Day 88. May 27, 1862. – We Saw a Grate Smoke Raise Up: Letters, Diaries, Wires from the Valley of the Late Rebellion

This war went by a queer script of its own….

May Tuesday 27 1862

Quite cool this morning. We (note: “always” is here but crossed out) have had cold nights and mornings. We marched about 1 mile over into a field and camped and got our tents fixed up and have splendid camping ground. We received a mail this evening. I received a letter from Mrs Burket. The men are all buissy fixing up. Are very much tired out marching so much and we have marched 230 miles in 16 days in the last 25 days. I don’t know know of anything of importance that has occurred. The troops at this point have left for some other point. The day is very warm and the soldiers are attending to their wants and comforts this evening. I don’t know how long we may stay here. We are 72 miles from Manasses Junction

Civil War Weather in Virginia Robert K. Krick P. 58

“7a.m. 59; 2p.m. 77; 9p.m. 63. Drizzly.”

Lincoln Day by Day: A Chronology 1809-1865 Volume III: 1861-1865 C. Percy Powell P. 116

“May 27, 1862: President notifies Gov. Curtin (Pa.) that only troops who volunteer for three years or for duration will be accepted. Telegraphs Gen. Frémont: “I see you are at Moorefield. You were expressly ordered to march to Harrisonburg. What does this mean?’”

My Will is Absolute Law: A Biography of Union General Robert H. Milroy Jonathan Noyalas P. 45

“The route from Franklin to Harrisonburg spanned 40 miles over rugged, mountainous terrain. With the advice of his staff Frémont opted not to obey Lincoln’s plan. Instead, he decided to march his army north, closer to his supply base at New Creek, feed his army and then move against Jackson.”

A Stillness at Appomattox Bruce Catton P. 352

“Time and again the Army of the Potomac had missed a victory because someone did not move quite fast enough, or failed to put all of his weight into a blow, or came into action other than precisely as he was expected to do. This had happened before Grant became general in chief and it had happened since then, and the fact that Warren had been involved in a few such incidents was not especially important. What Grant was really shooting at was the sluggishness and caution that were forever cropping out, at some critical moment, somewhere in the army’s chain of command. With the decisive moment of the war coming up Grant was going to have no more of that. Instinctively, he was turning to Sheridan, Sheridan the driver—giving him as much of the army as he needed and in effect telling him to take it and be tough with it.

Sheridan was the man for it. As Warren’s brigades struggled into position Sheridan was everywhere, needling the laggards, pricking the general officers on, sending his staff galloping from end to end of the line. He rounded up the cavalry bands, which had made music on the firing line the evening before, and he put them on horseback with orders to go into action along with the fighting men when the advance sounded. It was four o’clock by now, and there would not be a great deal more daylight, and at last the infantry began to move. Sheridan spurred away to send the cavalry forward too. There was the peal of many bugles and then a great crash of musketry, and thousands of men broke into a cheer, and the battle was on.

A skirmisher trotting forward a few hundred yards ahead of the V Corps turned once to look back, and he saw what neither he nor any of his mates had seen in a dreary war of wilderness fighting and trench warfare, and he remembered it as the most stirring thing he had ever looked upon in all his life. There they were, coming up behind him as if all of the power of a nation had been put into one disciplined mass – the fighting men of the V Corps, walking forward in battle lines that were a mile wide and many ranks deep, sunlight glinting on thousands of bright muskets, flags snapping in the breeze, brigade taut with parade-ground Regular Army precision, everybody keeping step, tramping forward into battle to the sound of gunfire and distant music. To see this, wrote the skirmisher, was to see and to know “the grandeur and the sublimity of war.’”

P. 149

“This war went by a queer script of its own, and it had a way of putting all of its weight down on some utterly unimportant little spot that no one had ever heard of before–Shiloh Church, or Chancellorsville, or some such–and because armies contended for them, those place names became great and terrible.”

