The Iron Game - Henry Francis Keenan
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"Now we're in Jeff Davis's land," Barney called out from one of the rear
files, as the company reached midway in the bridge.
"Not by a long shot," Nick Marsh cried. "Davis's land begins and ends
within cannon-shot of himself. He is like the Duke of Saxe-Meiningen--he
has to beg his neighbor's permission to hold battalion drill."
"He isn't so polite as the duke; he takes it without asking," Barney
retorts.
"But now we are on the 'sacred soil,'" Jack cries, as the company
debouched from the bridge up the steep, narrow road that seemed to be
taking them to Arlington. In spite of the burning heat and the
exhaustion of the three hours' march, the scene was, or rather the
imagination of the men, invested each step with a sort of awe. They were
at last in the enemy's territory. It had been held by the Union forces,
only by dint of large numbers and strong fortifications. There wasn't a
man in the company that didn't resent the fact, constantly obtruding
itself on the ranks as they marched eagerly onward by every knoll, every
bush in the landscape, that Union soldiers had been there before them!
that their devouring eyes were not the first to mark these
historic spots.
Tired as they were and burdensome as the heavy knapsacks and still
heavier ammunition had become, they heard an aide give the order to
bivouac with chagrin! They so longed to put undebatable ground behind
them and really be where the distant coppice might be a curtain to the
enemy! The Caribees marked with indignant surprise that, when they had
turned into a field about seven o'clock, the long line following them
pushed onward until far into the night, and they envied the contiguity
this would give the lucky laggards to first see and engage the enemy!
But they turned-to very merrily, in this first night of real soldiering.
They were "in the field." All the parade part of military life was now
relaxed. The hot little dress coats were left behind; there was no
display. Even guard-mount was reduced to the simplest possible form.
With one impulse all the men--that is, all who had been alert enough to
provide pen and paper--bestowed themselves about the candles allotted
each group, and began letters "home," dated magniloquently "Headquarters
in the Field. Tyler's Division, Sherman's Brigade, 16th July, 1861." The
imperial impulse manifested itself in these curt epistles. I can't
resist giving Jack's:
"Dear Mother: How I wish you and Polly could see us now! We are really
on the march at last. The battle can't be far off. We are not many miles
from the enemy, and, if he stands, what glorious news you will hear very
soon! I wish you could have seen us to-day. Colonel Sherman, who is the
sternest looking man I ever saw, a regular army officer, once a
professor, told the major--you know McGoyle is commanding us now--he is
a brick--Sherman told him that the Caribees did as good marching as the
regulars, who came behind us. Dear old Mick, with his brogue and his
blarney, has won every heart in the regiment, and you may be sure we
shall see the whites of the enemy's eyes under him, which we never
should have done under that odious Hessian, Oswald--in hospital now,
thank Heaven--though some time, when I tell you the story, you will see
that in this, as in most other things, Heaven helps those who help
themselves. Taps will sound in five minutes, and I can only add that I
am in good health, glorious spirits, and unshaken confidence that we
shall return to Acredale before your longing to see your son overcomes
your love of glory. We shall return victors, if not heroes--at least I
know that you and Polly will believe this of your affectionate and
dutiful son
"JACK."
Barney read one or two phrases of his composition to the indulgent ear
of Jack and the poet, over which they laughed a good deal. "We are," he
said, "before the enemy. I feel as our great ancestor, Baron Moore, felt
at Fontenoy when the Sassenachs were over against the French lines--as
if all the blood in Munster was in my veins and I wanted to spill it on
the villains ferninst us."
The poet declined to quote from his epistle, and the three friends sat
in the dim light until midnight, wondering over what the morrow had in
store. Dick Perley listened in awe to Jack's wonderful ratiocinations on
what was to come--secretly believing him much more learned in war than
this General McDowell who was commanding the army. The first bugle
sounded at three in the morning in the Caribees' camp, and when the
coffee had been hastily dispatched, the men began to understand the
cause of their being shunted into the field so early the evening before
while the rear of the column marched ahead of them. The Caribees passed
a mile or more of encampments, the men not yet aroused, and when at
daylight the whole body was in motion they were in advance, with nothing
before them but a few hundred cavalry.
