It was a Confederate Thermopylae.
30
After a two-day march, I rested in a Windsor chair on the second floor of a farmhouse near Frederick. Outside, General “Fightin’” Joe Hooker was berating his staff. All were mounted. True to report, Fightin’ Joe sat tall in the saddle and cussed. He cussed the 24th, 22nd, 30th, and New York 14th, the Zouaves. I tipped in the chair by an open window, my Enfield resting against the sash. I smoked a pipe. Merrick was in the next room on top of the farmer’s wife, a big German woman past her prime in looks, but not in amorous energy. Her husband had joined the Union Army, she “couldn’t manage der farm,” so took to drink. On this “guten morgen,” Frau Hess entertained a few of her husband’s comrades-in-arms.
“Goddamn straggling brigade!” yelled Hooker to the officers, which included General Hatch of First Corps and Brigadier Abner Doubleday. “I’ll have them arrested! Men will be shot! This is an army, not a convicts’ saturnalia.”
I hadn’t seen Hooker close up. The man was clean-shaven and lively. Whether traveling with camp followers, winking at whores in the District, or demanding men fight, Hooker was lively, angry, salty, ready. I leaned back in the Windsor—it was like the broke-back at home—pulled on the pipe and blew a cloud of smoke out the window. Happy groans came from the next room.
The march from Washington into Maryland had been slack. Men appeared for reveille, got in formation, started in columns, and walked off into the countryside. They picked apples, drank hard cider, kissed farm girls, napped in beds, did other things in bed, invited or not. Company G didn’t rape. That was our deal, our superstition, like not believing in ghosts but being afraid of them. Of course, men who’d been in four battles and marched in and out of Virginia had their own definition of rape. For some of us, it was more than two men enjoying unasked-for favors.
Two days before, a dozen members of another company had encountered a haughty little woman in her Sunday best, standing in the doorway of her house. It wasn’t a big place—two-storied, badly in need of paint, a sagging barn. The woman spat and, in a hard Southern accent said, “Yankee trash, be about your business.” The only people on the place were an old slave and his daughter.
“Come with us, Uncle,” a private said. “Take your freedom.”
“That nigger answers to me,” said the woman. “Julius, escort this trash from the property.”
“Pardon, Ma’am,” said a corporal, “but you’re the trash. You own human beings.”
“You’re right, I own them. And this farm. You get yourselves off my property.”
The woman, a small, sharp-nosed lady wearing a purple cloak, crossed her arms over her chest. It was a brave show. She stood proud, angry, in charge. This infuriated two men whose brothers had been killed at Chantilly. Without a word they grabbed the girl. She looked about thirteen, ratty pigtails, ragged flax dress, no shoes. They threw her down and tore her clothes off.
“Father! Missy Meredith!” The girl’s terror cut through the air.
Her father leaped up, but was held back. A corporal hit him in the head with a rifle butt. The man fell to the ground and didn’t move.
“He don’t have to watch,” said the corporal.
“She do,” said a sergeant.
A circle formed. Four men held the girl down. The “lady of the house” was pulled into the circle. Trousers were unbuttoned. The girl screamed. Some men laughed, like they enjoyed the fright they caused, then a line started. Men undid their belts, cupped their hands over crotches, took off their kepis and fanned their faces like they had a job to do. Company G held back. We looked at the ground, at each other. The girl kept screaming and slamming her head into the ground. The sergeant grabbled her pigtails and held her head down. A piece of her dress was put in her mouth. She was punched in the head and stopped moving. A dozen men raped her. It didn’t take long. I saw bobbing buttocks. Blood. Spit on the girl’s face. After a while, her eyes rolled back in her head. She didn’t move. Men got up saying, “Damn,” or “God damn,” or “I’m fuckin’ for Uncle Sam,” or “You could a had your freedom.” They acted like this was a lesson or a job well done.
When it was finished, the lady spat in the face of the nearest man and got slapped, hard. A private ripped the top of her dress and said, “You’re damn lucky we’re gentlemen.”
The Maryland woman, paying no attention to her small exposed breasts, removed her cloak and put it over the girl who lay naked in the dirt.
Men walked off, hitching up their pants.
We marched. I felt the need to vomit, but kept going. Under my breath, I said, “Forgive me, Gib.”
