Call Each River Jordan

by Ralph Peters (as Owen Parry)

  CALL EACH

  RIVER JORDAN

  Owen Parry

  [Ralph Peters]

  STACKPOLE

  BOOKS

  Books by Ralph Peters

  Nonfiction

  Lines of Fire

  Endless War

  Looking for Trouble

  Wars of Blood and Faith

  New Glory

  Never Quit the Fight

  Beyond Baghdad

  Beyond Terror

  Fighting for the Future

  Fiction

  Cain at Gettysburg

  The Officer’s Club

  The War After Armageddon

  Traitor

  The Devil’s Garden

  Twilight of Heroes

  The Perfect Soldier

  Flames of Heaven

  The War in 2020

  Red Army

  Bravo Romeo

  Writing as Owen Parry

  Faded Coat of Blue

  Shadows of Glory

  Bold Sons of Erin

  Honor’s Kingdom

  Rebels of Babylon

  Our Simple Gifts

  Strike the Harp

  Copyright © 2001 by Owen Parry

  Published by

  STACKPOLE BOOKS

  5067 Ritter Road

  Mechanicsburg, PA 17055

  www.stackpolebooks.com

  All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book or portions thereof in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher. All inquiries should be addressed to Stackpole Books, 5067 Ritter Road, Mechanicsburg, Pennsylvania 17055.

  Printed in the United States

  10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

  Cover photo courtesy of the Library of Congress, reproduction number LC-USZ62-49371

  Cover design by Tessa Sweigert

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Parry, Owen.

  Call each river Jordan / Owen Parry.

  p. cm.

  ISBN-13: 978-0-8117-1135-7 (pbk.)

  ISBN-10: 0-8117-1135-8 (pbk.)

  1. United States—History—Civil War, 1861–1865—Fiction. 2. Welsh—United States—Fiction. 3. Slavery—Fiction. I. Title.

  PS3566.E7559C35 2012

  813'.54—dc23

  2012003811

  eBook ISBN: 978-0-8117-4856-8

  For Katherine,

  my believer

  John Brown’s body lies a-mold’ring in the grave,

  His soul is marching on. . . .

  —Union anthem

  ONE

  I REMEMBER THE BURNING MEN. WOUNDED, AND caught like the damned at the reckoning. In brush and bramble lit by battle’s sparks. They cried for help or death, for wives and mothers. Some begged God’s mercy, while their fellows cursed. They smelled sweet. It is a scent no man forgets, once it has filled his nose. The fragrance of the pyre. The flames crept up and over stranded souls. Turning men into a twist of fire. Wild hands withered black. Uniforms burn quicker than the flesh, but hair blazes. Boys wore crowns of flame. That day I understood the pain of martyrs.

  They burned in a poor-struck land, above a river. I have known many rivers. And many burnings. The heathen roasts the living wife along with her dead master. And when they burned the niggers dead of cholera, in great piles, you would have thought the heavens scorched with sugar. The Hindoo and the Musselman burned, and here and there a Christian gone astray. A rancid sweetness will connote the damned. It clings.

  That muddy river made me think of India. But this was in America, and now, and white men burned.

  I saw them in the smoke but yards away each time I shouldered up to aim and shoot. Those hit in the legs crawled on their elbows, but could not get beyond the spreading flames. Some raised themselves enough to catch a ball. I fired and bent to load and heard their screams.

  A man beside me rose to make a rescue. I yanked him down. Another boy in blue, torn by the cries, ran out to help. Ignoring my command. He fell to no effect, and burned himself. In that storm of lead and hate and heat. I gave them the devil then, the lads I had gathered from the ruins of a dozen regiments, and hoped they heard me through the crash of battle. I shouted that their duty was to fight, and damn the rest.

  Thus I became a judge of life and death. For battle has to do with here and now, and I would waste no life where no hope lay. That is the soldier in me, a dreadful thing. I shall need much forgiveness. But let that bide.

