Most of the officers are sort of giddy about routing the Mexican Army, saying they won two battles in two days, which I guess sounds better than saying one two-day battle. Since the actions were a few miles apart I guess you could say two victories. Most of the officers don’t want to stay here but rather chase the Mexicans down and whip them good before they can get reinforced and rebuilt. So no one knows how long we’ll stay here. Gen. Taylor will be for making up his mind on that I guess any day. Has to figure on our supply road from the coast, and rumor has it there will be some steam packet boats used on the Rio Gr. for that, too. Also to bring troop reinforcements.
There is always a townful of vendors and whatnot built up as soon as the army moves into a place and stops. Army privates make 7 dollars a month and have no place to spend it except near camp. The officers call these places Little America. I am a sort of a part of it.
Now that I have this desk, and a place “of business,” I am again writing letters for the soldiers who don’t know how to write. Now that they’ve been in battle, they want many letters written. Most just tell their families they are alive. Some want to tell what they did in the battles, and therefore I get to write some really good stories, and I am learning a lot about the battles, and how men in battle feel. One thing they never say in their letters is how it felt to kill somebody. One private from the 5th Infantry, Company K, wrote to his sister in Michigan and said that the Army had made him violate the greatest of the Commandments, that he would not have gone forward in the battle and done it, but he would have been shot by his own officers if he had disobeyed. He told her that a lot of what passes for bravery is that the enemy fire might miss you but your lieutenant wouldn’t. I wonder if that could be true.
That K Company was Pvt. Riley’s company. I asked that soldier what he thought about Mister Riley being in the enemy artillery. He said he was sorry he had not gone across the river with him. But he asked me not to put that in the letter. He said that nobody could understand unless they had been bucked and gagged by one of these Army officers. He had been through that torment twice.
The soldiers who have been bucked and gagged made up a song about it. He remembered part of it and helped me write it down.
“Sergeant, buck him and gag him,” our officers cry
For each petty offense them lieutenants espy,
Till with bucking and gagging of Mick, Pat, and Bill, Faith, the Mexicans’ ranks they will sure help to fill!
Derry down, down, down, derry down.
A poor soldier’s tied in the sun and the rain
With a gag in his mouth till he’s tortured with pain.
Sure, I’m damned if the Eagle we show on our flag
In its claws shouldn’t carry a buck and a gag!
Derry down, down, down, derry down.
Their song goes much like that. It was hard to follow his words just quite, as he was drinking. For that same reason, I might have got part of his letter to his sister wrong, when he said, I think every day of you Dear Sister as I suffer through this—I couldn’t tell whether he said “sojourn” or “soldierin’.” I asked him which, and when he repeated it, I still couldn’t tell, in fact, it sounded more like “soul journey.”
So I just wrote it Sojourn. It’s all the same.
I won’t be surprised if that soldier vanishes from K Company, too.
Matamoros, Mexico June 12, 1846
NEWS ARRIVED BY boat from the States: War was declared by Congress May 13. (Though that was after the shooting had started.)
Also a letter from my Mother. It had been sent in Care of Colonel Harney’s battalion. I have stayed away from his outfit because I had way too much of him in the Seminole campaign. Maybe some clerk in that unit remembered me and found out where I am now. No matter. The letter told me that she was in New Orleans and would find a means of following me to Mexico if I will confirm that I’m here. That I should please write back to her at once. She gave no address as such, but that of Army headquarters at New Orleans, care of a Maj. Williams. That’s enough information to tell me that as usual she is supporting herself on the Army, and the Major would be her “liaison,” that being the fancy word she taught me to use, and to spell.
I have spent much of this day thinking what I should do about her letter, as a good son. It does not seem to me that a good son would encourage his Ma to travel into a theatre of war.
I could write to her and say that, but if I do so and reveal that I am with Gen. Taylor’s Army, she will certainly come following, even if I ask her not to.
On the other hand, I could write to her and tell her that I will come to New Orleans if she will wait there until I find passage, as I could do, on some supply ship.
It just doesn’t make sense a mother would want so much to follow a son who has run away. It would make sense for her to try to persuade her son to return to her.
I never thought I would be thinking about things like this.
Sure I am glad I started keeping this journal! I am learning not just how to write and draw, but also to think. To write, you have to think.
Have to do some errands for the soldiers now. I wish there was somebody I could ask advice about this letter. Mister Riley was the only soldier I would have asked about things like this.
Sometimes I wish I had followed him over. In spite of what Sgt. Maloney said.
Maybe I could talk to Sgt. Maloney about my mother’s letter. But he’s such a hero now that you can’t get near him for the reporters.
Matamoros, Mexico June 15, 1846
I DECIDED, in good conscience, not to answer Ma’s letter, not yet. Good conscience because rumors are we’ll be moving up the R. Grande toward Monterrey in a full offensive. She should stay in New Orleans, and probably will if she doesn’t hear from me.
