by Peter Troy
Some of the boys in the Sixty-Ninth start shouting that if Little Mac’ll just grow a pair, the Sixty-Ninth will lead the march all the way to Richmond. They’re going in with almost no ammunition at all, but with bayonets flourishing, their lines slip past the Eighty-Eighth’s and back into the fray, with the fighting closer than it’s been all day. They’re maybe ten yards from the wreck that was the Reb lines when Ethan takes aim and fires his last round. He sees the man he’s aiming at as the bullet hits him right in the chest and his legs fold underneath him and crumble like a tent that’s had its lines cut, bouncing onto his knees first, then falling backwards with his legs tucked beneath him. Ethan moves up closer and sees the blood gathering beside the man, forming a small pool, and him lying there, legs folded up like Aislinn in her too-small coffin, and with a look on his face that’s saying, Now why’d you go and do that?
But then Harry’s out of ammunition just a few feet away, and when a Reb that’s as big as he is knocks the musket from Harry’s hands, Ethan thinks his friend’s a goner ’til Harry hauls off and punches the fella smack in the nose, and they’re down on the ground rolling around and cussing up a storm at each other. Ethan moves over to help Harry and sees another Reb running up to do the same for his friend, but Ethan gets there first, knocking the big man in the head with the butt of his musket and allowing Harry to get the upper hand. The other Reb’s coming at Ethan then and he steps to one side, making the Reb miss partly but still managing to drive his bayonet into Ethan’s shoulder. And he feels a fire of pain rush through his whole body. Still, he’s got his wits enough about him to swing his own musket forward and drive the bayonet into the Reb’s chest, seeing him start to go down the way the fella he’d shot just before did. There’s no hesitation this time as Ethan drives his bayonet into him again, and he drops face-first to the ground, lifeless.
The bugle call finally can be heard over the noise of battle, and it’s time for the Sixty-Ninth to fall back and let the Eighty-Eighth hold the line. First thing Ethan and Harry do, once they’ve seen each other and know they’re mostly all right, is look around for Finny and Smitty. And as they retreat in as orderly a manner as men who’ve just been through such moments can do, boys all along the line are calling out the names of their closest friends, hoping to hear a response.
Ethan, you with us? comes the familiar voice of Finny, forgetting to call him Sergeant, the way he tries to do when it’s the whole company together like this.
Yea, Fin, he answers. Harry’s here too. What about Smitty?
Dunno.
Harry looks at Ethan and immediately breaks ranks, with Ethan soon following behind. It takes a minute or two for them to find Finny and then a little longer for them to catch up with the Eighty-Eighth. The Rebs’ve fallen back, but there are wounded scattered everywhere, gray and blue alike.
Smitt-yyyyy! Harry calls out, once twice and a third time. Until finally they hear a response.
I got’m over here!
They follow the voice and find their friend beside a Corporal from the Eighty-Eighth who’d played ball against them back at Yorktown. He’s pouring some water into the side of Smitty’s mouth, and then a little over the wounds where he’s been shot in the arm and taken some shrapnel in the belly. After a minute or two, Ethan and Harry and Finny take turns carrying him back away from the lines, lying to him all the way, telling him they’ll all be back playing ball at the Elysian Fields by the time next spring rolls around.
HARRISON’S LANDING, VIRGINIA
JULY 5, 1862
Three days later it was all over. The months of training and planning and marching and drilling and inching forward toward the ultimate goal of Richmond, and it had amounted to this. The Grand Army was abandoning the Virginia Peninsula altogether now, the wounded first, then the artillery, then the troops who’d won nearly every engagement with the enemy and were still being forced to retreat.