  The men in gray and rags rushed on and fell. Embers of spent wadding spread the fires. The damned in Hell will sound like burning boys. Our boys and theirs. For that is war. There was no succor, and death gleaned those who stood in the wrath of the day. If I shrieked in your ear in your safe parlor, it would mean little, for no art tells the agony of such. My words are shreds of nothing. Those men between the lines died hard and lonely. As lonely as Christ. I had heard screams before, of course, of brown men and of wounded friends in scarlet or in khaki, but never knew a chorus such as this. Dozens burned alive. Dozens and tens of dozens. A multitude. Crying.

  And that was Shiloh.

  THEY COULD NOT BUDGE US so they brought up guns. I heard the horses first, the whinnies of the teams. Then came the harsh commands and grump of muzzles, the sharp report of powder packed and lit. I could not see the cannon for the smoke. But branches broke and fell about our legs, and splinters killed. I thought I heard the bark of Whitworths in battery, recalling sepoys maddened with rebellion.

  In all my years of marching, fear marched with me. But there is a fear that vanquishes itself, and makes of man a brutal, killing beast.

  The cannoneers lowered their aim. Blasting through our feeble scraps of cover.

  We were a pack of shrunken regiments, of companies pared down to ten and less. I knew no names, and pennants there were none. Any flag raised up fell back again. Men lay close, almost atop one another, dying by strangers. I worked my rifle like a common soldier.

  The Rebels used the trees. Feeling for a gap beyond our flank. And they would find one. For never was a battle more confused. A broken army fought a breaking one. All combat is a boiling stew of chaos. But this fight was disordered through and through.

  I should have been away from all such doings, as safe as this, our fragile life, allows. I meant to disembark five miles downriver, at General Grant’s headquarters. I was no longer called to fields of battle. Not since my misfortune at Bull Run. No, I had come upon a criminal matter, at Washington’s alarm. Twas murder of a sort so sensitive that telegraphic code would not suffice to tell the half of what I needed to know. They only said it was an urgent crime that might disturb the nation and our cause.

  Dear God, what crime is greater than a war?

  The steamboat that carried me docked at the breakfast hour. Below a town set on the eastern bluff. A high, white house shone above a cloud of tents. That would be headquarters, and no question. For generals do not like to sleep in shanties. But the mansion was no happy place that morning.

  Staff men on the bluff stared south and pointed. Ignoring my vessel’s arrival, with its whistle, bulk and smoke. I had heard guns along the Tennessee and knew a scrap had gotten underway. I was dismayed, for this was on a Sunday, and that was brazen insult to the Lord. But now I saw the matter was not planned.

  Oh, not by us.

  Upon the mansion’s sloping lawn, an officer too stout to be less than a colonel cursed to astound. Profanity may be weakness, but his oaths roared above the grumbling boilers, above the splashing wheels and creak of ropes. You would have heard that fellow in a battle, but now his wind was wasted on his peers
. A signals man waved madly from a roof.

  I took my Colt and left my bag and jumped into a smaller boat just parting. Heading toward the fight. That is where an officer must go, see. No matter what his task on other days. I had naught else but purse and pocket Testament, a thing of solace indispensable, and last the orders folded in my pocket. I leaned upon my cane, skin all a-prickle, nose toward the clapping of the guns.

  The gentlemen aboard paid me no mind, for I am not impressive at a glance. And they had other matters on their minds.

  “There’s going to be hell to pay,” an unshaven major declared, repeating it over and over. “There’s just going to be hell to pay . . .”

  I half thought they would paddle with their hands. To reach the field of death a little sooner. They were distraught and heedless, if well-meaning. Surprise is hard in war, and good men fail.

  It took me back, unwilling, to the Mutiny, and desperate days when time was scarce as powder. Urgent and shocked, we marched on bloody Delhi. Slogging through hot nights, because the sun killed white men in a hurry. With sepoys and sowars grim to our front, and cholera in our baggage. I remembered Molloy singing, to mask the groans of sick men in the wagons, and the corpses blue by morning, and black before we got them in their graves. I was a sergeant then, and should have shut him up to show respect. For there were officers among the sick. But I was hard, and hummed along myself. Our jokes grew cruel. We were glad of the fight when it come, and showed the poor buggers no mercy. When they tried to surrender, we gave them our steel, and washed the Subzeeh Mundee with their blood. Of course, we kept their holy men for hanging. Whenever we had rope.

