Though eyewitness accounts of the U.S. Civil War have been often chronicled, children's voices seldom emerge. Yet the war made a heavy impact on youngsters; as many as 500,000 boy soldiers fought, and many children found themselves at the front lines of a war that took place in towns as well as on battlefields, says Emmy Werner, a UC Davis professor emerita. In her new book, "Reluctant Witnesses: Children's Voices From the Civil War" (Westview Press), Werner tells the story of the war through the voices of young soldiers, drummer boys and ordinary youngsters whose lives changed abruptly when their fathers or brothers went off to war, when their homes were in jeopardy of being burned or shelled. "No one had written about the children of the Civil War. And I was curious: What about the kids?" In her book, she draws upon diaries and letters, among other sources, to discover the children's voices. "Reluctant Witnesses" extends Werner's decades-long interest in how children cope when confronted by great adversity. In it, she looks at the hardships children endured and how they coped, she says, "drawing, where appropriate, parallels to the experiences of children in contemporary civil strife." The qualities Werner finds among the children who survived -- much like those of survivors of modern wars -- are an affirmation of life, an active compassion for others in need and a sense of belonging provided by their peers or by their religious faith. Many were helped by small acts of kindness from strangers.