part 1 chapter

21

a s the frost dissolved under a pale november sun in 1863, our regiment headed south

one morning toward the rolling virginia landscape of orange courthouse. we trudged behind

the cavalry, and the artillery followed with cannons rumbling on the corrugated road. miles of

wagons spilled over with gear and bumped along behind. i entertained myself by watching

beads of light sparkle on the icy fields and thinking we would soon retreat to camp for the

winter. no more marching out on cold mornings, not until after the spring thaw. how welcome

those days would be. this would be our third winter with an unknown number stretching ahead.

my mind drifted to the crude log and mud shelter we boys had cobbled together in last winter’s

camp. with a makeshift chimney and fire pit, we’d kept passably warm. i continued to dream

about a break from fighting, having no idea that just over a hill and through a dense stand of

forest, lines of union troops snaked for miles down the road, unaware of our parallel route.

their commander then made a wrong turn at a crossroads near mine run, we learned later

from captives, which is why a line of blue-jacketed soldiers appeared out of nowhere. they

emerged from the forest on the hill above us, and we stared, dumbstruck by the sight. their

shock and ours quickly changed to panic. they couldn’t retreat, blocked by their own soldiers,

horses, wagons, artillery, and cannons. we were completely exposed in a valley boxed by rocky

hills and by forests on their ridges, our artillery wagons stretched out on the low road. there had

been no time to dig trenches, heap barricades, or position cannons to face the enemy. our only

hope was to gain the stand of trees above. with a dry mouth and a throbbing heart, i barreled

after our sergeant, erin mcginniss, who bawled like a madman, “pick up your feet,

sonsabitches, and get to cover, goddamn it, get to cover!” his red-blotched cheeks were fiery in

his fair irish face. he raced upwards toward the trees.

runners pitched forward on the slope’s slick wet grass, tripping like dominoes those who

charged behind them. knots of our soldiers struggled to rise, only to be targets for yankee

shooters who had come to their senses. bullets were pinging everywhere. my breath came in

ragged bursts, but the trees now weren’t so far away. boys were visible between the trunks,

readying their rifles. beards, blue, and zeke ran nearby, following our sergeant’s lead. but

tayloe was behind us, lower on the hill. i heard him cry out, and when i looked around, he had

fallen face down, one leg bent beneath him, and his arms splayed out. my heart was in my

mouth; getting to him would be almost impossible in the shower of metal. but i wheeled around,

kept my head low, and ran down to where he lay. tayloe’s face was turned to the right away

from me, his profiled aquiline nose and high cheekbones pressed to the earth. a shock of brown

hair hid his eyes, and the ruddiness of his cheeks had vanished. now blood ran from a rip in his

scalp, oozing scarlet across his skull and over his collar. my breath stopped. first sam and then

tayloe, the two who had been with me in this hell the longest. placing my hand on the back of

his grimy jacket, i prayed to feel his ribs expanding and contracting. underneath the jacket’s

coarse texture, there was movement. and then tayloe groaned, moved his left arm, and finally

twisted his body over to peer at me with groggy eyes. the bullet had only grazed his head,

knocked him unconscious, and torn several inches of skin aside above one ear. “tom? you’re a

damned idiot. we’ll both get killed,” he mumbled. he tentatively touched his fingers to the

wound and then stared at the blood smearing his hand. “how in the hell are we going to get out

of here? my ankle hurts, too.” the bullets passed overhead with renewed fury.

“play dead. that’s the only hope right now,” i said, flattening myself next to him. “if we

stand up, it’s over.”

when i’d seen him last, mcginniss had been on the hill’s crest, flailing his arms and yelling

at company d to goddamn hurry up. he was a short, wiry fellow with hair that flew in tufts over

his ears, a few years older than the rest of us and proud of being irish tough. he was a devoted

catholic, although you’d never know it by the cussings we received. the entire company trusted

him. he never forgot that we were his sacred duty to protect. now he ran down the hill and

threw himself on his knees next to tayloe. he directed the lord’s wrath at us and

simultaneously fired his rifle at the enemy. “run! i’ll cover you,” he screamed. we rose, bent at

the waist, and scuttled a few yards uphill, tayloe ignoring the pain of his bad ankle. as

mcginniss launched into a fresh set of epithets, i heard the thwack of a bullet hit him. “holy

mother, i’ve lost my leg,” he bellowed. when i turned to grab him, he flailed at me with his rifle

butt. “get the hell out of here, you idiot.” his leg was still attached, but crimson leaked from a

round hole in his pants leg. he was pallid as snow.

