Divided We Fall
Page 12
I petted him and petted him, and maybe he understood me and maybe he didn’t, but he calmed down, and we followed the stretcher all the way to the field hospital, across the battle-scarred ground, red and bloodied.
Susan stayed with me when we went inside a farmhouse that the Yanks had taken over and turned into their hospital. No one complained about Dash. No one even noticed us, the way adults never noticed us, and for the first time I was glad of it.
Susan stayed with me when the surgeon came around and rolled Julius onto his stomach, and she stayed to help me hold him down as he started screamin’ and cryin’ because the doctor was pulling bits of metal from his body.
And she stayed with me days after, as Julius started to heal and get his words back, and we learned all about each other. How she’d been born on a plantation and been sold with her mother to the city and then, when her mother got sold away, how she lighted out North to find her. We told Julius how I came along and nearly turned her in.
“You’d’ve had to lick me in a fight first,” she said, and I said I could’ve, and she and Julius laughed at that, because we all knowed I would have lost, even though she was a girl.
And she told how she found her ma working as a nurse with the Union Army and how she wanted to help too, because she wanted to set all the slaves free, and I couldn’t blame her for that. So she signed up for nursin’ too, but they had no use for her, so against her ma’s wishes, she pretended to be a boy and took to drummin’ with this here regiment, through thick and thin and all kinds of battles. She’d seen the Union march cut through the South, and she told us she wasn’t sorry to say it, but our side had lost already, though we didn’t know it yet.
“I hope so,” I whispered, surprising even myself when I said it.
Julius raised his eyebrows at me. He didn’t expect such a thing from me neither.
“Like Mr. Ward said, slavery’s over and done already, and good riddance to it,” I explained. “Girls like Susan don’t deserve to be chained up. Nobody does.” She nodded and scratched her head beneath her cap, which she still wore, lest any of the others figure out she was a girl.
“And as for all that other stuff … well, I seen myself, war don’t make men heroes. Some live and some die and some get torn up like you did and some don’t. But livin’, that makes heroes, and the sooner we can get back to it, the better off we’ll all be. Yanks can go back to livin’, and here in Mississippi we can go back to livin’, and all the slaves can get started livin’ as free men, just like everyone’d want to. War ain’t livin’, and I’d sooner be done with it.”
“You sound like a regular preacher,” Julius told me, sitting up high in his healin’ bed.
“I just wanna go on home to Ma and Pa,” I said. “I’m sure they worryin’ themselves sick over us.”
I looked down at Dash. Susan was stroking his ears, and he was panting every time her small, dark hand pulled the loose skin back from his eyes and let it go again, like a metal spring. His tail thumped the floor. Every few strokes, he’d try to lick her with his big, pink tongue, and she’d pull away and laugh.
“Wanna take Dash out and toss him sticks?” I asked her, and she nodded yes, and the two of them padded out of the farmhouse to play together, while I stayed with my brother.
“You think she was right?” I asked him. “About the war?”
He nodded. “It’ll take a lot more blood, I think,” he sighed. “But it’ll end. What comes next, I don’t know … except I’m gonna ask Miss Mary to marry me.”
He smiled real big, and I smiled too.
“She’s just the most beautiful girl in all the —!”
I stood up to cut him off. “I don’t wanna hear this mushy stuff,” I said. “I’m going out to play with Dash.”
Julius laughed at me and let me run off while he stayed back to think up love poems or some nonsense.
I went outside and played with my dog and the girl my dog had found to save us.
For those Civil War experts reading this book, I must begin with an apology. While the story I’ve just told is based on the kinds of things that happened in 1863 during the American Civil War, I have rearranged real events to suit my story and made up a lot of other events to make the story better. I will try to make an account of the most egregious examples of where I changed fact to fiction. Egregious, by the way, is a word that means “outrageously bad or shocking” — a fitting word for a gruesome war.
On the scale of horrors that brother committed against brother during the Civil War, which raged from 1861 to 1865 and left over six hundred thousand people dead, I hope my factual fiddling is a minor offense.
