Karl Bacon (28 page)

Suddenly Colonel Carroll was knocked off his horse. He tried to stand; his right arm dangled uselessly at his side. Several men helped carry him to the rear. His war was done too and we would see him no more. Colonel Ellis and the other regimental commanders continued on and led us several hundred yards farther. The scenes of destruction passed, the ground beneath our feet became firmer and even grass covered in places — ahead was land green and verdant. Several Rebel guns opened on us; the shells either flew over our heads or fell short. A little farther and musket balls began to kick up the dirt in front of us. A drifting cloud of powder smoke hung above a dark line of breastworks atop a low ridge to the south.

“There they are, boys, sitting and waiting for us,” Colonel Ellis shouted. “Our work is done. Fall back to our works.”

We retraced our steps back to the mule shoe, back to the mud and gore, back to coming face-to-face with the horror of it. As we neared the corpse-filled trenches once again, my weary eyes focused on the most dismal and terrible sight of this man’s war. About twenty feet away, rising out of the drying mud, was the bare forearm of a man, its fingers frozen half-clenched as if grasping for something, for a friend, for air, for life, or for heaven. I stared unmoving for some time, trying to determine whether the arm had been severed from its owner, or whether the rest of the man’s corpse had been interred deep in the mud.

I could not go on. I was at my end. I took a few wavering steps over to the remains of a tree that had been shredded by an
endless stream of musket balls and sat down heavily. I leaned against the shattered stump and stared at that arm.

“Sarge, are you all right?”

“I’m done, Otto, completely done.”

I slept for about half an hour until Otto gently nudged me awake.

“Sarge? Sarge? Burial details have been by twice asking if you were dead.”

“Not yet,” I said, “but it may not be long.”

“What do you mean, Sarge?”

“I’ve tried to see any sign of God’s hand in this slaughter, but I don’t. Perhaps He’s finally abandoned us to reap the full harvest of what we have sown. How can anyone outlive this wicked war?”

Otto helped me to my feet and remained by my side as we walked back over that dreadful ground. Once or twice he reached out his hand to steady me when the footing seemed particularly treacherous.

“Sarge, I think I saw something move over there,” Otto said, pointing off to the left. “There it is again. Do you see it?”

I bent my head in the direction Otto was pointing and strained to see what had caught his attention. I saw only a carnage-filled trench where corpses were piled several deep, a grisly testament to the fury of the battle, as the still living fought atop the bodies of the fallen, and who knew if there were others more deeply interred in the blood-red mud. “No, Otto, I don’t see anything.”

“Stay here, Sarge. I’ll go have a look.”

Otto went and peered down into the trench. He called out something I could not hear. A moment later he was beckoning wildly for me to join him.

“There’s somebody down there, Sarge. I heard him groan and he moved a little. We have to help him.”

It was the last thing I wished to do. It was brutal and nasty work, and Otto did most of it, given my weakened state. Bullet-riddled corpses filled the trench, Federal or Confederate we knew not which. There was no way to lift them except through close physical contact with each corpse and soon we were covered head to toe with mud and gore, indistinguishable from the dead except that we still moved and breathed. As Otto reached down to take hold of one body by the hand, the hand gripped Otto’s in return.

“Thank you,” said a faint, raspy voice.

It took a few minutes to free the man’s arms and legs. He had been shot once in the side, but he did not so much as whimper when Otto grabbed him under the armpits and hoisted him out of the trench.

“Thanks, Yanks,” the man said humbly. “Thought I’d be gone soon.”

“What’s your name? What’s your unit?” I asked.

“Private Denny Allen, Tenth Louisiana, Stafford’s Brigade, but I guess my war is done.”

“It is,” I said. “We’ll take you back to the hospital.”

“Might I have just a minute before we go?” the prisoner asked. I nodded grudgingly.

Private Allen fell to his knees beside the trench that had nearly been his grave, hands clasped tightly before him, head bowed low. For several minutes he moved not a muscle, save for his lips, which mumbled a penitent prayer heard only above.

