Dan FitzGerald and the drummer boy McCarthy has sprung up a friendship between them and Dan is schooling McCarthy in the matter of Irish tunes. Made an Irish drum out of the dried skin of a mule and a spliced barrel-stave. Whittled him a striking stick and he’s all set. The two of them go running at these dancing tunes and it puts a lick of enjoyment into slack times. Not many of them now. We’re poured down slowly into northern Virginia and we was hoping to hear that tracks had been laid but no hope of that. We’re walking.
Lige Magan’s little detail carries the colours and it’s a sight. Nice banner sewed by nuns somewhere, they say. I got to keep my men fore and back in good order and John Cole has his own bunch and it has to be allowed Starling Carlton knows his army business and we don’t feel too bad with the captain leading our company. In fact must be said all the men are in devilish high spirits and want to be running at Rebels as soon as can be arranged. Starling carries weight but even without a horse he’s strong as the centre of a river current. He bulls along mightily. We don’t miss our old sergeant’s singing but McCarthy beats out the march on his drum. Left right, left right. Eternal soldiers, it don’t ever change. You got to get from one point to another and the only way is the old forced march. Otherwise you get dawdling, fellas peeling off to drink from a stream, taking an interest in the farms we pass in case some good woman has baked cakes. Can’t be having that. And then we are stomping down into that two-faced country, it’s north Virginia, we don’t know where allegiances may lie. Could be death to find out. Got to say Virginia appeals. Great mountains stand to the west and old forests there are not thinking about us, not for a minute. They say the farms are tired worn-out places but they got the look of plenty. Four regiments is a noisy river but still the songs of birds pierce through our din and local dogs come to the edges of their domains and bark their fool heads off at us. That pack and the musket and the rough uniform got to be borne gaily. Or else it start to crush you. Best think your way into feeling strong, best. No man likes to fall out because he can’t manage a little jaunt down into Virginny, as Dan FitzGerald calls it. Anyhows aren’t we going down to show the Rebs where they went wrong. Error of their ways. We got a nice deal of ordnance and it is our wish to show them what it can do. It’s not our lot to know the orders that drive us on but that ain’t needed. Just point us at those Johnny Rebs, says Dan FitzGerald. Sometimes we sing big songs all together as we go and we don’t offer the birds of Virginia the versions on the printed sheet as you might find in Mr Noone’s hall, but new versions with every stinking word we know stitched in. Every lousy stinking low brothelly word.
Before we leave I send a letter to Mr McSweny hoping Winona is going on well and I hope he gets it. We was not paid the first two months and then we were to general rejoicing and then it was possible for men to send money to their families and we was no exception. The Catholic chaplain carried our wages to the postal depot and sent our put-together sum up to Grand Rapids under army wrap. He never asked no tricky questions about wives. John Cole’s daughter was a handle good enough for him. But he’s one of those sociable easy-hearted Italian pastors and all ranks like him and all religions. A good heart carries across fences. Fr Giovanni. Small man wouldn’t be much good for fighting but he good for tightening those screws that start to come loose on the engine of a man when he’s facing God knows what. A few nights into the march I’m on sentinel duty and relieving Corporal Dennihy and it’s clear to me the man is shaking. Even in the moonlight as we exchange our words I can see he ain’t good. So it ain’t everyone looks forward to the fight. But Fr Giovanni creeps over to him and starts to buttress him up. Looks better for it in the morning anyhow. So, Corporal, he says to me, you send any other man gets windy. I will, Father, I says.