A delirious expectation, a rapturous sense of holding the post of
danger, kept every sense in such a thrill of anticipation that the hours
passed like minutes. The dusty roads, the intolerable thirst, and the
nauseous, tepid water, the blistered feet, the abraded hips, where the
cartridge-box began to wear the flesh--all these woes of the march were
ignored in the one impulse to see the ground ahead, to note the first
sight of the enemy. It was not until four o'clock in the afternoon that
the column was halted, and two companies, K and H, were marched out of
the column and formed in platoons across the line of march, that the
regiment learned with mortification that hitherto the route had been
inside the Union lines! They soon saw the difference in the tactics of
the march. The company was spread out in groups of four; these again
were separated by a few yards, and in this order, sweeping like a
drag-net, they advanced over the dry fields, through the clustering
pines or into cultivated acres, and through great farm-yards.
Back of them the long column came, slowly winding over the sandy highway
which curved through the undulating land. Here and there the
skirmishers--for that was the office the two companies were now
filling--came upon signs of picket-posts; and once, as Jack hurried
beyond his group to the thicket, near a wretched cabin, a horse and
rider were visible tearing through the foliage of a winding lane. He
drew up his musket in prompt recognition of his duty, but he saw with
mortification that the horse and rider continued unharmed. Other shots
from the skirmish-line followed, but Jack's rebel was the only enemy
seen, when, in the early dusk, an orderly from the main column brought
the command to set pickets and bivouac for the night. Jack would have
written with better grounds for his solemnity if he had waited until
this evening; but now there was no chance.
The companies were the extreme advance of the army; nothing between them
and the enemy but detached pickets of cavalry, at long distances apart,
to fly back with the report of the least signs made by the rebels. These
meager groups were forbidden fires, or any evidence of their presence
that might guide hostile movement, and the infantry outposts felt that
they were really the guardians of the sleeping thousands a mile or so
behind them. No one minded the cold water and hard bread which for the
first time formed the company's fare that night. Like the cavalry, fire
was forbidden them. They formed little groups in the rear of the outer
line of pickets, discussing with animation--even levity--the likelihood
of an engagement the next day. It was the general opinion that if
Beauregard meant to fight he would have made a stand at some of the
excellent points of vantage that had been encountered in the day's
march. Jack smiled wisely over these amateur guesses, and quite abashed
the rest when he said:
"Beauregard is no fool. His army is massed near the point that he is
guarding--Manassas Junction. You seem to think that war is a game of
chance, armies fighting just where they happen to meet each other. Not
at all. Our business is to march to Richmond; Beauregard's business is
to prevent us. To do this he must, first of all, keep his lines of
supply safe. An army without that is like a ship at sea without
food--the more of a crew, the worse the situation. Of course, Beauregard
had his skirmishers spread out in front of us, but, as there is no use
in killing until some end is to be gained, they have got out of our way.
If the spies that are in our ranks should send information that promised
to give the rebels a chance to get at a big body of our men, before the
whole army came up, you'd see a change of things very quick. We've got
fifty thousand men, or thereabout" (Jack was wrong; there were but
thirty thousand). "Now, these men are stretched back of us to
Washington, fifteen miles or more, because the artillery must be
guarded, and infantry only can do that. Now, suppose Beauregard finds
that there is a gap somewhere between the forces stretching back, and he
happens to have ten or fifteen thousand men handy? Why, he just swoops
down upon us, and, if we can't defend ourselves until the rest of the
army comes up, he has won what is called a tactical victory, and
endangered our strategy."
"Goodness, Jack, you ought to have been commander-in-chief! You talk war
like a book!" Barney cried, in mock admiration.
The war-talk went on late into the night, for the company, detached from
camp, was not obliged to follow the signals of the bugles that came in
melodious echoes over the fragrant fields. It was a thrilling sight as
the lone watchers peered backward. The June fields for miles were dotted
with blazing spires, as if the earth had opened to pour out columns of
flame, guiding the wanderers on their trying way. The sleep of the night
was desultory and fitful, excitement stimulating everybody to
wakefulness.
CHAPTER IX.
"THE ASSYRIAN CAME DOWN LIKE THE WOLF ON THE FOLD."
