“GENERAL” DAD
Meantime, Dad was saying to his grandson: “Maybe you think we’ve won a
little victory. We have. Maybe you think the retreat of those Confeds
was our victory. It wasn’t. The victory was our getting these guns of
theirs, especially that big swivel-gun.
“If we can save every cannon used here and get them all safe back to our
own lines, that’ll spell victory. Not the fact that one crowd made
another crowd run away.
“In war the victor isn’t the fellow who chases the other fellow. He’s
the man who is able to grab the weapons and provisions and ammunition
that make the other fellow dangerous. We can’t buy batteries and guns
like these for less than a fortune, and the Confederates can’t replace
them at any price.
“That’s how we harm them more than if we killed fifty thousand of them.
That’s why I told you to sound the recall.”
“I--I see,” admitted Jimmie shamefacedly. “They’re beginning to come
back now. Gee, if a party of Confeds had flanked us and run off the guns
while I was refusing to sound the recall, I’d ’a’ wanted to shoot
myself.”
“That’s all right, sonny. A man often has to stop to revise his list of
the world’s great men and give himself a lower place in it. It’s lucky
for him if his blunder’s no worse than yours in telling an old fool--”
“Dad! You know blamed well. I’d ’a’ bit my tongue out sooner’n have
called you that if I’d known it was _you_ had a hold of me.”
“No hard feelings, son. No hard feelings _ever_ between you and me.
Only--you saw I was old. I was fairly certain to be someone’s dad or
granddad. Someone wouldn’t relish hearing his dad or granddad called an
‘old fool’ any more than you would. Maybe it’d be well to remember
that.”
“I--I understand. I’m sorry. Oh, Dad, it’s gorgeous to be with you
again. I’ve asked and I’ve looked and I’ve even--”
“One second, Jimmie!”
Dad turned on the foremost group of the returning Federals. Briefly and
clearly he issued a series of orders. Then to a similar approaching
group and to a third and to a fourth. Soon the former fighting line was
swarming with men at work over the captured guns. Without waiting
further, Dad sprang astride a straying troop horse, lifted Jimmie to the
saddle in front of him, and set off at a lumbering gallop to render a
report to his corps commander.
On the way he scarcely spoke, saying only, as they started:
“If you and I have any sort of luck, Jimmie, we’ll have plenty of years
to tell each other what’s happened since we said good-by that night back
at Ideala.
“But just this minute we belong to Uncle Sam; and he needs us a lot. Our
best, quickest thoughts, most of all. For there’s trouble ahead for the
man who isn’t fitted to think it out.
“What’s become of my superior officers back there in the woods I don’t
know. They’ll show up when the glory is handed out. But just now they’re
a trifle scarce. And there may be work for me. I’ve got to do some
planning--some mighty tall planning, too.”
Presently they drew up at a small, cleared space in the center of the
portion of the demi-corps that had not been tossed into the forest
charge.
Dad dismounted, leaving the horse to an orderly, and, with Jimmie at his
side, walked up to the white and wildly excited corps commander. The
latter, with his staff, had witnessed through binoculars the hot little
charge.
The commander was fairly bubbling with questions.
“Sir,” formally announced Dad, at attention, “I have to announce that we
carried the Confederate position at the edge of the woods yonder, and
that we have captured between twenty-eight and thirty cannon of various
sizes. The exact list, with those of our losses, will be delivered to
you as soon as it can be determined. I have returned to--”
“Splendid!” broke in the young general, with a fine fervor. “A complete
victory! I shall send full report at once to General McClellan at
headquarters; and you can be assured, Captain Dadd, that your own
gallant conduct shall by no means be forgotten in my report. As for this
little hero with the drum--”
“General,” interposed Dad, dropping his voice and moving a step nearer
to the exuberant commander, “may I speak plainly?”
“By all means, sir!” bleated the commander, with his best Napoleon air.
“The hero of such a victory as this has just proved may well--”
“This is no victory, general,” urged Dad, with terrible earnestness. “It
was a flank movement that amounts to but one move in a big game. Our
videttes reported the approach of Confederates in force beyond the hill
there, you may recollect. Has--”
“Bless me!” cried the young general, aghast. “I’d forgotten. In the
glory of that charge I--”
“In the taking of one trick you have thrown away the whole hand!” burst
forth Dad in righteous wrath. “That affair at the woods was just a flank
movement to distract and weaken us and later perhaps to enfilade us.
“The real danger lies in front--in the force that lies between us and
our main body. A force that has let us get into this trap to catch our
whole demi-corps, as Jackson has done more than once with bigger
detached bodies of Federals than ours in the past six months. That or
drive us back into another Confederate army somewhere to the south.”
“Do you--do you really think--” stammered the general, his horror
making him insensible to his adviser’s tone of insubordination. “Do
you--”
“I think, sir, that we have one chance, and only one--to strike forward
at full speed for that hill-top. The nearer we get to the summit before
we come in touch with the enemy, the better our chances.
“Throw the whole force ahead, letting the men who were in the charge at
the woods be brought up as quickly as possible to form our rear guard.
It is just one chance; but a delay will leave us no chance.”
The young commander, pitiable in the fright of crass inexperience, clung
metaphorically to the one stable power in sight. And then he did the one
wise thing in his whole brief military career up to this point.
Reading calm self-confidence in Dad’s face, he said loudly:
“Captain Dadd, you are hereby appointed temporarily to my personal
staff.” Under his breath he murmured: “What orders?”
Readily and without change of expression Dad whispered a score of
successive sentences to his chief--sentences whose technicalities the
bewildered politician-general himself did not half-grasp, but which he
as promptly transmitted to his couriers.
