This is John Bachelor.

What follows is a conversation of a small piece of a larger conversation, two hours, with the author Patrick O'Donnell.

His new book is The Unvanquish, the Untold Story of Lincoln Special Forces,

The Manhunt for Moseby's Rangers, and the Shadow War that forged America Special Operations.

Much of the fighting takes place in Virginia in

Patrick's book, but there's a West Virginia segment that demonstrates the violence

and the savagery of the battle between the irregulars on both sides,

the Thurman Brothers for the Confederacy in what becomes West Virginia, and the Blazer Scouts for the Union. They wore each other's uniforms. They switched uniforms. You couldn't tell. They looked the same. they acted the same, they had the same accents,

and they didn't use rules of war as we understand it.

In the mountains of West Virginia, Patrick explains why, what was critical,

the logistics and needed to be protected.

This is the West Virginia part of the war.

More of this tonight. Thank you.

They're known as the Thurman brothers and their partisan group is the Thurman Rangers. It's a family affair. These two brothers bring together fighters from the West Virginia.

This is the rugged mountainous area near the gorge.

And it's here that in these mountains of Appalachia that there is massive

a massive number of fighting and the reason why there's fighting is the main

supply roads and lines the the railroads, the B&L, and also the number of military

roads run through West Virginia. And they have to be, or I should say Virginia at this time,

Western Virginia, and they have to be protected.

It's a bit of a buffer zone between both sides, and it's the union that's trying to protect these

vital supply lines, and it's the partisan rangers under the

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