When other soldiers noticed that Private Reavis was getting a whole lot of leave, he launched a sideline business of selling them forged passes. When the chain of command got suspicious and began to investigate, Reavis finagled a quick leave, ostensibly to get married. He then promptly hightailed it out of Confederate territory, and surrendered to Union forces. He even switched sides, and served for a while in a Union Army artillery regiment.
A lifelong history buff, I developed a particular passion for WW2 history as a child, when I spent hours listening to my grandfather, enraptured, as he recounted his wartime experiences in the British East African Campaign and with the British 8th Army in North Africa.
I graduated with a history BA from George Mason University, then went on to get a JD from the University of Virginia School of Law. After lawyering for a decade, I moved to sunny Rio de Janeiro and a less demanding career, opening a tourism agency in Copacabana.
A big chunk of my free time is spent blogging (you can follow me on Quora https://www.quora.com/profile/Khalid-Elhassan ) or freelance writing, mostly about my favorite subject, history.
