Ambrose Bierce was one of the only major author to see combat during the Civil War. He served in the Ninth Regiment, Indiana Volunteers. What evidence can you provide that "he knows what he is talking about" in his telling of the story?

Bierce had a strong attachment to this story and believed that it was one of the best he'd ever written. This was perhaps because it included more of his own experiences and detailed events that he had actually witnessed first hand, than some of his other stories did, which made him more personally and emotionally invested in it. As a story it was also thematically similar to a number of his other works, and one of the several that included a plot based around the killing of a father by a child. Some critics pondered his frequent obsessional use of patricide in his work.

The duty of the soldier was plain: the man must be shot dead from ambush—without warning, without a moment’s spiritual preparation, with never so much as an unspoken prayer, he must be sent to his account.