by Tony Roberts
After Pat had been buried, Case returned to find the cavalrymen gone, a black charred pile of something close to the yard and the other eight men sat by the back of the house. It had been roughly repaired but wasn’t likely to hold for very long. Case threw the spade into the barn and faced his men. “Okay, you ready to come back with me to the army, or go your own way?”
Buckley went to open his mouth but Munz stood up, treading heavily on Buckley’s foot. “We’re ready to come with you, Sarge. Ain’t no good stayin’ here when the men are fightin’ for our rights.”
Case looked at Billy who nodded slowly. It seemed they had been discussing things that day, and Buckley had lost the argument. Case smiled and slapped Munz on the shoulder. “Get the men ready; we leave in five minutes for Lynchburg.”
It took them a week to get to where army had camped after returning to Virginia, at a place just north of Richmond called Taylorsville. Captain Skivenham stood staring at their approach, arms on hips, an amazed expression on his face. “What the devil? Sergeant Lonnergan, I thought we’d lost you north of the Potomac! Where the devil have you been?”
“Long story, Captain, involving losing prisoners, being chased all over Maryland and meeting someone called Major Mosby. Heard of him?”
“Mosby?” Skivenham shook Case’s hand warmly. “Yes, some sort of hero in the mold of Jeb! You met him?”
“He saved us. I’ll tell you more once we’ve had some food and rest.”
Skivenham turned and looked at the gathering crowd of men who had come running once they’d heard the rapidly spreading word the nine missing men had returned from the dead. All were surrounded by excitedly chattering men, all wanting to hear of the adventure Case’s squad had endured, and the captain grinned. “Seems your men won’t have much of a chance until they’ve told their versions!”
Case grunted. He was tired, footsore and hungry. “Captain, give me something to eat and I’ll give you mine.”
“Johnny cakes?” Skivenham suggested with a wide smile. He knew Case had no love for the corn cakes but there wasn’t a great deal else to be had at that moment.
“Captain, I could eat the south end of a northbound skunk at this moment in time!”
Skivenham laughed, pleased the burly, reassuring figure of Sergeant Lonnergan had returned. Since the retreat from Gettysburg the men had seemed listless, apathetic. The defeat had been hard to take, but the losses they’d suffered had made things worse and the news that Vicksburg on the Mississippi had fallen to Grant was like a body blow. There was nothing but bad news, it seemed. Now Lonnergan and his men had returned and Skivenham could sense the lifting of the gloom. They looked upon the sergeant as some sort of good luck charm.
They stopped at one of the camp ovens, a wood fire over which hung a square metal sheet. A camp cook was mixing cornmeal with milk and animal fat and poured out the thick mixture onto the sheet. It began sizzling and Case sat down on one of the rough chairs dotted about. Skivenham grabbed another and sat next to him. “The Colonel will want a report, you understand.”
“Who’s colonel now, Captain?”
Skivenham watched the sizzling batter. “Colonel Skinner. The entire regiment took heavy losses at Gettysburg, Sergeant, there aren’t too many of us left.” As the cakes hardened, the cook flipped them off the tray and Case and Skivenham used cloths to hold them to stop their hands being burned. Case gave the Captain a condensed version of what had happened since the night march away from the battlefield.
Finally Skivenham stood up and allowed Case some rest. “I’ll get the quartermaster to set you and your men up some tents. I’ll leave you in peace now; I’ve got to report to the colonel your safe return. Good to see you again, Sergeant.”
Case nodded. “Good to see you again too, sir.” He sat there resting, tired but relieved to be back with the army. Eventually he stirred himself and made his way to the quartermaster who showed him a tent to sleep in. He threw his gun and pack into one corner and unrolled a flat looking set of blankets that had seen better days. Caring not if they had lice, he flopped into the bed and was asleep within seconds.
