14
– Alexander Hunter, 17th Virginia, Blackburn’s Ford, Bull Run River
A sharp jerk of alarm, a twist of fear. The long slide back into boredom. Alarm, fear, boredom, the cycle went round and round, a grindstone wearing Robley Paine down. Six days now. It was more exhausting than any drill or long march he had encountered yet.
He stood and stretched arms and legs, tore a piece of bacon off with his teeth. It was raw-fires were not permitted that morning-and the meat was chewy and slightly noxious, but he made himself eat. He followed the bacon up with a cracker, and then a drink from his canteen, filled with gritty river water.
The air was warm and sweet-smelling, the sky just growing light through the tangle of young trees along the riverbank. Over the muted conversations of the other soldiers, muttering over their inadequate breakfast, the incompetence of their leadership, he could hear the sounds of the Bull Run River, coursing through its choked and tangled bed, running over the shallow place they were protecting. McLean ’s Ford.
It was July 21, a Sunday, and though there would be no church service that morning, Paine did not doubt that there would be a power of praying going on. He had done enough of it himself already, and he reckoned there was more to come.
“Morning, Lieutenant.” Jonathan Paine ambled up, scratching with one hand, rubbing his eyes with the other. “Got any more of that bacon?”
“Where are your rations, Private?”
“Ate ’em last night. I was fearful hungry.”
Robley scowled at his youngest brother, but cut a slice of bacon from his own remaining piece and handed it over. Jonathan, skinny as he was, ate more than any other person Robley had ever met.
“Today’s our day,” Jonathan said through a full mouth, but it was more a question than a statement.
“I reckon.” It had been six days since the great flurry of excitement that saw 3rd Brigade decamp from near the McLean house and tramp the mile down gently sloping hills and through clustered stands of young trees to the banks of the Bull Run. For six days they had been in the proximity of battle, but had yet to enter into it themselves, like so many Moseses looking down on the Promised Land.
On the day after they had taken their position at McLean’s Ford, the firing started, muted, distant, and sporadic. It was Brigadier General Milledge Luke Bonham’s 1st Brigade, lobbing shells at the pursuing Yankees as they fell back from Fairfax Courthouse to the Confederate lines behind the Bull Run.
It had been worse the following day. Then the Yankees had come in force down the road from the cluster of wood-framed houses known as Centreville. They hit James Longstreet’s 4th Brigade hard and repeatedly, not half a mile from 3rd Brigade’s left flank. The soldiers of 3rd Brigade grabbed up their rifles and rifles, yawned with nervousness, fiddled with their equipment, joked, prayed, waited for their orders to splash across the river, to turn the bluebellies’ flank. But that order did not come.
Colonel Jubal Anderson Early’s 6th Brigade, held in reserve behind Longstreet, came up in support and drove the Yankees back until they came no more. The men of the 3rd stood tensed, listening to the bang of artillery, the crack of small arms like a pitch-pine log in a fire, watched the clouds of smoke building over the trees. They stood ready until the tension began to ebb away and they headed down that slope to boredom, and there they would stay until the big guns began to fire again.
“We’re in the right place for a fight, I reckon,” Jonathan continued. He was nervous. The only time he showed any interest in what the army might do was when he was nervous.
“General Beauregard seems to think so,” Robley said. Nearly all of the Confederate troops were massed at that end of the line, the Confederate right. Bonham, Longstreet, Jones, Ewell, Early, and Holmes had all been positioned there, strung out behind the Bull Run.
The day before, as brigades of Joseph Johnston’s Army of the Shenandoah had begun to arrive by train-to the great relief of the Confederates, from Brigadier General Pierre G. T. Beauregard, in overall command, to Private Jonathan Bonaventure Paine-they too had been massed near the McLean house. Now they stood in the rear of Bonham, Longstreet, and Jones, ready to come up to support the regiments along the river that would surely take the brunt of the Yankees’ massed assault.
The sun was breaking the horizon and the sky above was blue, clear and blue, and promised more unrelenting heat. The 3rd Brigade, like a great animal coming slowly out of sleep, began to move and shift and shuffle into place. Nathaniel came up, carrying two canteens, one of which he handed to Jonathan.
“Morning, Lieutenant,” he said.
“We drew cards to see who would fill canteens,” Jonathan explained. Robley frowned and shook his head as an officer should.
He ran his eyes over his two younger brothers, recalled how they had looked standing under the big tree in the front yard of Paine Plantation, their uniforms new and perfectly fitted, the leather of their belts and cartridge boxes gleaming black, their faces red-cheeked and eager. They looked like theatrical soldiers then, boys in costume.
They did not look that way anymore. They had lost so much weight that their clothes hung loose on them, and they wore their uniforms with the casual air of professionals. The leather belts and cartridge boxes were cracked and dusty and faded. Only their rifles retained the luster of newness, and that was only through meticulous maintenance. They had been soldiers long enough to know what was important and what was not.
In the distance they heard a gun fire, the flat bang of a cannon, field artillery.
“Shush!” Robley said to Jonathan, who was opening his mouth to speak. The three boys cocked their heads. The gunfire was far off, three or four miles at least.
“Sounds like it’s up by the Warrenton Turnpike,” Robley said in a whisper, pleased for the chance to display a knowledge of the terrain. “Fifth Brigade might be getting it…”
“You reckon that’s the Yankees attacking?” Nathaniel asked, also whispering.
“No. It’s a feint, I’ll wager. Real attack is going to come here.” And then, as if in support of his prediction, they heard artillery opening up much closer and to the north, a battery that must be aimed at them. Robley felt the sharp jab in his stomach, the sweat break out on his palms. So many times had the charge of excitement come and then drained away that he thought he would never feel it again. But with the sound of the guns he was flashed up in an instant, ready to go.
“You scared?” Jonathan asked, speaking soft.
Robley considered his answer. “No. You?”
“No.”
“I’m not either,” Nathaniel offered, but they were all lying and they all knew it.
Captain Clarence F. Hamer came stamping up the line, his tall boots in high polish, his tailored gray coat buttoned snug around his midriff, the top of his kepi a swirl of gold lace. “Lieutenant Paine! Get the company in order! We move out in half an hour. You hear?”
“Yes, sir!” Robley fairly shouted. He turned to the soldiers closest to him-his brothers-and began to issue orders. “Fall in, there! Get ready to march, men!” The order to move, to actually move, pitched his excitement even higher. And when Nathaniel and Jonathan said nothing but “Yessir!” and stumbled off to fetch their gear, he knew that they felt the same.
It was an hour and a half after Hamer’s orders that Private Nathaniel Paine splashed into the Bull Run River. The warm, brown water quickly filled his shoes so that each step was accompanied by a sucking, squishing feel. He wished he could shed them, go barefoot, as he had for half of his life, but Robley would not like that.
Nathaniel felt twisted up, alternately nauseated and jubilant. He wanted to get into the fight, he wanted to run, he wanted to move just to release the awful tension boiling inside. Robley could issue orders and yell at the beats, Jonathan could make jokes and get the ranks roaring with laughter. Nathaniel did not have those safety valves, so he marched, and that was some relief. But the pace was agonizingly slow, stopping, starting, stopping, until he wanted to scream with frustration.
They crossed through the river and trudged up the bank on the north side, and Nathaniel considered how he was now at the northernmost point on earth he had ever been. It was pretty, with the rolling green fields and the
