New two parter

[matteus the inbred]

hey thanks Franconicus! I also feel that this is the most 'complete' story I've written thus far. Perhaps another multiple author's story between the two of us would be the answer!
As far as I can read from sources (mainly Bruce Catton rather than Wikipedia) the North had planned the mine for some time. The south had suspicions about it (Lee did indeed have some listening patrols set up) but didn't really think it would work (mining was a known siege tactic even in medieval times, after all). So, it was a big surprise to both sides that it went off and was so effective in blowing a hole in the lines (despite a hitch with the fuse) but neither side really knew how the fight would then proceed or how best to take advantage...I'll get to that soon!
I thought I'd conveyed the main character's shock about it well enough, but maybe I should have emphasised it a bit more. Maybe he's one of those guys that always expects the worst!

Your point about our contrasting styles is very good though, it's true that war has a darker side than I tend to go for. However, I'm going to lower the tone a bit in part two, I assure you.

[Franconicus]

Do not get me wrong! Not everyone has to paint in black like I do. Your lancers story was a bit to glorious for my taste but this one is great. Go on!!

[matteus the inbred]

Ok, part two, and I'd like to thanks Franconicus for inspiring me!

My first thought was ‘too late’. The still smouldering edges of the crater were rapidly disappearing under the pounding of Yankee boots as wave after wave of blue-coated men scrambled over the lip and spilled around the edges. Even as the front ranks of our men hammered down the trench and reached the crater, Federal troops began to fire down into the trench and across the crater, rifle fire snapping and crackling. Private Foley Clay was hit just ahead of me, the smack of a bullet spinning him around and spraying his blood across the trench wall. People who haven’t been in a fight think bullets make neat little holes, but them minie balls are the near the size of your thumb and made of lead, and blow damn great chunks out of anything they hit. Clay collapsed across the floor, his wheezing screams drowned by bubbles of blood as he vanished under the boots of his comrades. The trench wall ahead of me collapsed, dumping a bewildered Yankee on the boards at my feet. Without even thinking, I let out a yell of anger and terror and brought the butt of my rifle straight into his forehead, like driving a pile-hammer into a fence post. I remember the sound, a solid wooden noise, and that Yankee flopped backwards as if his bones were all dissolved. All around me men were screaming now, the Rebel Yell, high pitched madness as we stormed the remaining length of the trench and cleared it, panicked Yankees pitching into the crater to tumble down into the mud.
We stumbled to a halt, surveying the scene. The crater was packed with them, blue coats and bright buttons, the air above their heads thick with bayonets and banners waving, and there seemed to be not a Johnny Reb in sight on the rear edge of the crater.
‘Stand boys, form line, stand! We gotta keep them Yankees down there else they’ll take the trench line! Stand and FIRE!’
The lieutenant had climbed onto the parapet above us, legs planted and hat off, screaming hoarsely into the confusion. I remember thinking what a fine man he looked just then, defying everything Uncle Abe could throw at us and cursing like
a trooper. Three companies manned the trench line, mixed and mingled, shoving and loading. The rest of us began to fan behind the trench line, forming up on the lip of the crater, kneeling and aiming. The sides of the crater were steep, twenty feet of crumbled soil, but the Yankees at the back edge had momentum, and they were climbing up fast. I couldn’t worry about that now. Aiming blindly down into the mass of bodies I pulled the trigger, felt the rifle kick back into my shoulder, reminding me of cold-shoeing a bad-tempered stallion back home, saw powder smoke gout into my face, stinging. Cartridge out, bite the bullet off, pour the powder, hands shaking, stuff the wadding and spit the bullet down the barrel, pull back the hammer and fumble a percussion cap onto the nipple, cock the hammer, aim at something blue, fire…all around me men were doing the same, shouting, screaming defiance or fear, bullets whipping through the air in all directions, and through it all the angry rumble of five thousand Yankees trying to get out of that crater and carve a path through to Petersburg. Artillery was firing now, ours and theirs, shells gouting out chunks of earth all along the trench lines, flinging men back into their dugouts like an angry child, leaving red-hot shrapnel and wood splinters stuck into the wounds, flaying a man’s insides across ten feet of duckboards. The noise was deafening, crushing, and endless.
I never saw the lieutenant get it. One minute he was on the parapet loading his pistol and yelling at Sergeant Ambrose to take a squad and close the gap between B and E companies, the next minute I turned around and he was gone. A private in F company swears he was hit by a sniper through the heart, but I looked afterwards and found nothing but scraps of bloody uniform and bone. It must’ve been a shell, direct hit, he’d never have known about it. Not like Private Jubal Hicks, who got two minie balls in the belly and died four hours later screaming in agony, nor like seventeen year old Private Ross Levin, who slipped on the crater’s edge and tumbled twenty-five feet to land amidst the feet and bayonets of the federals below. They were in no mood to show mercy in the madness, and he had time to shriek one syllable from breathless lungs before they clubbed and hacked him to death even as we shot them down. Hell, even I got shot, and I’d promised my wife not to. A ricocheting ball got me through the left arm, and it was lucky it was a ricochet or it’d have taken my damn arm clean off like you’d pull the stalk off a cherry.
Slumped against the wall of the trench, staring into the thrashing horde of soldiers below, with bullets hammering into the mass to spray red everywhere, smoke and flame drifting across my eyes, I thought of hell and sin. Through the chaos I could see blue uniforms stumbling over the skyline across the rear of the crater, unstoppable. We would truly reap the whirlwind now, I thought, as I struggled to jam one more cartridge into the hot barrel of my rifle…and suddenly the air was filled with shrieking, as though steam had escaped from a pressure cooker somewhere above us, growing louder and clearer.

