Karl Bacon (6 page)

The sword is without, and the pestilence and the famine within:
he that is in the field shall die with the sword;
and he that is in the city, famine and pestilence shall devour him.
EZEKIEL 7:15

O
N
M
ONDAY THE TWENTY-SECOND DAY OF
S
EPTEMBER, THE
men of the Fourteenth Connecticut broke camp at first light and formed in columns of four abreast at the head of the mile-long column that comprised General French’s division. We moved out in silent respect for the comrades we were leaving behind. Words were few, only brief whispered remarks, as the living passed soberly through the place where so many had fallen. In the mists of the dawn, we marched up the Smoketown Road and turned left onto the Hagerstown Pike. A small, white, spire-less church stood near the intersection, the meetinghouse of a small sect known as the Dunkers. This simple house of worship, now despoiled with its many scars and holes, bore silent testimony to the human storm that had enveloped it.

The pike led through the town of Sharpsburg. There were no crowds lining the streets to cheer our victory; the few town folk we did encounter were simply trying to put their lives back in order after the recent devastation. No bunting adorned the
simple homes, the two or three churches we passed, the meetinghouse, or the small library. Indeed the only display of any kind was a lone Union flag hanging slack in the still morning air next to a second-floor window of a grayish-white house near the town center. The flag was tattered and torn and very dirty. The red, white, and blue of her stars and stripes were stained with several mottled shades of brown and gray. Surely this flag had waved proudly in the breeze when the Confederate army entered the town, and surely she had been thrown angrily down and dragged through the mud. Perhaps she had even been kicked and beaten or run through with saber or bayonet. And yet she flew once more, wounded and soiled to be sure, but unbroken and unbowed, just like the army that defended her. I stared and stared at the simple beauty of that flag as my steps drew me closer, until a slight movement at the window caught my eye —an old, white wrinkled face, of a man or a woman I knew not which, faintly but clearly illumined by the light of the new day. A frail, trembling hand rose slowly beside the face and gave a feeble wave. I tipped my cap in return.

We left the town behind and the day began to brighten. The warm September sun warmed our spirits once more. The way ahead had been scouted and was clear of the enemy. It was our lot simply to march, and as the lead regiment in the column, the Fourteenth was able to set the mood of the march. The band struck up marching music to help us on our way.

“Sergeant Holt, when we get to Harper’s Ferry, do you think we’ll have to fight again?” Every head within earshot swiveled toward Jim Adams, the questioner, then to the sergeant, who was marching alongside.

“Nah, I don’t think so. If the Rebs are still there, our big guns will just blast them to kingdom come.”

“So what’s going to happen to us now, Sergeant Holt?” John asked.

“Don’t know exactly,” Holt answered. “Just have to wait until we get there.”

Like King Saul of old, Holt was a large man, taller than every other man in the regiment, the sort of man you would much rather fight with than against. However, he possessed neither the acute intellect nor the pleasant disposition of Sergeant Needham, and to us he would always be Sergeant Holt, never Sarge.

We reached the Potomac at about two o’clock that afternoon. Harper’s Ferry lay just across the river, and it should have been a simple matter to march across the railroad bridge. But the bridge had been destroyed and burned by the Confederates, and the only path into Harper’s Ferry was through the rapid currents of the Potomac itself. Mr. McCarthy, the leader of the band, ordered his players to step off to the side of the road to let the regiment pass. They struck up a happy tune as the men of the Fourteenth started to wade across.

Captain Carpenter approached the bandmaster as Company C started down the bank into the river. “Mr. McCarthy, this brass band of yours is pretty fair, but just how good are you?”

“What do you mean, Captain?”

“How about a little wager, Mr. McCarthy? Ten dollars maybe?”

“All right,” said Mr. McCarthy, his arms never missing a beat as he conducted the band. “What’s the wager?”

“I’ll wager that the boys in your band cannot keep playing all the way across the river. If any one of them stops playing his instrument for any reason from this side to the other, I win. Agreed?”

Mr. McCarthy laughed. “I’ll take that wager, Captain. My boys will show you and all the rest of these men the stuff they’re made of, … sir.”

