Rist studied in the Det von Westenske Institut [da] as he had his head full of fiction and theater, and even in the autumn of 1863 the view of the artium was probably a little cloudy but when the Second Schleswig War broke out, it was a significant contribution for inspiration for his works.

In January 1864 he became an officer aspirant and was part of the 9th Battalion in Fredericia, followed next month with Paul Ulrich Scharffenberg's brigade to Dybbøl and was wounded during the storming on the fortifications on 18 April.

After partially exploiting his historical studies in some popular journal treatises, in 1884 he published his vivid depictions of the 18th-century military service with the publication of From the Boot Age.

As a fiction writer, he has regularly resorted to his historical studies as a way to either seek refuge from fanaticism or to satisfy readers in a relaxed fashion as a slight inclination for the strange or perhaps simply to discern the occasional oppositional tendency through an old-fashioned costume.

[3] There were also a number of silhouettes of Danish commanders and privates and an extraordinarily vivid depiction of the sufferings of the war and of the way people deal with them.

The publication was considered to be both fresh and gripping which encouraged Rist to publish the short story collection Soldiers (1890).