He was a small men, Major General William Mahone. ‘Little Billy’, his boys called him, but he was a soldier, they used to say, every inch of him, though there weren’t many of those inches. He’d seen the danger, seen the opportunity, rallied his men and led them forward, yelled at them to scream like Rebels, god-damn it. That’s what the fellow on the next bunk to me in the sick ward said, claimed to have been at the front of the counter-attack that stormed up to the rear of the crater, tumbled the Yankees back into it and then formed up and began firing. And just like that, the battle was turned about.
‘The Turkey-shoot’, we called it after. For four hours, federal troops swarmed into the crater, and for four hours we stood and shot, kneeled and shot, shouted for water and ammo and listened to the yells and cries of wounded men dying, bleeding, suffocating. For they wouldn’t give up, the Yankees. They poured a whole division of troops in there, wave after wave, trampling their dead and wounded, shuddering and falling as the minie balls hit, getting shot and spiked in the hands and arms and face as they clawed their way up the dirt walls towards us, but they never had a chance. Perversely, their stopped their artillery fire, presumably in case they sent shells into the crater, as if they weren’t losing hundreds of men a minute anyway.
My eyes were red and aching, my shoulder bruised and sore, the wound in my arm a fire that pulsed and tore every time I shoved the ramrod down the clogged up barrel. I ran out of cartridges, saw a body beside me, the face blown through the back of the skull like a pulped melon, ignoring the horror as the mind will in times of need. I groped about the waist, pulled the belt and cartridge box around and used my bayonet to saw the straps, keening as the pain shot up and down my arm. Cartridges sprinkled on my lap as the strap parted, a bullet thudded into the earth beside my ear as I loaded again, saw a Yankee not fifteen away taking aim at me, pulled the trigger and saw the bullet blow a piece of his skull the size of a saucer six feet into the air behind him. I remember laughing at the insanity of it, wheezing and giggling as I searched for another round.

