St. Patrick Battalion

by JAMES ALEXANDER Thom

  After today I’ve got Lieutenant Grant and Sgt. Maloney much in mind. Really not the same kinds of men, but both braced me up and I’m glad I went over to the 4th Inf. Compared with Mick Maloney, the Lt. looks like a boy. Small wonder; he’s maybe ten years older than I am. He was only 17 when he went to West Point, he said. The sgt. appears to be near 40, been in the Army 12 years or so. To put it elsewise, the Lt. could be my older brother, while the Sgt. Major could be my father.

  Faith, and that would be fine family, it would. Except that the Lt. is a Scot, not Irish like me and the Sergeant.

  Mr. Grant’s face is so clear in my mind, I ought to start a sketch of him. Gives me a pleasure, drawing faces of people I like. It’s as if I am in their company while I draw them. When I draw or write, I’m not so lonesome.

  Corpus Christi Bay Nueces River Camp Sept. 30, 1847

  WELL, I HAD never thought people could do things like this to other people, not on purpose! Their excuse for it is they’ve got to keep discipline. What it seems like to me is they enjoy punishing. The more humiliating it is, the better. Here are a few of their favorite cruelties I’ve seen here already.

  Flogging. Saw plenty of that under Col. Harney, but usually for serious causes. These West Pointers do it for hardly any reason at all.

  Barrelheading. Make a soldier stand on a barrel all day in the sun. If he faints they throw water on him and make him get back up. For anything, even so little as stepping off wrong in drill, or for not having brass polished bright enough.

  The Horse. Put a man a-straddle of a narrow rail with irons on his feet, all day long. Maybe for not saluting a lieutenant properly.

  Buck-and-Gag. Set a man on rocky ground bound up hand and foot with a pole passed over his elbows and under his knees, and a stick tied between his teeth, leave him there all day rain or shine. A man can scarcely breathe scrunched down like that.

  It’s plain to see that the soldiers who bear most of this are the immigrants. Irish Catholics especially. The officers call them “Mick apes” and “cod eaters,” and “nun fuckers,” and “catamites.”

  The worst officers for this kind of sport are the southern dandies. It’s like they don’t have their negroes here to punish, so they take it out on the Catholics, mostly the Irish. I don’t quite see how this makes for good soldiers.

  Corpus Christi Bay Nueces R. Camp Oct. 17, 1845

  A GRAND PARADE and a showing-off was staged for the Inspector-General, & sure it was impressive. Rank and file marched and maneuvered for hours, brass bands and fifes and drums. Cavalry troops swooping and circling, yelling, waving sabers, raising so much dust they all but vanished in it. Then the artillery, the “flying batteries,” dashed about as nimble as the cavalry itself, wheeling hither and yon, unlimbering in minutes and shooting off volleys and salvos. Then hitched up again to race around and repeat the performance in another part of the field. If an army was ever ready for action in the field, this one appears to be it. One must admit the results of the training here are plain to see. After a show like this, the force of a modern campaign is so evident, it can make one’s legs feel weak.

  Every bit that amazing, I beheld something I never thought I’d see. It was about Gen. Taylor. It’s the talk of the whole Army now. I saw it from as close as 30 or 40 paces. I was on an errand for a lieutenant when Gen. Taylor rode by on his nag “Old Whitey.” I angled over to get a close look at him. Just then there came some fierce and profane yelling, uncommonly shrill and furious. A company of infantry stood there, all wavery in the sunheat. Two soldiers lay on the ground where they had fainted from standing at Attention in the heat.

  The general rode to a place where a lieutenant was screaming, real tantrum screaming, at a big lout of an Irishman, one I took to be just fresh over from the Old Country. This private was scowling red-faced at the lieutenant, a-hulking with his chin jutted forward, holding his musket at a slant in his left hand with its butt on the ground. The poor oaf was standing a few yards from the rest of the company, which was at Attention but all watching this scolding wary-like. When General Taylor rode upon that scene, his shadow fell over the lieutenant, who turned and saw him, and saluted. I was still catching up and too far yet to hear all their hubbub, but the gist was, that lieutenant was complaining that the private wouldn’t obey his order of drill. Sure and it’s no wonder, for the lieutenant has one of those southern accents that sound like a jew’s harp. Some lieutenants from nearby companies were strutting over, likely hoping to be noticed by the general. That seems to be the real day-to-day ambition of these West Pointers, is to have Gen. Taylor notice that they exist. I think some of these Peacocks might just perish outright if Old Rough & Ready didn’t nod their way once a week or so.

