regiment, the support of the as-yet-invisible picket line came forth.
We could see the sheen of their rifles flashing in the sunshine as they
hastened toward the earthwork.
As yet not a shot had been fired and scarce a sound was heard; even the
tramp of marching feet and the rumble of artillery wheels was muffled
by the soft, grassy ground. I can feel even now the queer sensation of
unreality, as though it were all a gigantic pantomime, or some eerie
flitting of armies of ghosts.
But appearances could not deceive us. We knew too well the Spirit of
the Place; we waited its arousal with grave expectation. The feeling in
our ranks was picturesquely expressed by a stuttering little fellow in
our company when, as we halted for a few moments on the hills above and
watched the silent river and apparently-deserted plain and hills, some
one ventured the rash opinion that the enemy had decamped. The
stammerer quickly replied:
"You j-just g-g-go ov-ver and s-stir up the hive, and the b-b-bees will
c-come out f-fast enough!"
That river had always been a River of Death whenever we had crossed it.
Were we to prove it once more? The question in our hearts was answered
when the pontoon train with its long line of great boat-laden waggons
issued from our ranks and, like an enormous snake began to wind its way
toward the river, its head plunging downwards and disappearing in the
hidden road leading to the water's edge. Pontoons at the front always
meant bloody business in those Rappahannock days. The illusion, the
silence before the storm, is at an end. Hark! There is a rattle of
rifles from the other side. With it another clatter and roar, as from
our side three batteries gallop forth, wheel near the edge of the
ravine in which the river flows, unlimber, and quicker than it takes to
tell, crash! crash! crash! the volleys from eighteen cannon rend the
evening air. Through sudden clouds of white smoke red flashes dart like
savage tongues of wild beasts, the gunners leap like demons to and fro
in apparent fury, yet really with mechanical precision as they load and
fire, reload and fire again. A little breeze lifts the veil of smoke,
through the rift we catch a glimpse of the earthwork beyond the river;
it is an inferno of bursting shells and clouds of dust. Woe to the men
behind that torn and fire-scorched mound! We knew there could be but
few of them at most; they had no artillery with which to answer ours,
it seemed in truth like crushing mosquitoes with a sledge-hammer. Yet
the crossing of a deep river in face of even a few determined opposers
is always a ticklish piece of work and our commander meant to take no
chances. The thunderous strokes of eighteen cannon are not too much to
make the task of the engineers who must lay the bridge a safe one;
whether even such ponderous defence is sufficient we are soon to see.
Our attention had been riveted upon the scene before us and we failed
to notice that our colonel had been called away by a message from the
commander of the brigade, but as he galloped back one look into his
grave, determined face was enough. We knew what was coming before the
sharp command rang out. "Attention, battalion! Forward, double quick,
march!"
In battle, events arrive suddenly. You learn to expect it thus, yet
like the final summons to a slowly dying man the order which sends you
into the vortex of fire is apt to come with a shock of surprise. To us
at that moment the surprise was the more keen because home-going
instead of battle had so lately been our prospect, and least of all had
we dreamed that, out of a dozen regiments we would be the first called
upon for specially perilous duty. But that curious electric thrill
which comes with the battle order, which merges your individual
consciousness into the composite consciousness of a regiment sent us
forward, and before we could fairly ask ourselves what it all meant, we
were swiftly moving toward the river by the road over which the
pontoons had passed. We had travelled that road before, we knew it
well. At the edge of the plateau it turns sharply and descends by a dug
way in the steep bank parallel with the stream to a small piece of open
level ground close by the water; and when we reached the turn of the
road where we could look down, a glance showed what the din of the
cannonade had concealed. The earthwork was but part of the defence of
the crossing. Below the line of our battery fire, out of reach of its
shells, was a row of rifle-pits manned by sharpshooters who were doing
deadly work. A few of the pontoon boats were on the ground close to the
water, but none of them were launched; the train was in disorder, the
engineers were being shot down at every attempt to handle their boats
and our task was clearly before us. With another regiment from the
brigade which was coming down by a different route through a little
ravine, we must force the passage of the river. It began to be hot work
as soon as we reached the dug way. Even now I can hear the waspish buzz
of bullets, and feel the sting of the gravel sent into my face, as they
rip through the ground at my feet. It was hotter still on the little
flat when two regiments quickly arriving and huddled together with
boats, waggons, and engineers, filled every inch of space. We could not
return the enemy's fire and our closely packed crowd offered a
pitifully easy mark for those sharp-shooters only a hundred yards away.