Eventually it was over. I can’t place the moment, but gradually I noticed the enemy going backwards, stumbling and crawling, pulling their wounded or leaving them to die as the bullets and shells kept lashing down, blowing holes in already dead blue-coated bodies, ripping open live flesh to expose ribs and spines and guts the stinking air. Our artillery never let up, nor did we, firing at the fleeing men, firing at those who tried to stand and fight, firing at the wounded crawling and thrashing and staggering below. I have never in all my fights seen such an absence of pity as we displayed to those poor damn Yankees on that day. I recall one fellow limping on his shattered shin, flapping his arm in the air as though he were scaring crows, shaking his head in a frantic attempt to ward off the bullets. I thought he’d make it, as the bullets kept missing and missing. So I aimed low, straight through his backside, and pulled the trigger for the last time that day. It took him through the left lung. I could see the white rib suddenly spring from his jacket in a spray of blood, and that minie ball turned him clean round to stare back at me in shock, legs twisted, his face as disbelieving as a man who sees the Hand of God manifest itself on this earth. Then he just dropped, a rag doll whose strings had been snipped clean through. Was it a sin, I ask myself? Would he have done that to me? What kind of cause could make a man do that to someone? Is it in all of us?

I could not find the answer as I stared wearily over the crater at dusk. The smoke was clearing, but the mass of bleeding, dead, dying men below me, heaving like a stirring anthill, was obscure and dark. Whoops and yells sounded down the trench line, celebration of the day’s victory, for victory it was, and yet I could not help but feel utterly beaten, defeated, sullied and sad. Perhaps I’d always known we’d lose. Perhaps I was already anticipating the day when we’d lay down the guns and roll up the flags, that hot day at Appomattox when we finally went home, our cause lost and reviled. Perhaps, in view of what I believed myself to have become, I was relieved that I wouldn’t ever be an honest farrier again, for though I had kept my arm, the bullet had left it too weak and I would be crippled, so the surgeon said, for the rest of my life. In the twilight, staring down into the horrid pit of death that we had made, I felt obscurely satisfied that God had judged me thus.

[Strike For The South]

GOD SAVE THE SOUTH

[Franconicus]

That is really great. Best story you've ever written, maybe the best I've red here.

No advices today. Just go on

[matteus the inbred]

wow. thanks man, that's really good of you. looks like my limey fascination with the ACW paid off!

[Franconicus]

Last Victory

I was standing on that hill and looked into dawn. Another night was over, another day had begun. The fog was slowly lifting and soon I would be able to see the positions of the enemies. I loved to look at the peaceful country before the the huzzle and buzzle began.

On the left and right, there were our trenches, long and well build lines of defense. In the middle, the heart and the abutement, the hill. We called it fondly our ‘fort’. We had a battery here and a company of snipers. The ‘fort’ controlled the forefront. We could send our greetings to John Brown, whenever he was foolish enough to approach our lines.

Yes, our line was strongly fortified and the Yanks would need something special to get us. Until now, they had not dared to assault us. All they had sent us were cannon balls. Shell-holes covered the forefront. They did not do much damage; our trenches were too deep. I resolved to order the boys to dig even deeper.

On the other side of the ‘fort’ there was our camp; we lived in caves dug into the ground. The glorious soldiers of the pride Confed Army lived like rats. Oh no, not like rats. Rats had better life these days. They became fat and more numerous each day. No, we were worms, earthworms.

From the camp side there was a signal, a wake up call. Canvases at the entries of the caves were removed and slowly, one after the other, our soldiers stepped outdoor. The first one started to caugh, then another one joined and in the end, there were several hundred men caughing. This happened every morning. I did not know why, but each morning caughing filled the camp.

There was no breakfirst and so the groups gathered and marched to their trench. I saw my men glimbing up the hill. Soon they filled the trench. I counted them when they passed by: Butcher, O’Hara, Watts, Caligari, Davis, Kramer, Malinowski, Peterson, Schneider. None of them was missing; all of them had survived last night.

Billy Butcher was the youngest. He was just 15, but he was an experienced veteran. When he had joined the army two years ago, he had been the drummer boy of the company. Well, we did not have drummers anymore. Now he carried a gun.

Patrick O’Hara used to be a boxer at the fairgrouds of New Orleans; heavy weights.

