Snooks made two mistakes. The first was to leave the mines of Australia to search for gold in the wrong area of Canada. The second was to travel across the USA during a Civil War when all he wanted to do was get home to England. In a moment of panic he compounded the second by using the name of his old school friend Flashman instead of his own.Rubbing shoulders with the high and the mighty, Snooks manages to wear two uniforms, have two different ranks in two different armies; encounter women with bizarre notions of bedroom etiquette; kill more than one general and lose the greatest battle of the war three different ways. Journey with him as the likes of U.S. Grant, Robert E. Lee, Longstreet, Halleck, Sherman and Wild Bill Hickok get in his way more often than not. His final error was to document his adventures and send them to his good friend Flashman, seeking to have them published. His manuscript vanished until being rediscovered at an estate sale in Durban, South Africa in 2006.Now his memoir resurfaces and the reader will wonder....... who was it who really did all these things? Is a vexing mystery explained?