Rags and Hope The Memoirs of Val C Giles, Four Years with Hood’s Brigade, Fourth Texas Infantry, 1861-1865

Rags and Hope The Memoirs of Val C Giles, Four Years with Hood’s Brigade, Fourth Texas Infantry, 1861-1865 Compiled and Edited by Mary Lasswell, Coward-McCann Inc 1961, Hardback with Dust Jacket, Exlibris US Army.

Corporal Valerius Cincinnatus Giles was a 19 year old farmer in Travis County when he enlisted at Camp Clark in Guadalupe County as a Private in Company B, 4th Texas Infantry on 11 July 1861. He was promoted to 4th Corporal on 10 March 1862 and was slightly wounded in the spine at Cold Harbor, VA on 27 June. He was with his Company in action at Sharpsburg on 17 September 1862. He was promoted to 4th Sergeant on 1 May 1863. He was captured at Lookout Mountain near Chattanooga, TN on 28 October 1863 and was held in Nashville to 3 November, then sent to Louisville, KY for exchange. Instead of being exchanged, he was sent on to the Federal prison at Fort Morton near Indianapolis, IN. He was admitted to the post hospital there on 10 November 1864, probably with small pox, and escaped from the hospital in February 1865. There is no later military record. By 1870 he was a laborer on a large farm in Travis County. In 1880 he was a clerk in the land office in Austin, and by 1900 and to at least 1910 he was a merchant – in the wallpaper business with his son there. He passed away in Austin, TX in 1915.