The town of Meridian, Mississippi, was a major site of Confederate guerilla activity, and in February of 1863, General W. T. Sherman of the Union Army marched in and laid the town to waste. He ordered the looting, burning, and wrecking of every useful structure in the town, from weapons depots and railroad tracks to civilian homes and food stores. When it was over, Sherman is reported to have said, “Meridian, with its depots, storehouses, arsenal, hospitals, offices, hotels, and cantonments, no longer exists.” He didn’t want anything left behind for his enemies to use.
After the fighting, thousands of slaves did indeed make a run for freedom in the wake of Sherman’s army. For Andrew and Dash’s story, I moved the destruction of Meridian forward in time a short ways so that it would occur closer to the time of other battles and to the siege of Jackson, but I tried to otherwise remain true to the impact of the event.
There really was a Battle of Chickamauga in late September 1863, and it was a bloody affair, the second deadliest battle of the Civil War (Gettysburg was the deadliest). Chickamauga was a victory for the Confederate Army, and one of the last significant victories they would enjoy. While there were army divisions sent from Mississippi for that battle, I have invented the Fifth Mississippi’s role there.
Both the Confederate and Union armies used young boys as drummers, messengers, spies, and, in many cases, soldiers. As the war went on, and recruitment became more difficult, more and more youngsters were compelled to join the fight. At the same time, desertion became a crisis, especially among Confederate ranks. Julius would not have been alone in deserting his post. Far less common would be a soldier returning after a desertion.
As for dogs in the Civil War, they were plentiful on all sides, guarding prisoners, tracking runaways, and carrying messages. In many cases, they did march into battle with the men, and countless hounds and terriers served as mascots for their regiments, lifting the spirits of the soldiers in the ways that only a dog can. I learned a great deal about Civil War dogs from the book Dogs of War by Marilyn Seguin (Branden Books).
A few other useful sources that informed the writing of this book were Hospital Sketches by Louisa May Alcott (who served as a nurse during the Civil War and later wrote Little Women); Bruce Catton’s This Hallowed Ground: A History of the Civil War (Vintage Books); The Brothers’ War: Civil War Letters to Their Loved Ones from the Blue & Gray, edited by Annette Tapert (Vintage Books); and A People’s History of the Civil War by David Williams (The New Press). Also, I took great inspiration from Stephen Crane’s 1895 masterpiece The Red Badge of Courage.
Sadly, throughout history, the stories of war are as notable for their tragedies as they are for their heroism. Man and beast alike have died by the millions. In the past, war has often been the only way that leaders can see to solve their problems. The Union victory in the Civil War preserved the United States and ended the great crime of slavery. The fight against Hitler in World War II prevented a murderous regime from conquering half the world and ensured freedom from Nazi rule for the peoples of Europe. And our current war in Afghanistan is being fought for a host of reasons by men of goodwill and great devotion. In all these wars, just or unjust, foolish or wise, dogs have fought and died beside their humans. While dogs will fight bravely beside us, only humans can muster the imagination it takes to make peace.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
C. Alexander London is an author of books for children and adults. In addition to the Dog Tags series, he writes the Accidental Adventures novels for young readers and books like One Day the Soldiers Came: Voices of Children in War for older readers. When he is not writing books, he can usually be found walking around New York City talking to his dog.
www.calexanderlondon.com
ALSO BY C. ALEXANDER LONDON
Dog Tags #1: Semper Fido
Dog Tags #2: Strays
Dog Tags #3: Prisoners of War
We Are Not Eaten by Yaks: An Accidental Adventure
We Dine with Cannibals: An Accidental Adventure
We Give a Squid a Wedgie: An Accidental Adventure
Copyright © 2013 by C. Alexander London
All rights reserved. Published by Scholastic Inc.
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First printing, April 2013
Cover art by Richard Jones • Reference: ASC/ Shutterstock.com
Cover design by Yaffa Jaskoll
e-ISBN 978-0-545-63390-1
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