In both cases, innocent people are killed. War is a common theme of romanticism, characterized by images of valiant warriors, exciting battles and glory. Bierce contrasts this by showing realistic results of the war; a father who tries to do his part is hanged, a child is orphaned, and disfigured men crawl helplessly into the water. Bierce's writing style has been called "realism" because he attempts to shed light on what war is really like. Bierce was inclined to write about the war because he was a Civil War veteran himself. His veteran status actually makes his descriptions of the wounded even more haunting, since it is a true-to-life depiction based on things he had actually seen. These stories are not so much an indictment of war itself as they are an indictment of people's skewed perceptions of war. Bierce paints a picture of war as it really is; a tragic and horrible thing, rather than glorious