matteus the inbred
03-29-2006, 13:13
first part of a bit of a Civil war thang, based on true events...
Shock in the Morning
The mist was just rising, faint sunlight beginning to glimmer off to the right of our position. Unfortunately, the slowly clearing vista was not a pretty one. Miles of trenches, muddy thanks to an unseasonal downpour two days ago, scarred and pocked by shell-craters from the previous day’s Federal bombardment. On the southern horizon, the spires and stacks of Petersburg rose dimly through the murk, coughing out smoke like a man clearing his lungs with a cigar. I thought of my own cigars, four of them, crudely wrapped in my last few dollars and stuffed into the pocket of my undershirt, and decided that after a night of nerve-wracked and cold-sweating guard duty on the forward saps I deserved to have one.
Groaning as I pulled myself upright against the trench wall, I shuffled down the line and stopped at a shallow scrape in the wall. A swift kick awoke the occupant, one Private Jubal Hicks. ‘Wha? Hmmm? Damn you man, what is it…?’
‘We’re bein’ attacked Hicksy, thousands o’ goddam Yankees comin’ across the trench lines. All of ‘em got their bayonets real sharp just for your worthless guts.’
‘Awww, dammit sarge’, I was dreaming. Sonofabitch.’
Hicks rolled clumsily out of his shelter, reaching automatically for his Springfield rifle-musket, propped on the wall beside his dugout, and used it lever himself upright. He spat and coughed and focussed one red-rimmed eye on the Union lines.
‘So, where in hell are all these Yankees disturbin’ my sleep?’
‘Ah, they must’ve gone when they saw you getting’ up. Gimme your tinder, I need a smoke.’
‘Not unless I get one, sarge.’
‘All you’ll get if you don’t hand it over is fatigues and latrine duty for a week you peckerwood backalley piece of rebel scum. Give.’
Grumbling, Hicksy handed it over. ‘I don’t even get a good morning kiss?’
‘Kiss my bayonet, you slovenly excuse for a soldier.’
‘Gee, thanks Sergeant Miller.’
That’s me. Sergeant Andrew P. Miller, twenty-six years old and frankly too old for this war. Most of the boys in my company are not a day over nineteen, uneducated Southern farmboys and Richmond slum trash. All they can do is fight, but they can do that better’n any other company on earth, and certainly a lot better’n any damn Yankee. We’re part of the 16th Georgia Rifles, or what’s left of it. From Seven Pines to Cold Harbour, via Sharpsburg and Chancellorsville, and now here, Petersburg. We’d spent so much time digging, my hands were blistered all the way through on both sides, and I never want to see no spades again. But it’d worked, for now. Grant and his massive army were stuck outside lookin’ in, and knowing they’d never get through the trenches, not with Southern boys defending them. We’d never be beaten on the defensive, not us.
Still, Federals can be darn tricky when they got time to think. We’d heard rumours for weeks now, that they had a bunch of boys all digging like moles down below the lines, putting together a tunnel under our position and filling it with black powder and blowing us all to kingdom come. Maybe they’d blow up Petersburg itself if they could, but I don’t believe all the powder in the North could do that. Anyway, Bobby Lee doesn’t believe a word of it, and he’s not often wrong. He did order some Virginia companies to do a spot of digging and listening a while back, but they never found anything except earthworms.
Tugging out my battered pocket watch, I checked the time. Half past four in the goddamn morning, or thereabouts. Only a soldier or a fool gets up that early. Maybe a farmer too, but I was never a farmer. I left a wife and three kids and a small farrier’s business behind to come and fight for my state and the South, and now here I am being a sergeant and watching for Yankees in the siege lines at Petersburg. No shortage of ‘em, our observers reckon they’ve got at least 90,000 of the rascals out there, or maybe more. If there’s one thing I’ve learned, it’s never to trust rumour when it comes to enemy numbers, but they’ve definitely got more than us. Always have.
Drawing deeply on the cigar, savouring the taste, I strolled down the trench, ducking automatically at low points in the parapet. Union troops like to use snipers, and some of them even get up early to see if we’re stirring. The Lieutenant was awake, sitting on an ammunition crate and yawning into a tin mug of what was probably very bad coffee mixed with mashed oats.
‘Ah, Sergeant Miller. Good morning to you. See anything during the night?’
