The Wilderness

Behind the lines

May 5, 1864

The army is moving and I ain’t with it. I asked again to be sent back, and the answer came gentle, like they were trying not to shame me. Not yet. The shoulder’s weak. The rupture makes me no count for marching and lifting. They said I’d be a burden.

A burden. That word cuts deeper than a bayonet.

All day the world has shook with a sound off to the west, heavier than thunder. The word is the fighting’s in the Wilderness, the thick woods past Chancellorsville where a man can’t see ten steps and can die without ever knowing what hit him. They say the brush is catching fire.

I sat on a crate and listened and hated myself for setting.

Behind the lines

May 7, 1864

Men came back last night with eyes older than their faces. They said Heth’s division got there first, out on the Orange Plank Road, and the 27th was put in the woods to hold the road against the whole Yankee army coming at ’em. Underbrush so thick it grabbed at your legs like hands. Fighting so close you couldn’t tell where one line quit and the other started. Rifles so hot from firing they burnt your fingers.

I asked how many.

The man waited before he answered. That wait told me most of it. Better than a hundred and fifty of ours hit, he said, out of what little Bristoe left us. The colors went down and were taken up again more than once.

I laid down afterwards and stared into the dark with a shame I can’t put a name to. And relief right alongside it, dressed up in that shame. Part of me said, You didn’t have to walk into that fire. And another part answered, That’s just what you ought to be ashamed of.

I don’t know which voice is mine.

Behind the lines

May 8, 1864

Here’s the worst of it. The Yankees didn’t go back. Any other time, after killing like that, they’d have pulled back to lick their hurts. This Grant has turned the whole army south instead, toward Spotsylvania Court House. The fight ain’t over. It’s just moving.

This morning I didn’t ask nobody. I put my things together and set out after the regiment.

Maps from the printed book