Along the route of the march they encountered men who had fallen out, some from Jackson ’s brigade and others from the 2nd and 3rd Brigades of the Army of the Shenandoah, which had come before. Some sat and some lay passed out, perhaps dead, from the heat. Some leaned on their guns and watched with no interest as the boys hurried past. Occasionally one would call out to them for water, but they had no water to spare, and even if they had, they would not have shared it. They had no interest in beats who had dropped out of the fight when they were so eager to get into it.
They marched on in silence for as long as they could, and then, by tacit consent, stopped and had a drink of hot, silty water.
“Reckon we’re catching them up,” Nathaniel huffed. His face was a worrisome shade of red, his hair plastered to his forehead, wet as if he had just come from a swim.
Jonathan just nodded, not ready to speak. He looked up the road. The tail end of the brigade did appear closer. Hard and conditioned as Jackson’s troops might have been, a brigade on the march could not move as fast as two motivated and well-rested young men.
“It would be an unhappy irony,” Jonathan gasped at last, “if we was to die of the heat just before we get to tangle with them bluebellies.”
Nathaniel nodded. With his mouth hanging open and his eyes glazed he looked remarkably like a dead fish. “Let’s move it out,” he said, and the boys shouldered their rifles and headed off again on the double quick.
They could not see the fighting, but still they were in no doubt that the battle was joined, and the fighting was hot and intense. Beyond the low, rolling hills, the lines of forest that ended abruptly where the farmers’ fields began, they could hear the gunfire. It was not the burst of fire, followed by quiet, that they had heard the day before, as skirmishers and pickets felt each other out. This was a blanket of noise, a mosaic of noise, a single whole made up of thousands and thousands of tiny parts.
And through the wall of sound, the big guns blasted away like kettledrums punctuating the lighter melody. The clouds of smoke rose in the still air, great banks of gray, roiling smoke, rising up from behind the patchwork hill and settling in a thick layer.
On the road ahead of them was a house, a big, imposing affair with massive brick chimneys on either side. But Jackson’s brigade had turned off the road and was now making its way across open fields and up the slope of a hill-what appeared to be the final hill-between them and the great battle of the war.
“I swear…” Nathaniel said, “I swear, I expect to see them Yankees come swarming up over that crest, any second now.”
“Well, we still got the Virginians between us and them, if they do.”
They tramped on, heads down, through a patch of piney wood. The shade of the trees was a relief from the sun. And then they broke out and Jonathan said, “Lookee here, brother.” Jackson’s brigade had nearly reached the crest of a hill and stopped. Mounted officers were riding in the front of the battalion, spreading the men out into a line of battle, until the serpentine mass of troops, marching toward the fight, was now a wall of men, poised just below the high ground, ready to sweep forward.
“Come on!” Nathaniel said, quickening his pace, and Jonathan did likewise. Jackson’s men were spread along the rise, the far end disappearing into a tangle of scrub and trees. If 1st Brigade was going forward, the boys did not want to miss it. They were no more than a couple hundred feet behind the line when Jackson’s men did the one thing they would not have expected. They lay down.
“Now what in hell? They having a little nooning?” Jonathan huffed.
“Beats me.”
The two boys quickly covered the distance, came up with the troops near the crest of the hill, spread out over a thousand feet of hilltop and packed tight. They found a gap in the line into which they stepped and fell to the ground with the others. For some time they did nothing, just lay there and gulped air, grateful to be done with marching.
Overhead, the shells screamed by, nearly deafening as they passed, the bullets whipped by with a wild buzzing sound, so it seemed as if there was a great current of flying metal just feet above them, as if, were they to stand, they would instantly be caught in the maelstrom and hurled clear down the hill, carried away on the riptide of artillery and rifle fire.
At last Jonathan rolled over, propped himself up on his elbows, turned to the soldier on his right-hand side. “Say, pard, what’s going on here? What’re y’all doin?”