“do what he said, tayloe. i’ll deal with the sergeant,” i hollered. then i turned to

mcginniss. “straighten out that leg, and let’s see if it’s broken,” i ordered, kneeling by his side

and squeezing his bleeding thigh with both hands above the wound.

“you goddamn fool, it’s not broken, it’s shot off,” he yelled. “get your hands off me. ow,

ow!”

“it’s not shot off. stick your goddamn leg out,” i yelled back. “we can get you to cover

easier and stop the bleeding if the bone’s not broken.” clumps of grass and clay jackknifed into

the air, popping me in the leg and arm as yankee shooters missed their target. “i need to look at

it!” i insisted. he finally agreed. the bullet had torn all the way through his thigh but seemed to

have missed the bone.

tayloe had crept back down the hillside and seized mcginniss’s rifle to return fire. i grabbed

mcginniss under his arms and pulled him along while he struggled on his good leg. he was

faint with loss of blood, but managed to growl, “leave me here. save yourself.”

tayloe snapped, “no way in hell, sergeant.” after what seemed an eternity’s climb to the

hill’s crest, zeke raced out and helped drag mcginniss behind a stout fallen oak. tayloe and i

made it to cover behind the trees, and i scooted over to mcginniss. i tore the sergeant’s ripped

pants from his injured leg. tourniquet strips could be made with the fabric. “help me with this,”

i said to zeke. all the while, bullets bounced off the trunks and branches above our heads. i

yanked the strip tight above the puncture while zeke knelt and twisted a stick through our

tourniquet to increase pressure. the gush of blood slowed to a modest flow. tayloe was

collapsed against a tree, wrapping his head with a piece of shirttail.

zeke looked up for a second, away from the hand pressed on mcginniss’s thigh, and tilted

his head. “listen for a second. what have the yanks got hold of?” above the ordinary rhythm of

rifle fire there now was a steady stream of louder rat-a-tat-tats that ricocheted off the trees and

never relented.

“something that doesn’t have to be reloaded,” i said. just then, we spotted figures moving

beyond the thicket: regiment doctors readying tents for surgeries. zeke and i lifted mcginniss’

arms around our shoulders, crooked his useless leg over my arm so that it was elevated, and

made our clumsy way across brambles and fallen limbs to the hospital area. every few steps,

mcginniss dug his fingernails into my arm. he bit his lip until it bled and moaned even though

we stepped as carefully as we could. “write my wife,” he groaned. “tell her that i loved her ’til

the end . . . will see her in heaven.” his head fell forward.

“what? you’re giving up? you’re too brave for that,” i told him. “you need to see ireland

one more time.” i grunted as i adjusted his weight. “nobody will let you into heaven, anyway.”

he attempted a faint smile, “goddamn you, smiley.” we gently settled him on the ground

with the other wounded as medical staff passed among them, and we raced back to our broad

log. he wouldn’t die, but we knew the camp doctor would amputate his leg to prevent gangrene.

through the trees and over the hill’s rise, we could see mangled bodies lying under the thick

gun smoke. bullets rained down without pause. beards and the others were grim-faced as they

reloaded their rifles after each shot. i leaned against a tree to gather my thoughts and surveyed

the ridge across the valley. from time to time, the smoke parted and sunlight gleamed on bright

metal in the direction of the mysterious blasts. squinting to sharpen my focus, i spied a monster

gun with six brass barrels pointing through the foliage. it was more delicate than a cannon and

larger than a rifle. i’d never seen such a weapon.

something rose up in me, ripened by sam’s death and the suffering i’d seen. it was righteous

anger, but it mostly felt like an intention larger than myself. grabbing my rifle, i called out,

“follow me.” zeke raised an eyebrow, then guessed my goal, and we were off, dodging through

the brush, leaping over fallen limbs, and circling the curving ridge behind the rapid blasts. every

hundred feet, i searched upward through the bare branches, seeking the sun behind rather than in

front of where we began. our noisy progress was undetectable in the midst of the artillery blasts.

when the infernal machine came within sight, we hid behind a giant sycamore. the rest of the

yankee force was far to the right of the blasts, distant from where we were. but through the gray

trunks, two yankee soldiers hefted buckets and dumped streams of bullets into a sleek

mechanical hopper. two other men rotated the barrels with a hand crank.

