Backlands (72 page)

At last the cruelest of wars was over.

The generals were having a hard time getting through the surging crowd. When they reached the lime deposit across from the arbor, they were caught short by the whine of bullets flying over their heads.

The battle was still on and the square was once again emptied out.

It was a rout.

Running back to their trenches and ducking into any spot they could find, sidling up to the riverbanks, the men were fearful and horribly disappointed. Just as victory was imminent, they were mocked by the defeated as they lay dying. These assailants of a kind that history had never seen before finally understood that the enemy’s last stronghold would eat them up. It was not enough that they had six thousand rifles and six thousand swords; the strength of twelve thousand arms, the thud of twelve thousand boots, six thousand revolvers and twenty cannons, thousands of grenades and shells—all were of no use. The executions and fires, the hunger and thirst they had thrust on the enemy were not doing the job. What had they gained in ten months of fighting and one hundred days of endless bombing? What use to them were the mountains of ruins, the destroyed churches, and the rubble of broken images, crushed altars, and shattered saints? All of this had occurred under a bright, serene sky that cast doubt on their obsession with crushing a form of deeply rooted religious belief that brought comfort to their fellow human beings.

Other measures were needed. The opponent was immune to all the forces of nature and adept at havoc and destruction. They had made plans for such an emergency and had foreseen this awful epilogue to the drama. A lieutenant, an orderly of the headquarters staff, ordered up dozens of dynamite bombs from the camp. This was the only thing left to be done. The
sertanejos
had defied all the psychology of ordinary warfare. Their resistance was emboldened by defeat and they were strengthened by starvation.

The troops were attacking the very bedrock of our race. Dynamite was the only suitable weapon. It was a tribute.

The firing stopped now and an intense silence fell over the expectant troops. Then a violent tremor shook the circumference of the settlement, running along the camp and spreading to the artillery on the hillsides, covering entire sectors with a shaking grid of seismic curves, intersecting over the ground. The pointed ruins of the churches came crashing down, walls swayed and fell, and rooftop after rooftop jettisoned into the air, forming a plume of dust to add to the smoke. Shrieks of terror came from hundreds of victims as mighty explosions shook the earth. What was left of Canudos was being torn apart.

The battalions crouched in the alleys outside the death zone were waiting for the flames and dust to subside so they could initiate their last attacks. Beams and splinters were flying all around, and a thundercloud of dust rose above them. They were not meant to accomplish this task. A heavy round a fire swept over them from the burning huts. They sought cover wherever they could: in corners, creeping along the foundations of the huts, or running back to the trenches.

Ahead, an indescribable disonance of screams and wails, curses and shouts, expressing terror and pain, anger and frustration, rose from the tortured multitude. In the glow of the fires, silhouettes could be seen running in and out. Women ran from their burning shacks, carrying babies in their arms or dragging children along as they hurried down the lanes and disappeared into the maze. People were fleeing in every direction, rolling on the ground, their clothing afire. Bodies were burning and writhing in agony. They were human torches. Overlooking the horrible scene, running about and making no attempt to hide, leaping over the bonfires and standing on the rooftops, the last defenders of the settlement shouted and gestured. They were barely visible through the smoke. Then from all around, two steps away from the line of fire, sinister figures with masks of soot and singed chests, returned to the battle. The
jagunços
were back.

These men had come to confront the enemy in the troops’ own trenches. The army troops were discouraged. They realized the futility of the bombardments, the constant firestorms, and the extreme resort of dynamiting the settlement. They lost all unity of action and of command. The bugles sounded discordantly but no one paid attention to them. It was impossible to follow their signals when conditions were changing from minute to minute. Detachments from the same company would move forward, fall back, or stop, breaking up into smaller units at every corner. They would mingle with other corpsmen as they attacked the houses or moved around them. This process was repeated again and again, with the same advances and retreats, ending in dispersion of the men. Soon small bands of soldiers were milling about, completely disoriented.

Taking advantage of the confusion, the
jagunços
gave them heavy fire. After a while, men who did not have any cover were huddling against the walls of the few dwellings that were still standing. Others had backed off a considerable distance down the lanes to the part of the compound that was controlled by the army. This was in an attempt to avoid the danger zone, but that zone was now expanding. Men on the other side of the trenches, outside the battle zone, were falling as well. It was reminiscent of the first terrible days of the siege. The slightest incaution would cost a life.

The captain commissary of the second-column command, Aguiar e Silva, stopped to let a platoon pass by behind a corner of a hut and shouted a viva of encouragement. He had hardly got the second syllable out of his mouth when he was struck by a bullet in the chest.

The commander of the Twenty-fifth Battalion, Major Henrique Severiano da Silva, suffered the same fate. He was a fine man. In the middle of the fighting he saw a child struggling in the flames and dashed through the blaze to carry it to safety. It was the one act of heroic altruism in that bloody day. But he paid for it. He died from a gunshot a few hours later.

The battle went on. It had become unnaturally torturous for both sides.

Army losses were escalating again. The spectators, who were gathered at observation points on the hill at the far side of the camp, were able to get an idea of the extent of the losses from the lugubrious procession of stretchers and hammocks coming over the hill. Emerging from the ravine, the stretcher bearers would make their way slowly upward around the houses on the slope. At the top they would start the descent along the other side to the field hospital where at one o’clock in the afternoon there were already about three hundred wounded.

The leather awning that covered the depression in the hillside could not accommodate all of them. The patients were crammed in and they spilled over onto the rocks on the southern slope. They could be seen dragging themselves along and competing with each other for the shade of the barracks. The medical staff, too few of them, ran back and forth. The wounded from previous engagements, lying in their cots or leaning on their elbows, looked anxiously at these new companions in misery. Outside on the bare ground in the hot sun were the stiff corpses of a number of officers, Lieutenant Colonel Tupy, Major Queiroz, Sublieutenants Raposo, Neville, Carvalho, and others.

The panting, sweating bearers came in and out, bending under the weight of the stretchers. They would place them down and go back to the battleground. This funereal procession threatened to continue all day because the situation was not changing. The guerrillas continued their ferocious counterattack. Successive charges were made. The bugles kept up their insistent bellowing. Huge waves of fire and metal crashed and thundered against the floodgates they were unable to break down.

The ninety dynamite bombs that had been detonated kept exploding on and off but with no effect. They had to resort to still other means. Cans of kerosene were tossed into the houses to spread the fires. This, too, was futile.

At two in the afternoon the assault stopped. The charges ceased and the attackers, on the defensive and back at their positions, experienced the disappointment of a defeat. In the stretchers and hammocks, or being carried under their armpits by their comrades, the wounded continued the climb up the hill. The exhausted bearers were staggering, leaning against the houses for support. The bullets kept coming through the night, flying all over the camp, reaching to every point of the line. They whistled through the air, making every imaginable sound. They came from the tiny circle where the
jagunços
were confined.

It was a cruel and sterile battle. Five hundred sixty-seven men had fallen, with no apparent result. After the battle died down there was as always scattered fire. The night went by with the beleaguered troops keeping watch. All they had to look forward to were more encounters, useless losses, and wasted effort.

Meanwhile the situation of the
sertanejos
had become worse. They had lost the new church and the last of their water pits. They were surrounded by huge fires that kept them penned in their last holdout. Yet at dawn on October 2, the weary conquerors were awakened by firm, sustained fire.

That day . . .

Let us transcribe without changing a single line, the final notes from a journal written as these events were taking place.