The soldier looked at Jonathan, said nothing, just chewed a stalk of grass he held in his teeth. He did not look like the men of the 18th Mississippi looked. He looked more like what a soldier should look like, by Jonathan’s lights. He was lean to the point of looking unwell, but there was a hardness in his gaunt face, an unhurried professionalism in his demeanor. His uniform, such that it was, was torn in some places and patched in others. His kepi had a dark and permanent sweat stain an inch high all around. The butt of his gun was chipped and the finish nearly worn off, but the metal gleamed in a way that spoke of the care the weapon received.
At last the soldier spoke, as unhurried as if he was leaning on a rail fence, talking with his neighbor of a summer evening. “We’re layin down,” he said.
Jonathan nodded. “Why are we laying down? Isn’t there a battle going on over there?” Jonathan nodded toward the crest of the hill.
The soldier considered him for a minute more. His eyes wandered over Jonathan’s uniform. “Where the hell you come from?”
“Eighteenth Mississippi. We were down at McLean’s Ford.”
The soldier sat up on his elbow, looked back down the hill, toward the woods. He looked back at Jonathan. “Where’s the rest of your regiment?”
“Back at McLean’s Ford, I reckon. My brother and I, we didn’t want to miss the fight.”
The soldier nodded. “Y’all ain’t seen the elephant yet?”
“No. And now we’re just laying down. What does a fella have to do to kill a few Yankees around here?”
The soldier smiled at some private joke. “Don’t you worry, young Mississippi. You want fighting, you come to the right goddamned place.” Then his expression seemed to soften a bit, and he said, “Say, you got any water in that canteen?”
“Some.” Jonathan struggled out of the strap, handed the canteen over. “It’s half mud.”
“No matter. Hour ago I was drinking out of a hoofprint, and glad for it.” The soldier took a couple of swallows, with evident pleasure, and handed the rest back.
Jonathan looked to his left. Nathaniel was lying on his back, looking up at the artillery screaming overhead. Somewhere down the line to their right, a Confederate battery was returning fire. They could feel the concussion of the heavy guns going off, feel the rumble in the ground.
“I sure as hell would like to know what was going on in the front there,” Nathaniel said.
Jonathan looked up at the crest of the hill, twenty feet away. He could see nothing but blue sky through the tall, coarse brown grass, and the black streaks of shells screaming past.
Let’s go have us a look. He thought the words, almost spoke them, but checked himself. He was having doubts about this whole thing, now. It was bad enough that he might have made a grand mistake with his own skin, but he had got Nathaniel in on this as well. He felt a flush of guilt for having once again lured his brother into some mischief.
Mischief, hell…I might’ve got us both killed…
This was not their regiment, of course, not where they were supposed to be. Were they obligated to go forward, if the others did?
What was going on out there? Am I my brother’s keeper?
“Hey, Nathaniel…”
“What?”
“I’m gonna crawl over to the edge of the hill there, see what’s what.”
Nathaniel was quiet for a second. “I’ll come, too,” he said at last.
The two of them crawled forward, walking on elbows and pushing with knees. Over the crest of the hill behind which they were lying, through
the tall, stiff dried grass, they could see there was a dip in the ground and then a second rise, thirty feet away.
They stood straighter, ran down into the dip and up the farther slope, dropping and crawling as they approached the crest. They came up over the last rise, approached the top carefully. Beyond the last rise the land was flat for a couple hundred feet and then it sloped away steeply. To the right was a small white house, riddled with holes from the Yankee guns. Beyond that was a great sweep of countryside, brown fields and patches of trees, a dusty road running off to the north.
And the enemy.
“Sweeeet Jesus! Look at all those damned Yankees…” Nathaniel said.
It was nothing that Jonathan could have imagined. The wounded and dead were everywhere. Hundreds upon hundreds of men scattered like heaps of tossed-off rags and spread over the hill. Before he saw the Yankees, thousands of them, before he saw the field artillery blasting holes in the Confederate lines or the Confederates giving ground to the blue-clad hordes, before he saw any of that, he saw the dead and he pictured himself among them.