P. 142

(Writing of late spring, 1864, Catton):

“Strange new names were entered on the army’s annals—Ox Ford and Quarles Mill and Jericho Ford, and the other crossings of the North Anna River; roads down to the Pamunkey, places like Hawe’s Shop and Bethesda Church, and the rambling network of highways that led to a desolate crossroads known as Cold Harbor. In all of these places there was fighting, and before and after each fight there was a forced march, and the army neither won nor lost as it moved on. It added to its knowledge and to its losses, and it got deeper and deeper into Virginia, but it never quite got around the end of the Rebel army and the big showdown always somewhere ahead.

The army had conquered nothing and it possessed not a foot of Virginia soil except the ground on which it actually stood. All the way back to the Rapidan, Virginia was still Confederate territory, and the men who strayed past the army lines to the rear were quite as likely to be shot or captured as if they had strayed out to the front. Rebel cavalry roamed far and wide, and it was assisted by pestiferous bands of guerillas—informal groups of semiofficial mounted men, who were peace-loving farmers half of the time and blood-thirsty raiders the rest of the time. These bands covered all of the rear, and no wagon train could pass between the army and the river bases north of Fredericksburg without a strong escort.”

Nature’s Civil War: Common Soldiers and the Environment in 1862 Virginia Kathryn Shively Meier P. 127

“Straggling is defined as being absent from camp or roll call without leave, as every enlisted man who wished to leave the ranks was required to obtain a pass from his commander. One of the most common disciplinary infractions of the war, straggling was distinct from desertion– a permanent withdrawal from the ranks without permission– in that it was the soldier’s intent to return to his unit after a temporary hiatus, be it several hours or several weeks. Soldiers straggled for many reasons, some of which overlapped with reasons for desertion, but only two reasons are relevant to self-care: first, straggling for relief from environmental strain (which soldiers feared might lead to sickness and diminished spirits), and second, straggling to pursue self-care techniques, such as locating clean water or berries, or seeking civilian home care. This is not to suggest that no stragglers were feigning illness but rather to reframe certain types of absenteeism as what might be termed strategic straggling. Historians have often conflated straggling and desertion in their studies, because of some overlapping soldier motivations and because, as historian Mark Weitz explains, “Straggling and desertion were essentially the same in that they depleted the army of manpower.” While Weitz is unquestionably correct that in the immediate sense stragglers were not available for roll call (which was also command’s main objection), strategic straggling counteracts this argument. Some men who fell back in pursuit of self-care could recover sufficiently to resume duty as effective soldiers, whereas if they had remained in the ranks they might have deteriorated or even died.”

WESTERN SOLDIERS.

“May 26-7.—The streets, the public buildings and grounds of Washington, still swarm with soldiers from Illinois, Indiana, Ohio, Missouri, Iowa, and all the Western States. I am continually meeting and talking with them. They often speak to me first, and always show great sociability, and glad to have a good interchange of chat. These Western soldiers are more slow in their movements, and in their intellectual quality also; have no extreme alertness. They are larger in size, have a more serious physiognomy, are continually looking at you as they pass in the street. They are largely animal, and handsomely so. During the war I have been at times with the Fourteenth, Fifteenth, Seventeenth, and Twentieth Corp. I always felt drawn toward the men, and like their personal contact when we are crowded close together, as frequently these days in the street-cars. They all think the world of General Sherman; call him “old Bill,” or sometimes “uncle Billy.’” Whitman Poetry and Prose Walt Whitman Penguin Putnam Inc. P. 770

Note: May 27, 1864 Pickett’s Mill, Georgia during Sherman’s Campaign:

In “The Crime at Pickett’s Mill” Ambrose Bierce calls the assault a “criminal blunder.” The battle was about 15 miles northwest of Atlanta with 1,600 Union casualties, including 700 killed inside ¾ of an hour. Sherman had the idea to push Johnston’s army back. Instead, Generals Howard and Wood got lost in the woods, and couldn’t find the Confederate right flank. This gave Johnston time to reinforce his right flank. It turned into yet another deadly frontal* assault in the Civil War, and the Confederates still had possession of the field at daybreak. 24,000 were engaged, and 500 Southerners lost their lives. Upshot: The capture of Atlanta was delayed a mere week, and this battle marked the beginning of trench warfare. In 1981, Georgia bought the land. Today, the Pickett’s Mill Battlefield Historic Site is one of the most well-preserved battlefields in the world, though now endangered due to budget cuts. Trenches are still visible around the 765 acres of wilderness.

