author
Augustus Meyers
1841–1919
A teenage immigrant who joined the U.S. Army in 1854, Augustus Meyers witnessed frontier life, military discipline, and the upheaval of the Civil War from inside the ranks. His memoir, Ten Years in the Ranks, U.S. Army, offers a vivid firsthand view of nineteenth-century soldiering.
1 Audiobook
Ten years in the ranks, U.S. Army
by Augustus Meyers
About the author
Augustus Meyers (1841–1919) was an American soldier and author born in Switzerland. He immigrated to the United States with his mother in 1852 and enlisted in the U.S. Army in 1854 at just twelve years old, serving as a musician with the 2nd U.S. Infantry.
Meyers spent his early service in the Minnesota and Nebraska Territories, where he observed frontier military life and lived in close contact with Dakota Sioux communities. During the Civil War, he served with the Army of the Potomac in campaigns that included Manassas, Antietam, Fredericksburg, Chancellorsville, and Gettysburg.
In 1914, he published Ten Years in the Ranks, U.S. Army, a memoir based largely on his recollections of more than a decade earlier. The book remains a valuable personal account of daily life, training, discipline, and combat in the nineteenth-century U.S. Army.