He looked off to his right. Thirty feet away, a soldier lay on his back, eyes and mouth open and his lower half turned away at an odd angle, as if he had been broken in two and his insides spilled out. Jonathan looked long enough to understand what he was looking at, then turned his head quick, squeezed his mouth and throat closed tight to fight the rising in his stomach.
“Jonathan!” Nathaniel slapped him on the shoulder. “I said, did you see all them damned Yankees?”
Jonathan looked down the hill, avoiding the dead men, avoiding the horror to his right. Thousands upon thousands of bluebellies were massing at the base of the hill, and many, many more behind. Not disorganized clumps of men, but neat blocks of soldiers, marching regiments, coming on in a relentless way. They fired by volleys, shot clouds of gray smoke out in front of them, like some fire-breathing creature of mythology. Some were coming on, but most were marching to and fro, getting into formation, assembling into a grand and unstoppable line of men and guns, ready to sweep forward and roll over the weakened Confederate lines.
There was another, smaller hill beyond the one on which they lay, and between the points of high ground, a thin tributary of the Bull Run River wound itself, crossing and recrossing a turnpike that ran in a straight line between. From the distant hill, perhaps a mile away, a Union battery was pouring shot and shell into the Confederate lines.
More big guns were coming. Jonathan could see teams of horses dragging field artillery across the turnpike and up the grassy fields of the hill from which they watched, ten guns churning up dust with the big wheels of their carriages and leaving twin lines in the grass as they were hauled along.
“I don’t think this is our day, Jonathan!” Nathaniel shouted over the din.
“Those guns are going to knock hell out of us, once they’re in place!” Jonathan replied.
The Confederate line, such as it was, was backing away from the Union march, backing up the hill toward where Jackson’s men were lying. Some units were retreating in good order, but others were breaking and running for the Confederate lines, desperate to put the hill between themselves and the killing volleys.
The panic was infectious. One by one the units broke and ran, and the Union juggernaut came on, slow and relentless and seemingly unassailable.
“Look there!” Nathaniel said, pointed down the hill. In the wake of the artillery, which was now moving up the hill to a position not 200 feet away, came a regiment of Yankees. Their jackets were blue, but their pants were bright red. Others were clad entirely in brilliant crimson, short jackets and pants that were loose-fitting from the waist right down to where they were drawn in tight by white gaiters.
“Zouaves…damn…” Jonathan said.
The regiment was a thing to behold, a thing of beauty on that field of horrors. Their lines became muddled as they made their way over a rail fence, but once on the other side they reformed with startling symmetry and marched on, uphill, coming in support of the battery.
“They’ll make better targets with them red outfits, anyway,” Nathaniel said.
“I reckon…I reckon it’s time we got out of here.”
They did not take their eyes from the field below, as if the enemy was waiting for them to turn their backs before shooting them. Instead they backed away, crawling backward, and slowly the crest of the hill came up between them and the fight beyond. When at last they could see nothing but sky, they turned and scrambled back to the lines, hunched over, half crawling, half running, until they were once again part of the line of waiting men.
The soldier with whom Jonathan had spoken turned to him now. “You seen the elephant? What’d he look like?”
Jonathan opened his mouth for a flip response, but the image of the dead man, torn apart, swam in front of him. He closed his mouth and shook his head. No words would come.
The soldier nodded. “He gets uglier,” was all he said.
Then with a roar that made Jonathan jump, the Union artillery opened up. The gunfire was from nearly in front of them, but the Yankees were aiming elsewhere, and only the intimidating sound of the blasts threatened the men with whom the Paines had joined.
“Them Yanks brought up some guns, I reckon,” the soldier at Jonathan’s side commented.
“Yes, a dozen or so.” Jonathan was eager to tell this man something that he did not know. “And Zouaves to support them. You should see their red uniforms!”