The next morning the march was resumed by daylight, the two companies
remaining on the skirmish-line. The country gradually became more rugged
as the route brought them near Centreville. There were no hills--a bare
but not bleak champaign, mostly without houses or farms, as the North
knows them. Sluggish brooks became more frequent, but none that were not
easily fordable. There were no landmarks to hold the mind to the scene,
nor, in case of battle, give the strategists points of vantage for the
iron game. About noon, the detached groups stalking a little negligently
now over the tedious plains, were startled by the unexpected.
On the green slope of a hill, a mile or more ahead, a score of little
puffs of white smoke were seen, then a sharp report, and, in some places
near by, the ground was broken as if by a thrust of a spear, and little
scraps of clay scattered over the greensward. Then the bugle sounded a
halt. A few minutes later the horsemen spread in a chain across the line
of march, rode swiftly to a common center, formed in a solid group,
turned to the rear and rode back of the skirmishers to the main body.
Company K watched them as they galloped back, and as they reached the
group at the head of the long line, a half-mile or so distant, a body of
men hastened forward laden with stretchers and hospital appliances. Ah!
at last! It is now real war. The bugle sounds Forward! and with an
elastic spring the groups of four push dauntlessly ahead. Their eyes are
fixed on the brow of the hill, separated from them by a narrow
depression.
The whole line--perhaps three miles wide--but, of course, not at all
regular, conforming largely to the difficulties encountered, moves down
the sloping bank on a run. Before they reach the bottom they are an
excellent target, and for the first time that most blood curdling of
sounds--the half-singing, half-hissing z-z-z-ip of the minie-ball--numbs
the ardor of the bravest. It is such a malignant, direct, devilish
admonition of murder; it comes so unexpectedly, no matter how well you
are prepared, that Achilles himself would feel a spasm of fear. And when
it strikes it does its work with such a venomous, exultant splutter,
that there seems something animate, demoniac in it. The volley, as I
said, came as the men were hurried down the hill by their own momentum
and by the sharp fall in the ground. The balls passed too high or too
low, but they impressed the fact on enthusiasts, who had longed for
battle, that one might die for one's country and not die gloriously. It
seemed such an ignoble, such a dastardly, outrageous thing, that death
could come to them from unseen hands, for as yet they had not seen a
soul. But now they are at the foot of the hill--though it is not correct
to so call it, for it was a long, winding valley, through which ran a
dancing streamlet, very welcome to the thirsty warriors when they had
succeeded in breaking through the vicious natural _chevaux de frise_ of
blackberry-briers and nettles. But now there wasn't much time to slake
thirst. The bullets had begun to come regularly; and suddenly, as Jack
conducted his squad across the stream, he was startled by the
exclamation, uttered rather in reverence, it seemed to him, than
surprise or pain:
"My God, I'm hit!"
Yes, a fair-haired lad--one of his class--tottered a second in a limp,
helpless way, and fell headlong, pitching into the little stream. Jack
ran and lifted him out; but even before the hospital corps came the boy
was dead. The bullet had gone quite through his heart.
However, now the first numbing terror of the bullet was changed to a
sort of revengeful delight. Relinquishing any return fire for a moment,
the company, with a great shout, that sounded all along its front,
dashed up the hill, through the scrub-oak at the brow, and then they
could see the enemy slowly retiring, a chain of them a mile or more
wide. While one of the rebel ranks fired the other knelt, or lay flat
upon the ground loading, where there were no natural obstacles to take
shelter behind. A vengeful shout ran along the Union lines.
"Capture them--don't fire!" and with one impulse the groups lied forward
so swiftly that the enemy, believing the rush only momentary, delayed
too long, and in two minutes the Union line was pell-mell among them.
"Surrender!" Jack shouted to the squad just ahead of him--"surrender, or
we'll blow your heads off!" and along the line for some distance to his
left and right he could hear his own exultant demand echoed. There was
nothing to do for the rebels, who had neglected to keep their enemies at
the proper distance, but throw up their hands. Jack's squad sent back
twenty-three prisoners to Major Mike, who took them in proud triumph to
General Tyler, riding with the head of the column, now that the tenacity
of the rebel skirmishers made it seem probable that there would be
serious work. But though the firing kept up as the Union forces
advanced, no obstacle more, serious than the thin lines of the
skirmishers revealed itself.
At dusk the bugles, moving with the captains in the rear, sounded the
rally, and then the scattered groups came together in company. They were
to bivouac on the spot to await their regiment when it arrived.
