4+ years ago I wrote about 1st Lieut. Eugene C. Jeffers and his status as one of the "Immortal 600." I first learned about this Civil War history when visiting Fort Pulaski some 10 or more years ago. An informational marker at the National Monument provided the following: The Immortal 600 were a group of Confederate officers held as prisoners of war at Fort Pulaski during the bitterly cold winter of 1864-1865. They were moved here from Charleston where they had been placed in the line of artillery fire in retaliation for what was viewed as similar treatment of Union POW's. The fallen officers endured many hardships, including a six-week diet of rancid cornmeal and pickles…From dysentery, chronic diarrhea, scurvy, and pneumonia, thirteen of the prisoners died while here at Fort Pulaski. The National Park Service website provides a bit more detail: The story of the Immortal 600 began on August 20, 1864, when a chosen group of 600 Confederate prisoners of war were t
Telling the Tales of Tombstones