Private Allen talked all the way back through our lines to the hospital. “Thought I was a Christian before, even been baptized, but I probably weren’t till now. All my life I’ve heard many a sermon about the cross of Jesus and how I should look only to the cross. Well, I didn’t pay much heed and pretty much thought I could do as I pleased. But last night, under that heap of dead men, when I couldn’t so much as open one eye, let alone two,
I saw nothing but that cross before me, and I tell you, I was at peace, even when I figured I was about to breathe my last. Then one of you boys grabbed my hand. You boys saved my body from that pit, but the Lord saved the soul of this worm of a sinner. Praise be!”

I say unto you, that likewise joy shall be in heaven over one sinner that repenteth.
Indeed, Otto seemed very pleased with our prisoner’s confession. I remained silent.

Eye hath not seen, nor ear heard, neither have entered into the heart of man, the things which God hath prepared for them that love him.
1 CORINTHIANS 2:9

June 2
^nd
, 1864

Camp of the 14
^th
Conn. Vol. Rgt. Inf.
Cold Harbor, Virginia (near Richmond)

My Dearest Jessie Anne,

It has been four weeks since I last wrote to you. I am as well as can be expected, given the constant marching and fighting the army has been engaged in. I am not injured, nor am I ill, and I have sufficient food for my need. However, I am weary to the bone and wish for none other than to be done with this business one way or another. That I have more than fourteen months service remaining weighs all the more heavily upon me with each passing day. Pray with me that all of this might soon end.

In your last letter you wrote that Abby has agreed to allow Mr. Allerton to call on her. At first I thought this an inappropriate development, but I could find nothing reasonable
to support my position and upon further reflection, I have come to see some merit in it. It may be that as I have always considered Abby to be John’s wife, I shall need to revise my thinking and more kindly regard her happiness and the welfare of her children. Truly I would wish such happiness for you should I also depart this life.

Of the four men who left Naugatuck aboard that train so long ago, I alone still live. After a long, hard day of fighting near Spotsylvania Courthouse on May 12
^th
that continued well into the night, Jim Adams was set upon by one of the enemy. In the fight Jim also killed his foe. Another good friend and soldier is in the ground. I wrote to Jim’s parents a day or two after he was killed to express my sympathies, but if you meet them about town, please greet them and tell them personally how much I valued Jim. He was a soldier among soldiers and a trusted friend.

Charlie Merrills met with some trouble several weeks ago. He has not revealed the nature of it, but it possibly stems from an incident at a band concert back in April that aroused the ire of several officers. Although I know not the details, I am given to understand it was sufficiently serious for Charlie to be removed from his position as principal musician. He was reduced to the rank of private in my company, and now carries a rifle instead of a cornet, but he is not skilled as a soldier, and I try to place him in the rear ranks when possible.

No doubt the newspapers have followed our advances and have printed digests of the battles. The 14
^th
has seen much fighting, and the men have given a good account of themselves. But our fighting strength has been reduced to less than two hundred again. Company C has only seventeen men fit for duty besides myself. In spite of this loss, everyone here believes the enemy has suffered even more severely. We have not retreated; our advances have not been reversed. We are at the doorstep of Richmond and I cannot believe the enemy can sustain this war much longer.

Indeed, I cannot sustain this effort much longer. Periods of
rest do little good, and true sleep has been unknown to me for the last month. My strength is never renewed – every day it seems what strength I do possess is gone before I rise. Perhaps tomorrow it will all end, or the next day.

Until the end I remain ever faithfully
your affectionate and devoted husband,

A hand gently touched my shoulder. “Sergeant,” Captain Simpson said in a low voice, “it’s time to waken the men. You know the usual measures—no fires, no noise, no anything—and have them very quietly check and load their weapons and fix bayonets. Not a sound.”

“Yes, sir, Captain,” I said, getting to my feet, “not a sound. This means we’re going in, then?”

“Yes, Sergeant, and it’s going to get brutal in a hurry. The Rebs have been to this ball too many times not to know the steps to the dance. They know how fond General Grant has become of attacking at dawn, so they have to know we’re coming.”

“Captain?”

