Soldier's Heart (4 page)

Charley stood and walked to a small creek. It took only moments to hold his canteen beneath the surface and let it fill and take several long drinks from the brook and wash his face, but in that time the light grew brighter and he saw that the water wasn't clear, it was tinged with pink, and he saw bodies in the water upstream.

This time he wanted to vomit but it would not come. The food felt like a stone in his stomach and the bloodied water seemed to sour it, curdle it, but it wouldn't come up even when he stuck his finger down his throat.

“Clean your weapon, Private.” A sergeant from another part of the regiment, one he did not know, came up to him and pointed to his rifle. “There'll be plenty of time for puking
later. Get ready. We're going against them again in just a few minutes.”

Later he would know things about fighting. It was silent now and that meant that troops had not joined battle yet; meant that there might not be a fight. But he did not know this yet and the sergeant's order made him so afraid it was as if a shaft had gone through him, had stopped his heart. He had never really thought they would make him cross the meadow again.

But here it was, against him. He looked to where they had been yesterday and saw the lumps that were bodies. Here and there a wounded man—lying all night on the ground—moved and made a small sound but mostly they were still.

I'll be there soon, he thought. I'll be there on the ground with them. If I don't run away I'll be there like a broken doll. We all will. None of us can live if we walk out there again.

But he could not run away. None of the others had and he couldn't. He cleaned his rifle carefully. He had not loaded it after firing the previous afternoon and he used a bit of rag and water to clean out the powder residue, then took oil from a small bottle he carried and oiled the bore and wiped it dry with a piece of rag he carried wrapped around the bottle—all done automatically, without thinking.

The training must work, he thought. I'm doing all this without meaning to do it. He felt like a stranger to himself, like another person watching his hands move over the rifle, wiping and cleaning. When it was clean he snapped three caps on the nipple to burn any oil out of the nipple hole, then took a cartridge from his cartridge box, bit the end of the paper off, poured the powder down the bore, slid the bullet down on top of it and pushed it into place with the ramrod.

When the bullet was seated he cocked the hammer, pinched a cap so it would stay wedged on the nipple and eased the hammer down to half cock.

Ready.

For a moment there was nothing to do, so he started to sit by the tree again, but then the sergeants came.

“Everybody form line-of-battle. Out here, form on me!”

And Charley's legs moved again, carried him out, and he hated them for it but they worked and took him into the grass to stand with all the other men who still lived.

“Form on me, in a line, line-of-battle right here.”

A sergeant he did not know was pointing with an officer's saber to where they should stand. The men moved as told, stood in their line, and Charley stood with them.

“Fix bayonets!”

Charley pulled the bayonet from the scabbard at his side and locked it on the muzzle of his rifle.

Another delay. It was a clear morning, no clouds, the sun just up, and he could see other units forming. How could they? he thought. How could they just form and stand there waiting for it after yesterday? How could I? It had all started this way yesterday. March out and form up. Except that yesterday there were congressmen and their families on the hills, come out from Washington in buggies to picnic and watch the battle, and hadn't
they
got more than they bargained for? All those petticoats flying and the carriages rocking along as they found that Rebel shells did not care if you were a soldier or a civilian.

The Union troops had marched the same as today and formed into the same line-of-battle and then the Rebs had brought the fire and steel of God down on them …

“Forward!”

The sergeant turned and started marching across the field, just as he had done yesterday, heading for the piles of dead men they'd left yesterday, walking in a measured pace, and the men followed, their rifles held at port arms, ready to be raised.

“Watch the trees,” the sergeant yelled. “Keep your eyes on the trees.…”

That, Charley thought, was the most unnecessary command he had ever heard. Charley couldn't keep his eyes
off
the trees. His mind, his breath, his very being watched the trees. The trees where his death would come from.

They walked in line across the meadow, through their own dead from the day before. Charley tried not to look down at them but couldn't help it and found that they all looked alike. He could not identify men he'd known for months. They were all bloated, pushing out against their uniforms; clouds of flies were
planting eggs in the wound openings and eyes and mouths of the bodies. The smell was sweet, cloying, the smell of blood and dirt and decaying flesh—the smell of death. They had uniforms on, red flannel shirts, so he knew they were all Minnesota men, but the dead all looked alike.

Broken. Like broken toys or dolls.

The troops were through the dead now, still walking, past the smell.

There. He thought he saw movement in the trees. A hundred yards, now ninety-nine, ninety-eight. Every step a yard. Another step, another, men stepping next to him.

There. Some rustling leaves. He was sure of it. Movement. They'd open fire soon. Any second. It would come from the trees. The snarl and smoke and death would come from the trees, from the leaves.

Any second. Now. Now.
Now!
Why don't they shoot? What are they waiting for? Every
breath his last, every sound his last, every sight his last—it would come
now
. God oh God oh God
now
!

It did not come.

They walked in line to the Rebel earthworks and found the enemy gone. The Rebs had pulled out during the night. Left food on the fires, water in pails—just left it all.

Charley studied the earthworks. Logs stacked up with dirt piled in front and small ledges for the men to stand on and shoot without exposing more than their heads. We could have shot at them for years and never hit them, Charley thought; we could have died shooting at them and never touched them.