  Memory is the curse of Cain and soldiers.

  They called our destination Pittsburg Landing. But no name tells the shame of what we found. We washed down the cool of the river, with the current brown and quick and spiked with branches. Blossoms pinked the bluffs. The sun was up all lovely, I remember, as befits a proper April Sunday. But nature is a harlot in her beauty.

  Have you ever seen a side of beef all maggots? A crawling thing, fit to turn the gut? That was our welcome on the riverbank.

  The western shoreline festered. With cowards. Thousands had sought refuge by the water. They crammed the little space below the bluff. A shameful swarm of blue they made, speckled with the red of undergarments and shirts billowing like flags of surrender. Runaways and skulkers to a man. Cringing in the mud. Never had I seen such a filthy quitting. Even natives fight to save themselves.

  Bull Run was a triumph by compare.

  It looked as if our army had dissolved. Yet cannon sounded thick beyond the landing. A fight there was, a real one, some miles distant.

  We put in to shouts of disaster and warnings of enemy legions. Our generals were dead, deserters cried, and the Rebels took no prisoners. But that was tosh. Americans had no stomach for a massacre, and I prayed they never would gain one. Surrendering was honored, more or less. The meanness comes when skins have different colors. Then men will kill and think it worth the sweat.

  The sailor folk raised axes, clubs and pistols to keep our boat from being overrun. Men, half-naked, splashed into the river. As if it were the Jordan. A few swam out in the muddy stream, then disappeared, unable to cross over. Men begged and offered gold to come on board. A lieutenant colonel, splashing in an eddy, wailed that his brother was a Congress fellow, insisting that his life must be protected. He offered up his watch-chain, then the watch.

  Now I have seen fear, and felt it, but there is no greater danger for an army than panic. No plague spreads so fast, or kills so surely. In battle, he survives who stands and fights. The man who runs will be cut down and slain. But we are not creatures of sense, and cannot be told. That is why a soldier must be trained. For running is the impulse of our hearts.

  That day they ran, the good men after bad. I felt the shock and wonder of my boatmates, for they were young and green as Gwent themselves. Bleating like lambs in their newness. Well, they would learn what war was soon enough.

  I jumped down in the muck and started marching. Limping up the bluff, with cane and pistol, an angry little man whose back was up. But misery loves company, there is true. More than one man clutched me by the arm, swearing, “Major, they’ll kill you dead, if’n you go up there . . . sure as the devil, they’ll kill you dead.” To hear them tell it all was lost that morning. With no hope of redemption on the field. But I had been a sergeant and knew better. And now I was a major full of hopes. No battle is lost as long as one man stands.

  And I was shamed. For I had taken this Union to my heart. More fully than we should love mortal things. I loved its promise of a better life, its goodness to the man who strived, its fairness and its hope, if yet imperfect. Our country took me in when I had fallen, and though I hated war I knew my debt. And there was pride mixed in, the pride of man. I am no gentleman when it comes to losing. Oh, I was hot.

  A thousand cowards make a mournful sound. In Bible verse they call it lamentation. It is ignoble, and desperate, and rude to the ear. They might have been the ravished folk of Egypt, those fellows gathered witless by the bank.

  Rifles lost and even shoes abandoned. Playing cards and papers strewn about. Pipes cast down. All trampled underfoot. Clean new greenback dollars sailed the breeze and frightened men ignored the dancing money. The earth stank of defeat and bad latrines.

  The men behind the bluff had turned to cattle. A single company of Rebels might have taken them all. And not one would have lifted a finger to save himself. Now, you will say, “That is a lie, and foolish. A thousand will not give way to a hundred.” But you have not seen men as I have seen them. Paralyzed by terror, cripple-souled.

