The railroad tracks led to Rappahannock Station. But the station itself was no longer standing. The town of Remington, where it was located, saw some fighting early on in the war and the station, along with a bridge spanning the river, were burned down. Now only their charred frames remained. The Rebels compensated for the loss of the bridge by straddling the water with pontoons. Five miles from the skeleton of the burned down station was Kelly’s Ford, a place where one of the pontoons was positioned. As we approached this place, our left column, commanded by Major General French, broke away from the main body. The rest of us continued on. This was the first sign to alert us whatever we were here for would be soon to follow.
The 121st continued on toward Rappahannock Station. As we approached the old station, we were kept in the shadow of the tree line and told to stay put. From where we were positioned I could see clear to the river where the Rebels had done a good job of fortifying their position. It gave me a sick sort of feeling because I could see the fighting wouldn’t be easy on us. My eyes wondered along the bank, where there were several well-guarded buildings made of roughly hewn timber. These were constructed on some of the higher ground. Connecting each to the other was a series of deep pits the enemy had carved out, which provided a safe shelter for the rifleman concealed within. All areas of approach were easily defended.
Just past all of these defenses lay the river and their pontoon bridge. Beyond these there was a piece of ground angling up to a hill. On the hill they placed their artillery, so should we attempt to attack the pits, we could be blown to bits by cannon. Should we make it to the pits themselves, after somehow managing not to be blown to bits, the men waiting in the pits had sufficient time to shoot us down without risking any exposure to our fire.
“Impossible!” I whispered to Sam.
“Come now, Frank. Nothing is impossible,” he said with a smirk. “Take heart. Whatever is to happen will be over quickly.”
It was roughly noon when the fighting began.
“A few days before fighting, my hat!” Darby said with a grimace. “Don’t believe a word they should utter. No sir! They will lie to your face if it should suit ’em.”
The report of parrott rifles coming from Kelly’s Ford, where we earlier left Major General French and his men, was our first inclination the battle was soon to come our way. Yet, we still held back and waited, hidden behind a veil of trees. We watched a ragtag group of skirmishers exchange fire with our skirmishers with little effect. It was more noise than anything.
It wore on much the same throughout the afternoon. The rifles made a tremendous noise, the Rebs stood ready, but there seemed no progress. We began to wonder what purpose we would serve, because it seemed as though we were standing idle and doing nothing for quite some time.
“Suppose we’ll sleep on it,” Mr. Haney commented. “Expect it is getting too late to do much now.”
But Mr. Haney was wrong. Now the men who were on the front line would soon need to be relieved. Out of all of us, they were the only ones to see fighting that day. So Upton devised a cunning plan. He called upon our company and several others to move forward, as if to give the tired skirmishers a chance to switch out, so they might get rest and we might take over for them. Clever and sneaky all in one, Upton would use the opportunity to advance our position unbeknownst to the enemy who would think we were merely changing out men.
“Those skirmishers will be our way in,” he told us all. “You will act as if you are there to relieve them. The Rebels will pay little attention, thinking you are not a threat, it’s nearly dark and they won’t believe we will make our move now. Once you are up to the first line of skirmishers, you and the skirmishers will jointly move forward to attack. Our objective is capturing the fort and those breastworks. We want that pontoon to be in our hands before morning.”
It seemed a risk to me, but I never was one to understand strategy very well, as was evident from my chess game losses. Upton pointed to the six companies amassed to the left.
“Once your line advances in what looks like picket relief, the picket line will advance with you. And moving forward as one, we will drive the enemy off of that crest! Understand?”
He got a flood of Yes, sir! from the men.
“The success of this operation lies solely with you,” he continued. “You must make it seem as though you are there to relieve them of duty, and it must seem convincingly so to the enemy. Do not—I will say it again—do not fire unless fired upon. The element of surprise is what will make this endeavor a success.”
We formed a line and waited for the signal. At which time we slowly and casually moved forward. The silence was unbearable as we closed the gap upon open ground, without a thing for cover if they should decide to fire upon us. Just short of the skirmish lines, the mayhem began. We took up with the old line as instructed and pressed forward jointly, and then our companies to the left joined in. Where there was silence before, the air was now filled with reports from rifles, guns firing in quick order.
We did our best to return fire, as thousands upon thousands joined in the action. Now when the Confederate skirmishers saw what we were up to, they didn’t have a choice but to turn and run for their lives because they were so outnumbered. They ran in full gallop to the breastworks and began to throw themselves into the rifle pits for cover. Without a thought for ourselves, we blindly pursued.
Chapter 19
ONCE THE REBS GOT TO THE RIFLE PITS, they opened fire on us. We ducked down and sheltered ourselves in a ditch stretching between the two roads running horizontal on the sloping hillside. I immediately began reloading, as we waited in the brief interval, while they wasted their ammunition firing. Not one of us was hit by their bullets.
“Stay close!” Sam was yelling above the noise. I nodded to him with what I was sure was a grim face.
The order came down, “Fix bayonets!” and we scrambled to do as we were told. Upton, pacing back and forth, was visibly excited as his voice carried above the din.