For Ethan it’d been a worse few days than the walk to Newry or aboard the Lord Sussex, and almost as bad as the days just after Aislinn’s funeral. Smitty woke up the day after the battle and was sure that the pain he felt in his arm was the real thing, and not just the kind made up somewhere in the mind when it doesn’t want to think about what’d been lost. And Ethan woke the first two mornings after Malvern Hill, unsure if the pain he felt in his shoulder and the arm, numb still, prickling with pins and needles, was really there in the corporeal sense, or if he’d become as mad as Smitty. But each successive morning he doubted his senses a little less, felt his arm a little more, and was left only to consider the two men he’d killed in the battle, or how he’d helped hold down Smitty when the doctor cut off his throwing arm, or how all of it turned out to be for naught.
Perhaps the worst part of it was the fact that Ethan’d be on a boat separate from most of the rest of the Sixty-Ninth. His wound was almost serious enough to warrant a discharge, but not quite, and he was happy for that much at least. He knew it would heal eventually, and he hated the idea of leavin’ Harry and Finny behind to face what was next. Smitty was a different story … the war was over for him. Then just before the call came for Ethan to board the last of the ships set aside for the wounded, he saw Harry walking up to him with a shovel draped over his shoulder.
Where’s Finny? Ethan asked, surprised that they hadn’t both come by to see him off.
Well, now that you decided t’go an’ get stuck, Harry said, that’s all fer the picture-takin’ crew, so we got some ditch-diggin’ to do. Little Mac’s worried the bogeyman Bobby Lee’s still out there waitin’ t’get him.
So how come you’re here? Ethan asked.
Well, there’s shifts t’things, ya know, Harry replied. Not my shift just now, the way I figure it. Besides, it ain’t like my Sergeant’s gonna do anything about it.
And Ethan smiled for the first time in a few days.
The ship was loaded with stretchers across the top deck, and as the Lieutenant began to make his way down to call for the last group to be put aboard, the thought finally struck Ethan that this might be the last time he saw Harry. There could be another fight before the boys got back to Washington, if Bobby Lee got impatient enough to kick them out faster than they were already going. And if Malvern Hill had taught him anything, it was that any man’s time could be up whenever some stray bit of shrapnel or a well-aimed minnie ball decided to make it so.
I just … Harry … you gotta … Ethan started to say.
Hey, listen to this, Harry interrupted before Ethan had the chance to get even a little emotional. There’s about a hundred Rebs a half a mile from here, a buncha prisoners we took th’other day. An’ me an’ Finny an’ a half dozen of the lads were walkin’ past yesterday, an’ we heard one of th’Rebs say … now get this Ethan … he says, There’s some o’ them Irish devils … I wisht they was on our side.
Ethan smiled at the thought of it, pretending to find as much consolation in the accolade as Harry hoped to offer. But as he walked onto the gunboat that’d take him back to Washington, he couldn’t help but feel how little it’d all amounted to once again, and that they’d been fools after all. As the ship’s steam paddle finally started them downriver, he saw the sad image of what remained of the Grand Army’s Grand Plans, strewn all along the riverfront. Even the caissons and supply wagons looked sad, resting beside countless barrels and crates still loaded with supplies that hadn’t been used. And then, just a little farther down the river, beyond the last of the Union camps, there they were again, the runaways, clinging desperately to their last vestige of freedom, and soon to be left behind by the army that had seemed like their liberators for that one glorious spring.
When the ship was far enough away from the shore for Ethan not to feel their haunted gaze upon him, he took a place along the portside edge of the top deck and decided he’d have to tell her about the disappointments of the past two weeks. It’d be done with whispers amidst the clamor of the paddlewheel, lest a passing orderly take him for a man gone mad.
&n
bsp; We’re done for now, Ais’, he said, staring out at the water. Smitty’s lost an arm and I got nicked some and we’re all bound for Washington now like the whole last year never even happened.
And then his voice grew even quieter.
I killed two men, Ais’—right up close. Close enough to look them straight in the eye and know something about what sorta man it was I was sendin’ to the Ever After. And I know I’ll see their faces in my dreams for as long as I live—like maybe I’ll be mad as Hamlet one day, I dunno. And none of it was like the “once more unto the breach, my friends, once more …” from old King Henry—it wasn’t anything like that at all. It’s all just spit and blood and bullets and madness. I’ve grown to like Shakespeare almost as much as you did, Ais’—and I told Mam and Aunt Em about your book, and how they should find the right person to give it to if something happens to me an’ all. But I gotta tell ya, Ais’—Shakespeare doesn’t know shite about war.
