From the Rapidan to Richmond and the Spottsylvania Campaign Part 11

The crash of that Napoleon, and the scream of the sh.e.l.l there, in the deep stillness of day-dawn, sounded as if it might be heard all over Virginia! The effect was instant! You ought to have seen the boys, lying all about, "tumble up." They flirted up from the ground like snap bugs!

"Gabriel's trumpet" couldn't have jerked them to their feet quicker.

Ned Barnes had lain down right where the gun had been, at the work. When we ran it back to its place, in our excitement, we did not notice him.

Fortunately the wheels went on either side of him. He was lying flat on his back, and right under the gun, when it fired. Ned went on like a chicken with its head off. There was a scuffle, a yell, the whack of a b.u.mped head under the gun. Ned came tumbling out, all in a heap, perfectly dazed, and wanting to know, in indignant tones, "What in the thunder we were doing that way _for_?"

Before the sound of our gun had died away the whole line was up, shooting like mad, and both guns were going hard. A few minutes of this sent that sneaking line back to the woods, with a good deal more noise, and faster, than it came. We learnt, afterwards, that the idea was to surprise us, if possible. If so, to take, and sweep our line. If not, _not_ to press the attack. The "surprise" was all they could have wished. Not a picket fired on them. They were in one hundred and fifty yards of our sleeping men, and could have simply walked over them, and captured the whole line at that point. And, _if they had_--fixed as our Army was, a half hour later--it would, I am sure, have meant disaster.

The only thing that averted it was, _humanly_ speaking, the _accident_ that three young "Howitzers" sat up talking all night, and, happened to look over at that wood at the break of day,--and _had a cannon handy_!

I think the Texans "owed us another one" for this, and the Army of Northern Virginia "owed us one" too. Major-General Field _said so_ in his report of this incident.

The very same thing which _would have happened here was happening_ five minutes later up the line to our right, where the Federal troops came right over our works, and caught our exhausted soldiers asleep in their blankets--the start of the b.l.o.o.d.y business of the b.l.o.o.d.y Angle.

Yes! the b.l.o.o.d.y work which was to go on all day long, this dreadful 12th of May, was already beginning, up there in the woods.

The little firing on our part of the line was scarcely over, before we heard the sound of musketry come rolling down the line from the right.

Soon the big guns joined in, and we knew that a furious fight was going on, off there. In a few moments we got the news, called from man to man down along the lines, "The Yankees have taken the Salient on Ewell's front, and captured Ed. Johnson's Division, and twenty guns. Pa.s.s it down the lines!"

So it was! In overwhelming ma.s.ses the Federals had poured out of the woods, over the Salient Angle, where the men were asleep, and from which the cannon had been withdrawn. And General Lee was trying to drive them out, and retake our works.

This was the great business of the 12th of May. A very cyclone of battle raged round that Salient. The Federals trying to hold it, our men trying to retake it. We heard that the two Parrott guns of our "Right Section"

had gone over there to help, and they were in the thick of that awful row. We heard it all going on, artillery and musketry, rolling and crashing away, all day long.

Our part of the line was comparatively quiet, after the fight of the early morning. Several times infantry was seen moving about, down in the woods, in our front, and we would send a few sh.e.l.ls into the woods just to let them know that we were watchful, and ready. Harry Sublett was wounded by a stray ball on this day. But no real attack was made, only the sound of the sharp-shooter's rifle, and the sound of their bullets enlivened the time.

This went on for several days. The idea of breaking our line, here, had been given up as a hopeless job, and no other attempt was made on it.

a.s.saults were made on other points, and we could hear fighting, here and there, but we were left alone.

At last, we got orders to move, about the 18th or 19th. Our pickets had advanced through the woods, and reported that the enemy had left our front.

While waiting for the horses to be brought up to take off the guns, an infantryman told me that a cow had been killed, between the lines, and was lying down there in the woods, in front.

We had had an awful time about food, for the last week, and were hungry as wolves. This news about the cow was news indeed. I told several of the boys, and off we started to get some of that cow! We found it lying just in the edge of the woods. It was a hideous place to go for a beefsteak! All around, the ground was covered with dead Federal soldiers, many in an advanced stage of decay. The woods had been on fire, and many of these bodies were burned; some with the clothing, and nearly all the flesh consumed! The carca.s.s of that cow was _touching five dead bodies_,--which will give an idea of how thick the dead were lying. Many of their wounded had perished in the flames, which had swept over the ground.

=Grant's Neglect of Federal Wounded=

We had witnessed all these horrors, with our own eyes, days before, from our lines, and had been helpless to do anything for them. Hundreds of wounded Federal soldiers lay between the lines, day after day, and perished for want of help. Several of us, unable to bear the sight of their suffering, went out one day to carry them food and water, and the Federals fired upon us, and wounded one of our men, then we had to leave them alone. They could not or would not care for their wounded, and would not let us do it. It _was stated_ among us that General Lee had sent an offer to General Grant to permit him to send, and care for his wounded, near our lines; and he refused. And then General Lee offered, if Grant would suspend hostilities for some hours, that _we_ would care for his wounded rather than see them suffer, and die, before our eyes; Grant refused that proposal too!

