Chickamauga (9 page)

 … So, like I say, Old Rosey finally pushed us back across the Cumberland. He was in Chattanooga in July, and fer a few weeks hit was quiet thar. But all the time I knowed that Rosey would keep comin’ on. We got wind of him again along in August. He had started after us again. He pushed his trains across the Cumberland,
with the roads so bad, what with the rains, his wagons sunk down to the axle hubs. But he got ’em over, came down in the valley, then across the ridge, and early in September he was on our heels again.

We cleared out of Chattanooga on the eighth. And our tail end was pullin’ out at one end of the town as Rosey came in through the other. We dropped down around the mountain south of town and Rosey thought he had us on the run again.

But this time he was fooled. We was ready fer him now, a-pickin’ out our spot and layin’ low. Old Rosey follered us. He sent McCook around down toward the south to head us off. He thought he had us in retreat but when McCook got thar we wasn’t thar at all. We’d come down south of town and taken our positions along Chickamauga Creek. McCook had gone too far. Thomas was follerin’ us from the north and when McCook tried to git back to join Thomas, he couldn’t pass us, fer we blocked the way. They had to fight us or be cut in two.

We was in position on the Chickamauga on the seventeenth. The Yankees streamed in on the eighteenth, and took their position in the woods a-facin’ us. We had our backs to Lookout Mountain and the Chickamauga Creek. The Yankees had their line thar in the woods before us on a rise, with Missionary Ridge behind them to the east.

The Battle of Chickamauga was fought in a cedar thicket. That cedar thicket, from what I knowed of hit, was about three miles long and one mile wide. We fought fer two days all up and down that thicket and to and fro across hit. When the fight started that cedar thicket was so thick and dense you could a-took a butcher knife and drove hit in thar anywheres and hit would a-stuck. And when that fight was over that cedar thicket had been so destroyed by shot and shell you
could a-looked in thar anywheres with your naked eye and seed a black snake run a hundred yards away. If you’d a-looked at that cedar thicket the day after that fight was over you’d a-wondered how a hummin’ bird the size of your thumb-nail could a-flown through thar without bein’ torn into pieces by the fire. And yet more than half of us who went into that thicket came out of hit alive and told the tale. You wouldn’t have thought that hit was possible. But I was thar and seed hit, and hit was.

A little after midnight—hit may have been about two o’clock that mornin’, while we lay there waitin’ for the fight we knowed was bound to come next day—Jim woke me up. I woke up like a flash—you got used to hit in those days—and though hit was so dark you could hardly see your hand a foot away, I knowed his face at once. He was white as a ghost and he had got thin as a rail in that last year’s campaign. In the dark his face looked white as paper. He dug his hand into my arm so hard hit hurt. I roused up sharp-like; then I seed him and knowed who hit was.

“John!” he said—“John!”—and he dug his fingers in my arm so hard he made hit ache—“John! I’ve seed him! He was here again!”

I tell you what, the way he said hit made my blood run cold. They say we Pentlands are a superstitious people, and perhaps we are. They told hit how they saw my brother George a-comin’ up the hill one day at sunset, how they all went out upon the porch and waited fer him, how everyone, the children and the grown-ups alike, all seed him as he clumb the hill, and how he passed behind a tree and disappeared as if the ground had swallered him—and how they got the news ten days later that he’d been killed at Chancellorsville on
that very day and hour. I’ve heared these stories and I know the others all believe them, but I never put no stock in them myself. And yet, I tell you what! The sight of that white face and those black eyes a-burnin’ at me in the dark—the way he said hit and the way hit was—fer I could feel the men around me and hear somethin’ movin’ in the wood—I heared a trace chain rattle and hit was enough to make your blood run cold! I grabbed hold of him—I shook him by the arm—I didn’t want the rest of ’em to hear—I told him to hush up—

“John, he was here!” he said.

I never asked him what he meant—I knowed too well to ask. It was the third time he’d seed hit in a month—a man upon a horse. I didn’t want to hear no more—I told him that hit was a dream and I told him to go back to sleep.

“I tell you, John, hit was no dream!” he said. “Oh John, I heared hit—and I heared his horse—and I seed him sittin’ thar as plain as day—and he never said a word to me—he jest sat thar lookin’ down, and then he turned and rode away into the woods.… John, John, I heared him and I don’t know what hit means!”