SHARPSBURG, MARYLAND
SEPTEMBER 17, 1862
By the time the two armies meet along the Antietam Creek in this small farming town in Maryland, it’s easy to see how so many of the men have become hardened by all the loss. The Grand Army’s done nothing but lose, and nobody’s callin it Grand anymore. Six months of buildup brought to a crashing halt just like that, with all the lads who’ve fallen having given their limbs and their lives for what seems like nothing at all. And now Ol’ Bobby Lee’s got his boys on the march north, taking the fight into Maryland for the first time.
Your shoulder’s fine … fine enough to hold a rifle anyway, though you doubt you’ll be knocking any baseballs into the Hudson anytime soon, war or not. But it’s hard to think of anything back home these days, as you’ve learned to just put your head down and march in line … not much of an outlook for a division photographer, but essential for a soldier. And now this is shaping up to be the worst fight since Bull Run, likely a whole lot worse, since there won’t be too many greenhorns on either side running away after the first taste of fire, and these two armies are each half again as large, and many times more pissed off, than the ones who met at Bull Run.
It starts as a mess, of course, as if anything else could be possible. The right flank of the Union Army bumps up against Stonewall Jackson’s Corps making a bloody marsh out of the five-foot-high cornstalks. They’re fighting hand to hand with artillery cutting down broad swaths of corn and broader swaths of men until both sides back off, ending it in a standoff. So then comes your turn, along the center of the lines, where the Rebs have the Sunken Road, a convenient trench at least a foot and a half deep where thousands of wagons over dozens of years have eroded away as perfect a firing position as an army could want. And it’s the Irish Brigade’s task to clear the Rebs out of there, all of you walking forward in formation, and the Rebs lying down prone on the ground, only the tops of their heads exposed.
Father Corby, the Brigade Chaplain, rides out in front before you all set off and offers a general absolution of your sins. You look over at Harry who’s got that Jesus, now that’s a promisin’ sign look on his face. Still, you and Harry and Finny all remove your caps and bless yourselves, one last time maybe, before you set off. It’s occurred to all of you fighting men that it makes no sense to march in formation against such a position. Not that you’re afraid to get at the Rebs in the Sunken Road, but for Christ sakes, do we gotta WALK all the way there? For what? So the officers can keep track of things? Because that’s how Napoleon used to do it?
But walk forward you do, in perfect formations that’ve become second nature to you by now, absorbing musket fire from the time you’re a hundred or so yards out, not being allowed to fire back ’til you get in closer, closer, closer, ’til there aren’t nearly as many of you left as what started out walking in the first place. There’s a wooden cow fence about halfway there, and the lead lines have to stop to knock it all down while still coming under fire. Finally they march forward again, fewer still than just a minute before, and now the men from the back lines step forward to replace those that’ve fallen in the front. Then it’s your turn, third line back, to step to the front position and replace the two men before you who’ve gone down already.
The command comes to fire when you’re confronted by a Reb company out in front of the Sunken Road, poor lads they are, and the whole Brigade opens up and fires its volley. But the greenhorn beside you panics a little, stepping to the side and dropping to one knee, and it’s all you can do not to waste your shot as you’re stumbling over him. When the smoke’s settled a little, you can see the Reb company drawing back into the Sunken Road with the rest of their boys, except for a few fellas near a tree they use for cover. The lead man fires and has two men behind him reloading and handing him their muskets, and you stop, just as the smoke is clearing and the Brigade is getting ready to move forward again. You aim your musket. Twenty, maybe thirty yards away, you breathe out the way the drill sergeants taught you, see that Reb doing the shooting by the tree and aim right at his nose, then let go. And you see his head snap back, see the way his boys around him don’t even bother to drag him along with them as they retreat to the Sunken Road. And that’s three, for sure. Three you’ve killed, counting the two at Malvern Hill. An odd thought in the midst of all this.
