Unnamed Members of Sartoris' Troop

Members of the irregular Confederate unit that John Sartoris organizes in Mississippi after his original regiment votes him out of command after a year appear first in the first Yoknapatawpha fiction, Flags in the Dust, in the second story about the Civil War that Will Falls rehearses for the Colonel's son Bayard. In that novel Bayard calls them "pretty good men," but adds that they "quit fighting and went home too often" (229); Jenny calls them "a bunch of red-neck brigands" (238). These men play more significant roles both during and after the War in the Unvanquished stories "Retreat," "Raid," "Skirmish at Sartoris," and are still loyal to and prepared to fight for the dead Colonel's cause in that novel's final chapter, "An Odor of Verbena." As Bayard says in "Retreat," unlike the first unit that Sartoris organized in Yoknapatawpha, it's "not a regiment," containing only "about fifty" men (22). Their main goal seems to be harassing the Union troops in Mississippi, though because of their numbers they often have to hide from the Yankees instead.