‘Good morning sir. Nope, ain’t seen nothin’ except maybe some Yankee miners digging holes in the floor.’
‘Hmm, the old mining rumours again. I don’t know Sergeant, the Yankees sure do love a bit of engineering.’
‘Railroads and fancy boats is different from mining sir. I expect they got their heads down right now.’
‘I expect so, sergeant.’ The lieutenant rubbed his whiskers and stood up, stretching, then made a face and threw the contents of his mug over the parapet. ‘Right, I want an ammunition check this morning. And make sure everyone’s got a nice sharp bayonet too. Word is the Federals might be sounding us out sometimes soon, while they think we’re concentrating on their flanking movements around Fort Stedman. And sergeant, do try to steal me some decent coffee one of these days?’
‘Yessir, I’ll see what my scoundrels can scavenge…’
Nice fella, the lieutenant. Bit fond of luxuries and not entirely concerned with soldiering, but he always wants to know about ammunition. Used to be a linen trader’s son down in the Carolinas, but left to go gold mining and joined the army instead. Walking back east down the line, I spotted Corporal Decker emerging from his dugout, and filled my lungs to shout at him to get his squad together…
The earth heaved. The breath left my lungs in a tearing rush as I was smacked flat into the stagnant mud of the trench floor. A thundering rolling roar of dull sound ground into my eardrums and shook my skull around like a child’s rattle. My vision blurred, and a fist of air pounded my stomach and left me trembling as though my ribs were gone.
The first thing that registered was the enormous plume of filthy smoke, then the smell, the bitter rotten egg stink of powder mixed with a thick cloying earth stench of a newly opened grave. The lines to our left, where the Virginian 56th Rifles had been, was now hidden under the pall, rising hundreds of feet. I couldn’t stand, my legs felt severed and numb. Rolling over, I vomited onto the boards and lay panting, my hearing gone, only a painful, thick noise singing in my ears.
All I could think was ‘A mine. They did put one there, and it’s gone off. Dear God, a mine…’ Impossible, undetected, but they’d done it.
I staggered to my feet. All around men in grey, blue and butternut brown, patched and ragged and shoeless, were staggering up likewise, drunk-like and disbelieving. Shambling into a run, I turned down a reserve trench and clambered onto a protected viewing ladder, staring east. My jaw dropped open, ears popping in the suddenly warm air. The mine had been huge, I could see some of the extent now.
It had blown a hole across damn near 200 feet of trench, just wiped it out. I couldn’t see how deep it was, but it was at least 30 feet wide front to back, filled with black soil and debris, bits of wood, bits of men. Nothing moving though…except…to the rear a soldier stumbled out of the smoke, from a reserve trench. He was naked, clothes blown off him by the blast, sheeted in blood and dirt, wide-eyed and moving like a puppet.
Another soldier scrambled up beside me, fingers probing in his ears, his mouth moving but I could not hear him. Hundreds, I though. There must be hundreds of men killed in there, wiped out without knowing anything except maybe the earth moving like some great disturbed beast rising to swallow them.
Turning to stare north I saw banners and bayonets gleaming bright, Old Glory coming at the head of thousands of dark blue uniforms, ants swarming to the smoking gap in our lines.
‘Christ Jesus, we gotta get out of here!’ My hearing was coming back, buzzing and numb, but now I could hear shots, dull and faint, and cheers. The soldier next to me spoke again ‘Sarge, sarge come on, we gotta run, them Yankees’ll be here in next to no time!’
I shook my head, inarticulate for now, but I was already thinking, thinking no darn Yankee was going to take my trench with a dirty trick like a mine. I sprinted back down the trench grabbed my rifle and checked the priming, and then began grabbing men, shoving them towards the appalling plume of smoke, shouting ‘Form, you dozy sons of bitches, form! Get your guns loaded, get ‘em ready and get up and fightin’! We got Yankees coming in fast, get up!’
