Is it likely Bierce knew soldiers who had similar experiences? Why /why not ?

A Horseman in the Sky focuses on the way in which a single family can be destroyed by war, and that this destruction extends further than the family members who are physically involved in actively fighting in it. In the story, a father and a son find themselves taking different sides in the Revolutionary War and this leads to the son killing his father in the name of the Union. After this murder, he young man, Carter Druse, goes slowly mad, unable to cope with having chosen patriotism over love for his father.

The issue of veteran mental health was very important to Bierce; as a soldier he had sustained a serious head injury which affected his mental health for the rest of his life.

Bierce had a strong attachment to the story and felt that it was one of the best he had ever written. This was perhaps because it included more of his own experiences and detailed events that he had actually witnessed first hand, than some of his other stories did, which made him more personally and emotionally invested in it.