But many strong hands were now heaving at the boats, in spite of the
fire and of falling men, three or four of them were quickly launched.
Then there is a moment of desperate confusion, no one responds to the
frantic but unfamiliar orders of officers to "Get into those boats!"
when out of the crowd one man springs forth, leaps to the gunwale of
one of the boats and waving his gun high in the air cries, "Come on,
boys!" It is Corporal Joe. Instantly the boat is filled, pushed off
from the bank, and the engineers with their big oars begin to row out
into the stream. Another boat quickly follows, and soon a flotilla of
seven of these great scows, deeply laden, bristling with bayonets, is
making such speed as is possible for such awkward craft toward the
opposite shore. The bullets now patter like hail upon the water; a few
strike the boats or the men in them, but the fire slackens as we near
the bank. Our opposers were too few to resist us when once we landed,
and they began to scatter. Some ran from the rifle-pits toward the
earthwork, others disappeared through the bushes. Before the shore was
fairly reached our men sprang out into the water and waded to the land,
the boats were emptied quicker than they had been filled; no one paused
to fire; there was a pell-mell rush of bayonet charge up the river bank
straight at the earthwork. It was a race between our men and the
Vermonters, and to this day it has been a matter of friendly dispute as
to which regiment first entered the enemy's works. But it was all
quickly over. The cannonade, which ceased only when our charge began,
had half buried and almost wholly paralysed the defenders of the little
fort, only a few feeble shots met us and we took nearly eighty
prisoners--all who were left alive when we entered.
There were some ghastly sights inside that yellow mound. A Confederate
officer, torn by one of our shells lay dying; the captain of our
company sprang to his side, raised him tenderly, gave him a drink from
his canteen and tried to soothe his passing moments. But it was
surprising how few of the defenders had been killed. The worst
complaint of those brave men was that they thought our batteries meant
to bury them alive!
We suffered far more severely. Our own regiment lost nineteen, the
engineers between thirty and forty, and the Vermonters, who had come
down to the river by a difficult though sheltered path, five or six:
the cost of the crossing was between fifty and sixty men. I think it
took not more than ten or fifteen minutes to fight our little battle,
but those minutes were crowded with incidents. I have mentioned that of
the dying Confederate officer. The handful of brave fellows who held
that crossing so manfully, who made its conquest so dear to us, were
heroes. We had naught but respect--nay, admiration--for them. It came
to be always so. There was never a war fought more sternly, yet with
less bitterness between those who met each other on bloody fields.
Bank's Ford came only a month before Franklin's Crossing; there, too,
we took a number of prisoners. I shall never forget the talk with a
group of them as we sat down together. If you could have seen us you
would have found it hard to believe that a few moments ago we had been
firing into each other's faces. At the conclusion of our friendly chat,
one of those Confederates said:--
"Well, boys, this war has got to be fought out. You must be good
soldiers and do your duty, and we must do the same!"
On our side two incidents were pathetic in their tragedy.
Among the killed was a private, a plain man to whom writing was a task.
A few days before we marched he had managed to send a letter to his
wife telling her that we would soon be at home. That was the last she
heard from him, and when a few weeks later the regiment marched into
the streets of his native city, the wife stood on the sidewalk waiting
to welcome her husband. Some one had to take her away and tell her that
he was dead.
