St. Patrick Battalion

by JAMES ALEXANDER Thom

  Harney was Irish himself, but one like those I spoke of, the third generation in America, and so he was especially vicious to the immigrants. The littlest offense and he’d lay on with the flat of his saber. Very severe that is, if you’ve ever felt it. Once in Missouri he’d beaten a poor slave woman to death, it was said because she resisted him. But for his acquaintance with President Jackson, that would have been the end of his Army career.

  I myself saw enough to make me believe the rumor about that poor slave woman. In the swamps our soldiers often caught Indian women and girls. Harney had a special lust for any dark-skinned damsels, and the power to do with them as he pleased. And sure he would demonstrate the contempt he had for Indians.

  There was one morning outside his tent the awful sight of a naked Indian girl, bruised all over. Her mouth and cunt were bloody and fly-blowed. She had been strung up unconscious by her thumbs from a tree limb.

  Being as we were in conflict with Indians, the soldiers passed many a fearful night, near smoky campfires to baffle the plagues of mosquitoes and listening for splashes and rustlings out in the darkness, whispering of the stealth and the murderous skills of the savages. The cunning of the Seminole Osceola put me in mind of legends I’d heard of Chief Tecumseh up north. Already at that age I’d gotten good at cadging at least one dram of a soldier’s daily rum or whiskey ration. One night I got giddy on it and started telling some of the soldiers how I had used to get lashed with a razor strop made of what but Chief Tecumseh’s own hide. Plied for more fact by those side-squinting soldiers, I told them the truth as I knew it, that my father had killed and flayed Tecumseh. Thereupon an old veteran, a sergeant, winked at me and asked, “Would ye mind tellin’ to me, Quinn lad, how come I never heard that the great chief was killed by somebody named Quinn, which I should have, as I was in that battle?” “Well, see, Sergeant,” said I, too besotted or slow to think it out, “my father’s name wasn’t Quinn.” The laughter that rose up, I was afraid it would attract every Seminole that lurked in the Everglades. And when he asked me what was my father’s name if not Quinn, I was embarrassed bad, wishing I’d never said anything, for how could I say to a circle of rogues like them that I didn’t know my own father’s name? I thought as fast as I could. I remembered the jingle I’d heard in Michigan:

  Rumsey dumsey! Rumsey dumsey!

  Richard Johnson killed Tecumsey!

  And I said, “My father’s name was Johnson.” For all I knew of it, that was as good a guess as any.

  The sergeant’s eyes gleamed like a devil’s then, and he sucked the stem of his dudeen pipe twice before saying in a tone of theatrical lewdness, “Oho, then! So ’twas Colonel Johnson that knocked up Quinn the washerwoman! Ha! An old mystery resolved! Well, lad, if . . .”

  They say I attacked him then, though I don’t remember just what I did. A hellish light flared in my head. Later I was wakened by one of those maniac swampfowl calls and found myself alone, lying near the campfire embers with my face in my own puke and drool, and daybreak just beginning to pale the swamp.

  I hoped that would be the end of it. But the next evening I was summoned to another gathering at the same campfire. The sergeant sat there with his dram, and as far as I could see, my assault had not left a mark on him. Beside him, one on each side, sat a pair of veterans, a private and a corporal who were the oldest soldiers in Harney’s unit. There also was a young private who hadn’t sat in the group the night before.

  “Lad,” the sergeant began, “ye jumped on me last night like a rabid bobcat, set to kill. Now I want ye t’ say y’r sorry for that.”

  That did get me hot again. “By God never!” said I. “You insulted my poor faraway mother, and if I could get a sword I’d put it through your guts!”

  “Only if I allowed it, and I’d not,” he said. “Rather, I make you a gents’ bargain right here and now: Apologize to me, and I’ll apologize to you about what I said. And then you and me, we’ll drink to that. I shall provide th’ rum. And more than just a dram. I’ve on hand here more rum than ye can hold. I should be intrigued t’ see how much it’d take to slake y’r thirst, Quinn lad. Not much, I’ll wager, as one little dram turned ye into a banshee last evenin’. I thought Irishmen could hold it better, but o’ course, y’r not really no Irish man yet.”