Well, whether he seed hit or imagined hit or dreamed hit, I don’t know. But the sight of his black eyes a-burnin’ holes through me in the dark made me feel almost as if I’d seed hit, too. I told him to lay down by me—and still I seed his eyes a-blazin’ thar. I know he didn’t sleep a wink the rest of that whole night. I closed my eyes and tried to make him think that I was sleepin’ but hit was no use—we lay thar wide awake. And both of us was glad when mornin’ came.

The fight began upon our right at ten o’clock. We couldn’t find out what was happenin’: the woods thar was so close and thick we never knowed fer two days what had happened, and we didn’t know fer certain
then. We never knowed how many we was fightin’ or how many we had lost. I’ve heared them say that even Old Rosey himself didn’t know jest what had happened when he rode back into town next day, and didn’t know that Thomas was still standin’ like a rock. And if Old Rosey didn’t know no more than this about hit, what could a common soldier know? We fought back and forth across that cedar thicket for two days, and thar was times when you would be right up on top of them before you even knowed that they was thar. And that’s the way the fightin’ went—the bloodiest fightin’ that was ever knowed, until that cedar thicket was soaked red with blood, and thar was hardly a place left in thar where a sparrer could have perched.

And as I say, we heared ’em fightin’ out upon our right at ten o’clock, and then the fightin’ came our way. I heared later that this fightin’ started when the Yanks come down to the Creek and run into a bunch of Forrest’s men and drove ’em back. And then they had hit back and forth until they got drove back themselves, and that’s the way we had hit all day long. We’d attack and then they’d throw us back, then they’d attack and we’d beat them off. And that was the way hit went from mornin’ till night. We piled up there upon their left: they mowed us down with canister and grape until the very grass was soakin’ with our blood, but we kept comin’ on. We must have charged a dozen times that day—I was in four of ’em myself. We fought back and forth across that wood until there wasn’t a piece of hit as big as the palm of your hand we hadn’t fought on. We busted through their right at two-thirty in the afternoon and got way over past the Widder Glenn’s, where Rosey had his quarters, and beat ’em back until we got the whole way ’cross the Lafayette Road and took possession of the road. And then they drove us out again.
And we kept comin’ on, and both sides were still at hit after darkness fell.

We fought back and forth across that road all day with first one side and then the t’other holdin’ hit until that road hitself was soaked in blood. They called that road the Bloody Lane, and that was jest the name fer hit.

We kept fightin’ an hour or more after hit had gotten dark, and you could see the rifles flashin’ in the woods, but then hit all died down. I tell you what, that night was somethin’ to remember and to marvel at as long as you live. The fight had set the wood afire in places, and you could see the smoke and flames and hear the screamin’ and the hollerin’ of the wounded until hit made your blood run cold. We got as many as we could—but some we didn’t even try to git—we jest let ’em lay. It was an awful thing to hear. I reckon many a wounded man was jest left to die or burn to death because we couldn’t git ’em out.

You could see the nurses and the stretcher-bearers movin’ through the woods, and each side huntin’ fer hits dead. You could see them movin’ in the smoke an’ flames, an’ you could see the dead men layin’ there as thick as wheat, with their corpse-like faces ’n black powder on their lips, an’ a little bit of moonlight comin’ through the trees, and all of hit more like a nightmare out of hell than anything I ever knowed before.

But we had other work to do. All through the night we could hear the Yanks a-choppin’ and a-thrashin’ round, and we knowed that they was fellin’ trees to block us when we went fer them next mornin’. Fer we knowed the fight was only jest begun. We figgered that we’d had the best of hit, but we knowed no one had won the battle yet. We knowed the second day would beat the first.

Jim knowed hit too. Poor Jim, he didn’t sleep that night—he never seed the man upon the horse that night he jest sat there, a-grippin’ his knees and starin’, and a-sayin’; “Lord God, Lord God, when will hit ever end?”

Then mornin’ came at last. This time we knowed jest where we was and what hit was we had to do. Our line was fixed by that time. Bragg knowed at last where Rosey had his line, and Rosey knowed where we was. So we waited there, both sides, till mornin’ came. Hit was a foggy mornin’ with mist upon the ground. Around ten o’clock when the mist began to rise, we got the order and we went chargin’ through the wood again.