Another of the killed was our senior captain. Before the days of labour
troubles, when master and men worked side by side, he was owner of a
manufactory, a man beloved by all his fellow-citizens, and not least by
the men who worked under him. He was near middle age, of peaceful
tastes, without military aspirations, and enlisted only because of a
strong sense of duty. He knew his example would be followed, he could
multiply himself thus. Workmen and neighbours flocked about him; he had
been their captain in industry, they made him their captain in war. He
might have been a field officer, but he judged himself unfit. To serve
his country where he could serve best was his only ambition. There were
smarter officers in the regiment, but none so beloved as this noble
Christian the light of whose example shone ever with bright and
benignant ray.
When we went down to the river that day, Captain D----'s company led
the line and filled the first boat. The enemy's fire was at its hottest
when they were shoved off. Caring always for others more than for
himself, he commanded his men to lie down and shelter themselves, but
his perilous duty was to direct the rowers and guide the course of the
fleet. He stood up to do it better. The risk was fatal; his commanding
figure became the mark for many rifles, and he fell before we were half
way across.
Such a death for such a man was nothing less than martyrdom, all the
harder because he knew that hundreds of hearts were eagerly counting
the hours that lay between him and a joyful welcome home. But our dear
captain was a type. There were hundreds like him in our army who never
reached home.
In the same boat with the heroic captain was a man from the other
regiment who had been a deserter. His conduct in action was to
determine his fate. How he managed to get into that first boat I do not
know. He must have run far ahead of his own company, but when we neared
shore he sprang out where the water was waist deep and, waiting for no
one, charged alone up the bank. It looked like sure death; but he
escaped unhurt, and I believe was the very first to enter the enemy's
works. Of course he secured his pardon.
In every battle there are a few heroes of the type with which Stephen
Crane has made us familiar, whose ingenuity in finding safe places is
amusing, and whose antics make life a burden to officers and
file-closers. When we reached the boat-landing the ground was
absolutely bare; there was not a bush, or tree, or rock; the only
possible shelter from the leaden hail was a spring,--a mere mud hole,
perhaps three feet in diameter. By lying down and curling himself up in
the mud and water a man might fit into it. If the desirability of land
is the measure of its value, then that mud hole was priceless, for it
was occupied every minute and each occupant was envied by other
would-be tenants. As I came down the hill I saw one of these fellows
who had just been routed out. A bullet had pierced his arm as he rose
from his muddy bed, and he was dancing with pain, clasping his wounded
arm with his unhurt hand and muttering angry curses upon the officer
who had disturbed his repose. The vacant place was instantly taken by
an old gray-bearded fellow from my own company. Over him stood the
major, punching the man with his sword, and accentuating each prod with
an appropriate remark.
"Come, Peter [a prod], get out of this [prod]; your life is not worth
any more than mine!" (final prod). And Peter slowly arose. It makes me
laugh now, as it did then, to see his white, scared face gazing agape
at the major, the mud and water dripping in festoons from his hair, his
beard, and his clothes.
When we were half way across the stream a bullet struck the oar of one
of our rowers, close to his hand with sharp ping and shock. For an
instant the man seemed paralysed; he stopped rowing and our boat's head
swung round, threatening collision with the craft beside us. In that
other boat was a red-haired captain, a fiery little Irish gamecock.
Quick as thought he grasped the situation, and leaning far over the
gunwale with uplifted sword, he hissed at the frightened oarsman:--
"Row, damn you, or I'll cut your head off!"
Never can I forget the appealing glance of the poor fellow at that
impending sword, nor his sudden transformation from helpless inertness
to desperate energy.
After the capture of the earthwork, without waiting for the laying of
the bridge and the crossing of other troops, our regiment was advanced
in skirmishing order far out across the plain, until as night fell our
line was established in front of the ruins of the Bernard Mansion. That
night on the skirmish line is one of the pleasantest memories of my
army life, but its story belongs elsewhere.
