Days Without End

CHAPTER TWELVE

SPRING COMES INTO Massachusetts with her famous flame. God’s breath warming the winter out of things. That means something to a thousand boys heaped into camp at a spot called Long Island outside the old city of Boston. Except the endless yards of rain as thick as cloth that falls on us. Battering the tents. But we got new business with the world and our very hearts are filling with the work. That’s how it seems as we set out upon our war.

Mostly muskets and only a few of them Spencer carbines that so put anger into Starling Carlton when he saw it at Caught-His-Horse-First’s side. Pistols and a few of them famed revolvers. LeMats and Colts. Swords and sabres. Bayonets. That’s what we got to bring against the Rebels. New kinda bullets we ain’t seen to shoot Indians with. Not round like the old ones, but the shape of a arched door into a church. The major in his present guise of colonel takes in a whole ocean of Irish out of the Boston reeks. Stevedores and shovel men and hauliers and rascals and big-mouths and small mousy lads. Whatever’s going because we got to swell into a huge army, that’s the main task. Me and John Cole is corporals for the stint because we’re actual soldiers that done soldiering. Major brought in Starling Carlton too and he’s a sergeant and Lige Magan. And Lige Magan because he getting older now is made colour sergeant and will carry the flag. Must be fifty years old is Lige. Everyone else is just privates, volunteers and loyal men and chancers. There’s a thousand faces and the ones we know best will be in D Company. We sign up for the three years and everyone believes this war will take no more or we ain’t Christians at all. Most of the privates sign for ninety days. Want to do their duty and then go home proud men. We’re drilled up and down our scraggy parade ground and the sergeants try and teach the new boys how to load their muskets but by God they ain’t a quick study. Lucky if they get one in ten balls out. Sheridan, Dignam, O’Reilly, Brady, McBrien, Lysaght, a line of Irish names as long as the Missouri river. A few of the boys been in Massachusetts militias right enough so they ain’t so useless. But God Almighty. Maybe Mr Lincoln better start worrying, says John Cole, looking on bemused as all dickens. Making a hash of simple drills, says Starling Carlton. He come in the day before all bluster and friendship and he hugs John Cole and I swear he nearly kissing him for the joy of the reunion. Sweating like a damp wall. Lige Magan shakes our hands and says it sure is a how-do-you-do this new war and how have you been, boys? We say we been good. How’s that Injun girl? says Starling. Oh, she’s good enough, I say. The major he’s as busy as Jesus at a wedding but he come over anyhow and smiles on us in his way and says Mrs Neale sends her compliments to her old soldiers. That has us laughing. Starling Carlton thinks it’s a bigger joke than it is and can’t stop guffawing face-up into the clouds. Major takes no offence whatsoever and Starling Carlton don’t mean to give none. He’s looking around now blinking and knocking the sweat off his old forage cap. You’ll do your best, boys, I know, says the major. Yes, sir, says Lige. God damn it, I guess we will, says Starling Carlton. I know you will, says the major, in his nice colonel’s uniform. You follow your captain, now, boys, he says. Captain Wilson he means, a quiet red-haired Irish. Then there’s Lieutenant Shaughnessy and Lieutenant Brown. Seems like decent Dublin men enough. Sergeant Magan. Two corporals, me and John. Stew then of Kerrymen and other western seaboard starving types. Fellas with faces like old black bog-oak. And the younger ones all smiles and frowns, listening. Eyes and noses and mouths of all descriptions. Mothers’ sons. Seen already the death of their world and now asking pardon of the Fates so that they can fight for a new one. All the faces. Captain Wilson gives a fine speech just the day we setting out for Washington and I still can see all those faces staring up at him on his saddle-box. God damn it, you could weep at the memory if you had a mind. We only ask, says the captain, that you keep the Union in your heart and by that star steer your course. Your country desires of you something beyond any man’s capacities. It wants your courage and your strength and your devotion and all it might have to give in return is Death. Maybe he got it out of a manual. Talks like a Roman, says Starling Carlton, looking dazed as a damsel. But somehow it hurt us into an understanding. Soldiers fight mostly for dollars which in that case were thirteen. It weren’t like that then. We could of eaten the head off our enemies just then and spat out the hair. Nice Wicklow man with a musical Yankee voice.