“Boys, I am with you again! Our friends at home and your country expect every man to do his duty! Some of us have got to die. That’s an unfortunate truth. If you die, I tell you now, you are going to heaven!” He was prepared to move and us with him, but he continued, “When I give the command to charge, move forward. Don’t fire a shot until you’re told to. If they fire upon you and take you down, I will move six lines of battle over you and bayonet every one of them down to the last man! I swear it!”
“That’s supposed to inspire confidence?” Darby muttered.
Maybe Darby was right. Maybe speaking to us about dying was not the thing to do in such a situation, but no one else seemed to notice. His speech roused us all. We were ready to follow him anywhere, even if it meant giving up our lives.
When they spent their rounds we rose up in a great wall of blue, our rifles at the ready, and pressed forward upon them. As a unified whole we took up yelling with a deafening roar that must certainly have struck terror into the hearts of our enemy. It frightened even me, although I too was screaming with everything I had in me. My ears rang, and I was finding it nearly impossible to have a coherent thought in my brain. This is what happens when you know you must kill or be killed, all reason flies out the window and you are left a simpleton, reverting back to the most base of human instincts. It is a wonder anyone comes out of war alive.
What few Confederates were left to hold the line crumbled before us, turned tail and ran for it. We took chase, driving them back and back until we too were at the trenches. I couldn’t say who was more surprised, them or us. We looked down upon them in their pits, close enough to see the details of the features on each of their faces. Mostly they seemed completely taken off guard.
It was like a bunch of rabbits caught in their burrow. The Graybacks all looked up from their hole in astonishment, wondering, I suppose, how such a thing could have transpired. It all happened so fast, they scarcely knew what to make of it. Some, with a strong sense of self preserva
tion, had the wherewithal to try to fire their rifles. Most either surrendered on the spot or tried to escape by scampering up the back side of the pits and making for the river.
We secured the pits in five minutes’ work. Upton was strutting like a prize cock, shouting out orders and routing our prisoners to the back lines.
“You,” he said pointing to Sam. “I need you to carry a message back to Major General French, Second Lieutenant Barlow.”
Sam was pleased the Colonel knew him by name. He was giddy with excitement. He was about to leave when he brushed past me. He stopped only briefly to check with me.
“Will you be all right?” I could see he was torn between ensuring my safety and the thrilling time he might have while delivering the important message Upton entrusted him with. I didn’t want to be the reason he missed out on his fun.
“I’m fine, Sam. You go on,” I told him with a reassuring smile. So Sam eagerly went over to Upton, took the message, and disappeared at a trot into the chaos and clamber of the riotous scene.
Colonel Upton then ordered the 121st and the 5th Maine, under Major Mather’s command, to secure the bridge and the river where the Confederates were attempting retreat. We headed posthaste to the pontoon spanning the river and began right off preventing the Confederates from crossing. Now some of them did not like the idea of being taken prisoner, and in desperation they began to jump into the freezing waters trying to swim to the other side to escape. The water was so intensely cold that those poor Confederates were crying out in agony.
Felix Newburn caught a mess of them trying to cross the pontoon bridge and hollered out to them. “Surrender or I’ll run every damn one of you through!” I’d never heard him curse like that before, so he must have been in a state. The Confederates knew they were caught and gave up without any trouble. Felix led them off to the rear, where the other prisoners were being kept. Major Mather called over to the Carroll brothers and me and Jack Monroe. We obediently came to him.
“I need you boys to go downriver and detain those men trying to swim to the other side. Bring ’em on in,” he said. “They won’t escape so easily.”
We tramped across the bridge and headed downriver. Now my apprehension began to grow, because of course the Carroll brothers were going to stick together. Which left me to Jack Monroe. Oh, if Sam were there I knew he would be very mad at me for getting myself into such a situation. But I didn’t have a choice. As we searched along the bank of the river the unsettled feeling grew to a full on stomachache. My head told me again and again to get out of there. I must not be left alone with him. I must not! The Carroll brothers moved off in a different direction from us. I called out to them.
“Shouldn’t we stick together?”
“Cover more ground this a-way,” one of them replied. As I said before, I never could tell them apart.
A terrible foreboding spread through me. Old Whiskers and I were alone. In my worst nightmares, this was the sort of thing that would frighten me most. To say I was wary of him would be to say too little. I was downright distrustful and watched him suspiciously. I kept my gun up in front of me defensively, thinking I would run if I needed to, all the while trying to behave as though I was not terrified of him. He simply led the way and ignored me, as if I weren’t even there. I tagged along behind, keeping him fully in my vision, aware of every move he made.
We got up near the river and began searching for anyone who may have swum across. The water was littered with the bodies of men who had drowned, their corpses looking disturbingly serene as they bobbed along with the current, collecting along the edge of the river. Old Whiskers poked at them with the barrel of his gun, watching them go down and then spring back up again.
“Awful way to go,” he said.
“I guess any way would be an awful way to go.”
“Not compared to going in your sleep, or having your heart give out of a sudden. It would be over right quick then. No this way is slow and terrible. Endeavoring to get breath in your lungs as they burn, fighting to make it to shore, trying to get air as you go under…And the shore right there where you can see it but too far away to get there.”