  General Taylor swung down from his saddle just as I caught up, and he strode up in front of the poor brute, declaring, “You, soldier, you will obey any order you are given!”—at the same moment grabbing the soldier’s left ear with his right hand, one of those humiliating liberties the officers are wont to take with soldiers to impress their authority on them. It is really painful, as I can say from my own experience, having often felt as if my own ears were being yanked out by their roots.

  Thereupon came the spectacle that is already become a legend in the rank and file:

  The Irishman blew up out of his sullen humiliation with a great rising blow of his fist, which struck the general so hard under his jaw that his boots left the ground, and he landed on his backside in a flurry of dusty sand.

  Yes, I saw that with my own eyes, close by. What other sight could have been so stunning! All the dandy officers within sight of it froze for an instant, and soldiers groaned.

  Then the officers recovered from their paralysis with shouts and curses. Most all drew their swords in the same instant. There were so many blades shining in the sun I’d have sworn that every lieutenant must have had three hands, with a sword in each hand. All of them were poised as if to run the red-faced Irishman through, in punishment of his unthinkable crime against authority. He turned like a bewildered beast, his left ear all bloody, where the general’s talons ripped it when he was sent a-flying. I waited for them to skewer him. A growl came from the ranked soldiers of the company, who surely sensed his jeopardy. I felt that some of them might jump out and kill any lieutenant who would have taken the sword to their fellow Irishman. There is about that much hate built up in this Army.

  Gen. Taylor, amazingly, after such a blow, was still conscious! He clambered to his feet. He stood swaying, examining his jaw with one hand. Then he yelled at the lieutenants, “No, damn you all! Harm that man and I’ll have your guts for garters!” It was several breaths gone by before all those officers seemed to hear him. They turned from the soldier to look at the general, all with their mouths hanging open. Gen. Taylor said, “Leave that man alone. I reckon he didn’t obey your order because he just couldn’t understand you screaming at him like a parrot. Leave him alone! He’ll make a good soldier, a man who can hit like that.”

  Then Old Rough & Ready dusted off his sleeves and his seat, and got back up on his nag, and rode off to wherever he’d been going to.

  Soldiers in this camp are talking more about the General’s fall and rise than about anything else.

  As I was a witness, I enjoy a certain popularity I’m not used to having. Another important person is that Irish soldier with his bloody left ear and his swollen right fist, who is beginning to understand it’s a miracle that he’s still alive. And many are a-wishing that the officers of this army were more like Old Rough & Ready than like the little Napoleons they are.

  Well, they can scoff at me for thinking I was ever whipped by a piece of Chief Tecumseh’s hide. But when this thing today gets to be a legend, by the holy fist of Saint Patrick, they can’t say I’m giving them blarney! I know what I saw! And scary though it was then, I reckon I’ll enjoy remembering it, by and by.

  Nueces River camp, Corpus Christi March 7, 1846

  THE ARMY’S READY to march for the
Rio Grande. Going southward. Why couldn’t we have headed south five months ago? That ungodly winter might have been a little milder down there. I scarcely remember a night we didn’t lie shivering in rain or sleet and every man dribbling snot and hacking his lungs up. Half the Army, any day, unfit for duty. But no duty possible anyway for the camp was usually knee-deep in floods and icy puddles. So, now that it’s warming up, we’ll march south.

  That wretchedness drowned the last of anybody’s civility and respect. We’re suffering an epidemic of sullenness. There’s hardly an Irish soldier I know of who wouldn’t kill his lieutenant and light out from this Army if he thought he could get by with it.

