A novel by New York Times best-selling author, West Point graduate, and former Green Beret Bob Mayer.
They swore oaths, both personal and professional. From the Plain at West Point, through the Mexican War, to the carnage of Shiloh. They were fighting for country, for a way of life and for family. Classmates carried more than rifles and sabers into battle. They had friendships, memories, children and wives. They had innocence lost, promises broken and glory found.
Duty, Honor, Country is history told both epic and personal so we can understand what happened, but more importantly feel the heart-wrenching clash of duty, honor, country, and loyalty. And realize that sometimes, the people who changed history weren't recorded by it. This book is big, almost twice the length of my usual books, because the story demands a large scale.
Our story starts in 1840, in Benny Havens tavern, just outside post limits of the United States Military Academy. With William Tecumseh Sherman, a classmate, a plebe, and Benny Havens' daughter coming together in a crucible of honor and loyalty. And on post, in the West Point stables, where Ulysses S. Grant and a classmate are preparing to saddle the Hell-Beast, a horse with which Grant would eventually set an academy record, and both make fateful decisions that will change the course of their lives and history.
The key to this series is a simple fact I had to memorize as a plebe at West Point:
Who commanded the major battles of the Civil War? - There were 60 important battles of the War. In 55 of them, graduates commanded on both sides.
That struck me as utterly fascinating and disturbing on a core level. After all, how did men who went to the same Academy, who swore the same oath of allegiance, end up fighting each other? So I decided to take a handful of fictional character and insert them into history, to rub elbows with those who would become great and those who would become i...
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