I rocked in the Windsor and watched General Hooker cussing out his officers. Hooker had a pointy nose with a bump in the middle, a sharp nose and a sharp tongue. He wore a slouch hat with gold braid that gleamed in the sun. I picked up my rifle, cleaned it with rod and cloth, took a bullet out of my “forty dead men”—the cartridge-box—put it down the barrel, pinched a cap, placed it in the firing pan. I pulled on the pipe and stroked the barrel.
“These Goddamned men are under arrest! I’ll court marshal every enlisted man and every officer! How can we have a damned army where men walk off?”
The officers looked away, patted their mounts, nodded agreement. This wasn’t the first time they’d heard such talk, I was sure. No one moved to follow Hooker’s orders, if indeed they were orders.
I polished my rifle—wiped the butt plate, sling ring and trigger guard, avoided the hammer, polished the barrel band, kept lint off the long-range sight, ran a finger over the blade sight as if it were a knife blade. I was relaxed. I felt good. If anyone—general, staff officer, enlisted man—came in the house, I’d shoot Hooker through the eye. No one was going to arrest my pards. No one was going to cuss me.
We were different, and if Hooker didn’t know it, he’d be dead before he hit the ground. I wasn’t angry. I wasn’t hungry. I hadn’t raped. I wasn’t worried about being killed. I was just someone else. We all were—Merrick, Ferguson, Hamer, Cox. Lyman was gone. Nothing—not officer, general, conscience—scared me.
I pulled on the pipe.
31
The men who ate in orchards, raped, relaxed, floated in nasty, full-belly trances, were ready to fight. Hooker didn’t know it, but we did. The grand ball was here. The armies had flirted, courted. Consummation was unavoidable. For those who hadn’t seen it, the elephant was coming. The circus was on Union soil. Bobby Lee’s gamble was working. Jackson took Harper’s Ferry and its supplies, but Longstreet had to hold the passes at South Mountain. There were two: Crampton’s Gap and Turner’s Gap.
McClellan ordered an attack at Turner’s.
At four in afternoon September 14, the 24th went into Turner’s Gap. We called it Frog’s Gap, or “Hell.”
“Hell’s down,” I said.
“Up today,” said Merrick.
Turner’s Gap was a pass—a rocky incline thirty rods wide between the broken sides of the mountain. Scattered trees, boulders, rocks big and small, and vines over the rock face, led to the summit where clumps of trees and a small depression fronted a stone wall. It was worse terrain than any I’d seen. I’d stood face-to-face, line-to-line, and fired at men who fired back. I’d lain on my belly under canister, charged a sunken railroad, been shot at point blank, but I hadn’t gone up a mountain with musket fire on three sides and artillery on top. The Rebs had the supreme defensive position. I said nothing.
Every man knew.
The bottom of the mountain was a mess. Union artillery fired uphill, Reb downhill. Rebs were in the pass—behind trees, rocks, bushes, behind breastworks of fallen timber. Smoke drifted up. Minié balls came down. The cannonade thundered off rock, echoed, and shook the entire mountain.
The 24th lined up. Penfield of Oswego, who hit a fly ball over Merrick’s head a week, a lifetime ago, yelled, “Let’s go!”
It was good to move. The pass was littered with bodies. The Rebs had charged and the 14th Pennsylvania had dri
ven them off. I stepped over a mangled body. Don’t look. Run. Go. Move. Flies rose in a cluster. I jumped over a headless corpse. Shells whistled in both directions. I took cover behind a rock hardly big enough for my head. Merrick got behind a bush. Balls and shells shrieked over. The Rebs were firing high. I slipped and scraped my cheek. Sharp twinge in my shoulder. I jumped up and went five paces to a bigger rock.
There was no line, just men scrambling. Climb, find cover, move again.
The 24th went up. No colors. Men for themselves. I didn’t see Merrick. I lay on a rock—bullets careened off each side. I got to a pile of logs. Balls thudded. I lay and loaded. Twenty paces left, a Reb loaded a musket behind a bush. Rod up, down, slouch hat bobbing. I timed my shot to the rod. The hat flew. I saw no more.
A cluster of 24th men rose and scrambled up. I followed.