The water was only about waist deep, but the current was
swift and footing on the rocky bottom was tenuous. The regiment splashed its way merrily across, the river’s cool flow refreshing and exhilarating. As each of the ten companies climbed the opposite bank, the men sought out vantage points from which they could view the crossing’s finale.

The band members carefully made their way down the opposite bank into the waters of the Potomac. Thousands of eyes looked on intently; thousands of ears strained to catch every note. With every passing moment we expected one or more of the players to slip and fall. But Mr. McCarthy handled his charges wonderfully. He worked his way slowly across the river, feeling his way carefully step by step, and allowing each member of the band to do the same. On they came, foot by hesitant foot, fighting the buffeting current, fighting at once to maintain their tune and their balance, and slowly but surely nearing the hooting and hollering of the crowd that lined the bank to welcome them.

And then it happened.

“Look there, look at that fellow,” someone said.

“Which one?”

“The third one, with the cornet—he almost went in.” Indeed the young musician did seem to be struggling. The pitch of his horn had increased a tone or two and had begun to waver so that he was suddenly out of tune with the rest of the band.

“He’s probably dancing like crazy on those slippery rocks.”

“Yeah, tryin’ to do the underwater double-quick.”

“There he goes.” The cornet player’s tenuous hold on the river bottom was reduced to none at all, and he was quickly swept a few feet downstream.

Yet the man played on.

“He’s going under.” Waist-deep water was suddenly chest deep; then it was up to his neck. The man inclined his instrument upward and ceased fingering the keys while he fought to
keep the river out of his horn. One more step forward and the man went completely under but for the very top of his head and the bell of his horn.

Yet the man played on, albeit in monotone.

“He’s coming back up.” Everyone began to cheer, at first hopefully and then lustily, as the soggy cornet player, with footing regained, slowly began to ascend in a gradual resurrection from the abyss. His head emerged, and his gasp for breath was clearly heard from the bank of the river. The man inched his way forward, rising little by little, recovering the tune and playing on to the great delight of us all, although with a somewhat damp timbre to his music.

When he finally reached the riverbank, the soaked cornet player, Charlie Merrills by name, was lifted clear of the water by a host of helping hands with much cheering and backslapping. I doubt that Captain Carpenter was ever happier to lose a wager.

The refreshing respite ended and reality closed around us once again. We marched past the armory made famous by the abolitionist John Brown. He and his small band of followers had seized it in hopes of arming an uprising of slaves, but after a few days, John Brown and his cronies had been captured and hanged for treason. Our route led us through the center of town, then steeply uphill for another two miles to Bolivar Heights. Our assignment was to occupy the breastworks on the heights and guard against any possible Rebel attack, but as we soon discovered, the breastworks were not vacant. They were already occupied by dozens of Union men, albeit dead ones, who had been killed in the fighting the week before when the town fell to the Rebels. Animals had savaged some of the corpses and all had decayed rapidly in the heat and humidity. The bodies were quickly moved outside the works and buried. The earth was turned over where the corpses had lain, and the Fourteenth Connecticut Volunteers set up camp within the breastworks.

And there we remained until the end of October. As the shorter autumn days gave way to chilly and even frosty nights, we lacked the things we needed most, clean clothes, warm woolen blankets, and tents for shelter. The army had forced us to leave our knapsacks at Fort Ethan Allen when we marched for Maryland, so we had only what clothes we were wearing at the time and our rubber blankets, which served as our only protection against the weather.

We lived in squalor. The drinking water was poor, and the unvarying diet of hardtack and salt pork might fill a soldier’s belly, but it was hardly sufficient to keep him hale and hardy. Nearly everyone became sick with colds or fevers, and some fell ill with pneumonia. To a man, the regiment weakened by the day. Dysentery and diarrhea were epidemic. Some in our ranks fell to more deadly illnesses like malaria and typhus. As for myself, in addition to regular bouts of diarrhea, I came down with a bad cold just a few days after crossing the river. I became weak and feverish and was plagued with a coarse, hacking cough that at times seemed about to tear me asunder. The next morning, immediately after roll call, I reported for sick call.

“What’s the matter with you, Private?” Doc Rockwell asked.