Sense of ferocious danger then descends when we reach the spot where we must deploy. News is the boys in grey are beaded into the great line of woods that seem to rush down that country. Three long great meadows rise to a bare and blasted headland. Deep three-foot grasses such as would make a cow hurry on to partake. Our batteries are ranged in expert wise and by afternoon our section’s positioned and good. Something building in the hearts of the soldiers, if you could see that thing it might have strange wings. Something fluttering in their breasts and then a great clattering of wings. Our muskets are loaded and where we are a line of fifty men kneels and another fifty stand behind, and then a loading line, and then men there anxious and silent ready to step forward and fill the gaps. The field guns start firing into the trees and soon we are marvelling at the explosions such as we ain’t ever seen before. Fire and blackness bursts in the tree-tops and then you might think the green of the forest washes forward and back to close the destructed place. All this a quarter mile off and then we see the grey-coated soldiers appear at the ravelled margin of the trees. Captain is peering through his glass and he says something I can’t hear and it’s spoken back in a relay and it sounds like he is saying there be about three thousand men. That sounds like a great number but we’re just a thousand more. The yellowlegs group on the top meadow and our batteries are trying to get a pin on them. Then they are getting a pin and then the Rebels are moving down because there ain’t nothing joyous in receiving well-served bombs. The Rebels run down towards us in a fashion never expected at least by me and then when they come in range the officers steady us and then call out to fire and then we fire. Those crazy Rebs go down in numbers and then just like the forest seem to close with green courage over the gaps of deaths and then they keep coming on. Each line of us reloads and fires, reloads and fires, and now the Rebs are firing, some by standing for a moment, some on the hoof as they hurry down. It ain’t the slow march we were taught at all but a lurching wild gallop of human creatures. You wouldn’t think so many could be killed and it not stop them and then all round us we are falling with a bullet in a face or a bullet in a arm. Those fierce little minie bullets that open in your poor soft corpse. Then the captain screams out to fix our bayonets and then we are bid to stand and then we are bid to charge. Of my little bunch of men one still kneels in dazed conviction so I deftly kick him to his feet and on we go. Now we are one heart running but the grass is tufty and thick and it is hard to run nobly and we are stumbling and cursing like drunkards. But somehow by fierce tuck of strength we keep our feet and suddenly it seems desirable to lock with our foe and suddenly the grass seems no obstacle at all and one in the company cries out Faugh a ballagh and then there is a sound made in our throats we have never heard and there is a great hunger to do we know not what unless it is stick our bayonets into the rush of grey ahead. But not just that because there is another thing or other things we have no names for because it is not part of usual talk. It is not like running at Indians who are not your kind but it is running at a mirror of yourself. Those Johnny Rebs are Irish, English, and all the rest. Canter on, canter on, and enjoin. But suddenly then the Rebs swing right and turn their charge across the meadow. They’ve seen the great swathe of our men come up behind and maybe seen a engine of death complete and whatever it is we can hear the officers calling out in the chaotic uproar. We’re stopped in our charge and kneel and load and fire. We kneel and load and fire at the side-on millipede of the enemy. Our batteries belch forth their bombs again and the Confederates balk like a huge herd of wild horses and run back ten yards and then ten yards reversed again. They greatly desire to reach the cover of the far woods. The batteries belch behind, they belch behind. Some bombs come so low they want a path through us too and many fall in our lines as a missile forges a bloody ditch through living men. A frantic weariness infects our bones. We load and fire, we load and fire. Now in the burgeoning noise dozens of shells hit into the enemy, sharding them and shredding them. There is a sense of sudden wretchedness and disaster. Then with a great bloom like a sudden infection of spring flowers the meadow becomes a strange carpet of flames. The grass has caught fire and is generously burning and adding burning to burning. So dry it cannot flame fast enough, so high that the bl