Below, Hooker and General Hatch watched. We heard later that Hatch had yelled, “See those Goddamned stragglers now!” He had said it with pride, then was hit in the head. Soldiers carried him back.
Wisconsin men and New York men climbed and fired and climbed. It was early evening and the Rebs still held. Puffs of white smoke were all over the mountain. Broken blue lines, men clustered behind boulders, solitaries going log to log, all began to slow.
General Reno saw men hesitate and rode up the hill. “Don’t stop! We must get the top!” He put his hat on his saber and waved it gallantly. What an example! Men got up from bush, log, stone. I wasn’t happy, and looked back. A bullet hit Reno square in the head. Quick red halo, riderless horse. Reno was carried back.
The mountain was suddenly alive with blue-clad men yelling. Everyone up. Penfield led one group, Merrick another. “Reno! Reno!” Men shouted. Men moved. Badgers in black hats, Yorkers in blue kepi. I didn’t feel my bruised shin, scraped chin, shoulder.
On the right Pennsylvanians went over the stone ledge from which Minié balls had come all day. They went into the brush firing, bayoneting.
Iron Brigade and Black Hats whooped. I went up the mountain, feeling crazy, like at the Sunken Railroad. I dodged, ducked, pulled myself up by grabbing bushes between crags, small trees. Men shouted, “Reno!” “To the top!” I shouted, “Reno!” Fear gone. Pain gone. I fell, cut my elbow. I kept going up. Men moved together and alone. Two went down near me. I didn’t see who. Their bodies rolled down. One struck an outcropping of rock and was caught in a crevice. The other slammed into a pile of rock and brush, his neck horribly twisted. I went up, pulling and grabbing. The Rebs shot high. The bee swarm of Minié balls was mostly overhead. I gasped for breath. The mountain reeked of sulphur.
Men fell, but we kept moving. They’d have to kill us to stop us.
I reached a line of young trees and brush at the top of Turner’s Gap. I saw the stone wall where the Rebs stood and fired. Red flashes streaked the twilight. White smoke hung over the wall, drifted through the trees, making a dirty curtain. Rebs fired. I found a tree, caught my breath, loaded, fired at a muzzle flash and splintered a birch. Our men began to reach the trees.
Company G took cover behind saplings. We pushed, tucked in our rear ends, peered around the trees. Suddenly, balls whizzing, men clinging to wood two inches thick, somebody laughed. Climb a mountain, see a general’s head blown apart, make a frontal assault, watch friends fight over a skinny tree. Funny.
If that wasn’t enough, Sewell Baldwin shoved Martin Dennison and Allen Rogers from a spindly tree, bent over, and was shot in the seat of his pants. Company G erupted. Merrick, me, all never laughed so hard. Nothing was ever so hilarious.
Then we charged.
32
“Forward.” Word passed among the trees. “Forward.”
We rose. Our line was solitaries, twos, threes. I saw Rebs rise from behind logs, rocks, trees. They rose in the dirty haze of early evening, and they ran. The laughter and yelling had been too much. We chased them.
I banged a shin, then a knee. I stopped advancing when a Reb officer rode out from behind the stone wall. He pointed his saber downward. Behind the wall, men with powder-black faces who’d been here all day fired point-blank into him.
We were furious! The battle was over! The officer ordered his men to surrender! The crazy sons of bitches wouldn’t stop!
Rebs reloaded and fired. They shot high.
We charged. Yorkers and Black Hats.
The Black Hats got there first. Part of the line went down. It reformed and went over. Merrick and Penfield and Captain O’Brien were on the wall. Clubbing, stabbing. Rifle butts up, furiously down. A bayonet went through a Reb’s eye.
I reached the wall as the Rebs broke and ran. I aimed, we aimed, rifles steadied on the wall, and fired. Rebs went down by the dozens. Men who’d fought all day to save Bobby Lee and had killed their Colonel died like rabbits.
I fired, reloaded, fired. I shot a man in the back. I fired at a running man and missed.
Reb reserves, held back all day, charged. They went in for a minute of daylight and died for it. Their charge was screams, wounded men, and corpses.
