Tales of Soldiers and Civilians (1891) is a collection of short stories by Ambrose Bierce, half about the Civil War, half tales of horror and the supernatural. It includes An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge, Chickamauga and The Man and the Snake.
The war stories
Drawn from Bierce's experience as a Union soldier, the war stories show battle with cold irony: a scout who must shoot his own father, a deaf child wandering among the wounded at Chickamauga, a soldier paralysed by fear.
Their short, precise style and their surprise endings influenced later writers of war fiction.
Owl Creek Bridge
An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge tells of Peyton Farquhar, a Southern planter about to be hanged from a railroad bridge in Alabama for trying to sabotage it. The rope breaks, and he escapes downstream towards home and his wife.
The last lines reveal that the escape took place only in his mind in the instant before death. The story was first published in the San Francisco Examiner in 1890.
Publication
The book was published in San Francisco in 1891 by E. L. G. Steele, after New York publishers had refused it. It appeared in London in 1892 under the title In the Midst of Life, the title later used in America too.
Owl Creek Bridge was filmed by Robert Enrico, released in 1962; the French short film won an Academy Award and was broadcast as an episode of The Twilight Zone in 1964.
Anecdotes
A film on The Twilight Zone
Robert Enrico's French film La Rivière du hibou (1962) won the Oscar for best live-action short film in 1963 and was shown as an episode of The Twilight Zone in 1964, one of very few episodes not made by the series.
Chickamauga
In the story Chickamauga, a deaf child plays among dying soldiers, believing it is a game. Bierce had fought in the battle of Chickamauga in 1863.
Frequently asked questions
What is An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge about?
A Confederate sympathiser being hanged imagines his escape in the instant before his death.
What else is in the collection?
War stories such as Chickamauga and A Horseman in the Sky, and tales of terror such as The Man and the Snake.
What is the book's other title?
In the Midst of Life, used for the British edition of 1892 and later editions.