Crossing (29 page)

“You see that church over there?” he asked, pointing. “That is the church in Falling Waters. The Federals are just on the other side of it. They are advancing. Now, we are going to move just past the treeline of that glade over there and we’re going to wait for them to advance into this open field. And then we’ll take them. Position your men in three stances: first volley, from a prone position; second volley, kneeling position; and third volley, standing. Then, gentlemen, we will charge and give them the bayonet. Ride out.”

Yancy caught up to him and said, “General, sir? Permission to join Raphine Company?”

Jackson frowned. “Is that the company you’ve been training and drilling, Sergeant Tremayne?”

“Yes, sir. I’d very much like to be with them in their first battle, sir.”

“Permission granted.”

Yancy saluted and turned to ride away.

Jackson called after him, “Sergeant Tremayne?”

“Yes, sir?”

“Fight hard, Sergeant Tremayne. This is for Virginia, for our homes, for our families. No matter what they think about this war, this is for them.”

“Yes, sir!” Yancy said, wheeling Midnight and hurrying to the front.

As Jackson planned, the enemy came marching across open fields, and they met deadly musket fire. Jackson and his three regiments charged them.

Captain Reese Gilmer drew his sword, thrust it forward, and yelled, “Charge!”

Yancy, on Midnight, charged right behind him, sword drawn.

From then on, all was a confusion of harsh glaring light—for it was a blistering July afternoon—hot gulping breaths, the smell of blood and gunpowder, and the echoing screams of men fighting and firing and dying. Yancy saw, as if in magnification, a man fall just beside him. The soldier was on his back and the lower part of his jaw had been shot away and he clutched at the wound, his heels kicking into the ground.

A tall soldier named Ed Tompkins was beside Yancy, and he yelled and drove his bayonet into the chest of the wounded soldier. “Here’s one Yankee who won’t give us no trouble, Lieutenant!” he screamed. He then raced forward, yelling at the top of his lungs.

Yancy carried his rifle. Midnight carried him, directed by the pressure of his knees, and he never wavered. Yancy shot three men that he saw aiming a rifle at him, but he didn’t stop to see the results. He kept riding, reloading, and shooting at the Federals in blue.

“We’ve got them!” Jackson shouted. “Drive them with the bayonet!”

The battle turned into a foot race. The Union soldiers turned and fled away from the advancing Confederates, but before they had gone very far, a Union artillery of hidden guns fired and shells began exploding around the Confederates. One of them hit so close it rocked Yancy and he almost lost his balance. His eyes were full of dirt, so he pulled Midnight to a halt so he could clean out his eyes.

When he finally could see, Yancy started to signal Midnight forward, but he looked up and saw a single blue-clad soldier that had a rifle aimed right at him. Yancy threw up his pistol and fired. The shot struck the Federal soldier and drove him backward. His finger was still on the trigger and he shot at the blue sky above. Yancy slowly eased Midnight forward then stopped to peer down at the soldier.

Around them was still the chaos and thunder and maddening yells of a battlefield, but for a moment Yancy was encased in quiet as he saw the first man he had ever killed. He was an older man with a russet beard, and his eyes were open. His uniform was dyed scarlet with his blood. His final expression was one of surprise as if to say, What?
This can’t be happening to me
!

Yancy stared at him for a moment, but the blood of battle was still thrumming in his veins, and Midnight was spoiling to run. He reloaded his rifle, took it in his right hand and his pistol in his left, and spurred Midnight forward, yelling like fury.

But Jackson called them back.

The Reverend Colonel Pendleton then activated his big guns across the road, decimating the column moving along it. He raised his head and cried, “Lord, have mercy on their souls.”

The Battle of Fallen Waters was over. As Yancy withdrew with Captain Gilmer’s company, he saw a Confederate body lying in a crumpled way as if it had fallen from a great height. He dismounted and turned the body over and saw it was Private Birdwell. “Birdie,” he whispered, “you’ll never get back to marry Ellen Mae now.” Yancy thought of how she would cry when she learned of her lover’s death.
And his mother and father will weep, and his friends—all will suffer an awful loss
.

For the first time Yancy realized just what a sacrifice war was—not just for the men fighting, but for their families, their loved ones, their friends, their countrymen.
General Jackson said it
, he thought sadly: “
War is the sum of all evil.
”

He hurried to report back to Jackson’s headquarters, and General Jackson greeted him immediately. “Sergeant Tremayne, are you and your horse fresh or are you battle weary, sir?” he asked sternly.

“We are ready and waiting for our duty, sir,” Yancy answered.

“Good, good. I have dispatches for Richmond, so you can ride?”

“Yes, sir.”

“And Sergeant Tremayne—”

“Sir?”

“The sooner Richmond knows of all of our movements, the better they can direct this war and give us timely orders. Your horse is fastest in the Confederate Army, I imagine, except for maybe Colonel Stuart’s. Ride hard. Don’t stop.”

Yancy and Midnight headed for Richmond.