  They all laughed. They were having a lark at my expense, and I knew that whether I accepted or not, whichever way it went I would be their goat. Maybe I should say their kid.

  So then we traded our apologies. I shook his rough and filthy hand, and accepted the cup of grog he handed me over the fire. In a still moment as we sipped and nodded, looking into each other’s eyes, I recall there were two cries I heard not far away in the night. One was some sort of owl, sounding like a child talking in a foreign language. The other was a girl’s voice sobbing and protesting pain. I knew, we all knew, it came from the tent of old Horny Harney, our commander. He had in there a waif of a Seminole girl the scouts had drug in from a fish camp, she being not more than a year or so above my age. To be plain about it, Harney was ravishing a child. Again. It was right unsettling to glance about at the faces of the soldiers around our fire, all of them knowing what their “superior” was up to, and sure I suspect every bedamned one of them both condemning and envying him at once. I had seen the worst of his men go after his leavings. I had seen them drag off some half-dead girl and line up to get on her.

  But the sergeant and the newcomers to our fire circle plainly had an issue with me, and I’d been summoned for that. The sergeant forthwith turned to the toothless corporal beside him, who resembled a twisted length of beef jerky, and said to him:

  “Mister Barton, this fine lad regaled us all with a yarn last evenin’ that I thought would prick up y’r ears, since you was at the place and time that it happent. Quinn, lad, tell Corporal Barton here about that razor strop y’r pa had. Corporal Barton, y’see, lad, was there in Colonel Johnson’s Mounted Kentucky Rifles at the battle where Tecumsey was kilt and skinned.”

  The grog wasn’t diluted hardly at all, and I was half sotted even before I started retelling the story. When I’d finished, the old corporal and the other two were laughing and tilting their heads toward each other. The old corporal said to me, then:

  “M’boy, listen. Of all the soldiers in that battle, I reckon half went home with strips o’ redskin hide they peeled off the dead Injens lyin’ about. And I further reckon that about every one of them soldiers bragged at home that his trophy come right off Chief Tecumsey hisself. They must have been an acre o’ skin carried off that bloody place. As big as ol’ Chief Tecumsey was, he wan’t that big! Here by me sits Private Grainer, who was in that battle, too. He used to wear a hatband, didn’t ye, Lloyd, that he believed was a strip off the chief’s thigh. He bought it off one of Johnson’s lieutenants for a month’s wages. Lieutenant swore that it was off the chief.”

  The man named Grainer nodded, sneered, said: “Later I heard that popinjay lieutenant brag all drunk that he’d made four hunnerd dollars off selling the skin of one dead Injen to ’bout forty innocent soldiers like me who’d not got near where th’ action was at.” He spat into the fire and wiped his nose on his shirt cuff, which from the looks of it had been his snotrag since the War of 1812.

  Corporal Barton said, “Lloyd meant to go home and show off his Tecumsey hatband, but all he could claim was, it was some mis’ble savage kilt that day. Right, Lloyd?”

  “I admit. Hell, I could of said it was Tecumsey. Who’d a knowed? But I never was no liar, so I didn’t.”

  My head by then was bullroaring from the grog, but I was sensible enough to see that the only grand myth I’d ever had a hand on had been yanked out from under me.

  With the insult to my Ma still rankling down in me, that made me feel lowly and glum, instead of the way liquorous spirits are supposed to make one feel. It was just then that the young private on the other side of the fire, maybe eighteen years with a red, round face and a pouty underlip that stuck out as far as his e
ars, pointed at me with his grog cup and said:

  “Boy, y’ ain’t the only one ever whupped with a Tecumsey hide. My Pa come home from that same battle with a long brown strip o’ leather like that, he glued it on one side of a cutoff oar blade, an’ when he paddled us with it, he’d always tell us it was Tecumsey’s Vengeance, so as no generation of palefaces would ever fergit how mad he was at us all. Well, I used t’ believe Tecumsey’s skin had stung mine, just like you thought, till Lloyd and Corporal Barton told me the truth. Fact is, the Shawnee themselves, after they got tamed, always said old Chief Tecumsey never got skinned nohow, on account o’ his braves carried his body off the battleground before the skinnin’ started! It just shows, anybody’ll lie to ye, even your own kin, to biggen ’emself in a war story. But stories like them git found out.”