  Wagons mostly loaded, & some already on the road down the coast. The vendors’ slum, the laundresses, bootleggers, and all those, all breaking camp, too. “Little America,” it’s called. Also known as the “Whores’ Nest.” Soldiers who were daring enough to sneak out of camp and go there mostly added clap and crabs to their ailments. Only thing that went on unabated all winter was punishment.

  Those awful months of inactivity could have been a fine good time for me, to read and write and practice sketching. But there was seldom a day dry enough or when I wasn’t too shivery to put pencil to paper.

  One hopeful thing is, it’s hard to imagine anyplace we’re going to that could be as bad as this Nueces River camp. We don’t mind turning our back on this!

  On the other hand, from here to the Rio Grande is all country the Mexicans say is not Texas but Mexico. Once we’re on that side of the Nueces, we’re provoking. According to the newspapers, that’s President Polk’s aim. Lt. Grant shared his New York Herald with me. He said the newspapers’ call for war makes him have to grind his teeth. Confessed that he wishes he had the moral grit to resign his commission and go home.

  But, he is a West Pointer! If that place teaches them anything besides strutting, it’s that birds of a feather must indeed flock together.

  Sure and he’ll do what the President wants, even if he thinks it’s wrong. That’s what soldiering is, and it’s one thing that makes me wonder about my ambition to soldier.

  But I’m merely an ignorant camp boy, and should I even dare weigh such big matters? Should a flea on a dog’s rump say what the dog ought to do?

  I reckon if I didn’t sit alone and write, I’d never even ponder such things.

  The one thing wrong with writing that I can see is, it makes you think.

  CHAPTER III

  PADRAIC QUINN’S DIARY

  Fort Texas, on Rio Grande R. March 2, 1846

  DAY BEGINS WITH the bugles here in camp. Then we hear a very different music, the bells of the Catholic churches in Matamoros, just across the river. I wish I could write well enough to compare the different feelings those two sounds set up in my soul. I see in the faces of Irish soldiers a kind of troubled longing which must be like what I feel. Bugles and bells. Arms and faith. All those churches are Catholic.

  Well, we are all just laborers now. Moving dirt to make the fort. Rest of the time it’s drill and maneuvers and target practice. No rest. The West Point officers treat the soldiers like slaves. Camp and corrals around the fort, what used to be Mexican cornfields. Town and fort in gun range of each other across the river. Mexican girls bathe naked in plain sight over there. Our soldiers can hardly keep their eyeballs in their heads.

  Also over there is a big portion of the Mexican Army, digging in. I am setting myself up for business, running errands and doing letter writing. Paper hard to get. My diary so far is a wad of sheets and scraps, tied with twine.

  Fort Texas, Rio Grande R. March 5, 1846

  GOOD CLEAN PAPER to write and draw on is hard to come by here. Sutlers and camp followers, hucksters and bootleggers are already setting up around the fort & you can buy about anything, but not decent paper.

  Part of my diary and a few drawings got ruined by a rain leak. Everything in ink faded and spread. That did get me low in spirits. Guess I’ll rewrite what I can read or remember of it.

  I quit lodging in the soldiers’ tents. If you’re in there with them, they have you do the chores free. And they pick on a boy where they’d be more careful about picking on each other. Sometimes you get fondled in the dark. So I found a hollow between dirt piles banked against the fort’s wall, on the river side, and here I’ve rigged up a canvas roof over willow sticks, and moved in. I dug niches into the dirt to put my papers in, and one to hold a candle. It’s better than a tent when the wind is cold.

  But it did leak the first heavy rain. I think I have it fixed now so that won’t happen again.

  The Mexican Army and Gen. Taylor’s Army strut around on the two sides of the river, marching, maneuvering, like trying to scare each other. They might not be doing that very well but they’re scaring me.

  Ft. Texas on R. Grande March 19, 1846

  FORT ALMOST DONE, walls 15 ft. thick. Bomb shelters dug inside.

  Company K of the 5th Inf. has Michigan men in it mostly, so I went to their camp to look them over for familiar faces. Also to scout up more errand work. Capts. Chapman and Merrill were names I remembered, but never saw them in Michigan that I remember. Both were already drunk at noon today!