Abraham Lincoln stared at the men of his cabinet gathered in the room with him. He had listened to their arguments, but basically what was being said was summed up by the blunt secretary of war, Edwin Stanton. “Mr. President, we must give the people something to see. We need a military victory.”

Lincoln had been opposed to bringing on action, but finally he was convinced. “Very well, then, we shall have it.”

The commander chosen to lead the army in this first campaign was General Irvin McDowell, a well-regarded graduate and instructor at West Point. Until the war, he had served in the adjutant general’s office in Washington.

As the days of preparation took place, there was no secret about what was going to happen. It seemed that every man on the street knew the army was preparing to do battle, and most of them knew where the first field of battle was to be. It was near a creek called Bull Run, which was adjacent to a small town called Manassas.

There was almost a holiday air as the army was sent to war with marshal music, stirring tunes by marching bands, cakes and doughnuts by the thousands baked by the ladies of the land. In fact, the North was so certain of an easy victory that many families in their carriages went to the site of the impending battle and had picnics and visited with each other on a hillside overlooking the picturesque creek of Bull Run and the Manassas Crossroads.

As the Army of the Potomac marched out of Washington headed southwest, Lincoln’s face grew sad, and he whispered, “Some of those young men will die. How can I bear it?”

General McDowell listened to the cries of “Forward to Richmond!” fill the air, but he moved his army slowly. He was an experienced soldier but not a brilliant strategist; nor was he the man to inspire troops.

The Confederates were well aware of both the strategic and tactical moves of the Federals, because there were spies in Washington that kept close tabs on the movement of the Union army. Commanding generals Joe Johnston and P. G. T. Beauregard knew the movements of the Federals almost as well as they themselves did.

On Friday, July 19, the 1
^st
Brigade, led by General Jackson, arrived at Manassas Junction. He had given few orders, and Yancy had stuck close to his side acting as a courier. Now the men were placed in a line along Bull Run Creek and were ordered to stay in reserve. At this time there were arguments among the top-ranking Confederate generals of where the Union charge would be made.

On a blistering Sunday, July 21, it was obvious that the Federals were advancing. Yancy was by his commander’s side during the whole time, except when he was assigned to dispatch messages. Midnight was the fastest horse on the Confederate side, and he never seemed to tire.

Finally, the attack came, as McDowell threw his army forward. The Confederates stiffened and General Jackson took his stand on a small rise. Still ordered to hold in reserve, he watched calmly as the battle raged on back and forth. Jackson was clearly outlined against the sky on the knoll; though, of course, it was doubtful that anyone would take him for a general from his nondescript uniform and awkward, small Little Sorrel. Still, he carried a certain authority as he watched, occasionally through his field glasses, the battle raging just below. Shrapnel from Union shells sometimes showered about him. He never even flinched. At one point it seemed a sharpshooter targeted him. A bullet came so close between him and Yancy that Yancy could feel the hot air as it whined by. Then another, so close to Yancy’s hair that it stirred it a bit, and convulsively Yancy ducked. Jackson didn’t blink.

Uncertainly Yancy said, “Sir? Don’t you think you might take cover from that sharpshooter that’s firing at you?”

Jackson turned to him. His face was grim, his mouth a tight, hard line. His eyes were like the very core of blue flame, sparking dangerously. At that moment Yancy realized that General Thomas Jackson was, indeed, a dangerous man. “How do you know he’s not aiming for you?” Jackson said drily and turned back to view the field through his glasses.

One more bullet came close, but not as close as the other two, whistling a few feet alongside Yancy’s knees. With a self-control he had no idea he possessed, he managed not to jerk away and sat tall and straight in the saddle. It seemed that Jackson could bring out this quality of bravery in men.

The Federals advanced and were driven back by fierce Confederate forces, but the Union troops seemed to be coming from all sides. The Confederates were hard pressed all along the front.

Jackson pointed and stated, “Look, General Bee is being pushed back. They’ve been shot to pieces.”

Yancy saw General Bee turn, the agony of defeat on his face. He had lost his hat and his sword was bent. Then General Bee saw Jackson, and he called out so all could hear him, “Look, men, there stands Jackson like a stone wall! Rally behind the Virginians!”

Jackson could stand it no longer; though he had been given no orders, he shouted the command, “Charge, brigade! Drive them from the field!” He spurred forward, and Yancy stayed by his side.

The rest of the day was a time of thunder and confusion, a time of blood and fear. More battle, more death, and after a while Yancy’s mind rebelled against seeing the faces of the men, the horrors inflicted on both sides, the carnage.

Slowly, almost imperceptibly, the battle began to turn against the North. A charge by Jackson’s 33rd Virginia regiment and by Stuart’s cavalry were pivotal points in the battle that made the Northern troops retreat, and then that retreat became an insane rout. Soldiers threw down their arms and ran on foot; teamsters driving carts stampeded the crowds; the road was packed with retreating cavalry, sutlers, civilians, companies, even whole regiments of men running back toward Washington. They left their arms, their supplies, their carts and horses, their wounded, and their dead.