Why Being a Civil War Soldier Was a Living Hell

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The year is 1861, and you are 19 years old. You were promised glory, brotherhood, and a cause worth dying for. What you got was frostbite, dysentery, and a rifle that barely fires.

In tonight’s immersive descent into forgotten history, we follow the brutal reality of life as a Confederate foot soldier during the American Civil War. From muddy enlistment to a slow, painful death in a makeshift field hospital, this is not a story of battlefield valor — but of hunger, infection, punishment, and silence.

There are no heroes here. Just young men made old by cold winters, bad rations, and orders shouted over cannon fire.

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