The regimental orderly scrambled out of a dugout with the flag, and let the rising breeze unfurl the red and blue of the Stars and Bars into the sky, white stars bright. The lieutenant fumbled the last round into his Colt Navy and clapped his battered slouch hat on, scowling and snapping at his men. The trickle of soldiers heading east down the trench became a flood, carrying me with it, heart pounding and mouth dry and sour from the tobacco. Surprised, shocked and semi-deaf, the 16th Georgia Rifles were going to a fight…
To Be Continued
Shock in the Morning
The mist was just rising, faint sunlight beginning to glimmer off to the right of our position. Unfortunately, the slowly clearing vista was not a pretty one. Miles of trenches, muddy thanks to an unseasonal downpour two days ago, scarred and pocked by shell-craters from the previous day’s Federal bombardment. On the southern horizon, the spires and stacks of Petersburg rose dimly through the murk, coughing out smoke like a man clearing his lungs with a cigar. I thought of my own cigars, four of them, crudely wrapped in my last few dollars and stuffed into the pocket of my undershirt, and decided that after a night of nerve-wracked and cold-sweating guard duty on the forward saps I deserved to have one.
Groaning as I pulled myself upright against the trench wall, I shuffled down the line and stopped at a shallow scrape in the wall. A swift kick awoke the occupant, one Private Jubal Hicks. ‘Wha? Hmmm? Damn you man, what is it…?’
‘We’re bein’ attacked Hicksy, thousands o’ goddam Yankees comin’ across the trench lines. All of ‘em got their bayonets real sharp just for your worthless guts.’
‘Awww, dammit sarge’, I was dreaming. Sonofabitch.’
Hicks rolled clumsily out of his shelter, reaching automatically for his Springfield rifle-musket, propped on the wall beside his dugout, and used it lever himself upright. He spat and coughed and focussed one red-rimmed eye on the Union lines.
‘So, where in hell are all these Yankees disturbin’ my sleep?’
‘Ah, they must’ve gone when they saw you getting’ up. Gimme your tinder, I need a smoke.’
‘Not unless I get one, sarge.’
‘All you’ll get if you don’t hand it over is fatigues and latrine duty for a week you peckerwood backalley piece of rebel scum. Give.’
Grumbling, Hicksy handed it over. ‘I don’t even get a good morning kiss?’
‘Kiss my bayonet, you slovenly excuse for a soldier.’
‘Gee, thanks Sergeant Miller.’
That’s me. Sergeant Andrew P. Miller, twenty-six years old and frankly too old for this war. Most of the boys in my company are not a day over nineteen, uneducated Southern farmboys and Richmond slum trash. All they can do is fight, but they can do that better’n any other company on earth, and certainly a lot better’n any damn Yankee. We’re part of the 16th Georgia Rifles, or what’s left of it. From Seven Pines to Cold Harbour, via Sharpsburg and Chancellorsville, and now here, Petersburg. We’d spent so much time digging, my hands were blistered all the way through on both sides, and I never want to see no spades again. But it’d worked, for now. Grant and his massive army were stuck outside lookin’ in, and knowing they’d never get through the trenches, not with Southern boys defending them. We’d never be beaten on the defensive, not us.
Still, Federals can be darn tricky when they got time to think. We’d heard rumours for weeks now, that they had a bunch of boys all digging like moles down below the lines, putting together a tunnel under our position and filling it with black powder and blowing us all to kingdom come. Maybe they’d blow up Petersburg itself if they could, but I don’t believe all the powder in the North could do that. Anyway, Bobby Lee doesn’t believe a word of it, and he’s not often wrong. He did order some Virginia companies to do a spot of digging and listening a while back, but they never found anything except earthworms.
Tugging out my battered pocket watch, I checked the time. Half past four in the goddamn morning, or thereabouts. Only a soldier or a fool gets up that early. Maybe a farmer too, but I was never a farmer. I left a wife and three kids and a small farrier’s business behind to come and fight for my state and the South, and now here I am being a sergeant and watching for Yankees in the siege lines at Petersburg. No shortage of ‘em, our observers reckon they’ve got at least 90,000 of the rascals out there, or maybe more. If there’s one thing I’ve learned, it’s never to trust rumour when it comes to enemy numbers, but they’ve definitely got more than us. Always have.
Drawing deeply on the cigar, savouring the taste, I strolled down the trench, ducking automatically at low points in the parapet. Union troops like to use snipers, and some of them even get up early to see if we’re stirring. The Lieutenant was awake, sitting on an ammunition crate and yawning into a tin mug of what was probably very bad coffee mixed with mashed oats.
‘Ah, Sergeant Miller. Good morning to you. See anything during the night?’
‘Good morning sir. Nope, ain’t seen nothin’ except maybe some Yankee miners digging holes in the floor.’
