The US Civil War can be viewed as the first "total war" in world history, with terror rained upon civilian populations like never before, and large numbers of ordinary citizens conscripted, and/or simply persuaded, to become cannon fodder.

I have long held the opinion that armchair historians who revel in the "glory" of such carnage suffer from the delusion that, had they been alive at the time, they would have belonged to the small minority of the population privileged enough to watch the destruction, or perhaps even to direct it as a member of the officer class.

Of course, the reality of that era for most young men (and, by extension, for most families) was to suffer the ignomy of long marches in worn-out boots, to experience the kill-or-be-killed terror of the battlefield, and in many cases to endure a slow and painful death from gangrene after a botched amputation.

Unlike a few of you who had relatives participating in that conflict, I don't have a single ancestor who lived on this side of the ocean at that time.

Three-quarters of them were scratching out a living as tenant-farmers on land they were not allowed to own in County Mayo, Ireland, despite the family having occupied that farmstead for more generations than anyone can remember.

The other branch of my family tree were also farmers, in Alsace-Lorraine, where they struggled to keep mind and body together while the "great and powerful" of France and Germany fought over their homeland, passing it back and forth as they took turns defeating one another in one war after another.

Perhaps that family history explains my extreme skepticism regarding tales of military glory.