March Toward the Thunder Part 4

The crackling sound was coming from somewhere on the other side of the confusing tangle of hills and forests in which they'd found themselves lost. Rutted roads so narrow that they seemed no more than trails led off in every direction. Not a marker to be seen anywhere. Whatever signs there might have been had been taken down by the Southern soldiers whose land they were invading.

Sounds like corn popping, Louis thought, wiping the sweat from his brow with his sleeve. But it's not. It's rifles.

They'd advanced a mile or so since the battle began. It was nothing like what he had expected. Rather than ranks of Gray soldiers, all Louis had seen so far was tangles of cedars and vines, pines and heavy brush cut here and there by dirt trails and meandering streams. Midday sun hot on his shoulders. From the woods to his left came the familiar sound of a cardinal's song, fweet-fweet-fweet, cheer, cheer, cheer.

Louis sniffed the warm air. Smoke in it now for sure.

Somewhere ahead of them General Hanc.o.c.k, the Second Corps commander, had given the order to keep advancing. They'd find good ground ahead. At least that was what the colonel who brought back the order told them before he rode off.

Sergeant Flynn growled from the tree stump he was standing on to Louis's left, trying without success to see more than fifty feet up the twisted trail.

"Good ground for the Rebs, but not us. No way for the artillery to find them in these G.o.dforsaken woods. They'll be shooting at us from behind every tree. Babes in the wilderness 'tis what we are!"

Flynn was talking to himself in a low voice that he thought no one else could hear. He'd not yet learned just how sharp were the ears of the brown-skinned young man who made it a point to seem as if he were not listening.

The wilderness. A good name for where we are.

The sergeant hopped down from his perch. "Follow me, lads," he boomed. "Stick like a burr to the men to the left and the right of ye. If ye get confused, just march toward the sounds of the guns."

Louis c.o.c.ked his head. Something was coming fast from up ahead. Hoofbeats were thudding in their direction from one of those roads that disappeared into the woods.

"Cavalry," Louis yelled.

"Off the road!" Flynn bellowed.

The men of Company E scattered to every side. Hats and bedrolls went flying in their haste to avoid the hooves galloping down on them. Louis barely held on to his rifle as he dove and rolled, coming up against the sharp roots of a cedar that tore a hole in the right knee of his trousers.

As quickly as they had appeared, the company of Union cavalrymen was gone. They left behind a cloud of dust, the echo of hooves and jingling spurs, the memory of gaily decorated horses, s.h.i.+ning boots, spotless blue uniforms, and plumed hats . . . and more than a few curses.

Louis rubbed his leg. It was bleeding just below his knee.

My first war wound. But there are no medals given for damage done by members of our own army-if the cavalry can be called that.

"And there go our thoughtful lads on their lovely great steeds," Sergeant Flynn called down from the top of the pine stump where he had taken refuge. "Bless their mounted souls-if they have any."

Louis understood the irony in Flynn's words. After only two weeks in uniform he shared the foot soldier's lack of affection for the danged horsey boys. Cavalrymen could dash in and out of battle as they pleased without even losing the crease in their pants. Their feet didn't burn from marching for hours without stopping or their backs ache from lugging a forty-pound pack. And every cavalryman seemed to take it for granted that the roads belonged to them. So what if they had to ride over a few common foot soldiers and make them eat mud?

Cavalry's job was to be the eyes of the army. Reconnoiter, report back on the strength of the enemy. But, after three years of war, the Union cavalry had earned the reputation of disappearing just when it was needed and then coming back with wrong estimates of the enemy's numbers.

Easier to hate the cavalry than the enemy. That was said by every infantryman from the lowest private on up to the top generals.

Joker limped up to lean on Louis's shoulder as he tried to dislodge the th.o.r.n.y branch wrapped around his ankle.

"Have you heard there's a reward being offered for dead cavalrymen, Chief?" Kirk said. "Five dollars if they're wearing gray and ten if they're in Union blue?"

Louis chuckled.

Joker poked him in the side. "Finally got you to crack a grin on that one."

Sergeant Flynn looked over the ranks of the company as the rest extricated themselves from the branches and brambles to re-form on the dirt track, three abreast. It took three men to pull out William O'Day, who'd once again justified his nickname of Bad Luck Bill by getting his foot jammed into a hollow tree.

Corporal Hayes counted heads. "Nineteen," he said.