The Union Soldier in Battle: Enduring the Ordeal of Combat Earl J. Hess P. 175

“The Crime at Pickett’s Mill” is one of the most evocative descriptions of combat ever written by a Northern veteran. It reads rather like a typical soldier memoir except for the Biercian style– sharp clarity, tinged with irony. The biggest and most important departure from the memoir model is Bierce’s characterization of the attack as a “crime.” No other veteran wrote of a failed campaign in that way. They often described terrible tactical mistakes committed by their superiors but never went so far as to indict their officers as criminals. Remembering how he had stood on the far right flank of Hazen’s brigade** when his comrades came up the ravine, Bierce decided that losing half the brigade for no gain had been a crime, not just another example of the fortunes of war.

Bierce also crafted his fictional stories in such a way as to show continuity and contrast with the typical soldier memoir. Two remarkable features stand out. First, Bierce, like his fellow veteran-authors, accurately described the experience of battle. He wrote of the difficulties of seeing and hearing while under fire, of battle’s ability to deafen and mask the senses. He wrote of the imperative of doing one’s duty, of a wounded man committing suicide, of the fear of failing to do one’s duty while under fire, of soldiers falling asleep while on guard duty, of the impact that a beloved officer’s death could have on the battle spirit of his men, of soldiers who deliberately exposed themselves to danger to prove their bravery. These fictional works were obviously written by one who knew battle intimately.”

“The Crime at Pickett’s Mill” Ambrose Bierce

“There is a class of events which by their very nature, and despite any intrinsic interest that they may possess, are foredoomed to oblivion. They are merged in the general story of those greater events of which they were a part, as the thunder of a billow breaking on a distant beach is unnoted in the continuous roar. To how many having knowledge of the battles of our Civil War does the name Pickett’s Mill suggest acts of heroism and devotion performed in scenes of awful carnage to accomplish the impossible? Buried in the official reports of the victors there are indeed imperfect accounts of the engagement: the vanquished have not thought it expedient to relate it. It is ignored by General Sherman in his memoirs, yet Sherman ordered it. General Howard wrote an account of the campaign of which it was an incident, and dismissed it in a single sentence; yet General Howard planned it, and it was fought as an isolated and independent action under his eye. Whether it was so trifling an affair as to justify this inattention let the reader judge.

The fight occurred on the 27th of May, 1864, while the armies of Generals Sherman and Johnston confronted each other near Dallas, Georgia, during the memorable “Atlanta campaign.” For three weeks we had been pushing the Confederates southward, partly by maneuvering, partly by fighting, out of Dalton, out of Resaca, through Adairsville, Kingston and Cassville. Each army offered battle everywhere, but would accept it only on its own terms. At Dallas Johnston made another stand and Sherman, facing the hostile line, began his customary maneuvering for an advantage. General Wood’s division of Howard’s corps occupied a position opposite the Confederate right. Johnston finding himself on the 26th overlapped by Schofield, still farther to Wood’s left, retired his right (Polk) across a creek, whither we followed him into the woods with a deal of desultory bickering, and at nightfall had established the new lines at nearly a right angle with the old—Schofield reaching well around and threatening the Confederate rear.