“Yes, Sergeant?”

“If I should fall …”

“Say no more, Sergeant. I know. There are things of which old soldiers like us no longer need to speak. We know what’s required. Say nothing of this to the men, but last night when our orders came down, Colonel Ellis said, ‘The Fourteenth will do its duty as always, but there won’t be any heroes made tomorrow.’ I’m not sure what he meant by that and he wouldn’t elaborate.”

Rousing slumbering soldiers was a thankless duty at any time, but on this morning, with prospects only for battle with
no coffee or breakfast, I knew the men would be particularly ill-tempered. Indeed the only “Good morning, Sergeant Palmer” I heard was from Otto. Under normal circumstances I would have ordered my corporal to do it, but in the three weeks since Jim’s death, the regiment had been either on the march, in line of battle, or in an advanced picket position, so no corporal had yet been named for Company C.

It was Friday, June 3
^rd
, and the armies were now pitted against each other about seven miles east of Richmond at a village called Cold Harbor. The predawn darkness was nearly total, but I guessed it to be about three o’clock. A light mist was falling. Up and down the line of the Second Corps, which ran from near the crossroad in the center of the village one and one-half miles to the south, the men arose and did as they were ordered, albeit with a fair amount of muted cursing and grumbling. At three-thirty a silent signal was given to fall into line. All was in readiness to once again step off into the leaden gale of death, and yet something was amiss.

Sergeant Needham had been correct; the fear was always there, that anxiety of spirit and dread of the future when one could not say what the next few minutes or hours might have in store. It sometimes felt so close I could feel it lay hold of my shoulder, at times sharply, startling me with its swiftness, at other times gently, as a friend might do. Rather than panic, this fear was a building apprehension within me that often made itself manifest through restlessness deep in my soul, strain upon my emotions that caused both tears and giddy humor to be more frequent, and tension within the tendons and sinews of my body, so that no part of my being escaped its influence.

It seemed that fear would ever be my master, always tapping into the sap of my soul and draining it from me. We had
marched shoulder to shoulder away from the encampment at Stony Mountain only a month previous. Through the thickets of the Wilderness fear had gone with me, and it was there, and only there, and only for a few brief hours, that I thought him to be my servant. Indeed, there I seemed to feed upon his vitality, until the horrors of Spotsylvania finally revealed him to be the most traitorous of companions.

Thankfully, my fear would sometimes retreat a short distance into the shadows beside the roadside. Respite came when the Second Corps marched away from Spotsylvania after nightfall on May 20
^th
. Three weeks of fighting had taken its toll — nearly one in three of the eager, confident men who had begun the campaign were now dead, wounded, or missing. Heavy artillery units from Washington’s defenses exchanged their guns and limbers for rifles and cartridge boxes and were hurried to the front. With their uniforms bright and unsullied, these untried troops were easily spotted, and no one knew what to expect of them when the clamor of battle arose and hot metal filled the air.

My dreaded companion kept his distance for a few days as we marched south to Bowling Green, then southwest to the Telegraph Road at Carmel Church, but he closed ranks once again the morning of May 24
^th
, when the brigade sprinted across a crude timber bridge over the North Anna River and once more found an imposing line of entrenchments blocking our way. Heavy skirmishing developed as we tested the enemy’s strength and they tested ours, but no pitched battle developed.

The night of May 26
^th
, as we withdrew north of the river, my anxiety abated once again. As before, we marched east and south, drawing ever nearer the coveted Confederate capital. Again the Rebels were waiting for us behind stout works as we approached Totopotomoy Creek from the north on May 30
^th
. We drove their pickets across to the south side of the creek, pushed across ourselves, and then entrenched. Three days of artillery
duels and deadly sharpshooting ensued. Other than picketing and digging, there was nothing to do in the hot, humid weather but to keep quiet and keep out of sight.