Camp life restored some semblance of normalcy to Case but he felt less and less part of what was going on, mostly because the people he’d known in Virginia were mostly dead. Only Billy remained. He once again was a mercenary rather than a participating member of a country at war. His attitude became harder, more cold-hearted. Recognizing the war was slipping from the South’s grasp he drilled the men left under him to fight in a more defensive manner, using fixed positions and to cover each other. He trained them to fight in small groups, to be responsible to the others in their group, to rely on their buddies. He also taught them about the rapid withdrawal, how to run and cover, to get out of a position that was being overrun. These skills he knew would be called upon more than once in the months to come.
The year wound down to a close with the two sides facing each other across the Rapidan River with Orange to the south being in Confederate hands, and Culpeper to the north in Union hands. Although the 1st Virginia didn’t see any action, there was plenty of news to keep them sat discussing the war around the fires at night after yet another exhausting day of drill.
General Longstreet was sent west with some of the units from Virginia to help win a costly victory at Chickamauga in Georgia, but this didn’t turn the tide as Confederate armies were pushed out of Tennessee, particularly with the defeat at Chattanooga. Case read reports of how the Union armies had been moved by rail to secure the victory under Grant against Bragg and wondered if this was the future of war; rapid movement by rail rather than footslogging over all kinds of terrain. Grant seemed to be the Union equivalent of Jackson and Lee rolled into one, and maybe he was the one who would finally prove a match for the Army of Northern Virginia.
It wasn’t long into 1864 before orders came to the camp; they were to move off, destination unknown. They packed up, not knowing if they would ever return to the camp, so they took every possession of value they had, and headed for the railway where their transport awaited them.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
They were arranged in units, standing before Colonel Skinner. The other regiments of the 1st Virginia were arranged similarly around the camp parade ground at Goldsboro in North Carolina where they had come. Colonel Skinner, a huge man, faced the waiting men in the snow. With him were the other officers of the regiment. The snow was particularly thick that winter and the men had made beds from the boughs of the surrounding pine trees.
“Men of the 1st Virginia,” Skinner began, his breath clouding before him, “here we are again at the start of a new year, and once more your nation is asking you to make sacrifices for its survival against the aggression of the Union forces. I know you all have suffered much in the past couple of years but nobody can doubt your courage and determination in defending your homes against the invaders. I therefore ask you all to re-enlist for another year, and who knows God may smile down on us and bring us victory.”
Case rather thought God had given up long ago on the whole thing and left man to decide these petty squabbles. Still, he felt it best to fight in the army rather than be at the Union’s mercy elsewhere. He stepped forward smartly, somewhat at variance with the ragged state of his uniform, and stood well forward of the line of men. He was aware Munz had joined him, and, slowly, the others came forward, some more reluctant than the rest. But eventually everyone had stepped forward and stood closer to the line of officers.
Skinner smiled warmly and nodded. “Thank you all, nobody could possibly have finer men to command.” The parade broke up and the men returned to their cold tents and sat inside. Case had a tent to himself but the others normally were anywhere between two to six to one tent, depending on its size. After a few moments Case decided sitting in a cold tent was not to his liking and he made his way to the big camp fire where the day’s rations were being prepared. Once again it looked like mule meat, the combination of corn meal and pork with pork fat. I
t was tough as boots, which was why the men called it ‘mule meat’. Case grimaced and sat warming his hands on the crackling fire. He heard footfalls crunching through the show and turned to see Billy standing there, hands in pockets. Case waved for the young man to sit down. “Something on your mind, Billy?”
“Yeah.” Billy sat staring at the fire, thinking deeply. Finally he spoke. “Is it true we’re fighting just to keep slavery, Uncle Case?”
Case looked at Billy. Whenever he called him by his civilian name, it was serious. “I’m not, you’re not, and I’m sure most of the boys here aren’t. But that’s how the Union see it, or at least, how they want everyone else to see it. They’ve frightened off England and France from recognizing the Confederacy and now they’re seen as having the higher moral ground. ‘Crush the south; they’re nothing but slavers’.”