The civilian reader must not suppose when he reads accounts of military operations in which relative position of the forces are defined, as in the foregoing passages, that these were matters of general knowledge to those engaged. Such statements are commonly made, even by those high in command, in the light of later disclosures, such as the enemy’s official reports. It is seldom, indeed, that a subordinate officer knows anything about the disposition of the enemy’s forces—except that it is unamiable—or precisely whom he is fighting. As to the rank and file, they can know nothing more of the matter than the arms they carry. They hardly know what troops are upon their own right or left the length of a regiment away. If it is a cloudy day they are ignorant even of the points of the compass. It may be said, generally, that a soldier’s knowledge of what is going on about him is coterminous with his official relation to it and his personal connection with it; what is going on in front of him he does not know at all until he learns it afterward.

At nine o’clock on the morning of the 27th Wood’s division was withdrawn and replaced by Stanley’s. Supported by Johnston’s division, it moved at ten o’clock to the left, in the rear of Schofield, a distance of four miles through a forest, and at two o’clock in the afternoon had reached a position where General Howard believed himself free to move in behind the enemy’s forces and attack them in the rear, or at least, striking them in the flank, crush his way along their line in the direction of its length, throw them into confusion and prepare an easy victory for a supporting attack in front. In selecting General Howard for this bold adventure General Sherman was doubtless not unmindful of Chancellorsville, where Stonewall Jackson had executed a similiar manoeuvre for Howard’s instruction. Experience is a normal school: it teaches how to teach.

There are some differences to be noted. At Chancellorsville it was Jackson who attacked; at Pickett’s Mill, Howard. At Chancellorsville it was Howard who was assailed; at Pickett’s Mill, Hood. The significance of the first distinction is doubled by that of the second.

The attack, it was understood, was to be made in column of brigades, Hazen’s brigade of Wood’s division leading. That such was at least Hazen’s understanding I learned from his own lips during the movement, as I was an officer of his staff. But after a march of less than a mile an hour and a further delay of three hours at the end of it to acquaint the enemy of our intention to surprise him, our single shrunken brigade of fifteen hundred men was sent forward without support to double up the army of General Johnston. “We will put in Hazen and see what success he has.” In the words of General Wood to General Howard we were first apprised of the true nature of the distinction about to be conferred upon us.

General W. B. Hazen, a born fighter, an educated soldier, after the war Chief Signal Officer of the Army and now long dead, was the best hated man that I ever knew, and his very memory is a terror to every unworthy soul in the service. His was a stormy life: he was in trouble all around. Grant, Sherman, Sheridan and a countless multitude of the less eminent luckless had the misfortune, at one time and another, to incur his disfavor, and he tried to punish them all. He was always—after the war—the central figure of a court martial or a Congressional inquiry, was accused of everything, from stealing to cowardice, was banished to obscure posts, “jumped on” by the press, traduced in public and in private, and always emerged triumphant. While Signal Officer, he went up against the Secretary of War and put him to the controversial sword. He convicted Sheridan of falsehood, Sherman of barbarism, Grant of inefficiency. He was aggressive, arrogant, tyrannical, honorable, truthful, courageous—a skillful soldier, a faithful friend and one of the most exasperating of men. Duty was his religion, and like the Moslem he proselyted with the sword. His missionary efforts were directed chiefly against the spiritual darkness of his superiors in rank, though he would turn aside from pursuit of his erring commander to set a chicken-thieving orderly astride a wooden horse, with a heavy stone attached to each foot. “Hazen,” said a brother brigadier, “is a synonym of insubordination.” For my commander and my friend, my master in the art of war, now unable to answer for himself, let this fact answer: when he heard Wood say they would put him in and see what success he would have in defeating an army—when he saw Howard assent—he uttered never a word, rode to the head of his feeble brigade and patiently awaited the command to go. Only by a look which I knew how to read did he betray his sense of the criminal blunder.

The enemy had now had seven hours in which to learn of the movement and prepare to meet it. General Johnston says:

“The Federal troops extended their intrenched line [we did not intrench] so rapidly to their left that it was found necessary to transfer Cleburne’s division to Hardee’s corps to our right, where it was formed on the prolongation of Polk’s line.”

