Cump, I spent so many years being rousted out of my rack at oh-dark-thirty reveille, that I've lost my ability to sleep in. Even since retiring, I snap awake every morning at 0400 and crawl out of the rack. Drives my wife nuts. I used to dream about being an old retiree who could sleep in till noon. Nope, can't do it. I feel a little cheated, somehow.

I'd like to read your manuscript. My field of expertise, such as it is, is the Trans-Mississippi Army, but there are great similarities between the situation in East Tennessee, and the Ozarks here in northern Arkansas and southern Missouri.

Have you read W. Todd Groce's "Mountain Rebels: East Tennessee Confederates and the Civil War, 1860-1870"? I highly recommend it.