"Belaney," Flynn barked at the man who was standing behind a tree to relieve himself. "Out and to the front. And don't let me be finding ye bending down to tie a shoe and let the line go past ye. I know every trick in the book of malingering, boyo."

Flynn turned and nodded to Louis. "Nolette, thank ye for yer warning. So now let's put ye to scout where ye can use those Indian eyes and ears of yers. Stay a hundred feet or so ahead and report back whenever ye see something."

The sergeant pointed up the road. "Unless our beloved cavalry comes back and tramples us all to death, we'll be meeting the enemy just beyond those hills. Now forward, march!"

CHAPTER SEVEN.

STRANGE CONVERSATIONS.

Friday, May 6, 1864

If the sun rose the next day, Louis hardly knew it. The morning brought only a thin haze of light to the smoky landscape he squinted at as he stood on the picket line. He wiped his reddened eyes with his pocket kerchief. It came away smeared with black. Some was from the ashes in the air. More was from the powder and smoke of his own gun.

Louis looked down at his weapon. How many times have I fired it?

He cradled the Springfield in the crook of his left arm and felt inside his cartridge box, counting with his fingers.

Six cartridges left out of forty.

Probably the same for the other men who'd survived the fighting. They'd need more ammunition from the supply train before the next advance. Though they could also forage for ammunition from the cartridge boxes of the dead. Whether Gray or Blue, it didn't matter. They all fired or were struck by the same .58-caliber rounds.

How many dead?

He shook out the kerchief and wiped his eyes again. They were watering something fierce. He wasn't crying. Or maybe he was. It was hard to be sure. Just as hard as it was to keep straight all that had happened in the last sixteen hours. It seemed more like a dream than anything real.

Who's still alive in E Company?

He looked over to his right. A slender figure barely visible in the mist and smoke raised a hand to him. Louis waved back.

Merry.

Merry, there on the picket line with him, had come through the fight unhurt. Maybe it was because he was so small. In the hail of bullets that struck all around them, not a one had touched him.

Louis had escaped injury too, though a crease across the face of the bra.s.s box plate on his cartridge box showed how close a minie ball had come to finding his flesh and bone. The impact had knocked him off his feet. For a time he wasn't sure if he was alive or dead. Then another soldier in blue with a blackened face grabbed him by the hand and pulled him up. It had to be Songbird, for he was reciting poetry.

"We miss full well a comrade's smile, the grasp of many a friendly hand," Devlin chanted. "Come on now, Nolette. 'Tis no time yet for a nap."

Devlin was alive too. But not Bad Luck Bill. O'Day's head had been broken open like a melon by a spinning piece of sh.e.l.l. Nor was it likely that Shaky Wilson was still breathing. The last he'd seen Wilson, he was leaning on a fallen tree and trying to hold in a red writhing ma.s.s spilling like snakes out of his belly.

Why is it that I see those men who've been killed so clear in my mind, but I can't recall who else among us isn't hurt?

It was strange. Even stranger that all through the confusion of gunshot and smoke, shouts and screams and the sounds of men calling for water or their mothers, not once had he seen the face of an enemy soldier.

One moment he'd been walking along, moving down the road that had become wider, though the surrounding woods were just as thick. Then he'd heard a sound from the forest. The cracking of twigs underfoot, the tinny sound of a canteen hitting a tree, the sound of a musket being c.o.c.ked. No time to get back to the company just coming now around the bend. He took a deep breath, shouted.

"Ambus.h.!.+ Get down!!"

Then he was crouching down, crawling back to the company, the whole of the 69th under fierce fire from an enemy they couldn't see. What they shot back at were the flashes of flame from rifles thrust out from behind trees and rocks. Louis loaded and fired again, loaded and fired again.

"Follow me, lads," Sergeant Flynn's voice bellowed from somewhere in the smoke.

Some were dead or too injured to stand, but the rest of them rose up to follow the green flag of the Irish Brigade. Through the smoke and the mist, the only ray of light visible was that bright design of a sun bursting through the clouds above an Irish harp and the words Faugh-a-Ballagh. "Clear the way."

Clear the way.

Those words kept going through his mind as Louis ran and stumbled and fired, loaded and fired again at flashes of flame and gray shapes that wavered in and out of sight like ghosts.

Then they were in another clearing, this one littered with what looked like sticks bleached white by the sun. Until O'Day spoke the words that made them all look again at the scattered piles.