Then happy to be freed from camp we march down to Washington in a noisy blue river of four regiments and are mustered in and inspected by the lofty toffs who are but black specks in the distance and we can’t hear a blessed word of speeches. Most like the same old nonsense, says Starling Carlton but any fool can tell he’s proud anyhow. The whole goddamn seething army is ranked about there and the field guns shone into an ecstasy of sparkling glory not to mention the men spruced up and shaved as best they can manage. Twenty thousand souls ain’t a sparse party. Just ain’t.

Nice boy called Dan FitzGerald falls in with us in a card-playing capacity so it’s very like old times at Laramie except we’re bivouacked under slightly shifted stars and it’s a city of blue-coated gents all around. We got wives churning uniforms in the wash-churns and we got great boys for singing and even our drummer boy McCarthy who is only eleven years of age is a card. Name sounds like an Irish but he a black boy from Missouri. Missouri don’t know if it’s Rebel or Union so Mc-Carthy he leaves while they decide. There’s big tall men in the next row of tents that are gunners in charge of mortars. You never seen such wide thick arms on men or wide thick barrels on guns. Look like cannon that been eating nothing but molasses for a year. Swole up like a giant’s pecker. They say they’ll be needed under the walls of Richmond but Starling Carlton says there ain’t no walls. So we don’t know what that rumour means. Our company is mostly Kerrymen and FitzGerald he comes from Bundorragha which he says is a filthy poor part of Mayo. I ain’t met many Irish who will talk about those dark matters but he does easy enough. He has a tin whistle does other kinds of talking. He says his family was killed in the hunger and then he walked to Kenmare over the mountains and he was only ten and then over to Quebec like the rest of us and by a miracle he didn’t take the fever just like me. I asked him did he see anyone eat another in the ship’s hold and he says he didn’t see that but he seen worse. He says when they opened the hatches in Quebec they drew out the long nails and the light came into the hold for the first time in four weeks. All they had gotten on the journey was water. Suddenly in the new light he seen the corpses floating everywhere in the bilge-water and then the dying and then everyone to the last a skeleton. That’s why no one will talk because it’s not a subject. It makes your heart ache. We shake our heads and deal the cards. No one is talking for a while. Goddamn corpses. That’s because we were thought worthless. Nothing people. I guess that’s what it was. That thinking just burns through your brain for a while. Nothing but scum. Now we’ve girt our loins with weapons and we’ll try and win the day.

There are hard fights sometimes in the camp already but it ain’t with the yellowlegs. Some of those native-born soldiers fear the goddamn Irish since in a bad mood they might knock you down and stomp on your head till they feel better but you won’t. Irish boys all stuffed with anger. Bursting into flame. Who knows. As corporal I am trying to bluster them into peacefulness. Ain’t easy. I can throw them into clink if they don’t come off the boil. They carry a grudge like hunting dogs carry the bird so I got to be fair as Solomon. But then an Irish might be the gentlest man in Christendom too. Dan FitzGerald he would feed you his arm if you was hungry. Captain Wilson he only come out from his home place last year. Says the place still going to hell by the highroad. But he is a tip-top character. He was a major in the Wicklow Regiment of Militia. It seems like his people must be swells but he ain’t high-handed and the company is content with him. Looks like if he says to do something we might do it. Starling Carlton says the trouble with the Irish sodger, the trouble with him is he thinks when he is bid to go do a thing. He turns it over in his mind. He gapes at his officer to see if the order pleases or don’t. That ain’t a good trait in a soldier. Every Irish thinks he be in the right and he will kill the whole world to make a proof. Starling Carlton says the Irish is just ravening dogs. Then he clasps my hand and laughs. Goddamn Starling Carlton, fat as a grizzly bear. He’s a sergeant so I can’t punch him as I would wish.

