The
evening’s fall of darkness is a terrifying time when you are surrounded by men
that want, no are sworn, to kill you. The evidence of the enemy’s intentions
lay all around him, as did the efforts of his comrades. The blood, everywhere
on the ground, had been quite warm. Now the blood on the ground had congealed
into a sickly, slippery, cold gel. He slid slowly on his back, pushing towards
the Union lines and help. One hundred yards was all that separated the armies.
That and the dead that lay between them.
The
disgraceful brutality of the day’s bloodshed seemed lost on the insects of the
field as they sang and crooned their mating serenades with no more regard for
the hundreds of dead men lying there than a man would have had for the death of
hundreds of their kind. He hoped that their chorus would give cover to the roar
of his labored breathing and pounding heart. Not that it much mattered. His
heart was pumping his own blood out of his body through a hole in his neck,
courtesy of a dying Confederate soldier in his first battle, a boy really, who
discharged his rifle almost as an afterthought while being stabbed to death. He slid slowly on his back.
This was
not his first battle. He had seen the carnage and courage, the terror and
valor, and the death and survival of those that fought and bled on the field.
He prayed that those who sent young men to be slaughtered like this would know
a violent death themselves. This was their war. It was their cause - yet it was
his death. He had no dead man in this funeral. Well, other than he. He was here
because life had failed him and he needed the $300 he got for taking the place
of another. For $300 his life was spilling onto the ground from a hole in his
neck. For $300 he had forged lifelong friendships with the short lived, bonds
that can only be formed in the privation and fear where men seek the support of
the man standing next to them. For $300 received he had the privilege of
watching his newly acquired friends kill and be killed, their bodies decaying
unburied and unmourned, for no reason that any of them could intelligently
articulate. Now it appeared it was his turn. He slid slowly on his back.
His head
swam and his lifeblood flowed from the wound in his neck and still he slid
slowly on, like a frog turned on his back that struggles to right itself. With
30 yards to go he stopped to rest. He opened his eyes to the beauty and miracle
of the stars on a clear night. They greeted him impassively as they always had.
The vastness and excellence of a clear night’s sky is imponderable but the stars
remain unimpressed by man. He dared to let out a series of gasps. He needed
air, needed to breathe, unable to concern himself that someone might hear. He
closed his eyes and felt himself drifting. When he opened his eyes again the stars
were there but remained indifferent to his struggles. He slid slowly on his
back.
Drifting in
and out of consciousness with 20 yards to go a lucid thought fought through the
foggy mind of a dying man. This is a
stupid way to die. He laughed to himself as another thought came to him. I wonder if I give the money back will they
let me live? ‘NO’, said a voice. The
voice was his. He thought of his children,
4 boys under the age of 7. Will they even
remember me? They had been desperate. His wife thought the $300 would
change their lives. It certainly changed
my life. He slid slowly on his back.
There was a
body in his way; he could feel his head bump into it. He would have to go over
it. He collected his strength and curled up as if to sit and then lunged back
on top of the corpse, but the corpse moved and he slid off over its head. Then
the soon-to-be-corpse sat up with wild eyes and made a gurgled sound in his
direction. It was his Sergeant Major. Though he thought they had made eye
contact the Sergeant Major did not appear to recognize him. Then the
Sergeant’s eyes rolled up in his head and a torrent of blood came pouring from
the man’s mouth. The Sergeant Major fell to his side, certainly a corpse now.
He slid slowly on his back.
A hand
grasped his lower leg by the boot. When he looked down a young man missing the
lower part of his body was hanging on to him. “Help me,” he hissed. “Help me”,
he repeated. The half-man held a bloody piece of paper in his hand and was motioning for the soldier to take it. “Give this to my father, please.” With the bloody
paper now in his hand he slid slowly on his back.
He could
see the cover that the men holding the line were sheltering behind. The blood
that had been spewing from his neck was now just a trickle, and what little was
left of his strength had left his body along with it. Five yards to go. He had
to tell them who he was. He wanted his children to know what had happened to
him and where he had died. He slid slowly on his back.
He felt the
earthen ramparts of the line. He had made it. Someone would see him. Someone
did see him. He felt hands grab his tunic roughly and haul him quickly over the
mound. He heard their voices. He tried to speak but could not. He held out the
bloody paper that had been given to him by the man that had been blown in half
by a cannon ball as he lay there on his back.
“It’s a g-d
damn Yankee!”
He had only
a brief moment to realize that he had sought help in the wrong direction before
the soldier brought the bayonet of his rifle down into his chest, the blade
piercing his sternum and pinning him to the earth. How unnecessary, he thought as his life slipped away, to have my blood on your hands. I was killed
already.
His body slid slowly into the
earth.
A day soon came where hundreds of
thousands would come to pay their respects to the official that sent him and
hundreds of thousands like him to their violent deaths. These multitudes would
erect monuments and statues to this official, put his likeness on their
currency, exaggerate his accomplishments, and revere his memory. No one, not even the children of the Union soldier
slain so mercilessly, would remember his life, his loss, his forced sacrifice,
or where his body lay, unmarked, with the others killed that day.
C’est la Guerre.
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