This vivid typescript memoir, covering 1840-1865, was compiled by the general's daughter from his diaries and letters. Disasters continually struck the young Gardner on his travels north to West Point Military Academy, then southwest to serve in the Mexican War and California, and finally as a Confederate brigadier general in the Civil War. Among the interesting people he met and described were Ulysses S. Grant, William T. Sherman, and Mary E. Walker, M.D.