A Stillness at Appomattox (75 page)

At
night
the
front
came
alive.
Along
the
lines
men
took the
shovels
and
picks
and
axes
which
details
brought
out
to them
and
worked
to
make
their
trenches
deep
and
strong. Where
there
were
trees,
they
cut
them
down,
put
the
slashed branches
out
in
front
for
an
abatis,
and
used
the
logs
to
make the
breastworks
solid.
They
dug
their
trenches
deep,
so
that a
man
could
stand
erect
in
them
without
being
shot,
and they
cut
zig-zag
alleyways
through
the
earth
back
toward the
rear,
so
that
they
might
go
to
and
from
the
front
without
being
killed.

Being
very
human,
the
soldiers
on
both
sides
often
dug their
trenches
so
deep
that
while
they
offered
almost
perfect protection
against
enemy
fire
they
were
quite
useless
for fighting
purposes.
In
each
army
it
was
found
that
there
were long
stretches
of
trench
in
which
a
man
could
not
possibly point
his
musket
toward
the
enemy,
and
from
both
blue
and gray
headquarters
orders
went
out
to
front-line
commanders warning
that
there
must
always
be
fire
steps
on
which
riflemen
could
stand
to
shoot
their
foes.
¹

Along
much
of
the
line
the
trenches
were
so
close
that
the men
could
hear
their
enemies
chatting
together.
In
many places
the
lines
were
not
far
enough
apart
to
give
the
pickets proper
room,
and
in
these
places
there
was
constant
skirmishing
all
the
way
around
the
clock.
Even
where
there
was a
decent
distance,
the
lines
were
seldom
quiet.
Half
a
dozen shots
from
the
skirmish
lines
could
bring
great
rolling
salvos from
the
guns,
so
that
at
times
it
sounded
as
if
an
immense battle
were
rocking
back
and
forth
over
the
desolate
bottomlands.
Most
of
this
cannonading
did
no
great
harm,
for
the men
in
the
deep
trenches
were
well
protected
against
missiles fired
with
relatively
flat
trajectory,
and
fuses
were
so
imperfect
that
even
the
best
gunners
could
rarely
explode
a
shell directly
over
a
trench.
To
get
around
this
difficulty
the
artillerists
brought
up
coehorn
mortars—squat
little
jugs
of
iron that
rested
on
flat
wooden
bases
and
pointed
up
toward
the sky,
which
could
toss
shells
in
a
high
arc
so
that
they
might fall
into
a
distant
slit
in
the
earth.
At
night
the
fuses
from these
shells
traced
sputtering
red
patterns
across
the
sky.
²

The
infantry
hated
the
mortars,
regarding
them,
as
one veteran
said,
as
"a
contemptible
scheme
to
make
a
soldier's life
wretched."
The
weapons
were
usually
out
of
sight
behind
a
bank
of
earth,
and
when
they
were
fired
the
men
in the
trenches
could
neither
hear
the
report
nor
see
the
flash and
puff
of
smoke.
They
had
no
warning:
nothing
but
the hissing
spark
that
rose
deliberately,
seemed
to
hang
in
the air
high
overhead,
and
then
fell
to
earth
to
explode.
Even more
than
the
mortars,
however,
the
soldiers
hated
sharpshooters.
They
had
a
feeling
that
sharpshooters
never
really affected
the
course
of
a
battle:
they
were
sheer
malignant nuisances,
taking
unfair
advantages
and
killing
men
who might
just
as
well
have
remained
alive.
One
artillerist
wrote that
the
sharpshooters
would
"sneak
around
trees
or
lurk behind
stumps"
and
from
this
shelter
"murder
a
few
men," and
he
burst
out
with
the
most
indignant
complaint
of
all: "There
was
an
unwritten
code
of
honor
among
the
infantry that
forbade
the
shooting
of
men
while
attending
to
the
imperative
calls
of
nature,
and
these
sharpshooting
brutes
were constantly
violating
that
rule.
I
hated
sharpshooters,
both Confederate
and
Union,
and
I
was
always
glad
to
see
them killed."
³

So
much
of
the
killing
these
days
seemed
to
be
meaning
less.
In
a
great
battle
men
died
to
take
or
defend
some
particular
point,
and
it
could
be
seen
that
there
was
some
reason
for
their
deaths.
But
there
were
so
many
deaths
that
affected
the
outcome
of
the
war
not
a
particle—deaths
that
had nothing
to
do
with
the
progress
of
the
campaign
or
with
the great
struggle
for
union
and
freedom
but
that
simply
happened,
doing
no
one
any
good.
There
was
one
day
when a
Federal
battery
took
position
in
the
yard
of
a
farmhouse and
began
to
duel
with
a
Confederate
battery
a
mile
away. The
firing
grew
hot,
and
the
people
who
lived
in
the
farmhouse
huddled
inside
in
desperate
fear;
and
presently
a poor
colored
servant
in
the
house,
driven
beside
herself
with terror,
sprang
up
in
a
lunatic
frenzy,
scooped
up
a
shovelful of
live
coals
from
the
hearth,
ran
to
the
doorway,
and
threw the
glowing
coals
out
in
a
wild
swing.
The
coals
landed
in
an open
limber
chest,
which
blew
up
with
a
mighty
crash.
Two or
three
gunners
were
killed
outright,
two
or
three
more were
blinded
forever,
the
woman
was
quite
unhurt—and there
were
more
names
for
the
casualty
lists,
testifying
to nothing
except
that
war
was
a
madman's
business.
⁴