Jonny Watts and Lee Caligari came with the reinforcements. I did not know them very well and was not sure how they would act in combat. Actually, they were a bid too old to be soldiers; but they are still able to carry a gun and to pull a trigger.

James Davis had a temperature. He should have been at a hospital. However, he did not want to go. Soldiers are dying at the hospital even faster than they do in the trench. Two nights ago, Davis had a fever attack. He cried aloud and saw enemies everywhere. The whole division was set alarm. Since then he exempted from night guards.

Joseph Kramer did caugh all the times. He caught the cough at Cold Harbor.

Peter Peterson was silent. I did not remember when he had spoken the last time.

Ralph Schneider had been our best shooter. However, he had to wear glasses. Well, they got broken and now he could only see things that were as big as a tree. That did not matter; the Yanks came always in big formations.

All of the men suffered from diarrhea. I always wondered how we could still crap after two weeks without a real meal.

They passed me by without a word, without a look. That was my platoon. Although they did not look like soldiers anymore, they were the best platoon in the damned Confed. Army.

I looked at the position of the Yanks. The distance was 150 m. If Robert E. would order to attack them, we would hardly be able to pass that distance. Not after all these endless fighing, marching, digging and dying. We did not have a break for weeks. However, Robert E. would not order an attack. I had listened when he talked to our division’s commander. “The Yanks will not defeat the South as long as Richmond stands. As long as Petersburg stands, Richmond will not fall. As long as the ‘fort’ stands, Petersburg will not fall. So as long as the ‘fort’ stands, the North will not win this war.”

Well, Robert E. Lee relied on us and he could. Although we knew, we were a beaten army we would not give up. The Yanks would never be able to cross the front. We might be ill, weakened and hungry, but we were desperate, too, and we would not give up.

I had been in this army for a long time. Therefore, I knew that we could not win this war. The Yanks were just too numerous and had better weapons that we had. Each week we lost another town, another battle, another army. Maybe that did not matter. As long as we stood here, Abe would not win. We were still able to fight. Didn’t we teach them a lesson at Cold Harbor? Someone had told me that the Blue soldiers refused to do any assault since then. Maybe we could scare them so much that they went home and left our beautiful South.

“Hey Sarge! How long will we have to stay here in this puddle?”
I turned around and looked at Jonny Watts: “We will stay here as long as Grant wants to come into town.”
“Sarge, do we have a chance? They say that Grant has 300,000 men out there?”
“300,000? The whole North has not that many!” Well, in fact I was not so sure about that.
“If Grant had 300,000, he would have taken Richmond already.”
Watts was always making trouble.
“We shot thousands at Cold Harbor. We could have shot more if they had not run like turkeys. Ten times more, fifty times more!” Patrick O’Hara was a blatherskite. However, sometimes he was useful to raise moral.
“Sarge, do you have any information about what is going on in the south? You know my wife and my little boy is down there have a farm and a family near Georgia. I should be home to protect them.” Kramer vocalized what most of the men thought.
“If you stay here, you help them more. Imagine what happanens if we let Grant and his big army move south.” I did not have a good feeling when I said that. It probably was a lie. However, these men trusted me and the lie would ease them.
“What about food. How can we fight the Yankees if we do not have anything to eat?”
“Don’t be foolish, Lee! If you get a shot in the stomach, you will be glad if nothing is in it. The bullet will go straight through. Do you remember Richard? It was at Gettis. We had eaten that fine Yankee cow and then they hit him in the paunch. It was a huge hole and all the food run out of his bowel.”
“Shut up, Jimmy! Lee is right! We need something to eat. I will try to get some food. In the meantime, you can take your blades and get the mud out of the trench. Afterwards you should dig a little deeper.”
“C’mon, Sarge, we are no earthworms.”
“You are! When the Yanks come, you will be glad to be under the earth. Billy, you come with me! I’ll be back in an hour!”

xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxHope you do not mind that I participate at your story. Just wanted to see how I would write!