Meanwhile, to the bitter discontent of the Caribee companies, their post
of honor was taken by new troops, and they knew that next day they would
march in line. They had so enjoyed the glory of the first volleys, the
first deaths, and the first prisoners, that, not remembering military
procedure, they resented the change as an aspersion upon their valor.
When the regiment came up, however, they forgot their mortification in
the eager questioning and envious jocularities of the rest. Companies K
and H were so beset that they forgot to boil their coffee, and would
have gone thirsty to their dewy beds, if the other companies' cooks had
not shared their rations with the gossiping heroes. As darkness fell,
the sky was reddened for miles with pillars of fire, and for a time the
Caribees thought it was the enemy. But Tom Twigg, who had been with the
major at headquarters, explained to Jack that the army was divided into
three bodies of about ten thousand men each, and that Tyler's column, of
which the Caribees were the advance, were the extreme northern body;
that they were now at Vienna, far north of Manassas, where Schenck had
been beset a month before in his never-enough-ridiculed reconnaissance
by train; that in the morning they were to push on to Fairfax
Court-House and thence to Centreville, where the army was to come
together for the blow at the rebels. Jack and his friends were a good
deal chagrined to learn that they were not as near the enemy as the
column to the south of them, whose fires had been mistaken for
Beauregard's. Though the levee came to an end at "taps," no one felt
sleepy, and the excitement banished the pains of fatigue. Major Mike,
sauntering through the dark lines near midnight, heard the tale still
going on in drowsy monotone, but, good-naturedly, made no sign.
Though not given the skirmish-line next day--the 17th--Jack was
delighted to find that the Caribees led all the rest. With them rode the
commander of the brigade, Colonel Sherman, whom the soldiers thought a
very crabbed and "grumpy" sort of a fellow. His red hair bristled
straight up and out when he took his slouch hat off, as he did very
often, for the heat was intolerable. His eyes had a merry twinkle,
however, that won the hearts of the lads as he rode by, scrupulously
striking into the fields to save the panting and heavily laden line
every extra step he could. Often, in after-days--when Sherman had become
the Turenne of the armies--Jack, who was often heard to brag of his gift
of detecting greatness, used to turn very red in the face when he was
reminded of a saying of his on that hot July day:
"That chap is too lean and hungry to have much stomach for a fight; he
looks better fitted for wielding the ferule than the sword. Schoolmaster
is written in every line of his face and stamped in his
pedagogue manner."
The march that day was south by a little west, and about nine o'clock a
cool morning breeze lifted the clouds of dust far enough above the
horizon to reveal the distant blue of the mountains. The whole line
seemed to come to a pause in the enchanting, mirage-like spectacle. "The
Shenandoah," Jack said, mopping the dust, or rather the thin coating of
mud, from his face and brow, for the perspiration, oozing at every pore,
naturally covered the exposed skin with an unpremeditated cosmetic. The
march to Fairfax Court-House, for which judicial temple the curious
soldier looked in vain, was but eight miles from the point of departure
in the morning, but it was two o'clock in the afternoon when the
Caribees passed the hamlet, turning sharply to the right. They marched
up the deep cut of projected railway, where, for a time, they were
shaded from the sun by the high banks. But, emerging presently on the
Warrenton pike, they saw evidences that other columns--whether friends
or foes they couldn't tell--had recently preceded them. Scores of the
raw and overworked were breaking down now every hour.
The dust and heat were insupportable. Whenever the march came near
water, all thought of discipline was forgotten, and the panting,
miner-like hosts broke for the inviting stream. The officers were
powerless to enforce discipline; when these breaks happened the column
was forced to come to a halt until every man had filled his canteen--and
here is one, among the many trivial causes, that brought about the
reverses of McDowell's masterly campaign. A march that ought to have
been made in twenty-four hours, or thirty at the utmost, took more than
three days! One of those days saved to the army would have enabled
McDowell to finish Beauregard before the ten thousand re-enforcements
from the Shenandoah came upon his flank at Bull Run. But we shall see
that in proper time, for there is nothing more dramatically timely, or
untimely, than this incident in the history of battles, unless it be
Bluecher's miraculous appearance at Waterloo, when Napoleon supposed that
Grouchy was pummeling him twenty miles away.