Nightfall on June 1
^st
saw the Second Corps on the march again, again to the east and south to Cold Harbor. The distance traveled was not great, only about eight miles, but the night remained exceedingly warm and sticky, and the hot sun had baked the roads dry. Powdery clouds of dust covered me from head to toe, nearly choking the breath out of me, in spite of the kerchief over my face. It was impossible to see more than a few feet ahead. What should have been accomplished before sunrise lasted well into the next day. The Fourteenth filed into line about one-quarter mile south of the crossroad at about noon on June 2
^nd
and waited to see what would happen next.

I shifted my weight from one foot to the other, waiting for the signal to advance. Yes, something was definitely amiss. At first, I could not identify what precisely this strange sensation was, or its cause, but something was not as it should be. The men in the ranks were standing quietly, fidgeting as they always did. Because of the trees to our front I could not see our objective, but this was often the case, especially upon a damp and misty dawn. Otto was beside me in line as he always was, now that Jim was gone, and Charlie was in the second line a little to the left. Everything was as it should have been, yet something was still amiss. I contemplated this peculiar feeling for some time, examining several more possible causes, until it finally became clear to me.

The fear was gone. It was not among the dark shadows of the trees, nor was it taking coffee by the side of the road, ready to jump to my side when the killing began. It was really and truly gone. I was completely unafraid of what was about to transpire.
“Run away from that man as fast as you can,” Sarge had said, and yet my body was limber and relaxed, my mind clear and alert, and my soul was perfectly at peace.

I had been spared too often while others close at hand had perished. I knew the perils I would shortly face, and I acknowledged the nearness of my own death, but there was no terror in this realization. What a gift from God, I thought. Oh, what comfort! Oh, what a blessed mercy it will be to go into battle fearless of the outcome.

At exactly half past four, a gun behind our lines fired a single shot. The long double line of blue soldiers stepped forward and the assault began. Our line advanced into a patch of dense forest. The branches of the trees seemed to envelop me. Were these the enfolding arms of Almighty God? Was He really so close at hand watching over me and guiding every step? My composure was absolute; my face was set for battle; my step was sure in the serene confidence that no harm could befall me that day.

I approached the edge of the woods. A few hundred yards ahead, atop a low ridge, I could now easily make out the dark earthen gash that marked the Rebels’ works. Battle raged up and down the line as Confederate artillery and infantry mercilessly poured hot iron and lead into our troops advancing over open ground both north and south of the woods. As our brigade stepped from the protection of the trees, deadly missiles filled the air all around us.

“Step lively and stay low, boys,” Captain Simpson shouted. “Move up toward those works and don’t stop.” When I echoed the order, the steadiness of my own voice surprised me.

We ran at a crouch up that slope, ten, twenty, thirty yards. Bullets whined past all around me, some plucked at my clothing, stinging my flesh.
In the shadow of Thy wings will I make my refuge, until these calamities be overpast.
Oh, the security of that Mighty Hand swatting every bullet aside and carrying me forward. On
we ran, fifty yards, seventy-five, then a hundred. Men started to fall as we rushed up that hill.

“Fourteenth! Halt!” Colonel Ellis’s strident voice carried clearly above the din. “Fourteenth, dig in!” he screamed. “Dig for your lives!”

I opened my mouth to repeat the order.

Something akin to a hammer blow knocked my right leg out from under me. I fell heavily to the ground, rolled, and pitched face down. Moist earth filled my mouth. I spat and gasped for air. Sharpest agony enshrouded me. I cried out and tried to stand; my leg would not obey my will; every effort only doubled my suffering. I clenched my teeth against the pain.

There, it is finished. Just a few moments more and the blood and pain and tears will be gone forever. The light dimmed, then brightened, then dimmed again.

How long or short a time I lay there, I know not.
Lord, be merciful to me, a wretched sinner … upward, ever upward into glory … only a moment’s wait for bliss eternal … dear Jessie Anne, until we meet again.
And then it happened, just as I had hoped and prayed. Strong, loving arms gently enfolded me, bearing me upward, lifting me ever so slowly from the earth.
Lord, I have shed innocent blood. Why sendest Thine angels to escort me heavenward? They shall mount up as on wings of eagles.
Surely, this must be preferred above even Elijah’s transport. Just a few seconds longer …