The last fight of our regiment had been fought. We were proud of our
victory, and though the little battle is barely noticed in military
histories, it has an interest which makes it memorable to those who
were there. It was the prelude of a great drama. The advance of our
division of the Sixth Corps was a reconnaissance in force with the
object of checking, if possible, Lee's northward movement, and in our
little battle at Franklin's Crossing at the Rappahannock, the first
blood of the great Gettysburg campaign was shed.
One Young Soldier
The generous sentiment which would crown every one who fell in our
Great War with the hero's wreath may be excessive, yet a personal
acquaintance with almost any random portion of that enormous death-roll
will certainly make one feel that its length is its least significance.
Not long ago I made a pilgrimage to my native village. Of course the
old cemetery had to be visited. I knew the place was full of ghosts of
other days, but a strange thrill went through me as I found the
frequent stones inscribed with the names of former schoolmates or
comrades who had fallen in the war.
Here was one that said, "Captain R. S----, staff-officer--killed at the
battle of the Wilderness." The silent stone recalled dear friends and
neighbours and the sacrifice of their only son, the most high-spirited
and pluckiest young fellow in the town, one of those ready and
resourceful characters to whom the word "impossible" is a stranger. A
little farther on, under the shadow of ancient cedars, were two marble
shafts. One bore the name of gentle, reticent, but forceful W. P----,
and the fateful words, "Fell at the Battle of Bull Run." How memory
brings back the rush of feeling with which the tidings of his death
came to us, his schoolmates from whom he had so lately parted!
The other monument, in its simple uprightness, seemed a fit memorial
for a knightly soul. Noble Harry B----! We who knew him said to
ourselves, How can the world spare such as he! But the legend on the
marble told how he met his death while in command of a battery in
Sheridan's great fight at Cedar Creek.
I wandered on till I came to an humble stone whose rudely pathetic
inscription, telling how it was "erected to his memory by his wife,"
touched me deeply. Bluff, hearty Henry H---- was one of my own company
who fell on the bloody field of Salem Heights. Just a plain man, only a
private, no conspicuous hero, yet one of those faithfully courageous
souls who, when thick-flying bullets are droning their deadly song, and
the scorching breath of battle tries the line, never give captain or
file-closers a moment's anxiety. You could always depend upon "Hank" to
stand like a rock with his face to the foe, and to waste no shots on
empty air. And one reason for the Homeric deadliness of our war was
that both in the brown-clad ranks of the Southrons and among the
blue-coated Men of the North there were thousands like him.
I turned from the place in pensive mood. Remembering the awful harvest
of great battle-fields I said to myself: Only a small fraction of it is
planted in such peaceful places as this, yet this is a fair example of
its lesson. Every village graveyard throughout our broad land tells the
same story. Death waited with grim confidence for the choice spirits in
that war, and the best of us who took our share in it are not those who
live to tell its story.
Then thought travelled afar to the banks of the Rappahannock and its
camps and battle-fields. I dreamed that once more I stood amid the
familiar, blue-clad throng, yet there was a difference. Past and
present seemed to mingle. Here and there a face would vanish or a
well-remembered voice fail, grow faint and far off, or suddenly become
silent, and among these one, the first sought for, the most desired,
the face and voice of my tent-mate. I awoke from my dream, remembering
that he, too, now belongs to the army of the nobly fallen.
But ours was no common friendship. We had been schoolmates before we
became comrades, then tent-mates, finally brothers like David and
Jonathan.
We slept under one blanket; we shared our rations and our confidences;
and if we did not fight side by side, that was in part because he was
corporal at the right of the first platoon and my place was at the
other end of the line, but also in part because he had a way of doing
such startlingly original things in the face of danger.
His image rises before me now. There he stands, tall, erect, balanced
on one foot while he nervously taps the ground with the other and looks
at me with that mocking expression all his own, that premonitory grin
provoked by some latent jest upon my moralising.