He took a deep breath and let it out—his first whole breath since they had started walking across the meadow—and looked down and was shocked to see that he'd wet himself.

Across the meadow, he thought; I must have done it then. Walking through the bodies.
Maybe then. He couldn't remember doing it, could only remember the fear—it stopped his breath, made him almost
want
to die—and it must have been then.

He started to hide himself, turn away, but he saw that he was not alone, that several other men had done the same thing.

First battle.

FARMING

T
he fight had been called the Battle for Manassas Junction by some newspapers Charley saw but it quickly was called Bull Run by the men, for the creek that ran nearby.

They withdrew and set up camp in Washington, where all they did was drill and stand guard duty and wait for the Rebs to come and take the city—which most everybody said they could do with a good company of men—and Charley went to see some sights, but it rained
most of the time so he went back to the camp before his pass expired.

The Rebs did not come, and replacements poured into all the units. They were issued new uniforms—heavy wool, proper blue, with black leather belting—and, more important, they were finally paid after nearly three months.

Charley was given thirty-three dollars in gold coins. It was more money than he'd ever had, more money than he'd ever seen, and he was sorely tempted to spend it all on himself. He did not think he would live much longer—not past another battle—and he thought of all the things he could get with the money.

The sutler had come and there were pies for the outrageous sum of twenty-five cents each and he'd been on salt pork and beans for over a month. The thought of a pie was too much and he spent the money for one of them—an apple pie—and sat in his tent alone and ate the whole thing with his fingers, licking the juice
from the pan until it was clean. He instantly wanted another.

This he bought, which he also ate alone, and with that his stomach was full at last and the desire to spend money was gone with the fullness. He kept four dollars for possible expenses and sent the rest home by registered mail with a letter to his mother:

“Here is some money. I've been in a battle. I was scart some but it's past now. I can't come home.”

And now he waited. They all waited. They drilled and cleaned and cleaned and drilled and were given a new army commander named McClellan that many of the men, Charley included, held in high regard because he sat a horse well and took care to mind the conditions of his soldiers.

In a little time they marched again and some said it was to be a battle but now they had been waiting for so long that many of them did not
think there would be a battle at all. They thought they would just keep waiting and waiting and never fight again. It was, of course, a dream, a hope, and for many of them, a prayer.

Charley was not among them. He had waited with them, of course, and had settled into camp life and even marching life, but he still believed in the inevitability of battle and most of all believed in the absolute certainty of his own death. He could not live. Many others would die with him and many would live but he knew one thing:

He would die. In the next battle or the one after that or the one after that he would die.

But for the moment he kept his equipment clean and in good order and as they marched south he found time to look at the country.

There were settled farms now, more prosperous looking than the ones he'd seen from
the train. There were chickens and cattle and pigs and barely ripe fruit in the trees. The Minnesota regiment already had a reputation. They were called “cool under fire” and “well disciplined” but although they had been ordered not to forage—steal food from the population as they marched—most men ignored the order. After all, they were passing through Rebel territory and if they left the food the “dirty seceshes” (for “secessionists”) would just eat it.

The men called it farming. Charley “farmed” several chickens and helped slaughter a pig and a cow and agreed with the men that “secesh liberation meat” tasted as good as any homegrown goods.

They ate fruit constantly, picked largely green from the trees, and most of the men had bowel troubles. Charley came down with such a case of dysentery he couldn't dig toilet holes fast enough and had to go to the temporary
hospital at the back of the march. This was an old school building filled with sick men. There were some wounded soldiers as well, but he quickly learned that four men died of dysentery and disease for every man who died of battle wounds and he decided not to stay.

The doctor, a kind officer named Hand, gave him a shot of whiskey and some powder to mix in water and he went back to his company and arrived there in the late afternoon as the men were preparing for action.

“You're just in time,” a private named Nelson told him. “We're going up to that line of trees and kick the Rebs out.”

Charley studied the trees that lay two hundred yards off. Nelson was a new man—had come in with a batch of replacements from Minnesota that had caught up to them in the camp around Washington. Charley looked at him, saw the innocence, and felt his own age. Not in years. He was only sixteen. But in
meadows. He was old in the art of crossing meadows. He wanted to tell Nelson about it, about what would be waiting when they went up to that line of trees to “kick the Rebs out.” He opened his mouth, started to say something, then stopped. There was too much, a world too much to say. You couldn't say it. You had to live it. You had to see it.

“You don't know nothing,” he told Nelson. “You don't know as much as a slick-eared calf.”

Nelson stopped working on his rifle. “Well, ain't you one to take on airs? I guess I know enough—I know all I'll need.”

Charley began to say more but instead just shook his head and walked away, looking for some cartridges to fill his box.

It started the same way again, this third time. The officers dismounted and moved to the front with their sabers, the sergeants just to their rear screaming at the men.

“All right! Form on me! Line-of-battle here!”

Charley stepped forward with the rest. He did not think of fear, did not think of what would happen, what he
knew
would happen. He stepped forward in line, checked the cap on his rifle and fixed his bayonet, and when they ordered, he started walking across the field with the rest of the men.