Sure I could go back to New Orleans myself. But our Little America is stirring for the move & now I’ve a kind of a place to fit in. An Irish soldier, John Doherty, mustered out with a wound he received at Palo Alto, says he will be doing business with the Army and could pay me a little to assist him when we next set up. I asked him what would be the nature of the business, and he replied we’ll be for providing an ever-needed product for the thirsty soldier boys. There is good money to be made in that, he said. I know that to be true. My own dear Mother once told me that in all the years she worked near the Army, laundering, sewing, letter writing, and whatever else, the only time she prospered to speak of was when her liaison was a bootlegger.
Very much excitement here among the soldiers, as the rumor grows of invading deeper into Mexico.
For a short while after the Army did so well in those two battles, the Irish soldiers simmered down about deserting. Now with the invasion talk a-building, they’re murmuring about it again quite a lot. I believe they’d be for ducking out in droves by now, if they knew where to go. But nobody really knows where the Mexican generals went after they left here. When they were right in sight, one might have to swim the river to get to them, but they were there to greet you, and so were the senorita girls. Now you look off into Mexico and see nothing but grass and sand and shrubs to all the horizons. And you reckon that any Mexicans you’d run into out there would be those bands of rancheros like them that ambushed Lt. Porter, and Col. Cross, back in April. Those would not be likely to inquire of your sentiments before shooting.
And if you didn’t meet up with them, your only company would be rattlesnakes and scorpions and wolves.
Matamoros, Mexico With Gen. Taylor’s Army June 20
HERE I SIT at my table in my own nook, some whale oil burning clean in the lamp. Have my diary notes and sketches all in a stack with a hatchet as a paperweight. I’m like a scribe of old, or a monk in a cell. Well, maybe not so like a monk, though, as the monks probably didn’t have two gills of rum inside them making them think in whimsical philosophistry the way I am now. The rum came from Mister Doherty. He invited me to help him test his first shipment of the commodity we’ll be dealing. We agreed that it is good e
nough for Irish soldiers, as they are not picky-like or fastidious and would sooner swallow it right down with gratitude than waste their breath complaining. As Mister Doherty joked, “They’ll have the rum gone before they realize it ain’t whiskey.”
The rum sort of makes me want to say important things. Here I am with a pencil in my hand, pretty comfortable, and the whole world running through my head. Maybe I can write down how this war looks to a person in my situation, being rather caught up in it like a bit of chaff in the wind. What I really feel is, if I couldn’t put words down on paper, or didn’t care to, I’d be just about nothing at all.
Sure and by the holy fist of Saint Patrick, we are truly off to war! All because some particular mortal man in the President’s chair got it in his head that we must do it, and somehow, however presidents do such things, persuaded the Congress that it has to be done. From what we read in the newspapers that come down here, not everybody in Congress saw a need for it. I try to imagine just how such things come to be. The newspapers said that the President warned Congress that Mexico is a danger to the United States, and was attacking Texas. I read that one congressman got nicknamed “Spotty” because he kept demanding to see the “spot” on the map where Mexico was attacking. “Spotty Lincoln,” they call him. I think I would enjoy hearing an argument like that, in a great, important place like Congress must be. I wonder if they threaten each other when they argue. I wonder if they laugh at each other sometimes. If they give each other nicknames, they probably laugh at each other sometimes. Most of the arguments I’ve seen and overheard, they got around to laughing now and then. In fact, the one who made them laugh usually won. Though apparently Mister Spotty Lincoln didn’t win.
It comes to my mind, that it would be pretty awful to make up one’s mind to send anybody off to war. I don’t think I could do that. Soldiers and officers talk about this President, that he never was in military action himself. Some say they wish he had been at Palo Alto to catch a bit of case shot, just enough to make him think twice about sending men someplace to kill and to die. Some of our older officers and soldiers were in the War of 1812, and some of the immigrants were in the wars of Napoleon. (I hope I spelled that right. I can almost always spell a word if I’ve seen it printed. But I haven’t seen Napoleon printed for a long time.) I hear many of them say that a man who has never faced gunfire should not send others to face it. I think that sounds right. But does that mean nobody can be a President unless he has been in battle?
I remember when our army was fighting the Indians in Florida, some of our old soldiers said they admired the Indian leaders because they never stood back and ordered their warriors to fight, they always led them. I remember old soldiers, who had been in the war in 1812, saying that Chief Tecumseh was always right out in front where you could see him. But no one could ever kill him with a bullet. He was wounded a time or two but kept on fighting and leading his warriors. That’s what those soldiers said about him. But then in that last battle he was killed finally. That was when the battle just stopped and all his Indians disappeared. They said Indians would do that sometimes, just vanish, and then attack you again when you weren’t expecting it. I heard about that sometimes in the Seminole War. But the old soldiers said it was different when Tecumseh was killed. He had been yelling like a bugle, and when his voice stopped, they just all vanished. Eerie, they said, like a witching kind of thing.