"There's dead men's bones all around us," Bad Luck Bill yelled-just before the shrapnel found his skull.

It was later that Louis learned how another terrible battle had been fought between Blue and Gray for the same wilderness a year ago. So b.l.o.o.d.y and brutal that the bodies of the dead were left unburied. As Louis pushed his way through the woods, he saw the ghastly remains of that struggle again and again. A rib. A long leg bone. A gap-toothed skull. Sometimes, next to those remnants of what had been a breathing human like himself, the rusted remains of a canteen, a bit of tattered cloth, the rotting bill of a cap too worn by the weather to say which side it was from. By the bank of a little creek, Louis came across skeletons of three horses half buried in sticky mud.

It was moist in the creek bottoms, but the rest of the land was as dry as those abandoned bones. So dusty dry that muzzle blasts from muskets began touching off fires. Artillery was coming into play now, the Union gunners shooting blind. Where sh.e.l.ls struck, bigger blazes roared into infernos. Blue and Gray soldiers caught in the path were burned alive, especially the wounded as they tried to crawl to safety.

"Help," someone had called.

A hand reaching up from the smoke. Louis grabbed it, dragged the man from the blinding fire that crackled hot at their heels until they stumbled into one of the small streams that meandered through the thick forest.

The wounded man was stripped of his coat, had lost his pack and musket. Had his uniform been blue or gray? Half blinded by the smoke Louis couldn't tell, didn't want to know. He levered the wounded man up the bank without looking close, leaned him against a log. The man's hand reached up to grasp his shoulder.

"Thankee."

"Just stay down. You'll be safe here."

A familiar bellow.

"T' me, lads of E Company!"

Flynn and no other.

Louis followed the sergeant's voice up to the road where the tatters of their company were rallying behind the flag bearer.

Back again to shooting at muzzle flashes and phantoms.

Just think about the task at hand. Keep up a steady fire. Make sure you've actually pulled the trigger and that your gun has been fired.

Flynn had warned them about that during their first day of training, holding his rifle high in one hand and pointing at its barrel.

"Don't ye get so befuddled in battle that ye go ramming powder and ball into a loaded gun. Don't be one of them poor fools who do it not two or three, but as many as eight or ten times until they can no longer drive the ramrod in. Though they do keep trying."

Flick off the expended cap from the nipple before seating a new one. Raise the piece. Fire at any sight of a gray uniform. Fire at any flash of flame. Fire in the direction of those chilling Rebel yells that tell us to expect another onslaught.

Did any of his shots strike home? Likely not. Most shots fired in a fight went high. Some spend eight times an enemy soldier's weight in lead before they actually hit a man. Flynn had said that too.

The thrilling antic.i.p.ation of his first battle, the wild excitement that surged through him when he fired his musket the first time were far behind him. As far behind as the eager boy going into battle he'd been.

Louis shook his head as he saw it again in his mind.

Men screaming from the woods where the fires were so hot that pines exploded into flame. Johnnies, most likely. The shots aimed at them had been coming from that direction. He and the others in his company had to run like the devil as another blaze swirled down on them, a red whirlwind.

Exhausted by then. Dead tired even before the fight began after marching for seven hours. But they ran faster than any of them had ever run before. Death, hot as blue blazes, burned at their heels.

Then, somehow, it had been night. Louis had found himself sitting on the ground, leaning back against another man for support. Both of them too tired to turn around.

"Got any water?" the other soldier finally asked, voice cracking from dryness. "Lost me whole kit somewhere back dere."

Belaney, of all people.

"Here you go, Bull." Louis handed him his own half-filled canteen.

"T'ank you, me friend," Belaney replied gratefully before he drank. Not a trace of sarcasm in his weary voice.

Belaney.

That's who the other sentry was out there to his left. Belaney had been put on the picket line and stayed all night without trying to skedaddle. Silent and watching. He turned in Louis's direction as the smoke cleared.

Louis raised a hand. Bull nodded and waved back.

Now that Louis thought back on it, Belaney had actually acted like a soldier all through the fight. At one point he'd even grabbed hold of the flagpole and held it aloft when the flag bearer had stumbled.

You never know what a man is made of until you put him to the test.

Like little Merry over there. Halfway through the night they'd exchanged a few words.

"You all right?" Merry had asked.

"Guess so," Louis had answered.

Then, out of nowhere, came the question that Louis had been asking himself.