General Hood, commanding the enemy’s right corps, says:

“On the morning of the 27th the enemy were known to be rapidly extending their left, attempting to turn my right as they extended. Cleburne was deployed to meet them, and at half-past five p. m., a very stubborn attack was made on this division, extending to the right, where Major-General Wheeler with his cavalry division was engaging them. The assault was continued with great determination upon both Cleburne and Wheeler.”

That, then, was the situation: a weak brigade of fifteen hundred men, with masses of idle troops behind in the character of audience, waiting for the word to march a quarter-mile uphill through almost impassable tangles of underwood, along and across precipitous ravines, and attack breastworks constructed at leisure and manned with two divisions of troops as good as themselves. True, we did not know all this, but if any man on that ground besides Wood and Howard expected a “walkover” his must have been a singularly hopeful disposition. As topographical engineer it had been my duty to make a hasty examination of the ground in front. In doing so I had pushed far enough forward through the forest to hear distinctly the murmur of the enemy awaiting us, and this had been duly reported; but from our lines nothing could be heard but the wind among the trees and the songs of birds. Some one said it was a pity to frighten them, but there would necessarily be more or less noise. We laughed at that: men awaiting death on the battlefield laugh easily, though not infectiously.

The brigade was formed in four battalions, two in front and two in rear. This gave us a front of about two hundred yards. The right front battalion was commanded by Colonel R. L. Kimberly of the 41st Ohio, the left by Colonel O. H. Payne of the 124th Ohio, the rear battalions by Colonel J. C. Foy, 23rd Kentucky, and Colonel W. W. Berry, 5th Kentucky—all brave and skillful officers, tested by experience on many fields. The whole command (known as the Second Brigade, Third Division, Fourth Corps) consisted of no fewer than nine regiments, reduced by long service to an average of less than two hundred men each. With full ranks and only the necessary details for special duty we should have had some eight thousand rifles in line.

We moved forward. In less than one minute the trim battalions had become simply a swarm of men struggling through the undergrowth of the forest, pushing and crowding. The front was irregularly serrated, the strongest and bravest in advance, the others following in fan-like formations, variable and inconstant, ever defining themselves anew. For the first two hundred yards our course lay along the left bank of a small creek in a deep ravine, our left battalions sweeping along its steep slope. Then we came to the fork of the ravine. A part of us crossed below, the rest above, passing over both branches, the regiments inextricably intermingled, rendering all military formation impossible. The color-bearers kept well to the front with their flags, closely furled, aslant backward over their shoulders. Displayed, they would have been torn to rags by the boughs of the trees. Horses were all sent to the rear; the general and staff and all the field officers toiled along on foot as best they could. “We shall halt and form when we get out of this” said an aide-de-camp.

Suddenly there came a ringing rattle of musketry, the familiar hissing of bullets, and before us the interspaces of the forest were all blue with smoke. Hoarse, fierce yells broke out of a thousand throats. The forward fringe of brave and hardy assailants was arrested in its mutable extensions; the edge of our swarm grew dense and clearly defined as the foremost halted, and the rest pressed forward to align themselves beside them, all firing. The uproar was deafening; the air was sibilant with streams and sheets of missiles. In the steady, unvarying roar of small-arms the frequent shock of the cannon was rather felt than heard, but the gusts of grape which they blew into that populous wood were audible enough, screaming among the trees and cracking their stems and branches. We had, of course, no artillery to reply.

Our brave color-bearers were now all in the forefront of battle in the open, for the enemy had cleared a space in front of his breastworks. They held the colors erect, shook out their glories, waved them forward and back to keep them spread, for there was no wind. From where I stood, at the right of the line—we had “halted and formed,” indeed—I could see six of our flags at one time. Occasionally one would go down, only to be instantly lifted by other hands.