Certain it is, these poor fellows were left to their fate and perished, miserably, by wounds and famine, and fire. Their many dead, in our front, lay unburied until the odor from them was so dreadful that we could hardly stay in our works. It may be that General Grant had this in mind, and was determined that, if his _live_ soldiers couldn't drive us out of the works, his _dead_ ones should. Well! he had his way of making war! And on account of his inhumanity to his wounded, his _own men_ thought as _ours did_, that his way was very brutal! I heard his own men curse him bitterly. They called him "The Butcher" in those days. The feeling of his army to him was widely different from our feeling for our General.

All those dead soldiers along a line of five miles lay rotting on the ground, until we had gone away, and the people of the country neighborhood had to collect them from the fields, and thickets, and bury them, for fear of pestilence. And when one remembers that from Thursday, the 5th of May, to Thursday, the 12th of May, General Grant had lost 40,000 in killed and wounded, the dread sight of death and suffering we looked upon, can be imagined! The thronging lines of unburied dead,--it was a shocking and appalling spectacle!

But we could not just then, mind the sights we saw! We got our beef, all the same! We were the first to get to that cow, and we had to take our knives and cut through the skin, on the rump, and flay it up, and then cut out hunks of the flesh, as best we could, and get back to the guns.

As I got back, carrying my big piece of meat, in my hands, Col. H. C.

Cabell, commanding our Battalion, met me. He said, "My dear boy, where on earth did you get that meat?" I told him. "Well," he said, "I am almost starved; _could_ you give me a little piece?" I cut off a chunk as big as my fist, stuck it on a sharp stick, held it a few minutes in a fire, close by, and handed it up to the Colonel, sitting on his horse.

He took it off the stick, and ate it ravenously. He said it was the best morsel he ever tasted! It was scant times when a Colonel of artillery was as famished as he was! I cut up the rest of the beef, and divided among several of us, and we cooked it on a stick, the only cooking utensil we had at hand, and ate it, with a keenness of enjoyment that terrapin, canva.s.s back duck, and Lynnhaven oysters could not provoke me to now. _My dear!_ but that hot meat was good, to palates accustomed, mostly, to _nothing_, and _no salt on that_, for about a week. The only meat we had now,--when we had any at all.--was fat mess pork, and we ate that _raw_. Hot beef was a delicious change!

Meanwhile the hours had worn on. We limbered up the guns, and moved several miles off, toward the right, pa.s.sing through Spottsylvania Court House. It was here we went by to see Cary Eggleston for the last time.

He died next day.

We halted in a broom-sedge field, some distance beyond the Court House, and parked our guns, along with some other artillery, already there. And here we stayed a day or two.

The only thing I particularly recall of the stay here, was a trivial circ.u.mstance. One of the batteries we found in this field, belonged to the "Reserve Artillery" of which the "_un_reserved artillery" had a very humble opinion indeed,--just at that time.

These fellows had not fired a shot, through all the late fighting, and their guns were as bright, and clean as possible; which ours were not.

One day a blue bird started to build her nest in the muzzle of one of their guns. Some of the sentimental fellows took this as an augury. "A sweet gentle little bird building her nest in the muzzle of a cannon!

What _could_ that mean but, that peace was about to be made, and these cannon useless?"

The rest of us scouted this fancy, and took it as a rare good joke on that "Reserve Artillery." We said "their guns were not of any use anyhow _except_ for birds' nests; the birds knew they would be perfectly safe to build their nest, and live in _those_ guns. _They_ would not be disturbed!" We "chaffed" the officers and men of that battery most unmercifully. The whole field was on the _grin_, about that birds' nest.

The poor fellows were blazing mad, and much mortified; so _disgusted_ that they took their nice, clean guns, and went off to a distant part of the field, to get rid of us. We were _sorry_ to lose them! They afforded _us_ a great deal of fun, if they didn't have any themselves. That blue bird story got all over our part of the Army, and those "Reserve Artillerists" were "sorry that they were living."

CHAPTER IV

COLD HARBOR AND THE DEFENSE OF RICHMOND

About the 20th or 21st we started from Spottsylvania battlefields for others. The Army was on the move, and we went along. For a day or two we were constantly marching, not knowing where we were going, and along roads that I remember very little about. At last, about the 22d, we crossed the North Anna River, and struck the Central Railroad (now "the Chesapeake and Ohio") and marched along it, till we halted near Hanover Junction.

Our Army had crossed and stopped on the south bank of the North Anna, two or three miles in front of the Junction, and was taking the river for a new line of defence. Presently the Federal Army came up pushing on, for the same point, and found us, already ahead, in front, and across their track! Then they went at the same old game of trying to break through us. They got across the river on our right, and on our left. General Lee then threw back both wings of his army, clinging with his centre to the river bank. Thus check-mating Grant in a way to make his head swim! Grant after crossing the river, on both our right and left, suddenly found he had got his army cut in two, and he _got out of that_, just as quickly as he could, and gave the North Anna line up as a bad job.