Dan FitzGerald and the drummer boy McCarthy has sprung up a friendship between them and Dan is schooling McCarthy in the matter of Irish tunes. Made an Irish drum out of the dried skin of a mule and a spliced barrel-stave. Whittled him a striking stick and he’s all set. The two of them go running at these dancing tunes and it puts a lick of enjoyment into slack times. Not many of them now. We’re poured down slowly into northern Virginia and we was hoping to hear that tracks had been laid but no hope of that. We’re walking.

Lige Magan’s little detail carries the colours and it’s a sight. Nice banner sewed by nuns somewhere, they say. I got to keep my men fore and back in good order and John Cole has his own bunch and it has to be allowed Starling Carlton knows his army business and we don’t feel too bad with the captain leading our company. In fact must be said all the men are in devilish high spirits and want to be running at Rebels as soon as can be arranged. Starling carries weight but even without a horse he’s strong as the centre of a river current. He bulls along mightily. We don’t miss our old sergeant’s singing but McCarthy beats out the march on his drum. Left right, left right. Eternal soldiers, it don’t ever change. You got to get from one point to another and the only way is the old forced march. Otherwise you get dawdling, fellas peeling off to drink from a stream, taking an interest in the farms we pass in case some good woman has baked cakes. Can’t be having that. And then we are stomping down into that two-faced country, it’s north Virginia, we don’t know where allegiances may lie. Could be death to find out. Got to say Virginia appeals. Great mountains stand to the west and old forests there are not thinking about us, not for a minute. They say the farms are tired worn-out places but they got the look of plenty. Four regiments is a noisy river but still the songs of birds pierce through our din and local dogs come to the edges of their domains and bark their fool heads off at us. That pack and the musket and the rough uniform got to be borne gaily. Or else it start to crush you. Best think your way into feeling strong, best. No man likes to fall out because he can’t manage a little jaunt down into Virginny, as Dan FitzGerald calls it. Anyhows aren’t we going down to show the Rebs where they went wrong. Error of their ways. We got a nice deal of ordnance and it is our wish to show them what it can do. It’s not our lot to know the orders that drive us on but that ain’t needed. Just point us at those Johnny Rebs, says Dan FitzGerald. Sometimes we sing big songs all together as we go and we don’t offer the birds of Virginia the versions on the printed sheet as you might find in Mr Noone’s hall, but new versions with every stinking word we know stitched in. Every lousy stinking low brothelly word.

Before we leave I send a letter to Mr McSweny hoping Winona is going on well and I hope he gets it. We was not paid the first two months and then we were to general rejoicing and then it was possible for men to send money to their families and we was no exception. The Catholic chaplain carried our wages to the postal depot and sent our put-together sum up to Grand Rapids under army wrap. He never asked no tricky questions about wives. John Cole’s daughter was a handle good enough for him. But he’s one of those sociable easy-hearted Italian pastors and all ranks like him and all religions. A good heart carries across fences. Fr Giovanni. Small man wouldn’t be much good for fighting but he good for tightening those screws that start to come loose on the engine of a man when he’s facing God knows what. A few nights into the march I’m on sentinel duty and relieving Corporal Dennihy and it’s clear to me the man is shaking. Even in the moonlight as we exchange our words I can see he ain’t good. So it ain’t everyone looks forward to the fight. But Fr Giovanni creeps over to him and starts to buttress him up. Looks better for it in the morning anyhow. So, Corporal, he says to me, you send any other man gets windy. I will, Father, I says.