I must here quote again from General Johnston’s account of this engagement, for nothing could more truly indicate the resolute nature of the attack than the Confederate belief that it was made by the whole Fourth Corps, instead of one weak brigade:

“The Fourth Corps came on in deep order and assailed the Texans with great vigor, receiving their close and accurate fire with the fortitude always exhibited by General Sherman’s troops in the actions of this campaign…. The Federal troops approached within a few yards of the Confederates, but at last were forced to give way by their storm of welldirected bullets, and fell back to the shelter of a hollow near and behind them. They left hundreds of corpses within twenty paces of the Confederate line. When the United States troops paused in their advance within fifteen paces of the Texas front rank one of their color-bearers planted his colors eight or ten feet in front of his regiment, and was instantly shot dead. A soldier sprang forward to his place and fell also as he grasped the color-staff. A second and third followed successively, and each received death as speedily as his predecessors. A fourth, however, seized and bore back the object of soldierly devotion.”

Such incidents have occurred in battle from time to time since men began to venerate the symbols of their cause, but they are not commonly related by the enemy. If General Johnston had known that his veteran divisions were throwing their successive lines against fewer than fifteen hundred men his glowing tribute to his enemy’s valor could hardly have been more generously expressed. I can attest the truth of his soldierly praise: I saw the occurrence that he relates and regret that I am unable to recall even the name of the regiment whose colors were so gallantly saved.

Early in my military experience I used to ask myself how it was that brave troops could retreat while still their courage was high. As long as a man is not disabled he can go forward; can it be anything but fear that makes him stop and finally retire? Are there signs by which he can infallibly know the struggle to be hopeless? In this engagement, as in others, my doubts were answered as to the fact; the explanation is still obscure. In many instances which have come under my observation, when hostile lines of infantry engage at close range and the assailants afterward retire, there was a “dead-line” beyond which no man advanced but to fall. Not a soul of them ever reached the enemy’s front to be bayoneted or captured. It was a matter of the difference of three or four paces—too small a distance to affect the accuracy of aim. In these affairs no aim is taken at individual antagonists; the soldier delivers his fire at the thickest mass in his front. The fire is, of course, as deadly at twenty paces as at fifteen; at fifteen as at ten. Nevertheless, there is the “dead-line,” with its well-defined edge of corpses—those of the bravest. Where both lines are fighting with-out cover—as in a charge met by a counter-charge—each has its “dead-line,” and between the two is a clear space—neutral ground, devoid of dead, for the living cannot reach it to fall there.

I observed this phenomenon at Pickett’s Mill. Standing at the right of the line I had an unobstructed view of the narrow, open space across which the two lines fought. It was dim with smoke, but not greatly obscured: the smoke rose and spread in sheets among the branches of the trees. Most of our men fought kneeling as they fired, many of them behind trees, stones and whatever cover they could get, but there were considerable groups that stood. Occasionally one of these groups, which had endured the storm of missiles for moments without perceptible reduction, would push forward, moved by a common despair, and wholly detach itself from the line. In a second every man of the group would be down. There had been no visible movement of the enemy, no audible change in the awful, even roar of the firing—yet all were down. Frequently the dim figure of an individual soldier would be seen to spring away from his comrades, advancing alone toward that fateful interspace, with leveled bayonet. He got no farther than the farthest of his predecessors. Of the “hundreds of corpses within twenty paces of the Confederate line,” I venture to say that a third were within fifteen paces, and not one within ten.

It is the perception—perhaps unconscious—of this inexplicable phenomenon that causes the still unharmed, still vigorous and still courageous soldier to retire without having come into actual contact with his foe. He sees, or feels, that he cannot. His bayonet is a useless weapon for slaughter; its purpose is a moral one. Its mandate exhausted, he sheathes it and trusts to the bullet. That failing, he retreats. He has done all that he could do with such appliances as he has.