I got the idea he was trying to scare me. And while it was working, I was not about to show it to him, doing my best to be indifferent to him. I chose to ignore what he was saying and continued to look for survivors.
“Don’t you think?” he asked.
“What?” I said with intentional ignorance.
“Don’t you think it would be a bad way to go?”
I didn’t answer him. I didn’t have a chance. In the distance we could hear someone crying out for help. “Help,” he called out weakly. “It’s bitter cold. God have mercy…”
And then the poor wretch came drifting into view. He was still in full uniform, struggling to keep his head above the water. At times he would thrash about wildly and then he would grow tired and still, until he became desperate for a breath of air and would begin to struggle again.
“There is one, there.” I pointed. “We must pull him out,” I told Old Whiskers.
“What for? He will surely die anyway. And it would be one less prisoner to have to be accountable for,” Jack said indifferently.
“Maybe so, but can you watch a man die like that? I can’t.” I chastised him self-righteously. “I won’t.”
“I have no misgiving over it,” Jack said with a hateful sort of smile, as if he were getting pleasure out of riling me up. Indeed, I do believe that is exactly what he was doing.
I disregarded him, thinking I would not give him the satisfaction of a reaction. What sort of a man would say such a thing, anyhow? I took off my belt and threw one end to the man while holding fast to the other. He grabbed at it frantically. The poor Reb missed and went under. He batted about in the water for a brief moment and then came back up, more desperate than before. I tossed the end of my belt to him again. This time he managed to take hold of it. I did my best to keep myself anchored by squatting down low to the ground and leaning back.
Just as I nearly got him to the shoreline, Jack came up behind me and put his boot into my back, sending me catapulting forward. When I hit the water, the shock of the cold sucked the air right from my lungs. I went under and then desperately struggled to come up again. I gasped for air, inhaled water and began coughing violently. There was a brief moment of understanding. Jack pushed me into the water knowing full well I couldn’t swim. And yet the only thing for me to do was call upon him for mercy.
“Jack!” My head went under the water, and I struggled with my arms and legs flailing to pull myself back up. “Jack! Please!” I screamed, before I went under again. Jack continued to walk away without even a second glance. Not a care in the world. He left me there to die. Now the Rebel man I intended to rescue was fighting hard to keep above water as was I, and shamefully, in my terror, I latched on to him. We struggled together for a time, until his head went beneath the water and didn’t come back up again.
I knew I must surely drown too. My head went under, until I could fight my way to the surface just long enough to catch a frantic breath, and then I was dragged beneath again. There wasn’t even a thought in my head. Perhaps I had the fleeting notion I would die. But nothing more, as I struggled to survive. I kicked and floundered about, my head going under, then resurfacing as I gulped air, and swallowed water, coughing violently, my hands searching for something solid to hold on to, until finally I grabbed hold of a floating body. He was only one of many grouping together and collecting in the current like apples in a barrel.
Once I got hold of him, I hoisted myself from one body to another, using them to help me stay afloat. I thrashed desperately in the water until I managed to get close enough to shore so I could tow myself to safety. I had been pulled with the current and didn’t have any idea where I was or on which shore I landed. I crawled across the freezing mud, dragging myself by sheer willpower away from the water. I began to vomit up river water and then I collapsed, without the ability to
do anything more for myself.
I don’t have any recollection as to how long I lay there. I must have lost consciousness. I woke to the nudging of someone’s rifle. My eyes fluttered open, and right off I felt a coldness penetrating my skin and sink deep into my bones. I was shaking uncontrollably, frozen all the way through. My coat and pants were stiff with frost, my hat gone completely. I abruptly sat up, looking about me in full hysteria, surrounded on all sides by men wearing gray. Not a friendly face in sight. It was still dark, but I could see there was a faint glow on the horizon, a soft blush lending a little light.
“Get up!” one of them ordered.
I was frightened half to death, but I had the wherewithal to do as he said. I stumbled to my feet, my vision growing blurry around the edges. They waited for me to get my bearings, until my brain was no longer foggy. I could see I was nowhere near my earlier location, the only familiar thing being the river I managed to fight my way out of. I thought briefly to run. But I knew I shouldn’t do that. Either they would shoot me in the back or easily catch me again. There was no way out of it.
“What are you doing out here?” another asked.
“I fell into the river,” I stammered.
“Awful luck, friend,” a third said, with an ironic grin. “Come along then.”
So I walked along with them, until they took me to a larger group of Confederates. When I saw their numbers, I was aware I’d been captured and there was nothing to do but whatever I was told to. I was too worn out and in too much shock to think of anything but doing as I was told. They were on the run, these men, and I, out of default, would go along with them. In my head I cursed Jack Monroe.
Chapter 20
GIVEN MY PREDICAMENT there was nothing more I could do but stay to myself and do as I was directed. It gives a person a great deal of time to think. I wondered what Sam was doing, and if he missed me at all. So many times he prodded me to go home. I bet he was thinking I told her so. I bet he was thinking serves her right. And although his burden was removed with my absence, mine grew heavy with his.
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