Glory In The Name

The soldier nodded. “Y’all ain’t seen the elephant yet?”

“No. And now we’re just laying down. What does a fella have to do to kill a few Yankees around here?”

The soldier smiled at some private joke. “Don’t you worry, young Mississippi. You want fighting, you come to the right goddamned place.” Then his expression seemed to soften a bit, and he said, “Say, you got any water in that canteen?”

“Some.” Jonathan struggled out of the strap, handed the canteen over. “It’s half mud.”

“No matter. Hour ago I was drinking out of a hoofprint, and glad for it.” The soldier took a couple of swallows, with evident pleasure, and handed the rest back.

Jonathan looked to his left. Nathaniel was lying on his back, looking up at the artillery screaming overhead. Somewhere down the line to their right, a Confederate battery was returning fire. They could feel the concussion of the heavy guns going off, feel the rumble in the ground.

“I sure as hell would like to know what was going on in the front there,” Nathaniel said.

Jonathan looked up at the crest of the hill, twenty feet away. He could see nothing but blue sky through the tall, coarse brown grass, and the black streaks of shells screaming past.

Let’s go have us a look. He thought the words, almost spoke them, but checked himself. He was having doubts about this whole thing, now. It was bad enough that he might have made a grand mistake with his own skin, but he had got Nathaniel in on this as well. He felt a flush of guilt for having once again lured his brother into some mischief.

Mischief, hell…I might’ve got us both killed…

This was not their regiment, of course, not where they were supposed to be. Were they obligated to go forward, if the others did?

What was going on out there? Am I my brother’s keeper?

“Hey, Nathaniel…”

“What?”

“I’m gonna crawl over to the edge of the hill there, see what’s what.”

Nathaniel was quiet for a second. “I’ll come, too,” he said at last.

The two of them crawled forward, walking on elbows and pushing with knees. Over the crest of the hill behind which they were lying, through the tall, stiff dried grass, they could see there was a dip in the ground and then a second rise, thirty feet away.

They stood straighter, ran down into the dip and up the farther slope, dropping and crawling as they approached the crest. They came up over the last rise, approached the top carefully. Beyond the last rise the land was flat for a couple hundred feet and then it sloped away steeply. To the right was a small white house, riddled with holes from the Yankee guns. Beyond that was a great sweep of countryside, brown fields and patches of trees, a dusty road running off to the north.

And the enemy.

“Sweeeet Jesus! Look at all those damned Yankees…” Nathaniel said.

It was nothing that Jonathan could have imagined. The wounded and dead were everywhere. Hundreds upon hundreds of men scattered like heaps of tossed-off rags and spread over the hill. Before he saw the Yankees, thousands of them, before he saw the field artillery blasting holes in the Confederate lines or the Confederates giving ground to the blue-clad hordes, before he saw any of that, he saw the dead and he pictured himself among them.

He looked off to his right. Thirty feet away, a soldier lay on his back, eyes and mouth open and his lower half turned away at an odd angle, as if he had been broken in two and his insides spilled out. Jonathan looked long enough to understand what he was looking at, then turned his head quick, squeezed his mouth and throat closed tight to fight the rising in his stomach.

“Jonathan!” Nathaniel slapped him on the shoulder. “I said, did you see all them damned Yankees?”

Jonathan looked down the hill, avoiding the dead men, avoiding the horror to his right. Thousands upon thousands of bluebellies were massing at the base of the hill, and many, many more behind. Not disorganized clumps of men, but neat blocks of soldiers, marching regiments, coming on in a relentless way. They fired by volleys, shot clouds of gray smoke out in front of them, like some fire-breathing creature of mythology. Some were coming on, but most were marching to and fro, getting into formation, assembling into a grand and unstoppable line of men and guns, ready to sweep forward and roll over the weakened Confederate lines.

There was another, smaller hill beyond the one on which they lay, and between the points of high ground, a thin tributary of the Bull Run River wound itself, crossing and recrossing a turnpike that ran in a straight line between. From the distant hill, perhaps a mile away, a Union battery was pouring shot and shell into the Confederate lines.

More big guns were coming. Jonathan could see teams of horses dragging field artillery across the turnpike and up the grassy fields of the hill from which they watched, ten guns churning up dust with the big wheels of their carriages and leaving twin lines in the grass as they were hauled along.

“I don’t think this is our day, Jonathan!” Nathaniel shouted over the din.

“Those guns are going to knock hell out of us, once they’re in place!” Jonathan replied.

The Confederate line, such as it was, was backing away from the Union march, backing up the hill toward where Jackson’s men were lying. Some units were retreating in good order, but others were breaking and running for the Confederate lines, desperate to put the hill between themselves and the killing volleys.

The panic was infectious. One by one the units broke and ran, and the Union juggernaut came on, slow and relentless and seemingly unassailable.

“Look there!” Nathaniel said, pointed down the hill. In the wake of the artillery, which was now moving up the hill to a position not 200 feet away, came a regiment of Yankees. Their jackets were blue, but their pants were bright red. Others were clad entirely in brilliant crimson, short jackets and pants that were loose-fitting from the waist right down to where they were drawn in tight by white gaiters.

“Zouaves…damn…” Jonathan said.

The regiment was a thing to behold, a thing of beauty on that field of horrors. Their lines became muddled as they made their way over a rail fence, but once on the other side they reformed with startling symmetry and marched on, uphill, coming in support of the battery.

“They’ll make better targets with them red outfits, anyway,” Nathaniel said.

“I reckon…I reckon it’s time we got out of here.”

They did not take their eyes from the field below, as if the enemy was waiting for them to turn their backs before shooting them. Instead they backed away, crawling backward, and slowly the crest of the hill came up between them and the fight beyond. When at last they could see nothing but sky, they turned and scrambled back to the lines, hunched over, half crawling, half running, until they were once again part of the line of waiting men.

The soldier with whom Jonathan had spoken turned to him now. “You seen the elephant? What’d he look like?”

Jonathan opened his mouth for a flip response, but the image of the dead man, torn apart, swam in front of him. He closed his mouth and shook his head. No words would come.

The soldier nodded. “He gets uglier,” was all he said.

Then with a roar that made Jonathan jump, the Union artillery opened up. The gunfire was from nearly in front of them, but the Yankees were aiming elsewhere, and only the intimidating sound of the blasts threatened the men with whom the Paines had joined.

“Them Yanks brought up some guns, I reckon,” the soldier at Jonathan’s side commented.

“Yes, a dozen or so.” Jonathan was eager to tell this man something that he did not know. “And Zouaves to support them. You should see their red uniforms!”

The soldier smiled. “Pretty uniform don’t make a soldier. I hope for their sake them uniforms is bulletproof.”

An officer came running down the line, waving a sword over his head. “Stand and prepare to fire! Stand and prepare to fire!” he shouted.

The soldier looked over at Jonathan and smiled. “Here we go, boy,” he said, and Jonathan, who thought he would be sick with the thought of standing up in that hail of iron, got some comfort from the words and the calm in the man’s voice.