ades combust in great tufts and wash the legs of the fleeing soldiers not with soft grasses but dark flames full of a roaring strength. Wounded men fallen in the furnace cry out with horror and affront. Pain such as no animal could bear without wild screeching, tearing, rearing. The main body of soldiers find the mercy of the trees and their wounded are left now on the blackened earth. What is it causes the captain to halt our firing and by relayed message halt the guns? Now we are merely standing watching and the wind blows the conflagration up the meadow leaving many a howling man and a quiet man in its wake. The quiet are in their black folds of death. Others where the fire hasn’t touched are just groaning and ruined men. We are bid retire. Our surge of blue draws back two hundred yards and boys go out in gunless details from the rear and there are the medical boys and the chaplain too. Out from the Rebel trees come similar souls likewise and a truce is struck without a word. Muskets are thrown down both sides and the details charge up now not to fire and kill but to stamp out the black acre of lingering flames and tend the dying, the rended, and the burned. Like dancers dancing on the charred grasses.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
NOTHING TOO TRICKY about dying for your country. It’s the easiest item on the menu. God knows the truth of it. Young Seth McCarthy he come up from Missouri to be a drummer boy in the Federal army and what does he get only his head took off by a Federal shell. We seen that on the morning after when we strode the field looking for papers and the like we could send home. Seth there with his drum still roped to his young body. But he didn’t have his head. It wasn’t the only or the worst sight of the aftermath. Let’s put the charred corpses first on the list. How come God wants us to fight like goddamn heroes and then be some bit of burned flesh that even the wolves don’t want. Burial detail told to bury grey and blue alike and say the prayers. Fr Giovanni tells his beads and we hear him muttering in his Latin. The boys that never seen battle afore some of them were not cheerful. I don’t know what those bad sights do to a person. A few soldiers just shaking in their tents and no amount of beef jerky or even whisky can pull them straight. They got to get sent back to some place but the battlefield ain’t right for them now. Couldn’t hold a spoon let alone a musket. John Cole is very concerned in his nice-hearted way and two of his privates is dead as poked-out winkles. Took the fire from their own hind firers. That’s how it goes oftentimes. Just comes home to me how curious dark is battle. Does anyone know what in tarnation’s going on? Well, not this Christian. Me and John Cole thank God and old Lige Magan and Starling come through and also Dan FitzGerald. Else how we going to play cards God damn it.
When my sentinels is set up that night I pull away alone to a little copsewood. Alone there a while. Moonlight pouring down through the scrubby oaks as if a thousand dresses. I am thinking man is something of a wolf but also ain’t he something stranger too. I am thinking of Winona and about all her travails. I couldn’t say who in that while I was myself. Sligo seem a long long time ago and only another brush of darkness. The light is John Cole and all the copiousness of his kindness. Can’t get that drummer boy out of my inner eye. He’s stuck in there like a floating thing. I guess he should a got more from living than he did. Brave lad out of Missouri and cheery and not expecting nothing. His head rolling about a lonesome meadow in Virginia. Bright eyes and now they put him in a hole. By God it wouldn’t even be good enough to weep for him. How we going to count all the souls to be lost in this war? I am shaking like a last dry leaf on a branch in winter. Rattling. I don’t guess I have met two hundred souls in my time and knew their names. Souls ain’t like a great river and then when death comes the souls pouring over the waterfall and into the bottom land below. Souls ain’t like that but this war is asking for them to be. Do we got so many souls to be given? How can that be? I am asking the gap between the oaks these questions. Got to go now in a minute and relieve No. 2 post. Relief, halt! Arms-port! Relief, support-arms! Forward-march!
It is so silent you could swear the moon is listening. The owls are listening and the wolves. I took off my forage cap and scratch my lousy head. The wolves will come down after a few days from the mountains when we are gone and start to dig through the stones we’ve piled up. Nothing more surer than that. That’s why the Indians put their dead on poles. We put them in the dirt because we believe it to be respecting. Talking about Jesus but Jesus never knew nothing about this land. That’s how foolish we are. Because it just ain’t so. The great world lights like a poor lamp because the snow begin to come down into the clearing. Dimly illumined over in the east corner is a huge black bear. Guess he just have been there the whole time, nosing about for grubs and roots. I hadn’t even heard him. Maybe he too was respecting the queer silence. He saw me now and swung his heavy head in a slow arc towards me to get a better view. He was considering me. His eyes looked clever and calm and he sized me up for a long time. Then he swung his whole body as if hanging from ropes and went crashing away into the forest.