No command to fall back was given, none could have been heard. Man by man, the survivors with-drew at will, sifting through the trees into the cover of the ravines, among the wounded who could draw themselves back; among the skulkers whom nothing could have dragged forward. The left of our short line had fought at the corner of a cornfield, the fence along the right side of which was parallel to the direction of our retreat. As the disorganized groups fell back along this fence on the wooded side, they were attacked by a flanking force of the enemy moving through the field in a direction nearly parallel with what had been our front. This force, I infer from General Johnston’s account, consisted of the brigade of General Lowry, or two Arkansas regiments under Colonel Baucum. I had been sent by General Hazen to that point and arrived in time to witness this formidable movement. But already our retreating men, in obedience to their officers, their courage and their instinct of self-preservation, had formed along the fence and opened fire. The apparently slight advantage of the imperfect cover and the open range worked its customary miracle: the assault, a singularly spiritless one, considering the advantages it promised and that it was made by an organized and victorious force against a broken and retreating one, was checked. The assailants actually retired, and if they afterward renewed the movement they encountered none but our dead and wounded.

The battle, as a battle, was at an end, but there was still some slaughtering that it was possible to incur before nightfall; and as the wreck of our brigade drifted back through the forest we met the brigade (Gibson’s) which, had the attack been made in column, as it should have been, would have been but five minutes behind our heels, with another five minutes behind its own. As it was, just forty-five minutes had elapsed, during which the enemy had destroyed us and was now ready to perform the same kindly office for our successors. Neither Gibson nor the brigade which was sent to his “relief” as tardily as he to ours accomplished, or could have hoped to accomplish, anything whatever. I did not note their movements, having other duties, but Hazen in his “Narrative of Military Service” says:

“I witnessed the attack of the two brigades following my own, and none of these (troops) advanced nearer than one hundred yards of the enemy’s works. They went in at a run, and as organizations were broken in less than a minute.”

Nevertheless their losses were considerable, including several hundred prisoners taken from a sheltered place whence they did not care to rise and run. The entire loss was about fourteen hundred men, of whom nearly one-half fell killed and wounded in Hazen’s brigade in less than thirty minutes of actual fighting.

General Johnston says:

“The Federal dead lying near our line were counted by many persons, officers and soldiers. According to these counts there were seven hundred of them.”

This is obviously erroneous, though I have not the means at hand to ascertain the true number. I remember that we were all astonished at the uncommonly large proportion of dead to wounded—a consequence of the uncommonly close range at which most of the fighting was done.

The action took its name from a waterpower mill near by. This was on a branch of a stream having, I am sorry to say, the prosaic name of Pumpkin Vine Creek. I have my own reasons for suggesting that the name of that water-course be altered to Sunday-School Run.”

230 miles in 16 days in the last 25 days….

It’s a blur: they will pray at last roll call before pushed to the center of the front line like pieces of artillery the wind carrying the sound the birds following an old map legend where things used to be the birds had emerged and flown howl out at the poles that hold the world up the trick of the whole carnival inside the mute tents it all goes to the great fire in the distance & the wind will hide nothing tonight that much is grafted onto their knowing the trouble of identifying a small flying creature on fire birds smothered in mid-air mid-flight all the little birds badly scorched some burnt black all over some only in patches stilled wings folded leaving a phantom that shrunk in brutally peeled like the night itself.

But why stop there? They can’t leave well enough alone. It’s madness. Naturally, Jackson says I’ll see your day and raise you a night. He wants to keep fighting into the night. I’ll find you. You & your family. After dark he decides to keep it going to clear the North from the woods during a kind of keening, ending sunset. A piece of dusk lists at a sharp angle, the blood in their bodies the color of the sky going down, already-marked in an amorphous blackening. The late blue color shifts to red, the out-the-body-now-tint, to eventually become like gallons of pitch-black sea water. Nothing like a politically appointed officer who kills off hundreds or thousands due to ineptitude. That was a completely clear night, that was a completely full moon. Dog day night.

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