  My head was spinning and roaring so much by then that I wouldn’t have been able to reply even if I could have thought of what to say, and the last thing I remember of that evening was him saying that he aimed to cut the whole hide off of some Seminole chief, but if he didn’t get to, he’d take home any old piece of leather, even raccoon or alligator, or one of those Indian wenches Harney hung out to dry in the mornings, or if nothing else he’d skin an Irish camp boy and take the pelt home as a trophy from this goddamned swamp war.

  Well, menacing as that threat was, it just managed to hang in my memory. But the rest is, mercifully, oblivion. I say “mercifully” because, upon waking from my rum stupor sometime before daylight in the bilge of a pirogue, I hurt so badly at both ends that I knew that those authorities on the flaying of Tecumseh had, one or all, used a besotted camp boy as shamefully as they’d have used a girlchild of the Seminoles and Mikosukees. It is one of the hazards of being a camp boy, and a good reason for a lad not to get fond of liquor. But I am fond of liquor, I’ll admit that. I have a weakness for it.

  Well, that was a tale of glory from the Seminole War!

  I do mean to keep a journal in Mexico. A journal is supposed to tell of a day at a time. Jour in French is Day. But I wanted to write about myself before the beginning of my diary, and what I just wrote, that was it. So I have begun to write of myself, instead of just writing for illiterate soldiers. Sure and that’s worth doing, too!

  Best things I know are writing and drawing. I’d as soon have a big, new piece of paper as a dram. Ma always saw to it I had a pencil. I drew before I could write. I’m content when I have a pen or pencil, or a stick of charcoal in my hand, and I practice and copy good writing and drawing. I gather up the newspapers and magazines that the officers have finished, and I study them, hoping I can learn how to tell stories so you can hear what people say to each other, with the quotation marks. I found stories by someone named E. A. Poe in newspapers and magazines. I would like to be able to write as he does so that a reader sees a picture in his mind instead of the letters and words on the page.

  It seems that Mr. Poe doesn’t illustrate his own stories. I expect I can do that, if I keep practicing. To go with what I wrote here’s a pencil portrait of old Corporal Barton.

  This Army soon loads on ships here at New Orleans to be transported to the Texas Coast. Gen. Zachary Taylor will command. The amount of equipment going onto the sailing ships and steamers is past imagining. The Seminole War was little compared with this.

  What I’ll miss of New Orleans is there are books and papers and magazines here from everywhere. Most of what I know about this Army going to Mexico I read in the newspapers. One thing is, not everybody agrees it’s a good thing to do. But I guess a President can start a war if he wants to.

  Now that I look this over, I think my Ma would be proud that she made me learn to read and write. Sure and I ought to let her see how good I’ve got at it. I should also let her know what I’ve been doing since I ran off from Michigan.

  I think I should write her a letter, maybe copy some from this, but leave out parts that might vex her. I’ll send it to the last place she was in Michigan. The Army up there should be able to find her. If she’s still alive. If she’s still around the Army.

  Writing this has felt like a Confession. Confession is necessary for the soul. I’ll feel better if I write to her. I should have a long time ago. I guess I was afraid she’d be too mad that I ran off.

  A body does owe his Ma that much, the news that he’s still alive. What good is writing if it doesn’t tell somebody what they’d want to know?

  PADRAIC QUINN

  New Orleans

  CHAPTER II

  PADRAIC QUINN’S DIARY

  Corpus Christi Bay Nueces River Sept. 1845

  PADRAIC QUINN, BEGINNING my diary—

  This camp is Purgatory: sand, wind, bracky water. We’re on a desolation of grit and grass. Rancid pork bacon and wormy biscuit to eat, bowels boiling, even seagulls shit more solid than we do.