The snowfall grows heavier and I am wending my way back to camp. Giving the secret response of the night to the sentry. Nosing along E Avenue between the tents. The colonels and the majors and such are in the big officers’ wickiup. The shroud of canvas glowing dimly. Indeed they have real lamps burning within. The officers are sitting in silhouette and their backs are turned blackly to the opening. The picket standing mute outside in the new issue of snow. I can hear their low voices. Talking of family or war I cannot tell. The night has plunged into proper darkness and the pitch core at the centre of everything is in command. The whippoorwill calling over the tents of the sleeping men. Short note, long note. The whippoorwill will call forever over these snowy meadows. But the tents are temporary.
We’re moved up towards the river and are bound to establish winter quarters. Guess no man knows who hasn’t endured it the wretched boredom of those times. You’d rather risk a battering of canisters and grapeshot. Alright or nearly. Me and John Cole is mighty amused when evenings of blackface is put together for amusement. It’s knowed we’ve worked the halls but here we sing together as two boys and give an Uncle Tom or Old Kentucky Home and leave it there. Union boys in blackface maybe strange. Kentucky got both toes in the war so we have to tread softly there. Dan FitzGerald goes innocent into a dress one night and though he’s blackface he sings an Irish Colleen song and by God but the proclivities of a dozen men’s aroused. Starling Carlton says he wants to marry her. We leave that there too. Otherwise can’t get your damn feet warm and since there ain’t a scrap of news getting in the world could of ended and the last trump sounded for all we know. Messengers come pushing through only when the cold lifts its hand. Cases of fever plague the men and some of them go clear off their heads. Even the bad whisky runs out and if the supply wagons ain’t made it you is going to be eating your boots. Paymaster never comes neither and you’re wondering are you still a living man or has Death converted you till you be now a shivering ghost. When spring comes the ground is still hard and yet we are turned to digging out long rifle pits and redans for the guns. Seems this part of the river hides a ford under the present flood. When it shortly reappears we will be tasked to guard it I guess. Starling Carlton says he’s glad he’s a sergeant now and don’t have to dig. Says he wonders why he ever came east and sure misses Fort Laramie and killing Injuns. Don’t you wish to help the black man, sir? says Dan FitzGerald. What you now saying? says Starling. Help the black man get his freedom and keep the Union, sir? says Dan. What’s this about niggers, says Starling Carlton, I ain’t doing nothing for niggers. He looking clear bemused. Don’t you know why you fighting? says Lige Magan, by God, I don’t believe you do. I know, says Starling Carlton. In the tone of a man who don’t. Why you fighting then? says Lige. Why, because the major asked me, says Starling, as if this were the clearest fact in Christendom. Why the hell you fighting?
Here come back the warblers and the goddamn butterflies and now also the high-up officers who just the damn same as the warblers went off at that first hint of snow. Can’t exp
ect toffs to sit in camp like cabbages. Colonel Neale he tried to get west before the most awful of the snows but he only got as far as Missouri he says. Worried now about the twins and Mrs Neale. Gets some reports of trouble over yonder but expects the army will handle it. The war has thinned out troops in the west and citizen militias took their place somewhat. He don’t like citizen militias, Colonel Neale. Confederate militias the worst, roaming about and shooting ducks in barrels. He says wherever a gap opens you’ll find trashy men to fill it. General news seeps into camp. The war is widening everywhere. But the clock of the day turns just the same. Bugle and barked order. The big supply wagons dragged by oxen hove into camp. Well we was nearly eating bullets. Got a little boneyard full of the winter’s haul. Fr Giovanni likes his brandy but he always does the honours. The bugler with his frozen lips sticking to the mouthpiece. Raw with little wounds he don’t have time to give to healing.
Soon we hear tell that the big army’s coming south and will cross at the ford. Our captain opines they want to go on to a spot called Wytheville and cross the Blue Ridge Mountains. Bring grief to the Rebs in Tennessee, Captain Wilson says. That might be true and that might not be true. But the water has dropped and the two-foot shallows are yellow and brown from the stones below. New recruits arrive in a batch to fill the empty places, Irish just the same as always. City dregs, says Starling Carlton. But as they come in we give them a cheer all the same. Good to see new leaves and new faces. Everything’s astir and we ain’t feeling so bad now. Sap rising in men too.