The next day was hot and we buried the dead. I counted five hundred Rebs by the stone wall. The bodies were beginning to smell. We’d seen dead men, but hadn’t buried the men we’d killed. We hadn’t won a battle either. Not the 24th. The rear guard at Chantilly had held, then retreated. This was our work. We saw it. The corpses were so new, we got to them before the locals. Some of the wounded had pulled their shirts up to see if they were gut-shot. If so, by morning, they’d be dead.
Merrick counted eleven wounds in Colonel Strong, 12th Virginia.
“Poor bastard,” I said. “He was trying to save his men.”
“Nope,” said Merrick. “Just plain bastard. Look.”
I looked. “Christ All Mighty!”
Merrick had pulled off the man’s boot. It was hard, as the foot and ankle had swollen, but the boot came off. The name Colonel Frisby was written at the top of it. Colonel Frisby had been killed at Second Bull Run. Cusses and cries came from other parts of the field as men found Union shirts, boots, percussion cap boxes, belts.
“I’m not burying this son of a bitch,” said Merrick. “I won’t bury a thief.”
Others crowded around. “Them bastards took our men’s shirts and boots and left them to rot in the sun. They don’t deserve nothin’. Let the crows have ‘em.”
“They were soldiers,” said Captain Ferguson. “They deserve burial.”
Men grumbled, admitted soldiers deserved burial, but wouldn’t bury Colonel Strong.
“He rots here,” said David Hamer.
“He rots in Hell,” said Tom Cox.
I figured Rebs deserved burial, even if they stole. If I didn’t have shoes, I’d steal. I went through a few pockets. Everyone did. I took tobacco, not photographs or cartes-de-visite. I stuck the tobacco in my nose.
“Wish them Washington bastards had to do this,” said Merrick. “We kill ‘em. Let the politicians bury ‘em.”
“The clerks who were supposed to nurse at Bull Run,” I said. “I heard they got drunk and took the ambulances back to the city.”
Merrick spat. “Men who don’t fight, don’t fight.”
I walked off about noon. I’d seen enough and wanted to sit under a tree. I found a spindly birch and drank from my canteen. Then I saw the man looking at me. He was a Reb, he was young, he was dead. Ants crawled over his face and in his eyes. Not a mark on him. Just ants. He didn’t look like the heads I saw in dreams, except for the ants. He wasn’t a sphinx. He didn’t have a question. I wasn’t scared. It was all familiar.
I sat down and took out a scrap of paper and a stub of a pencil, and wrote Father a letter to be sent if I died. I pinned it inside my shirt. They’d find it on my corpse.
Then I wrote Helen.
Dearest,
Please understand, no matter what I see, what witness I bear, my heart shall not die. I am but deepened by sorrow. The man who says he loves you isn’t the boy who held you by Sandy Creek.
I loo
k at your picture as I write.
Love,
Ro
33
Two nights later, September 16th, was rainy, misty, and cold.
Men remember it differently. General John Gibbon remembered the night was solemn, dismal, silent. David Hamer remembered how close the lines were. I remember pickets firing sporadically. Occasional artillery echoed through the mist. McClellan could have attacked Tuesday and destroyed the part of Lee’s Army camped at Sharpsburg, but McClellan was McClellan. He waited, finicking with details, laboring with anticipation, parading before subordinates, worrying about his men. The delay doubled Lee’s Army as Jackson arrived and A.P. Hill started from Harper’s Ferry.
No one forgets the next day. The 17th, the bloodiest day in American history. More men would die on a Wednesday in Maryland than in all the wars Americans had fought. Those remembering, commemorating, making meaning, sanctifying, know the stakes—British recognition of the Confederacy, peace Democrats agitating to settle with the South, and the Emancipation Proclamation—the document that gave the war the moral clarity of Lincoln himself. All this was only suspected, guessed at or wished for by those shivering and chewing coffee beans the night before. We had no fires. Our food was cold, sleep difficult.
I prayed.
Many Yorkers and Black Hats got stomachaches as we helped ourselves to apples in the Miller and Poffenberger orchards. The Rebs had been eating green corn and apples for weeks. Ten thousand straggled. Those remaining had a variety of ailments. McClellan, with the help of overcautious, overestimating, overpaid Pinkerton agents, inflated Lee’s number ten times, and decided a phantom army lay in reserve behind South Mountain.
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