“I have a bad cough and a cold.” I coughed two or three times as proof. Doc Rockwell thumped my chest and my back. He put a hand on my forehead for a second or two to check for fever.

“You do have a cold, but you’re not that bad,” Doc Rockwell said. “You don’t need to go to a hospital.” He reached into a cupboard, removed the lid from a small jar, and dispensed a large brown pill into his open hand. “Here,” he said, holding the pill out to me, “take this.”

I popped the pill into my mouth just as I noticed something like a cruel grin on the Doc’s face. “Swallow it,” he ordered.

My eyes went wide and I looked for a place to spit the horrid thing out.

“Swallow it, Private!”

I can attest that this pill was indeed a cure-all, since at Bolivar I reported for sick call only the one time. The next day, though no better, I passed on sick call and reported for duty as usual and tried to stay as warm and dry as possible.

Nineteen enlisted members of our regiment died at Bolivar, the same number as were killed at Antietam. Additional scores spent long weeks in hospitals; some recovered sufficiently to return to the ranks, but many were so weakened that they were sent home on medical discharges. These numbers were multiplied throughout all the other units at Bolivar. A worthless, needless waste of good men could have been easily avoided if the army had seen fit to give us proper shelter, warm clothing, and nourishing food. Merely the arrival of our knapsacks would have improved our lot immeasurably.

“Remember the Dark Ages?” John asked one evening as the four soldiers from Naugatuck warmed themselves before a blazing fire. “The plague and the Black Death?”

“Sure, we read about it at Union School,” said Jim Adams.

“This place reminds me of that time,” John said.

“You mean because no one was safe?” I asked. “And no one knew why people were dying or how to prevent it? All of us have been sick, even Jim.”

“And every morning carts went around collecting the corpses,” Jim said. “‘Bring out your dead,’ the drivers called, ‘bring out your dead.’”

Harry’s eyes darted from one face to the other. “It’s … it’s not that bad, is it?”

“Isn’t it, Harry?” John said. “During the Black Death, many people ceased to care whether they lived or died. ‘Eat, drink, and be merry for tomorrow we die’ were the words they lived by.”

“I think you’re overstating it, John,” Jim said.

“But I see this same attitude in many of the men,” said John. “Do you keep a close eye on your money, Jim?”

“Sure, everybody does since we came here,” Jim said. “There are thieves in this camp.”

“Why so?” John asked.

“Because they have no money.”

“Right you are, Jim, and why is that? Because they’ve wagered it away or wasted it on whiskey—rogues of the worst sort. Now they steal from men like us who carefully save their funds.”

“So we are just sitting around waiting to die,” I said. “On the battlefield there is honor, but here in camp, like this?”

“Michael.” John’s usually gentle voice was suddenly sharp and direct. “You know better. Just a short time ago you spoke of the will of God for your life. What has changed? Are you now just waiting to die?”

A weak shrug was all the response I could muster.

“That is a dark and hopeless place to be in, Michael,” John said. “But for the grace of God, you or I might be one of those thieving rogues. I prefer to look for God’s hand at work in all circumstances.”

“So how is God working here at Bolivar?” I asked. Both Jim and Harry turned expectantly toward John.

“When I feel weak and downcast, I often turn to God for strength, and He lifts me up. But when I feel strong and content, it’s all too easy for me to see God’s blessings as my own successes. Self-pity and despair must not control me. I must believe in the eternal will of a holy, just, and merciful God. I must count on His love for me and stand on His promise, ‘I will never leave thee, nor forsake thee.’ Perhaps this is what God is teaching this army.”

Our spirits were soon raised by the arrival of a wagonload of new half-shelter tents, new woolen blankets, and new knapsacks. John and I teamed up as did Jim and Harry. I laid out John’s half-shelter and my own upon the ground and buttoned the two halves together. While I was doing this, John fixed the bayonets to our two Springfield rifles, stuck them into the ground at either end of the tent, and tied a length of rope between the trigger guards. Then we draped the shelter tent over the rope to form the peak. The corners of the tent were held in place by sticks driven into the earth. Lastly, we laid our rubber blankets on the ground inside the tent.