New Bern

The road to Kinston

March 14, 1862, night

I am writing this by a sorry little fire with my hands still shaking, and I don’t know as I can set it down straight.

This morning had fog in it. Fog and cold wet air that laid on your skin like a film, the kind of fog makes the world look close and far off both at once. We were dug in down by the river, nigh Fort Thompson, with the Neuse at our backs. They put the 27th on the left of the line. I don’t rightly know what a flank is good for. I only know where they told me to stand and where to point my rifle.

Then the racket commenced. Not rifles, not at first. A deeper sound, heavy and steady, like the sky was built out of iron and somebody was beating on it with a sledge. The river toted it right to us, and then here come the shells.

I never saw the like in all my born days. Gunboats out on the water throwing iron into the land like they were mad at the dirt itself. Ground jumping. Pines snapping off. Smoke and that sharp burnt smell that gets up in your nose and won’t leave out. I can smell it yet.

The bluecoats came on through the fog in lines too clean and too steady. I fired when I saw shapes. I don’t reckon I hit a thing. Couldn’t tell you was it my hands shaking or the whole of me.

Then hollering off to the right. Fellers running by with faces white as a sheet, something about the militia, about the center, about Yankees coming round through the swamp where nobody looked for ’em.

And then the worst sound of all. The sound of men running.

Not falling back proper. Running like the scare had grabbed ’em by the collar. It went down the line like fire in broom straw, and it got us too. I’ll put it down true, for this book is the one place I can. There were men in the 27th never fired a lick ’fore they were gone, and I won’t swear I fired many.

Retreat sounds simple when the officers say it. It ain’t. It’s dropping your cartridge box in the mud and not stopping for it. It’s turning your head and seeing your own state behind you and knowing them Yankees are stepping onto it.

The bridges were burning behind us. I looked back once at New Bern all swallowed up in smoke and thought, Lord God, that’s ours.

We struck out for Kinston, mud and sweat and cussing and praying all mixed. Folks along the road came out and stood watching us go by. One old woman at a gate hollered, “Look at ’em race!” and I hung my head. I expect that’s what they’ll call it.

I can’t sleep. Every time I shut my eyes I hear them gunboats. Worse than that, I hear our own feet running.

Somehow or other we got to pay this day back.

Maps from the printed book