There was no provost guard to spur on the stragglers; and when, late in
the afternoon, the way-worn columns spread themselves on the western
slope of the hamlet of Centreville, at least a third of each regiment
was far in the rear. Nearly every man had, in the heat and burden of the
march, thrown away the provisions in his haversack, and that night ten
thousand men lay down supperless on the grateful greensward, happy to
rest and sleep. Mother Earth must have ministered to the weary flesh,
for at sunrise, when the music of the bugles aroused them, they started
up with the alert vivacity of old campaigners. Provisions, that should
have been with the column the night before, arrived in the morning.
While the reinvigorated ranks were at coffee, there was a great clatter
in the rear, and presently a _cortege_ of mounted officers appeared,
General McDowell among them. Dick Perley, who was at the brigade
headquarters, with Grandison, came to the Caribees presently with
great news.
The battle was to begin that very day. General Tyler was to go forward
to a river called Bull Run, where Beauregard was waiting. The whole army
was to spread out like a fan and fight him. He had seen the map on the
table, and the place couldn't be more than four miles away. Yes, they
all looked eagerly to the westward now. The mountains in the distance
rolled themselves down into lower and lower ridges, and just about four
miles ahead could be seen a range that seemed to melt into a wide
plateau fringed deeply with scrub-oak and clusters of pine. Jack had
provided himself with a field-glass. Standing in the middle of the
Warrenton pike, a fine highway, that ran downward as solid as a Roman
causeway, for four or five miles, he could see the break made by the
Bull Run River, and--yes, by the glaive of battle!--he could see the
glistening of bayonets now and then, where the screen of woods
grew thinner.
The general, too, was examining the distant lines, and Jack took it as a
good omen that Sherman grew jocose and appeared to be making merry with
Tyler, whose face looked troubled, now that the decisive moment seemed
at hand. But the day passed, and there was no advance. It was not until
late in the evening that the cause became known. The army had been
waiting for supplies, ammunition, and what not, that should have been on
the field the day before. The Caribees were made frantic, too, by what
seemed a battle going on to the south of them, a few miles to the left.
The camp that night was a grand debating society, every man propounding
a theory of strategy that would have edified General McDowell, no doubt,
if he could have been given a _precis_ of the whole. How such things
become known it is difficult to guess, but every man in the columns knew
that the general had planned to put forward his thirty thousand men in
the form of a half-moon, covering about ten miles from tip to tip. The
right or northward horn was to be considerably thicker and of more body
than the left or southern. When the time came this right was to curve in
like a hook and cut the ground out from the left wing of the rebel army.
This is the homely way these unscientific strategists made the movement
known to each other, and it very aptly describes the formulated plan of
battle, save that, of course, there were gaps between the forces here
and there along this human crescent. Long before daylight Sherman's
brigade, with a battery of guns and a squadron of cavalry, set out due
south, leaving the broad Warrenton pike far to their right hand. Such a
country as the march led into, no one had ever seen in the North outside
of mountain regions--deep gullies; wastes of gnarled and aggressive
oaks, that tore clothes and flesh in the passage; sudden hillocks rising
conical and inconsequent every few rods; deep chasms conducting driblets
of water; morasses covered with dark and stagnant pools, where the
pioneers fairly picked their steps among squirming reptiles. A stream,
sometimes large as a river, crawling languidly through deep fissures in
the red shale, protected the left flank of the column. The cavalry was
forced to hold the narrow wood road, as the bush was hardly passable
for men.
"Hi, Jack!" Barney cries, catching his breath at the edge of a muddy
stream, "what sort of a place must the rebels be in if they let us
promenade through such a jungle as this unopposed?"
"I have been thinking of that," Jack replies. And so had every man in
the expedition--for to think was one of the drawbacks as well as one of
the excellences of the soldier in the civil war. But presently, after
five hours of laborious work, a halt is called. The men dive into their
haversacks, and even the brackish water in the nearest sedge pond has a
flavor of nectar and the invigoration of a tonic. On they tear again,
the whole body pushing on in skirmish-like dispersion. Suddenly the land
changes. They are climbing a rolling table-land, cleared in some places
as though the axe of the settler had been at work. The march is now
easier and the picket-lines are strengthened. Then a sharp volley comes,
as if from the tree-tops.