In almost no time the inert body of men was buzzing with orderly
activity. The front ranks--at the double, and their heavier
accouterments consigned to the baggage train--were on the march,
hastening eagerly toward the hill summit, the successive regiments
pressing close after.
“You see, sir,” Dad was explaining to the general, “it is easier to
advance fifty yards toward a foe over level ground, or a hundred yards
down a slope, than ten yards _up_ a hill. If we can seize and hold the
crest before they reach it, it is so much net gain.
“To prevent that, and to delay us further, the flank movement at the
forest edge was planned. In open order, as our men are now marching, and
as they must continue to march, they avoid presenting a good target to
volley-fire.”
Regiment after regiment wheeled into line and breasted the long slope,
the rear being brought up by the returning heroes of the forest fight.
Only the first half of the force was sent ahead at the double. The rest
of the demi-corps, baggage and big guns with them, moved at a more
sedate pace.
It was needful only to assure the capture of the crest and that it
should be held until the entire force could come up.
If there seems something comic-operalike in the idea of a Federal force
marching rapidly to battle against a foe whose numbers were unknown and
whose vanguard was unseen--a foe whose full description a dozen scouts
had not given hours earlier--the reader is respectfully, but very sadly,
referred to War Department records of no less than nine similar
occurrences in the Virginia campaigns of 1862 and 1863.
Dad (his long years of supposedly aimless reading of military tactics,
during such evenings as the Eagle bar had not called him, bearing sudden
and glorious fruit) knew the glow that can be equaled by none other the
world has to offer--the inspiration of seeing a mighty mass of fellow
men moving and acting on the sole impulse of his own brain.
He grew young again. As he rode close to the general’s bridle rein,
briefly mapping out the future movements of the detachment, he felt that
failure and he had forever bidden each other adieu.
Then--
A scurrying figure that scuttled up to the general, ducking under his
very bridle rein.
“Hey, general!” shouted Jimmie full fiercely. “They sent me back.
There’s going to be fun up there ahead by and by. I smell it. I can
_always_ smell it in advance. And that’s where I and my drum belong.
Give me a chance at those Rebs, won’t you? Oh, _please_!”
There was a chuckle from a hundred throats as the shrill plea went up.
The general glanced inquiringly at Dad, in whose company Jimmie had
arrived on the scene.
“He is my grandson, sir,” explained Dad. “Though what he is doing here
is beyond all my guessing. I left him back at Ideala, Ohio, a year and
more ago. I never heard of him or from him again till to-day. I’d
written often, but the letters were never answered. I see now they never
were received. The boy’s silence worried me. But not half as much as his
presence in this inferno does just at this particular time.”
“Can I please go to the front, gen’ral?” pleaded the boy.
His voice had swelled to a whine. But it was the frantic whine of the
leashed hunting-dog when it sees the pack afield.
The general turned to Dad.
“He is your grandson, Captain Dadd,” said he. “Use your own judgment
about giving him the permission he wants. I have enough to answer for
this day without sending a little boy to probable death.”
“Little boy?” scoffed Jimmie, outraged to the paladin soul. “_Little_
boy, hey? With a regiment of such ‘little’ boys you could storm
Vicksburg. And with a brigade of us you could have Richmond for the
asking.
“_Little_ boy? I take notice that just now when a passel of big, wise
men were holding back and wanting to call it a day and run home, it was
a little boy that jacked ’em up and showed ’em the way to win. And it’s
the same little boy who’ll do the same thing again out front yonder if
you’ll give him half a chance. Aw, lemme go! Out there where the fun is.
Me and my drum!”
“Jimmie!” reproved Dad sternly--though his eyes softened at
manifestation of the fighting spirit he loved--“Apologize! Apologize at
once for speaking disrespectfully to your superior officer. He could
rightly send you to the guard-house for impertinence. A soldier’s duty
is no duty when it lets him criticize his superiors. If nothing else
proved you were still a little boy, your behavior just now proves it.
Apologize!”
“I--I apologize,” meekly answered Jimmie, accompanying his humble words
with a horrible glower at the general by his grandfather’s side.
“Don’t mention it, my lad,” returned the general, choking back a guffaw
at the ludicrous contrast between face and voice. “And now, if your
grandfather thinks well of it, you can go forward. Take your orders from
him.”
Dad’s eyes were wide with sudden distress.
He knew what type of work was likely to be afoot beyond the hill-crest.
He knew, too, that where the lead should rain thickest there would this
irrepressible grandson of his be found. Once already, that day, the boy
had escaped death almost miraculously.
By the law of chance he could scarce count on the intervention of a
second miracle in his behalf.
“Jimmie!” he said. “I’ve missed you so, lad. And the world’s been so
empty without my chum. It’s hard to risk a longer parting, now that
we’ve just had the blind, unbelievable luck to meet again.”
Jimmie sighed, thrust the drum behind him, dutifully saluted, and fell
into step alongside his grandfather’s horse with chin stiffly set.
Dad leaned down sideways in the saddle and smote him on the shoulder.
“It takes a good soldier to go willingly into action. But it takes a
blamed-sight better soldier to stay out of the action where his spirit
is waiting for him to join it. Go ahead, lad! Forward! Do your own work
your own way. I’ve no right to stay you.”
The boy leaped forward, gripped Dad’s hand in an ecstatic instant’s
pressure, then scuttled off up the hill ahead of the more slowly
advancing staff.
And from every hurrying regiment that he outdistanced rose a laughing
cheer for Battle Jimmie. And so he went on toward the hill-crest, and
beyond it, where crouched the unknown.