We knowed the fight was goin’ to be upon the right—upon our right, that is—on Rosey’s left. And we knowed that Thomas was in charge on Rosey’s left. And we all knowed that hit was easier to crack a flint rock with your teeth than to make old Thomas budge. But we went after him, and I tell you what, that was a fight! The first day’s fight had been like playin’ marbles when compared to this.

We hit old Thomas on his left at half-past ten, and Breckenridge came sweepin’ round and turned old Thomas’s flank and came in at his back, and then we had hit hot and heavy. Old Thomas whupped his men around like he would crack a raw-hide whup and drove Breckenridge back around the flank again, but we was back on top of him before you knowed the first attack was over.

The fight went ragin’ down the flank, down to the center of Old Rosey’s army and back and forth across the left, and all up and down old Thomas’s line. We’d hit him right and left and in the middle, and he’d come back at us and throw us back again. And we went
ragin’ back and forth thar like two bloody lions with that cedar thicket so tore up, so bloody and so thick with dead by that time, that hit looked as if all hell had broken loose in thar.

Rosey kept a-whuppin’ men around off of his right, to help old Thomas on the left to stave us off. And then we’d hit old Thomas left of center and we’d bang him in the middle and we’d hit him on his left again, and he’d whup those Yankees back and forth off of the right into his flanks and middle as we went fer him, until we run those Yankees ragged. We had them gallopin’ back and forth like kangaroos, and in the end that was the thing that cooked their goose.

The worst fightin’ had been on the left, on Thomas’s line, but to hold us thar they’d thinned their right out and had failed to close in on the center of their line. And at two o’clock that afternoon when Longstreet seed the gap in Wood’s position on the right, he took five brigades of us and poured us through. That whupped them. That broke their line and smashed their whole right all to smithereens. We went after them like a pack of ragin’ devils. We killed ’em and we took ’em by the thousands, and those we didn’t kill and take right thar went streamin’ back across the Ridge as if all hell was at their heels.

That was a rout if ever I heared tell of one! They went streamin’ back across the Ridge—hit was each man fer himself and the devil take the hindmost. They caught Rosey comin’ up—he rode into them—he tried to check ’em, face ’em round, and get ’em to come on again—hit was like tryin’ to swim the Mississippi upstream on a boneyard mule! They swept him back with them as if he’d been a wooden chip. They went streamin’ into Rossville like the rag-tag of creation—the
worst whupped army that you ever seed, and Old Rosey was along with all the rest!

He knowed hit was all up with him, or thought he knowed hit, for everybody told him the Army of the Cumberland had been blowed to smithereens and that hit was a general rout. And Old Rosey turned and rode to Chattanooga, and he was a beaten man. I’ve heared tell that when he rode up to his headquarters thar in Chattanooga they had to help him from his horse, and that he walked into the house all dazed and fuddled-like, like he never knowed what had happened to him—and that he jest sat thar struck dumb and never spoke.

This was at four o’clock of that same afternoon. And then the news was brought to him that Thomas was still thar upon the field and wouldn’t budge. Old Thomas stayed thar like a rock. We’d smashed the right, we’d sent it flyin’ back across the Ridge, the whole Yankee right was broken into bits and streamin’ back to Rossville for dear life. Then we bent old Thomas back upon his left. We thought we had him, he’d have to leave the field or else surrender. But old Thomas turned and fell back along the Ridge and put his back against the wall thar, and he wouldn’t budge.

Longstreet pulled us back at three o’clock when we had broken up the right and sent them streamin’ back across the Ridge. We thought that hit was over then. We moved back stumblin’ like men walkin’ in a dream. And I turned to Jim—I put my arm around him, and I said: “Jim, what did I say? I knowed hit, we’ve licked ’em and this is the end!” I never even knowed if he heard me. He went stumblin’ on beside me with his face as white as paper and his lips black with the powder of the cartridge-bite, mumblin’ and mutterin’ to himself like someone talkin’ in a dream. And we fell back to position, and they told us all to rest. And we leaned
thar on our rifles like men who hardly knowed if they had come out of that hell alive or dead.

“Oh Jim, we’ve got ’em and this is the end!” I said.

He leaned thar swayin’ on his rifle, starin’ through the wood. He jest leaned and swayed thar, and he never said a word, and those great eyes of his a-burnin’ through the wood.