This bantering trick, so common with him, breaking out as it often did
at most unexpected and often atrociously inappropriate moments, was an
index of the side of his character most open to the general eye. Joe
was but eighteen years old when he enlisted, just the age when the boy
is passing into the man; a good six feet in stature, without an ounce
of spare flesh, long armed, loose-jointed, at once too undeveloped and
too full of individuality to wear any conventional garb with ease, so
that Uncle Sam's shop-made and ill-fitting uniform hung upon his
youthful but powerful frame with anything but martial impressiveness.
This, however, troubled him little. An undue care for appearance was
never one of his foibles, and the pomp and circumstance of war always
smote his keen Yankee sense of the ludicrous. Yet he had withal the
manner and the heart of a gentleman, and if you looked into those merry
yet piercing eyes, or listened for five minutes to the original ideas
expressed by that well modulated and pleasant voice with just a
suspicion of "away-down-East" accent in it, you would be compelled to
feel that in this boy there was the making of no common man.
For a long time Joe was a puzzle to his comrades. They could not
understand why such a great boy, and one too, so unmilitary in his
ways, should be a corporal. Some of the older men resented it. And
then, his persistent practical joking, his careless independence and
smiling indifference to rebuke or criticism was perplexing, not to say
exasperating. Yet no one could positively dislike him. He might be
provoking at times, yet every one knew him incapable of anything mean,
and his untiring good-nature and open-handed generosity made warm
friends for him from the very start.
The captain certainly showed himself a good judge of men when he made
Joe a corporal, though it took time to justify the choice, and the
honours of office sat but lightly upon the recipient. Not until our
days of battle came did Joe show any care for military distinction, and
he never bothered himself about the promotion which others sought so
eagerly.
As everybody knows, the corporal's rank is lowest in the company, only
a step above the position of a private, and the distinguishing badge is
that of the "chevrons," two triangular stripes on the sleeves of the
coat. So little did Corporal Joe prize his office that he would not at
first wear these; but the time speedily came when he found them
desirable. We were hurried into the field, and when at Hagerstown in
Maryland we joined the brigade to which we were assigned, we found
ourselves in a strictly guarded camp. The men were allowed to pass the
gates only in squads in charge of a non-commissioned officer. And now
Joe, seeing that the chevrons might be useful, instead of applying to
the commissary for a regulation set, cut strips of light blue from the
skirt of his overcoat and rudely sewed them on the sleeve of one arm
only. Then he proceeded to the gate and attempted to pass the guard,
who of course stopped him.
"You have no non-commissioned officer with you. Only a squad in charge
of a serjeant or corporal can pass."
Joe held out the newly adorned arm, exclaiming, "Is not _that_
corporal enough for you?"
The guard, a member of a veteran regiment, was perplexed yet obdurate.
"Yes, you may be a corporal, but where is your squad?"
Quick as a flash Joe wheeled and showed the other, the plain
coat-sleeve.
"There! Isn't _that_ squad enough for you?"
And then the lieutenant in command of the guard, who had watched the
whole performance broke into a hearty laugh and said,--
"You may pass. We will let you go as a non-commissioned squad."
It is to be feared that Joe was, for a long time, a thorn in the side
of some of our company officers. Indeed I do not think that our orderly
serjeant, a very business-like and soldierly German with a prejudice
against the loose ways of our volunteer service, ever became reconciled
to him.
We were a hastily enlisted regiment, and were rushed to the front and
into active service imperfectly equipped. Our arms were at first old
Harper's Ferry muskets with locks converted from flint to percussion.
Want of respect for these antique weapons made us too careless of their
condition: a grave military fault which was a grief and vexation to the
orderly and also to our conscientious first lieutenant. At "inspection"
one morning that officer found fault, justly enough, with Joe's gun.
Taking it from its owner and holding it out before us all, he said
sternly,--
"Corporal, what sort of an example is this to set before the company?
Look at the disgraceful condition of this musket!--of what use would
such a weapon be if we should be called into action?"
With his peculiar and provoking grin, and in that bland and childlike
tone which he assumed so readily, Joe impudently answered,--
"Why, lieutenant, if we get into a fight I expect to rely on my
bayonet!"