Union officer Ellis Spear missed being shot by a turn of his head. Instead, the shot killed his close friend.

The one-time Wiscasset teacher was also close by when a cannonball tore a leg off Cpl. John West, fatally injuring the Wiscasset soldier Spear had recruited.

Spear lost about a quarter of his recruits to disease during the Civil War. His youngest brother Guilford died, too.

Describing Spear's wartime experiences August 4, author Thomas Desjardin said they pained the Warren native the rest of his life. But unlike other veterans who may have felt the same, Spear did not withhold his dark view of the war, Desjardin said.

Spear wrote about it and once, in a speech in his hometown, he spoke of it. “You could see he was just in horrible pain,” Desjardin told an audience inside the barn of Historic New England's Nickels-Sortwell House in Wiscasset.

Spear didn't want praise or credit for success on the battlefield; he believed the credit should go to those who died, Desjardin said.

He stayed away a lot of the time because he couldn't stand to walk past families of men he had recruited, Desjardin said. “That was the kind of angst that he spent the rest of his life really dealing with.”

Despite much research, Desjardin has been able to find little to go on about Spear's time teaching in Wiscasset. A Bowdoin scholar, Spear took the job to earn money to study law. Wiscasset happened to be where the opening was, Desjardin said.

Desjardin is a prolific writer on Spear's friend Joshua Chamberlain, even advising actor Jeff Daniels who portrayed the war hero in the film “Gettysburg.”

Desjardin discounted a reported rift between Chamberlain and Spear near the end of Chamberlain's life, about Chamberlain's war accounts for a William Randolph Hearst magazine. The pieces wound up with doves added and other changes before they were published, upsetting Chamberlain and Spear, who didn't know Chamberlain's writing had been changed, Desjardin said.

The controversy was trumped up, Desjardin said.

The author also shared a couple of lighter anecdotes from his research surrounding Spear: An extra pair of taps for the boots of Henry Pero of Wiscasset made him tall enough for Spear to recruit. The shoes wore down with time, and with them, Pero's height, but Spear later said the man became an excellent soldier.

One Union officer, Charles Gilmore from Penobscot County, would disappear at battle time, then return when it was over, according to Desjardin. The officer was around in full uniform for photographs however, the author said.

Susan Johns can be reached at 207-844-4633 or susanjohns@wiscassetnewspaper.com.