Colonel Harold B. Birch, USA (ret.) is an alumnus of George Washington University and an infantry colonel who served in both the Korean War and the Vietnam War.  Harold B. Birch is the author of: The 101^st Pennsylvania in the Civil War: It’s Capture and POW Experience and The 50th Pennsylvania’s Civil War Odyssey: The Exciting Life and Hard Times of a Union Volunteer Infantry Regiment, 1861-1865.

The MOAA said of The 50th Pennsylvania’s Civil War Odyssey: The Exciting Life and Hard Times of a Union Volunteer Infantry Regiment, 1861-1865. “This is the story of the 50th Infantry Regiment, Pennsylvania Volunteers, recruited in Pennsylvania for three years’ service in the Civil War. They fought in six southern states in three very separate theaters. The book is complete with 22 maps, 22 contemporary photographs, and five appendices summarizing personal data.”

According to the book description of The 101^st Pennsylvania in the Civil War: It’s Capture and POW Experience, “The author's first book, The 50th Pennsylvania's Civil War Odyssey, addressed the wartime journey of a regiment that fought in six Southern states. In this, his second Civil War tale, you follow the hardships faced by a regiment that fought in only two. It fought in McClellan's Virginia Peninsula Campaign and then, in its second major fight at Plymouth, NC in April 1864, the entire Union garrison was captured by General Hoke's Confederate forces. This book also focuses on a lucky lieutenant from Bedford, Pennsylvania, who escaped from rebel captivity with two companions and, with help from field slaves and Unionists in the mountains of North Carolina and Tennessee, walked 250 miles in 42 days to Union lines. His regiment, the 101st Pennsylvania, was not so fortunate. Captured in April of 1864 in its entirety at Plymouth, NC, nearly half of its enlisted men perished in Confederate POW camps.”