[MortMan]

The battle is reconstructed here from interviews with five participants: three sergeants, a captain and a major, all far removed from efforts in Washington to recapture the glory of the military victory in this current much-debated period of postwar reconstruction.

While this paragraph gives much-needed background on the story, the ob(li)vious bias of the reporter is still galling, IMHO.

[Pharmboy]

Yes...I had the same reaction to that. I had to read it several times to figure out what he was saying. It very well could have been something an editor inserted and was not originally in the author's text.