Cold Harbor

Near Cold Harbor

June 2, 1864

We’ve slid south again, past the North Anna, racing Grant to every crossroads. Some of the old hands say we fought nigh here in ’62. I don’t remember the ground, but I know the feel of it. Roads choked with wagons, men digging without being told, and the air full of rumor and heat.

All day we dug. We cut trees and laid ’em with the limbs pointing out toward the Yankees, a cruel kind of fence meant to hold a man still long enough for a ball to find him. We piled dirt till it was a wall and cut steps in the back so a man can rise up, fire, and drop down again like a machine.

General Kirkland of the brigade next to ours was shot by a sharpshooter today. The news went down the line quiet. Nobody hollered. Men just set their jaws and kept digging, like the dirt could give back what the bullets take.

Night before a big assault is worse than the assault. Men write letters. Men stare at nothing. Men pray without making a sound. I can’t sleep.

Near Cold Harbor

June 3, 1864

Fog laid on the ground at daylight like a sheet, and then the sheet was torn wide open by musketry.

It all started at once, like somebody dropped a match in a powder keg. The worst of it was off to our right. From where we were we could hear it as one long tearing sound and feel the ground trembling. The boys that came over from that end of the line said the Yankees came on in the fog in lines, and fell into the low places and the felled trees and the open ground, and the line never moved. In less time than it takes to milk a cow, they said, thousands were down.

I toted cartridges along the trench and dragged water forward. My shoulder burnt every time I turned and my belly pulled till I thought I’d fall out. But I stayed on my feet.

By the middle of the morning it had changed from crashing waves to a slow, bitter rain of shots.

Near Cold Harbor

June 7, 1864

Now the killing comes in little pieces. A crack. A man drops. Another crack. Another man crawls back holding his arm. Nobody dares raise his head above the works. The heat is thick and the flies find every wound.

There’s men lying out between the lines still, from the third. You can hear ’em calling sometimes. It’s too close to cross in daylight and nobody trusts a truce. The battle’s over and the suffering ain’t.

I used to think war was charges and hollering. Now I know it’s mostly waiting and flinching.

Maps from the printed book