The soldier smiled. “Pretty uniform don’t make a soldier. I hope for their sake them uniforms is bulletproof.”
An officer came running down the line, waving a sword over his head. “Stand and prepare to fire! Stand and prepare to fire!” he shouted.
The soldier looked over at Jonathan and smiled. “Here we go, boy,” he said, and Jonathan, who thought he would be sick with the thought of standing up in that hail of iron, got some comfort from the words and the calm in the man’s voice.
All along the line, soldiers rose to their feet, shouldered weapons, pawed at the ground with battered shoes.
“I don’t know, Jonathan,” Nathaniel said in a low voice. “I’m so scared, I’m like to shit my pants…”
“Yeah, me too.”
Then from somewhere came the order to advance. Jonathan did not hear it, but suddenly everyone was moving forward, and so was Nathaniel. And he was, too, though he still had not decided whether he would go. They tramped forward to the crest of the hill, over the ground they had just covered on their stomachs. To their left, more men were emerging from the trees and scrub, and before them, terribly, terribly close, the Union battery, with the red-clad Zouaves out in front to protect it from the Southern threat.
The same officer who had ordered them up was back, telling them to halt, which Jonathan did, gladly, and when all the line was stopped the order came to prime.
Jonathan’s hands moved with no thought, so often had he gone through this routine. His right thumb pulled the hammer back to half cock, then he reached for the percussion caps in his pouch, fished one out, pressed it onto the nipple.
“Ready! Aim!”
The gun came up to Jonathan’s shoulder and he sighted down the barrel, was dimly aware of red-clad men swimming at the end of his muzzle.
“Fire!” The word was not all out of the officer’s mouth before Jonathan squeezed the trigger, felt the familiar jar of the butt plate against his shoulder.
The smoke and the noise and the concussion of the whole line firing at once was unlike anything Jonathan could have imagined, the numb calm that he felt now unlike anything he might have guessed at. He was standing up in the flying river of iron, the minie balls and shells screaming past, making their terrible sound, and his arms and hands were performing the manual of arms, and he was hardly aware of any of it.
He felt the paper cartridge in his teeth, tasted the powder as he bit into it and tore off the top, but he was not sure how it had come to be in his mouth. His thoughts, su
ch as they were, revolved around the stunning fact that he had just aimed his rifle at a human being and pulled the trigger. He had tried to kill the man, and he seemed not to care. He was more like a distant observer, watching this young man perform in his first battle, than he was a part of the scene.
His rifle came up again to the firing position, but this time he hesitated and looked at the scene beyond the shining barrel. The smoke was lifting and he could see the line of field guns, but the former military perfection was gone.
There were dead men everywhere, humps of crimson cloth and red legs sprawled out at odd angles and terrified horses and wounded horses screaming, an ungodly sound.
Some of the troops, the Zouaves and the red-pants regiment, were standing to fire, then dropping to their knees to reload. Still more were backing away down the hill, and some actually running, leaving the artillery units unprotected. And still the guns fired, as if they were unaware of the battle among foot soldiers taking place around them.
Jonathan looked to his left. Nathaniel was going through the drill, biting cartridge, pouring powder down the barrel, ramming the ball home.
Someone raised a shout, somewhere down the line, and a ripple of excitement moved through the men and Jonathan checked himself as he put his rifle to his shoulder and looked down the hill. From the woods on the left burst ranks of horsemen, Confederate cavalry, and with sabers flashing in the sun they charged down on the retreating Zouaves.
Jonathan watched, transfixed, as the battle played out just a few hundred feet away, horses prancing and whirling and sabers hacking up and down and the men on foot lunging with bayonets and firing up at riders, knocking them from the saddle. It was a macabre ballet, and the music to accompany it was the crash of artillery, the scream of minie balls, the wail of shells passing overhead.
Jonathan remembered the rifle in his hands. He shouldered the weapon, pointed it in the general direction of the battery, fired. The butt dropped to the ground, his hand found a cartridge.
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