The sudden wail shattered his concentration. He watched the ambulance lift and sail down the street, followed by a squad car. What department was that building? Physics?
He capped the old-fashioned fountain pen and took a sip of his tea. He liked to work here, on the edge of the student food court, because nobody would sit down and say, hey, you writin’ a book? There were distractions, but usually if it was sirens, they were of the female variety.
He opened the memorybook and typed in a date. It had every Gainesville newspaper from the Civil War onward. He reread an article for the dozenth time and continued writing:
The first battle was really no more than a skirmish. A raiding party of 42 cavalry rode into town, encountering no resistance. They posted guards on the streets entering G’ville, while the main body constructed a hasty fort of cotton bales on what is now University Avenue.
Mrs. Dickison, wife of the cavalry commander, happened to be visiting Gainesville. She knew that there was a cavalry group camped [a few] miles away, at Newnansville. She wrote a note explaining the situation, and sent it via her eight-year-old son, who slipped by the Yankee picket, pretending to be grazing his horse.
The small Confederate force, led by Captain——Chambers, attacked the next morning, but were unable to break through the cotton-bale fortifications. The Union soldiers, armed with repeating rifles, killed one man and [many] horses. Chambers retreated with his wounded to a camp outside the city, but the Yankees decided to quit while they were ahead, and that night returned to their main group at Waldo. They torched a syrup warehouse, but left behind nearly a million dollars’ [$85M in today’s money] worth of supplies and provisions.