‘Hmm, the old mining rumours again. I don’t know Sergeant, the Yankees sure do love a bit of engineering.’
‘Railroads and fancy boats is different from mining sir. I expect they got their heads down right now.’
‘I expect so, sergeant.’ The lieutenant rubbed his whiskers and stood up, stretching, then made a face and threw the contents of his mug over the parapet. ‘Right, I want an ammunition check this morning. And make sure everyone’s got a nice sharp bayonet too. Word is the Federals might be sounding us out sometimes soon, while they think we’re concentrating on their flanking movements around Fort Stedman. And sergeant, do try to steal me some decent coffee one of these days?’
‘Yessir, I’ll see what my scoundrels can scavenge…’
Nice fella, the lieutenant. Bit fond of luxuries and not entirely concerned with soldiering, but he always wants to know about ammunition. Used to be a linen trader’s son down in the Carolinas, but left to go gold mining and joined the army instead. Walking back east down the line, I spotted Corporal Decker emerging from his dugout, and filled my lungs to shout at him to get his squad together…
The earth heaved. The breath left my lungs in a tearing rush as I was smacked flat into the stagnant mud of the trench floor. A thundering rolling roar of dull sound ground into my eardrums and shook my skull around like a child’s rattle. My vision blurred, and a fist of air pounded my stomach and left me trembling as though my ribs were gone.
The first thing that registered was the enormous plume of filthy smoke, then the smell, the bitter rotten egg stink of powder mixed with a thick cloying earth stench of a newly opened grave. The lines to our left, where the Virginian 56th Rifles had been, was now hidden under the pall, rising hundreds of feet. I couldn’t stand, my legs felt severed and numb. Rolling over, I vomited onto the boards and lay panting, my hearing gone, only a painful, thick noise singing in my ears.
All I could think was ‘A mine. They did put one there, and it’s gone off. Dear God, a mine…’ Impossible, undetected, but they’d done it.
I staggered to my feet. All around men in grey, blue and butternut brown, patched and ragged and shoeless, were staggering up likewise, drunk-like and disbelieving. Shambling into a run, I turned down a reserve trench and clambered onto a protected viewing ladder, staring east. My jaw dropped open, ears popping in the suddenly warm air. The mine had been huge, I could see some of the extent now.
It had blown a hole across damn near 200 feet of trench, just wiped it out. I couldn’t see how deep it was, but it was at least 30 feet wide front to back, filled with black soil and debris, bits of wood, bits of men. Nothing moving though…except…to the rear a soldier stumbled out of the smoke, from a reserve trench. He was naked, clothes blown off him by the blast, sheeted in blood and dirt, wide-eyed and moving like a puppet.
Another soldier scrambled up beside me, fingers probing in his ears, his mouth moving but I could not hear him. Hundreds, I though. There must be hundreds of men killed in there, wiped out without knowing anything except maybe the earth moving like some great disturbed beast rising to swallow them.
Turning to stare north I saw banners and bayonets gleaming bright, Old Glory coming at the head of thousands of dark blue uniforms, ants swarming to the smoking gap in our lines.
‘Christ Jesus, we gotta get out of here!’ My hearing was coming back, buzzing and numb, but now I could hear shots, dull and faint, and cheers. The soldier next to me spoke again ‘Sarge, sarge come on, we gotta run, them Yankees’ll be here in next to no time!’
I shook my head, inarticulate for now, but I was already thinking, thinking no darn Yankee was going to take my trench with a dirty trick like a mine. I sprinted back down the trench grabbed my rifle and checked the priming, and then began grabbing men, shoving them towards the appalling plume of smoke, shouting ‘Form, you dozy sons of bitches, form! Get your guns loaded, get ‘em ready and get up and fightin’! We got Yankees coming in fast, get up!’
The regimental orderly scrambled out of a dugout with the flag, and let the rising breeze unfurl the red and blue of the Stars and Bars into the sky, white stars bright. The lieutenant fumbled the last round into his Colt Navy and clapped his battered slouch hat on, scowling and snapping at his men. The trickle of soldiers heading east down the trench became a flood, carrying me with it, heart pounding and mouth dry and sour from the tobacco. Surprised, shocked and semi-deaf, the 16th Georgia Rifles were going to a fight…
To Be Continued