  Many of their men are Irish, some of them veterans of the British Army before they came to America by way of Canada.

  One of those fellows I got drawn to by hearing him laugh. I heard it among the tents, and had to go see who would have a laugh like that, that could make you feel good just by hearing it. I went over and there was sure the finest-looking man I think I ever saw in this Army, a big Irishman, looked hard as oak, broad white brow and dark curly hair. About a squad of men were laughing at whatever he’d been saying. My thought was, I would wish to draw that man just as he looks, but I doubt I’m artist enough to come near it! He saw me gaping at him and leaned toward me and pointed, and said, “Lad, tell me y’r not my own son, for I left wee Johnny in Galway! Come tell me who y’ be!” I felt he wasn’t trifling with me, for he’d gone somber as one who’s seen a ghost.

  Here it is about him. John Riley is his name. Told me he joined the bedamned British Army a dozen years ago, so his family wouldn’t starve in the famine. Learned gunnery, was in some scraps in parts of the Empire, was sent to Canada and mustered out a sergeant. Loaded Great Lakes ships with lumber, sent money home to Ireland for to raise his son, whose mother had died. That’s the son he’d thought I favored. He meant to save up and buy his boy passage to come to America. When the U.S. Army sent recruiters to sign up men for President Polk’s war plan, Mister Riley went and talked to one, told him he had been a British gunner & a sergeant. The recruiter led him to believe that a man of his abilities was sure to gain that rank at least, especially in artillery. Instead, he’s a private in Infantry.

  I stayed awhile. Listened to those Irishmen grumble how they’d been duped, how they’ll never get up to their former ranks in this Protestant army, how they’re humiliated and tortured by West Point coxcombs who have never lifted anything heavier than a teacup.

  I heard them mutter about that feeling I’d had, about the church-bells and cantatas we hear across the river. Why were they down here menacing a country of their own religion, some were asking. It was close to mutiny the way they were talking, and plainly that Riley fellow was the center of their whole persuasion. For a man who laughs like an archangel, he is more like a powder keg with a fuse burning to it. I could see that they all were watching each other’s eyes and listening to who said what. Any soldier sure might take such talk to the captains, with names, and there would have to be discipline of the hardest kind. Those Irishmen all looked to Private Riley as if he was their leader, not those captains, not Old General Rough & Ready Taylor.

  Well, I came away troubled, but I have got that man’s face and his laughter in me. I will be for trying to draw what I’ve seen, for I get a strong instinct, somehow, that something’s going to happen to him. He seems like a magnet to the Irish soldiers, not just of his company but the whole 5th Regt. A
ny officer would envy the kind of admiration he gets.

  Pvt. Riley is handsome, but not in a pretty way. Has a high, broad brow, a proud bearing. A look in his eye like an eagle, but they’ll go merry in an instant, too. It’s plain he’s lived a hard life, but it’s left no coarseness in his face, nor any nastiness in his manner. By his complexion and blue eyes you’d say he should be a redhead, but his hair is almost black. Long and curly. I guess I might sound like a poet trying to praise someone he loves, but no, I’m just trying to reckon out what it is about him. I think too much.

  Well, sure and he won my heart a bit when he took me for his son. I will say he makes me proud to be Irish, and I would fancy sometime becoming such a man and a soldier. Sure and I’d rather have had a man like this as my sire than the unknown scoundrel who was. I expect I’d have a father yet, if he’d been someone like this.

  Two kinds of soldiers I’ve noticed, those who just try to serve out their time without ever getting noticed, for getting noticed often means getting hooked out for punishment or real bad duty. Then there’s the kind who want to be esteemed as good soldiers because soldiering is their trade and they’re proud men. Pvt. Riley and those around him are such men, I believe. They believe promotion in rank is their due. I heard them doubting they’ll ever get their due in this Army where all the officers are rabid against Catholics. I could sense mutiny. Maybe that’s why I felt he’s important. I’d better not let anybody see what I’ve written here.