Owing to the darkness, the storm and the absence of a road, it had been
impossible to move the artillery from the open ground about the Landing.
The privation was much greater in a moral than in a material sense. The
infantry soldier feels a confidence in this cumbrous arm quite unwarranted
by its actual achievements in thinning out the opposition. There is
something that inspires confidence in the way a gun dashes up to the
front, shoving fifty or a hundred men to one side as if it said, "_Permit
me!_" Then it squares its shoulders, calmly dislocates a joint in its
back, sends away its twenty-four legs and settles down with a quiet
rattle which says as plainly as possible, "I've come to stay." There is a
superb scorn in its grimly defiant attitude, with its nose in the air; it
appears not so much to threaten the enemy as deride him.
Our batteries were probably toiling after us somewhere; we could only hope
the enemy might delay his attack until they should arrive. "He may delay
his defense if he like," said a sententious young officer to whom I had
imparted this natural wish. He had read the signs aright; the words were
hardly spoken when a group of staff officers about the brigade commander
shot away in divergent lines as if scattered by a whirlwind, and galloping
each to the commander of a regiment gave the word. There was a momentary
confusion of tongues, a thin line of skirmishers detached itself from the
compact front and pushed forward, followed by its diminutive reserves of
half a company each--one of which platoons it was my fortune to command.
When the straggling line of skirmishers had swept four or five hundred
yards ahead, "See," said one of my comrades, "she moves!" She did indeed,
and in fine style, her front as straight as a string, her reserve
regiments in columns doubled on the center, following in true
subordination; no braying of brass to apprise the enemy, no fifing and
drumming to amuse him; no ostentation of gaudy flags; no nonsense. This
was a matter of business.
In a few moments we had passed out of the singular oasis that had so
marvelously escaped the desolation of battle, and now the evidences of the
previous day's struggle were present in profusion. The ground was
tolerably level here, the forest less dense, mostly clear of undergrowth,
and occasionally opening out into small natural meadows. Here and there
were small pools--mere discs of rainwater with a tinge of blood. Riven and
torn with cannon-shot, the trunks of the trees protruded bunches of
splinters like hands, the fingers above the wound interlacing with those
below. Large branches had been lopped, and hung their green heads to the
ground, or swung critically in their netting of vines, as in a hammock.
Many had been cut clean off and their masses of foliage seriously impeded
the progress of the troops. The bark of these trees, from the root upward
to a height of ten or twenty feet, was so thickly pierced with bullets and
grape that one could not have laid a hand on it without covering several
punctures. None had escaped. How the human body survives a storm like this
must be explained by the fact that it is exposed to it but a few moments
at a time, whereas these grand old trees had had no one to take their
places, from the rising to the going down of the sun. Angular bits of
iron, concavo-convex, sticking in the sides of muddy depressions, showed
where shells had exploded in their furrows. Knapsacks, canteens,
haversacks distended with soaken and swollen biscuits, gaping to disgorge,
blankets beaten into the soil by the rain, rifles with bent barrels or
splintered stocks, waist-belts, hats and the omnipresent sardine-box--all
the wretched debris of the battle still littered the spongy earth as far
as one could see, in every direction. Dead horses were everywhere; a few
disabled caissons, or limbers, reclining on one elbow, as it were;
ammunition wagons standing disconsolate behind four or six sprawling
mules. Men? There were men enough; all dead, apparently, except one, who
lay near where I had halted my platoon to await the slower movement of the
line--a Federal sergeant, variously hurt, who had been a fine giant in his
time. He lay face upward, taking in his breath in convulsive, rattling
snorts, and blowing it out in sputters of froth which crawled creamily
down his cheeks, piling itself alongside his neck and ears. A bullet had
clipped a groove in his skull, above the temple; from this the brain
protruded in bosses, dropping off in flakes and strings. I had not
previously known one could get on, even in this unsatisfactory fashion,
with so little brain. One of my men, whom I knew for a womanish fellow,
asked if he should put his bayonet through him. Inexpressibly shocked by
the cold-blooded proposal, I told him I thought not; it was unusual, and
too many were looking.