We were moving in one direction, or another, about the Junction, for seven or eight days. This North Anna business was far more a matter of brains between the Generals, than brawn between the men. Some sharp fighting, on points right and left, but that was all! General Lee simply "horn swaggled" General Grant, and that was the end of it! We were out one day on the "Doswell Farm," and got under a pretty sharp infantry fire, and fired a few shots, then General Rodes' skirmishers charged, and drove them off, and we saw no more of them.

Along about the 29th or 30th of May, we got on the march again; this time through the "Slashes of Hanover." It was an all-night march, and a most uncomfortable one. The rain had been pouring, and long sections of the road were under water. I think we waded for miles, that dark night, through water from an inch to a foot deep. And the mud holes! after a time our gun wheels went up to the hub, and we had to turn to, there in the dark, and prize our guns out; nearly lift them bodily out of the mud. I suppose we did not go more than five or six miles, in that all-night march, and by the time day dawned we were as wet, and muddy, as the roads, and felt as _flat_, and were tired to death. We halted for an hour or two to rest; then pushed on, all day.

In the late afternoon (this I think was May 31st) we took our guns into position, on the far edge of a flat, open field. Two hundred yards in front of us, in the edge of a wood, was a white frame Church, which, some of the fellows, who knew this neighborhood, told us was "Pole Green Church." They also told us that the Pamunkey River was about a mile in front of us. We heard artillery in various directions, but saw no enemy, and did not know anything of what was going on, except where we were. It was quiet there; so we went to sleep, and were undisturbed during the night.

The next morning, we found that infantry had formed right and left of us, and we were in a line of battle stretching across this extensive field. About eleven o'clock skirmishers began to appear, in the woods, in front of us. They thickened up, and opened on us quite a lively fire.

We stood this awhile until those skirmishers made a rush from the woods, and tried to gain the cover of the church building. Some of them did, and as this was crowding us a little too close, we took to our guns, and so dosed them with canister, as they ran out, that they retired, out of range, into the woods. Soon after some infantry began to form in the edge of the woods as if they were about to charge us. We opened on them.

They advanced a little, then broke in some confusion, and disappeared.

The rest of this day, June 1st, along where we were, there was lively sharp-shooting going on, up and down the line, and once a battery fired a few shots at us, but no special attack was made.

In the afternoon, taking advantage of the quiet, our negro mess cooks came into the line, to bring us something to eat. Each fellow had the cooked meat, and bread, for his mess, in a bag, swung over his shoulder.

They came on across the field until within a hundred yards of the line, when a sh.e.l.l struck, in the field, not far from them. The darkies scattered, like a covey of birds! Some ran one way, and some another.

Some ran back to the rear, and a few ran on to us. Our cook, Ephraim, came tearing on with long leaps, and tumbled over among us crying out, "De Lord have mercy upon us." "Ephraim," we said, "what is the matter?

what did you run for?" All in a tremble, he thrust out the bag towards us, and exclaimed, "Here, Ma.r.s.e George, take your vituals, and let me git away from here. De Lord forgive me for being such a fool as to come to sich a place as dis _anyhow_."

"But, Ephraim," we said, "there was no danger! That sh.e.l.l didn't hit anywhere near you." "De ain't no use in telling me dat! Don't n.o.body know whar dem things goin'! Sound to me like it was bout to hit me side my head, and bust my brains out, every minit; and if it had a hit me, dem other cooks would all a run away, and left me lying out dar, like a poor creeter." "But, my dear Ephraim," we said, "it mortifies us to see the 'Howitzer' cooks running so, with all the men looking on." "Don't keer who looking! When dem things come any whar bout me, I _bleeged_ to run. Dis ain't no place for cooks, nohow. Here gentlemen! take your rations; I got to get away from here!" We emptied the bag, he threw it over his back, and streaked with it to the rear.

Another night in line here! Next morning, June 2d, orders came to move.

We got on a road running along, just back of our position, and marched off toward the right. The road ran, for some distance, nearly parallel to our lines, and then bore away toward the rear. For a time we met, or pa.s.sed bodies of troops and wagon teams on the roadside, soldiers single, or in groups. Further on, all these reminders of the presence of the Army were left behind, and we found ourselves marching on quiet lonely country roads, through woods and fields of a peaceful rural landscape. We had not the least idea where we were going; or what we were going to do, or see when we got there. But we had got out of the habit of caring for that.

=The Last March of Our Howitzer Captain=

It was a calm, sweet June evening! quiet country farms, and homes lay all about us. The whole scene spoke of peace. It was such a restful change to us from the din and smoke and crowd we had been in the midst of so long. We gave ourselves up to the influences of the hour, and a very pleasant evening we cannoneers had strolling along, in front of the column of guns, and talking together.

Captain McCarthy was on foot, in the midst of us, as we marched. I remember being particularly struck with what a stalwart, martial figure he was, as he strode along that road. He was much more silent, and quiet than usual! He was generally so bright and cheerful, that this was noticed, and remarked on by several of us.