  I thought Florida was a prickly, vermin-ridden Inferno. At least it had some shade! Not a tree or bush here from one horizon to the other. The drill field is about two hundred acres. When the sun shines the field is like a hot skillet.

  Officers here as bad as Old Harney, but in a different way: fresh from West Point, imagine themselves Napoleons. To them, soldiering means strutting. Drill all day, every day. They’re like shepherd dogs yapping to make their herds of soldiers turn this way and that. They go berserk if they see a food stain on a soldier’s coat, and will punish him all day for it. Sloppiest soldier in the whole army is Gen. Zachary Taylor, but of course they can’t punish their commander.

  Taylor a famous old Indian fighter, looks like the town drunk, dresses like a trail drifter. Nickname is Old Rough & Ready.

  Fronting the drill field the camp is rows of little white tents, supply, medical, mess tents, corrals, and cannon parks. I myself camp under a broken wagon with about ten thousand bugs and ants.

  Corpus Christi Bay

  Army of the Observation Camp Nueces R. Sept. 1845

  I RAN AN errand today that made me a good acquaintance among the officers, one who treats me like a real person. 4th Infantry, a lieutenant named Sam Grant. We talked about the newspapers, which he reads every free moment. I asked him to save me the one he was reading and he seemed pleased a camp boy could read. I told him how I copy the drawings from the papers and that surprised him, too. His real name is Ulysses, and I ventured how I could see why he preferred being called Sam. That made him laugh, which he doesn’t do much. Talked to me like I was a regular adult, said he hopes no war really comes of this because we have no business down here provoking Mexicans in their own place. Most of the young lieutenants act like they can’t wait for it to start. Not many dare say what he said about it.

  He’s somber, not much polish. Handsome when he does smile. Has a fiancée he means to marry soon as this is over. Had a miniature of her in a locket, a very pretty lady.

  I expect I’d like to draw a picture of him. If I can look at a face awhile, I remember it well enough to do a good likeness from memory.

  He is from Ohio, son of a farmer, sure not fancy like so many of the West Pointers. Sure and a body can see he doesn’t care much for prancers and popinjays.

  There in the 4th Infantry camp I saw a famed fellow I remember from the Seminole campaign. An Irishman he is, and sure he’s a one for us to have pride in, a true legend for bravery.

  Sergeant Major Maurice Maloney is the man, but no one dares to call him Maurice. He wants to be called Mick. That’s a name the West Pointers call all Irishmen to slur them with, but the Sgt. insists on being called that. He says any man ought to be proud to be a Mick, especially in the Army, where the business is fighting. He was Limerick-born, and calls himself living proof that a native Mick can earn rank even in this bigot Army, if he’s soldier enough.

  Mick Maloney claims to be the highest-ranking Irish-born noncommissioned officer in the whole U.S. Army, and Lt. Grant says he believes that’s so. Lieutenant Grant admires him. The lieutenant is no bigot, and I think really likes Irishmen, so he deems Mick Maloney to be a good exampl
e for the other immigrants.

  Frankly, they need all the morale they can get, for the officers belittle and mortify them without mercy.

  Mick Maloney is a giant, red-faced, bright-eyed. I never saw any man sweat so. Seems to be either jolly or fierce, nothing in between. I heard him harangue a whole company, said “Stand tall, goddamn ye! It’s no wonder them officers look down on ye! If y’r backbones were as stiff as y’r fondlecocks are all night, they’d have to look up at ye Irishmen!”

  I was a good part of the whole day at the 4th Infantry’s camp, watching the sergeant, much in awe. I hoped he might recognize me, but he didn’t seem to, even though he saw me. Well, though, it’s more than three years since I saw him in Florida, and sure I reckon I don’t look like the urchin I was then. Maybe a foot taller now. And sure I was no more important to him than a gnat, so why would he remember me?

  But he saw a Lt. talking to me today, so maybe he’ll think I’m at least somebody. I’d sure like him to, being a fellow Irish. Sure and he could guide me up as a man fit to soldier.