“let’s take it,” i mouthed to zeke. we both shouldered our rifles and on a count of three,

fired together. the four yanks ducked in surprise, so intent were they on reloading and aiming

the machine that they never suspected our presence. a second volley from our rifles struck one

man in the arm, and he ran off clutching the wound. the third volley quelled the action of the

gun. two artillerymen frantically fiddled with it, turning the barrels and snapping the trigger.

the third grabbed up his rifle and was set to take fire toward us when the other two convinced

him to flee. we waited until they were out of sight and then rushed to the weapon. it would do

no more harm that day; the firing mechanism was shattered.

“do you think we can get this back to our side? the boys will never believe us when we tell

them what we discovered,” zeke said.

“we can try. the monster weighs as much as two men,” i said as i leaned against the gun

carriage. zeke was tinkering with the hopper and the hand crank, trying to figure out how the

thing worked. “come on, you can look at it later.”

but we had wasted too much time examining it. in the distance, splotches of blue were racing

in our direction. and our hopes were greater than our strength, anyway. the two of us would

never be able to drag the cumbersome carriage across the brambles and downed trees clogging

the space we had crossed earlier. not before they got to us. zeke and i fled through the woods,

back to the ridge held by our men. that was the only time i laid eyes on what i later learned was

a gatling gun, the first semiautomatic weapon.

after it was too dark to shoot, zeke and i picked our way through downed branches toward

the surgery tent. i held aloft a lighted stick wrapped with a flaming rag, and beards and blue

followed behind. we wanted to see how mcginniss was faring. by torchlight, the mound of

arms and legs discarded in buckets by the soiled hospital tent made a gruesome display. the

salty smell of blood sullied the evening air. “he’s gone home to augusta, fellows,” the nurse

told us. “he was a brave man when we operated. he squeezed the devil out of my hand, and i’ll

never repeat a word he said, but he made it out alive. we put him on the wagon with the other

wounded just an hour ago.”

“it’s good news for mcginniss that he’s going home, but what in the hell will we do now?” i

asked as we walked toward the flickering campfires. “no one else is tough enough to replace

him.”

“we don’t have many to choose from; not like we used to. but we’ll vote. it will work out,”

beards said.

“i guess so, but you tell the company.”

as we drew closer, one fellow cleaning his rifle called out to us, “what’s going on with the

sergeant? did he make it?”

beards didn’t answer but strode to the center of the group. he cleared his throat loudly to

signal he had something important to say and solemnly waited for quiet. all eyes turned toward

him.

“mcginniss lost the leg, and he won’t be coming back. do you fellows have any suggestions

for a replacement?”

tayloe called out, “i nominate private tom smiley to be sergeant of company d, thanks to

his heroic actions today.”

my face reddened. then another voice said, “we need someone who has a cooler head, who

thinks before he acts. is tom that man? i’m not so sure.”

beards came to my defense. “he wasn’t at first. but he’s changed over the past two years.

you’ve seen it yourself. look around at what’s left of our group. is there anyone else here who

would have done what he did today?” that silenced the boys for a minute.

“i suppose you’re right,” someone said. “his courage and quick thinking saved a bunch of

lives.”

“well, what about it, tom?” asked beards.

i could feel my ears burn. “i’d be honored, but a lot of you deserve it more than i do.”

zeke stood. “that seals it. i second the nomination. i move that we vote now.” he counted

hands and squatted again beside jim blue, who was nodding his head in assent. that was how i

became sergeant. afterward, i spent all night worrying about filling mcginniss’s big shoes.

he’d never shown signs of the emptiness i felt.