The command comes to move forward again, fix bayonets on the move, and get ready to take the Sunken Road hand to hand. But you don’t get more than three steps when you feel a ball of fire pop into your right leg, and before you can tumble from it, another goes through the same shoulder where you got it with the bayonet, making the same, terrible, sickening sound of flesh giving way to metal the way it did when you stuck your bayonet into that man at Malvern Hill. And you’re down in a rush, collapsing upon yourself, limbs flopping aimlessly like the pages of a book thrown facedown onto the ground, and there’s nothing but the noise beginning to meld into one vast pop and rumble and shout.
You can see the lines march past, then another horrible barrage coming from over by the Sunken Road, and plenty more falling around you. There’s a bugle call for retreat, and another from the Brigade behind you to move forward, and then there’s Harry, standing over you and cussing and calling to Finny, and you smile a little at the sight of them both, knowing they’re all right. And then they’re lifting you up with the pain bursting through you again as you feel everything going gray for a while … see your blood spilling out of your leg and onto Finny’s arms as he carries your lower half. Then Harry’s yelling at you, look at me Perfessor, look at ME, Ethan, and it’s coming from behind you … straight above you since Harry’s got you by both arms … and you smile halfway at him … not from seeing his face upside down in this odd manner, but from hearing him call you Ethan for the first time in maybe ten years, maybe more …
When you open your eyes you’re back on the ground, only under a tree, and the fighting sounds farther off than before. Finny’s saying how they cleared out the Sunken Road at last, and he’s laughing nervously, thinking the best thing he can do is tell you this, that it wasn’t all for naught this time around. At least we showed them Rebs how to fight. Then Harry’s telling him it doesn’t matter now Fin, and tells him to go off and get the Division Commander and see if he’ll send his surgeon for the fella that took his portrait back in Washington. Harry’s pulling off his belt and wrapping it around your leg just above the wound, like you’d learned you shoulda done from the Doc that had to take Smitty’s arm. It hurts like hell but Harry keeps saying sorry, Ethan, just a little tighter … then pulls with all the strength he’s got, and the pain makes everything go gray … then altogether black.
When you wake up again, Harry’s kneeling beside you … Yer gonna be fine now Ethan, he says, and it worries you that he’s still calling you that … but it’s hard to get the air to tell him so. Finny’s back before long and it sounds like the battle’s done, or shifted over to the left part of the lines. The sky’s turning dark and you remember that it must be this late by now, that you’re not dyin
g yet, that it’s merely the sun setting in its universe the way Isaac Newton says it should, and at least that’s still the same as ever. Finny’s got a canteen and he pours some of its contents into your mouth and you swallow it down along with some of the red spit that’s still forming from inside you. It burns like water isn’t supposed to and you start to cough in gasps of breath.
Finny! Harry shouts. Ya gotta water it down. You know he’s not an OBJ man.
Then you recognize the putrid taste of Oh! Be Joyful on your tongue. It’s a foul concoction of potato peels and whatever else the men can ferment down to this rubbish, and you can’t imagine how they love it so.
Sorry Ethan, Finny says, and you stop coughing before long, thinking, Et tu, Fin? not ’cause of the OBJ but because now he’s calling you by the name your Mam gave you, too. Finny’s gone for a few minutes and as soon as he’s back, there’s the surgeon standing over you. Fin tries again to pour some of the stuff from the canteen into your mouth, and the surgeon grabs it from him.
I watered it down Doc, Finny says, but the Doc’s not happy.
He looks at your leg and shakes his head some, then pulls Harry’s cap off your shoulder and seems not as unhappy as he is with the leg. He hands the canteen back to Finny and tells him to pour some on the shoulder, just a bitta shrapnel there, he says, went clear through. Finny’s dripping it down in little drops that sting, ’til the Doc grabs hold of it and lets it spill out in a rush, and you feel the fire pour through you.
