In England Mollie gave birth to two sons (both of whom would die young, one committing suicide in jealous despair at sixteen, the other succumbing to drink and pneumonia at age twenty-six) while her husband published his first three books, comprised of humorous sketches: The FiendвЂ™s Delight (1873), Nuggets and Dust (1873), and Cobwebs from an Empty Skull (1874). After he married Mollie Day in 1871, his father-in-law underwrote a trip to England and there Bierce lived (in Bristol, London, and Bath) for three years, contributing squibs and satirical pieces to Fun, a rival to Punch. Denied the rank he deserved, Bierce abandoned the army as a career and instead settled in San Francisco, where he met the author Bret Harte and began to write poetry and satirical prose for various newspapers, with increasing success and renown. While his stories and memoirs reveal war as hell, Bierce, the scout and topographical engineer, always looked back on his service as the most exhilarating time of his life.ДЇollowing LeeвЂ™s surrender, BierceвЂ™s former commanding officer persuaded him to serve as the mapmaker and engineering attachГ© for a survey expedition of western military posts. He was even captured by Confederates in Alabama, but managed to escape. Shot during the Battle of Kennesaw Mountain in 1864, he carried the bullet in his skull for the rest of his life. He fought all over the South-at Shiloh, Chicka- mauga, Missionary Ridge he marched with Sherman through Georgia. When the Civil War broke out, Bierce immediately enlisted with the 9th Indiana Infantry Regiment and rose to become a brevet major. Born in Ohio, he turned out to be the youngest surviving child of a zealously Christian couple who gave their ten children names beginning with A: Abigail, Amelia, Addison, AureliusвЂ¦ Growing up on a hardscrabble farm in Indiana, he gained most of his education from the books in his fatherвЂ™s library (supposedly the finest in the area) but also managed to spend a year at the Kentucky Military Institute. While we associate Bierce primarily with California and with San Francisco in particular, he was, in fact, a widely traveled man. As he wrote in a letter, вЂњIt commonly occurs that in my poor little battle-yarns the incidents that come in for special reprobation by the critics as вЂimprobableвЂ™ and even вЂimpossibleвЂ™ are transcripts from memory-things that actually occurred before my eyes.вЂќ The Battle of Shiloh, for instance, took place near Owl Creek.

Bierce himself always insisted that most of his Civil War fiction was based on fact. Throughout these gruesome episodes of war, there is no armor against fate, as seeming coincidence assumes the character of tragic destiny. Surely, no first-time reader ever forgets the shock of its final sentences. The best known of these contes cruels, вЂњAn Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge,вЂќ has been called-by Kurt Vonnegut, himself a kinder, gentler Bierce-the greatest short story in American literature. In those dozen or so вЂњtales of soldiers,вЂќ gathered in the collection eventually titled In the Midst of Life (1892, augmented in 18), a brother shoots his brother, a sniper is compelled to kill his father, and a cannoneer obeys the order to destroy his own house, where his wife and child await his return from battle.

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