General Taylor was an Indian fighter back in those years too, so it is said. And a brave man. He’s faced gunfire a-plenty, it’s said. He could be a president who could send men to battle.
They also say he’s conniving to be president if things work out in this war down here.
Having some rum, a body is likely to write just almost anything that comes to mind, and just almost anything does.
Here I am, sure nothing if ever there was nothing, a boy camp follower and bootlegger’s helper, polisher of others’ boots and brass, an amanuensis, here am I writing about presidents and wars, and about courage and loyalty, and all suchlike.
I do like that word amanuensis. It makes me sound like something important.
Private John Riley taught me that word. One of the things that man gave me, that I will always have.
May he be safe and well, wherever he is.
Hail Mary Mother of God, blessed art thou and blessed is the fruit of thy womb, Jesus.
That is really pretty language. That I’d say is Poetry.
That story writer Poe is a good poetry writer, too, by what Lt. Wallace tells me. “I guess his could be called Poe-try,” is a joke I told Mr. Wallace. He shook his head and grinned at me.
Lew Wallace is an Indiana Volunteers officer who shares newspapers with me. He’s been trying to write a novel but says the Army doesn’t leave you much free time to write. Maybe if he was a camp boy instead of an officer, he could write well and plenty like me.
Seems to me I write better when I have some rum.
Or anyway, I enjoy it more.
CHAPTER XI
AGUSTIN JUVERO
SPEAKING TO THE JOURNALIST
ON THE PILGRIMAGE ROAD
¡OYE! SEÑOR PERIODISTA , for a few, war means to be a soldier, and to be in battles, a few hours of rage and terror. But the most part of a soldier’s life is to be like a refugee, in fatigue and desperation. Swept along, una astilla en un torrente. For the larger part of the people, war is like that: being a refugee.
When the cannons began shooting between your fort and our Matamoros town across the Rio Bravo, we became refugees. First we made camps out of the range of your guns. Then, when your army routed ours, our soldiers came fleeing across the river, true panic seized us. We fled nearly two hundred miles on a terrible dry road southwestward to Linares. We had to keep leaving everything along the roadside, except what we wore. We scarcely paused to bury those who died—the old, the babies, the wounded soldiers.
Your scouts followed us at first, and we thought it was your whole army; the Texans especially we feared, for their vengefulness. We even discarded some of our food, to lighten ourselves in flight. And then of course we starved. Our soldiers left cannons and equipment along the way. Some in misery and shame shot themselves to death.
Many people of Matamoros resigned themselves to their fates and returned to their battered homes. My mother and I went west, under the care of Francesco Moreno, who had been the adjutant. I was destined to go to the Colegio Militar, in reward for my services as a carrier of propaganda into the enemy lines. As I have described to you before, you remember. It was a terrible journey for us, as for everyone. My mother was strong in spirit, and maintained her dignity and good cheer, but in body she was not hardy. She was of the hidalgo class and was not inured to fatigue or hardship. After the first days the carriage broke and was abandoned. Our horse became lame, was killed and eaten raw by soldiers, and so we walked the rest of the way to Linares. All but the highest officers were afoot by then. My mother’s feet were bleeding. She fainted several times. One time when she was unconscious, some Irish soldiers made a litter by slipping muskets through the sleeves of their jackets and carried her until we reached a water hole and she could be revived.
I see the question in your eyes, Señor, and will answer it: Sí. The man in charge of those soldiers was Teniente Riley. During the march all the way, he kept us in sight, though he did not march with us. He had responsibility for all his gunners, who had their own difficulty in keeping up. European and American soldiers are brave and strong, but no one can keep marching without food or water the way Mexican soldiers can.
Teniente Riley could not let his gunners fall behind. He knew that if the Yanquis were following and caught them, they would be executed as deserters and traitors.
Thus we and the army struggled to Linares; earth was the anvil, the sun the hammer. Late in mayo our remnants staggered into the plaza and fell down at the town well to drink.
In the days of our recuperation, we awaited orders from the capital. Our officers prepared el
aborate excuses for our defeat. There was a terrible anxiety about being disgraced. I suppose it is the same in any army, but in ours it is more extreme. One never knew who would be ruling the nation until the next edition of the newspapers came, and by the time it was read, that could be changed again. Among certain officers there was always hope that General Santa Anna would have returned from his exile. Among others there was perpetual dread of that.
Teniente Riley was solicitous of my mother’s health in those days at Linares, where she was recovering in the care of the alcalde’s wife and sister. Those señoras chaperoned her severely. Only two or three times was she permitted to sit with Señor Riley upon a bench in the shaded courtyard, and on those occasions the old señoras were at the window, guarding as if she were their own daughter. I in my turn watched the old women, to make them uncomfortable in their spying. But, too, I watched my mother and Señor Riley with keenest concern.
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