“So why are we still fighting? Why don’t we all just stop?”
Case smiled, but it didn’t reach his eyes. “To prove a point? To show the Union we’re entitled to make our own choices? Who knows. As for myself, I’m here to fight for money as well as for the right of Virginia to determine its own destiny. It looks like I’m going to end up on the losing side, but that’s the way the luck goes.”
“I just feel dirty about fighting to keep slavery. Some of the others do too.”
Case nodded. “If it was just about that then I don’t think most of us would have taken up the fight. In the beginning we were fighting to determine our own destiny; okay, it was over the slavery thing, but nearly all of us here in this army have never owned a slave, and probably never would! We’re in it to argue that each state has a right to its own self-determination, not to bow to a dictatorial Union. After all, the United States constitution allows for it. But when the crunch came, the Union found it couldn’t abide by the constitution if it meant keeping the Union intact.”
“But that’s all just small points of view, isn’t it, Uncle Case? I mean, what’s really at stake is slavery.” Billy shivered and warmed his hands, staring deep into the flames. “I’m tired of this war. I want to go back to the land, at the farm at Lynchburg and have Rosie with me. I’ve lost my family; only Mom’s left and she’s crazy. And now you’re talking about quitting when this is all over.”
“Yeah. Time for me to move on, Billy. Time for you to live your own life. Once this thing’s all over you’ll have plenty to occupy yourself without worrying about me or anything outside Lynchburg. It’ll be tough, that’s for sure. I won’t hang around under the armed force of a victorious enemy. They won’t trust anyone who fought in the Confederate army, that’s certain.” Case shifted his position, easing his buttocks. “I’d prefer to strike out west where things won’t be so strict. Who knows, after a few years things might be better.”
Billy nodded. “Where d’you think we’ll be sent next? The boys are talking about the Mississippi. Things are real bad there.”
“Lee’s stripped this line as much as he dare. We’re outnumbered everywhere, but he’s a Virginian; he won’t weaken this theater if he can help it. I think we’ll be sent north again once the campaigning season gets under way. What we’re doing here in North Carolina beats me. The only thing I can think of is we’re here to support the forces bottling up Yankee on the coast.”
Billy sucked on his lower lip. He felt torn; the army was really his family now, but he wanted to return home and leave the death and dirt and hunger and fear behind. It was the uncertainty of it all that got to him. “Do you think Rosie will want to come to the farm after the war?”
“Oh yes,” Case nodded, “I saw how taken with you she was. And you saw what Yankee did to Fredericksburg while they were there. The town is a shell; she won’t want to stay there any longer than she has to. So I bet she’s waiting for you to come take her away from there. Why don’t you write to her? Tell her your hopes for the future. That’s what she’ll want to read rather than what the army is doing!”
Billy looked up and saw case was being serious. “You mean it?”
“Go on, kid, stop moping and start writing!” Case pushed Billy’s head and grinned. Billy stood up. “Thanks – Sarge,” he added with a cheeky smile.
“Nothing to it - Private.” Case shook his head and returned to his thoughts. They weren’t comforting, but he had a job to do and as long as the army existed, he’d stick to it. He was a professional and prided himself on that. He wasn’t a quitter and he had no intention of quitting just because things were getting awkward.
A few weeks later they were sent south by rail to Wilmington and then went by boat up the Cape Fear River. Foraging was hard there; the army rations were even looked forward to, it was that bad. They made their way to Tarboro and eventually by the 10th of April they came marching up to a system of dugouts and shallow holes dug by the besieging army outside the port of Plymouth. Plymouth was on the south bank of the wide Roanoke River which at this point emptied into the muddy expanses of the Albermarle Sound which in turn a few miles to the east met the Atlantic.