Sense of ferocious danger then descends when we reach the spot where we must deploy. News is the boys in grey are beaded into the great line of woods that seem to rush down that country. Three long great meadows rise to a bare and blasted headland. Deep three-foot grasses such as would make a cow hurry on to partake. Our batteries are ranged in expert wise and by afternoon our section’s positioned and good. Something building in the hearts of the soldiers, if you could see that thing it might have strange wings. Something fluttering in their breasts and then a great clattering of wings. Our muskets are loaded and where we are a line of fifty men kneels and another fifty stand behind, and then a loading line, and then men there anxious and silent ready to step forward and fill the gaps. The field guns start firing into the trees and soon we are marvelling at the explosions such as we ain’t ever seen before. Fire and blackness bursts in the tree-tops and then you might think the green of the forest washes forward and back to close the destructed place. All this a quarter mile off and then we see the grey-coated soldiers appear at the ravelled margin of the trees. Captain is peering through his glass and he says something I can’t hear and it’s spoken back in a relay and it sounds like he is saying there be about three thousand men. That sounds like a great number but we’re just a thousand more. The yellowlegs group on the top meadow and our batteries are trying to get a pin on them. Then they are getting a pin and then the Rebels are moving down because there ain’t nothing joyous in receiving well-served bombs. The Rebels run down towards us in a fashion never expected at least by me and then when they come in range the officers steady us and then call out to fire and then we fire. Those crazy Rebs go down in numbers and then just like the forest seem to close with green courage over the gaps of deaths and then they keep coming on. Each line of us reloads and fires, reloads and fires, and now the Rebs are firing, some by standing for a moment, some on the hoof as they hurry down. It ain’t the slow march we were taught at all but a lurching wild gallop of human creatures. You wouldn’t think so many could be killed and it not stop them and then all round us we are falling with a bullet in a face or a bullet in a arm. Those fierce little minie bullets that open in your poor soft corpse. Then the captain screams out to fix our bayonets and then we are bid to stand and then we are bid to charge. Of my little bunch of men one still kneels in dazed conviction so I deftly kick him to his feet and on we go. Now we are one heart running but the grass is tufty and thick and it is hard to run nobly and we are stumbling and cursing like drunkards. But somehow by fierce tuck of strength we keep our feet and suddenly it seems desirable to lock with our foe and suddenly the grass seems no obstacle at all and one in the company cries out Faugh a ballagh and then there is a sound made in our throats we have never heard and there is a great hunger to do we know not what unless it is stick our bayonets into the rush of grey ahead. But not just that because there is another thing or other things we have no names for because it is not part of usual talk. It is not like running at Indians who are not your kind but it is running at a mirror of yourself. Those Johnny Rebs are Irish, English, and all the rest. Canter on, canter on, and enjoin. But suddenly then the Rebs swing right and turn their charge across the meadow. They’ve seen the great swathe of our men come up behind and maybe seen a engine of death complete and whatever it is we can hear the officers calling out in the chaotic uproar. We’re stopped in our charge and kneel and load and fire. We kneel and load and fire at the side-on millipede of the enemy. Our batteries belch forth their bombs again and the Confederates balk like a huge herd of wild horses and run back ten yards and then ten yards reversed again. They greatly desire to reach the cover of the far woods. The batteries belch behind, they belch behind. Some bombs come so low they want a path through us too and many fall in our lines as a missile forges a bloody ditch through living men. A frantic weariness infects our bones. We load and fire, we load and fire. Now in the burgeoning noise dozens of shells hit into the enemy, sharding them and shredding them. There is a sense of sudden wretchedness and disaster. Then with a great bloom like a sudden infection of spring flowers the meadow becomes a strange carpet of flames. The grass has caught fire and is generously burning and adding burning to burning. So dry it cannot flame fast enough, so high that the blades combust in great tufts and wash the legs of the fleeing soldiers not with soft grasses but dark flames full of a roaring strength. Wounded men fallen in the furnace cry out with horror and affront. Pain such as no animal could bear without wild screeching, tearing, rearing. The main body of soldiers find the mercy of the trees and their wounded are left now on the blackened earth. What is it causes the captain to halt our firing and by relayed message halt the guns? Now we are merely standing watching and the wind blows the conflagration up the meadow leaving many a howling man and a quiet man in its wake. The quiet are in their black folds of death. Others where the fire hasn’t touched are just groaning and ruined men. We are bid retire. Our surge of blue draws back two hundred yards and boys go out in gunless details from the rear and there are the medical boys and the chaplain too. Out from the Rebel trees come similar souls likewise and a truce is struck without a word. Muskets are thrown down both sides and the details charge up now not to fire and kill but to stamp out the black acre of lingering flames and tend the dying, the rended, and the burned. Like dancers dancing on the charred grasses.