  A man with half his teeth laughed as I went. “They’ll gobble that little pecker right up,” he said. Those hiding in the ditch beside him laughed. One even hurled a stone and struck my back. Men in their shame are desperate, little things.

  You would have thought the day was lost, indeed. Streams of men flowed back toward the river, as if the season rained them on the earth. Oh, how they ran. But I am an old bayonet and a veteran of John Company’s fusses, and I listened past their wailing and complaints. The sound of guns and musketry come mighty over the land. For each who fled, at least one stood and fought. There was a battle not yet lost entire.

  Men do not see when they are full of fear. They stumbled into me. As if I were but air. Blocked, they stared. Amazed to find themselves in human contact. Then they dropped their eyes and shook and fled. Men and boys. An officer in a uniform of beauty, a captain with a golden sash, ran off. Pursued by devils. And when the officers run, you cannot expect the other ranks to stand. God forgive me, I almost shot him down upon the spot.

  But I would have killing enough.

  A battery of ours charged through the runaways, shouts and hooves and whips and wheels and dust. Chains chimed under the carriages, and a dangling bucket banged. The gunners rode toward the fray, God bless them. Running down the stragglers in their path. Twas the first bit of sense I encountered. And though I had hard memories of caissons, my heart filled with a malice near to joy. I cheered the cannon on and followed after.

  I walked a sorry mile to find the battle, bad leg sore but willing. My cane gored Southron earth beneath the dust. Tents ranked neat stood empty but for looters, hard men dumping bags and chests and field desks. Stealing from their comrades without shame. Even in a battle you hear glass break. It is the pitch, soprano, sharp and thin. Letters strewn about dishonored sweethearts, laying bare the secret thoughts of wives. A cook stood over his kettle with a rifle, as if his troops had just stepped off to drill and he must feed them all on their return. Bugle calls broke off before they finished, and drums beat contrary orders. April flies, oblivious, swarmed and balled.

  Closing on the fight my hopes were bolstered. Regiments in order hastened up, jingling as they tramped across the fields. Aroused from rearward camps, they surged expectant, pointed on by officers with swords. Voices strained to command, and blue
caps lifted while men wiped their sweat. Couriers galloped in between the groves. Lieutenants with red stripes upon their trousers searched out strong positions for their guns, crashing through the brush on nervous horses. The wounded limped along, those who could walk, helped by comrades glad to quit the line.

  I saw few dead at first. Just those torn ragged by an errant shell, or bled to death of wounds as they strained rearward. They lay beside the roads and in the fields. In daunting stillness.

  A sutler’s wagon, looted, filled a ditch. With naughty pictures scattered in the weeds amid discarded bottles of camp remedies.

  And vexed I was with fears for my old friend, Dr. Mick Tyrone, who served somewhere upon that wretched field. Good it is to have friends near in battle, where you can feel their shoulders against yours. Then you imagine that you will protect them, as they will you. But the friend in another regiment, the comrade out of sight, excites your worry.

  A boy with a rifle as big as himself approached me.

  “Major,” he begged, “d’you know where the 11th Ioway’s gone to? D’you know the 11th Ioway? You seen ’em?” A child he was, afraid to be caught truant.

  I did not know and told him that. But then I thought me better.

  “Come along, lad,” I said. “We’ll find a fight, if not your regiment.”

  And so I began to do what I long should have been doing. Rallying those who would heed me. Grabbing boys and turning them around. Snatching rifles from the dust and weeds and slapping them into their hands. Shaming them with looks as much as words. Not all were skulkers, see. Many were but confused. Left by their leaders, scattered from their comrades.

  “Damn you,” I said to a sergeant, for I was one who valued every stripe. “Damn you, get up and help me, man.” Ready I was to drag him by the beard. But he got up himself, come to his senses.

  Some who listened died for it that day. Leaving wives and children hard bereft. That is the soldier’s lot. All those who slight the soldier do not know what he endures while they are safe at home. Why did they follow? I had a major’s shoulderboards. And a sergeant’s growl. Men only want their orders spoken clear.