The Union had occupied the town back in 1862 and used it as a base to launch raids deep into North Carolina. With Lee’s army depending on the railroad running north into Virginia not too far away, and Union attempts to cut this railroad, Lee had finally ordered Brigadier General Robert F. Hoke to take Plymouth, lending him five regiments of Virginian infantry together with eight North Carolinian and one Georgian. In all, he had 13,000 men surrounding 3,000.
Case leaned out from his dugout and studied the Federal defenses. They were formidable. There were plenty of cannons within the defense perimeter and the defenders had built a series of chevaux-de-frise, trees that had been cut down and their branches whittled to wicked looking points, pointing outwards. In front of this they had even dug a moat, reminding Case of the many times he’d either been in or been attacking a castle in ages gone by.
“Hard to get past that,” Furlong commented from his prone position next to Case, his lean, intelligent face masking whatever emotion he was feeling. “We’d be blown to pieces trying to hack through that.”
“Agreed. I hope the Brigadier General has a plan to avoid us getting impaled on those trees.”
Furlong slid back off the crest of the earthworks and sat in the trench, hungrily attacking his bacon and cornmeal rations. Case leaned against the side of the trench and looked down at the bespectacled soldier. “You really going to be a lawyer?”
Furlong paused and nodded. “I was going to study more law before the war got in the way. I would have become one by now. No matter, once this ends I’ll go back to studying and hope to pass in two years or so.”
Case smiled and shook his head, looking back out over the swept ground before the Plymouth defenses. Furlong caught the gesture and looked up. “What?”
“Odd feeling, having a lawyer fighting in a war alongside me. Normally I avoid them. This isn’t what I’d call lawyer territory.”
Furlong shrugged. “I’m not a lawyer yet, but bear in mind many of our officers were practicing law before the war. Nothing wrong in that. You make it sound like practicing law is a crime.”
“Some lawyers I’ve met are criminals,” Case grunted. “Scoundrels. I hope you don’t turn out like them!”
Furlong smiled. “You get good and bad in every profession. You say you’re a professional soldier. Well, can you say every soldier is good?”
Case turned round. “Oh hell, no! Some of the bastards deserved the horrible deaths they got, but I get your meaning. I must’ve been unlucky in meeting the dodgy lawyers I have in that case. I just don’t like the way they twist meanings to suit their ends, even when they stand for the wrong side.”
“Some would say we’re fighting for the ‘wrong side’,” Furlong said, his voice even. “Does that make us bad people?”
“Now you’re sounding like a lawyer,” Case growled and looked at the slim, long-faced man. He’d allowed a thin beard to grow over his chin and cheeks in the past year or so, but it wasn’t thick like some. “No,
again most of the guys in this army are good people.”
“Then why fight for something like slavery? Good people surely wouldn’t.”
“Randy, you and I know why we’re fighting this damned war.”
Furlong slipped a knot of bacon into his mouth and chewed. He thought for a moment, swallowed and pointed over the rim of the earthwork. “They would say we’re bad people.”
“They do. And from experience those who win a war write the history.” Case pushed back his hat. “And we’ll be demonized. How will you regard it post war as a lawyer?”
Furlong smiled. “If people from Virginia are accused of bad things, they’ll need a lawyer to fight their cause, and a lawyer who has had experience in the war will have a greater understanding of what he’s having to argue in a Court of Law.”
“You’ve got a point there Randy. Promise me something, will you?”
“What?”
Case looked deep into Furlong’s eyes. “If Billy ever gets into trouble over this, take up his cause. You promise me that?”
Furlong wiped his mouth and smacked his lips. “Least I can do, Sarge. We’ll need good friends after the war, whether we win or lose.”
The rest of the day they stood in their trenches and watched the enemy lines. The next day began with the guns from the town opening up and blasting away at the surrounding troops, and then up the river came a number of ships, all bristling with cannon, adding to the bombardment. Shells screamed overhead and exploded against the trees and earthworks, throwing up huge gouts of dirt, mud and shattered trees. Case and his men ducked for cover and cowered while all hell broke loose around them.