent and concise explanation of the Battle of the Wilderness of the American Civil War from the most unlikely source of a book about the origins of the Oxford English Dictionary by Simon Winchester - The Surgeon of Crowthorne.

This is a true and poignant story of an erudite and well connected American surgeon, W.C. Minor, whose experiences of the brutality of the Battle of the Wilderness precipitated a paranoid schizophrenia that drove him to murder and self multilation.

Incarcerated for life in Broadmoor lunatic asylum, he spent the years becoming one of the most significant contributors to the Oxford English Dictionary.

The chapter titled "The Madness of War" is a historical gem that outlines the strategy of Grant's military machine after the turning point of the Battle of Gettysburg when the fighting simply became a war of attrition against the Confederate forces and explains the cruel landscape of this particular battle - dense fire-prone scrub country where the only combat possible was hand-to-hand with bayonet or sabre or the use of musket shooting the dreadful Minie ball that expanded to tear wide holes in flesh and sparked fires that incinerated the dead and injured.

The chapter touches on Irish soldiers fighting for the Union and their complex motives - some fighting in support of the country that gave them succour, others out of antipathy to a South backed by the British they loathed, and others hoping to develop war skills to be used against the British back in Ireland.

The Emancipation Proclamation however, provided a turning point for many Irish soldiers when, as fierce rivals with blacks at the base of the social ladder, they felt they lost any advantage due to the colour of their skin. After the Emancipation Proclamation, desertion increased.

Punishment of caught deserters included having the letter "D" branded onto their face by the field surgeon, and it was the performance of this onerous task upon an Irishman during the Battle of the Wilderness that was said to have plunged Dr Minor into his terminal insanity.

The valuable insights into the Battle of the Wilderness and indeed into the American Civil War in this chapter almost outshine the remaining brilliant treatise on lexicography.

The Surgeon of Crowthorne by Simon Winchester Penguin Books ISBN 0 14 027128 7