Fredericksburg

Camp in Virginia

November 10, 1862

Colonel Cooke is a general now. They gave him a brigade all of North Carolina boys, the 15th, our 27th, the 46th, and the 48th, and Major Gilmer is our colonel. The boys that cussed Cooke all summer is proud as peacocks over it. He made soldiers out of the New Bern runners, and every man of us knows it.

We’re patching ourselves back together like a torn shirt sewed with twine. Some got new shoes. Some didn’t. New faces in the ranks, young’uns looking at us like we’re something they want to be. I don’t know how to tell ’em the truth without it sounding cruel.

I said Hardy’s name out loud today so I wouldn’t lose it.

Camp in Virginia

November 21, 1862

Today, for a little while, we forgot we were soldiers.

A couple of the boys spied a fat rabbit at the edge of camp, sitting there bold as you please like he owned Virginia. Somebody said, “That’s supper,” and we had more git-up than we’ve showed in weeks.

Jesse took the first shot and missed so wide it’s a wonder he didn’t hit Richmond. That rabbit didn’t even run. Just looked insulted. Another boy fired too quick and hit a tree, and the bark flew like we were under artillery. Half the camp thought the Yankees had jumped us. Men came scrambling out with rifles, one feller with his shirt half on, another with his britches tied wrong, and somebody hollering orders like he was Stonewall his own self.

All that over one rabbit, which finally had enough of our foolishness and lit out into the brush without leaving us so much as a tail.

No supper. But we laughed till our sides hurt, and that’s worth more than rabbit.

Above the Rappahannock

December 11, 1862

The river is the Rappahannock and the town across it is Fredericksburg. This morning the fog laid so thick you could grab hold of it. We heard hammering down at the water, dull and steady, then rifles cracking from the town. The Yankees are trying to lay bridges on boats under our sharpshooters’ noses.

A man beside me said, “They’re building their own grave.” Nobody laughed.

The stone wall below Marye’s Heights

December 13, 1862, night

Around noon the order came sharp as a slap and we went double-quick down the hill past our big guns, the ground shaking with every shot, and slid in behind a stone wall in a sunken road at the bottom. Georgians already there, faces gray with smoke.

Then word went down the line that General Cobb of the Georgians was hit bad. Not long after, our own General Cooke, struck in the head. That news went through us like cold water. The line held anyhow. It had to.

The Yankees came out of that town in waves. Line after line stepping into the open, and our rifles and the guns above us opening on ’em like a door slamming shut. I saw an officer waving his sword. He went down and the sword dropped out of his hand like it was tired too. Flags went down and came up and went down again. Some of ’em got close, closer than I’d have thought a man could get through that fire, and laid flat in the low places like the ground was safer than the sky.

I fired till my shoulder burned and my fingers cramped. Powder black on my hands, my face, my sleeve.

By dark the field out front looked carpeted in blue. Sharpsburg was hard because we were the ones falling. This was hard because we were the ones watching them fall and still having to load and fire.

I won’t never forget it.

The stone wall

December 15, 1862

This morning the Yankees was gone back across the river in the night. No cheering. Not from me. The boys say we won a great victory, and maybe we did, but I can’t say the word like I used to. The wounded out in front cried all night, and some quit crying, and that was worse.

Winter camp

January 24, 1863

The cold has moved in like an occupying army. It gets in your brogans and stays. The sick list grows every day, fevers and coughs and the flux, and a man strong enough to chop wood on Monday can’t stand up by Wednesday. I toted water for a boy today couldn’t lift his own cup.

Talk is the Yankees tried to march again in this weather and the roads swallowed ’em whole, wagons and guns and mules sunk to the hubs. The boys are calling it the Mud March and laughing a tired kind of laugh.

If it’s true, bless the mud.

Maps from the printed book