The Long Roll
Gulliver found the Houyhnhnms so detesting war? Horses have a dreadful
lot in war--and the quarrel never theirs. Do but look at that
stream!--how cool and pleasant, winding between the willows--"
Stafford got him to one side of the road, to a small plateau beneath an
overhanging bank. The column was now crawling through a ravine with a
sheer descent on the right to the frozen creek below. To the left,
covering the mountain-side, were masses of evergreen kalmia, and above
them tall and leafless trees in whose branches the wind made a grating
sound. The sleet was falling again--a veil of sleet. The two waiting for
the ambulance looked down upon the grey soldiers, grey, weary, and bent
before the wind. "Who would ever have thought," said the chaplain,
"that Dante took an idea from Virginia in the middle of the nineteenth
century? I remember things being so happy and comfortable--but it must
have been long ago. Yes, my people, long ago." Dropping the bridle, he
raised his arm in a gesture usual with him in the pulpit. In the fading
light there was about him an illusion of black and white; he moved his
arm as though it were clad in the sleeve of a surplice. "I am not often
denunciatory," he said, "but I denounce this weary going to and fro,
this turning like a dervish, this finding that every straight line is
but a fraction of a circle, this squirrel cage with the greenwood never
reached, this interminable drama, this dance of midges,--
Through a circle that ever returneth in
To the selfsame spot,
And much of Madness and more of Sin
And Horror the soul of the plot--
Is it not wonderful, the gold light on the mountains?"
At last the ambulance appeared--a good one, captured at Manassas. The
chaplain, still talking, was persuaded stiffly to dismount, to give
Pluto's bridle into Stafford's hand, and to enter. There were other
occupants, two rows of them. Stafford saw his old friend laid in a
corner, on a wisp of straw; then, finding Fontaine in the ranks, gave
over the grey, and joined the staff creeping, creeping on tired horses
through the sleet.
Cavalry and infantry and wagon train wound at the close of day over a
vast bare hilltop toward Unger's Store where, it was known, would be the
bivouac. The artillery in the rear found it impossible to finish out the
march. Two miles from Unger's the halt was ordered. It was full dark;
neither man nor brute could stumble farther. All came to a stand high up
on the wind-swept hill. The guns were left in the road, the horses led
down the slope and picketted in the lee of a poor stable, placed there,
it seemed, by some pitying chance. In the stable there was even found
some hay and corn. The men had no supper, or only such crumbs as were
found in the haversacks. They made their fires on the hillside and
crouched around them, nodding uneasily, trying to sleep with faces
scorched by the flame and freezing backs. They put their feet in the
sodden shoes to the fire, and the poor, worn-out leather fell into yet
greater holes. There was some conjecture as to how far the thermometer
stood below zero. Some put it at forty, but the more conservative
declared for twenty. It was impossible to sleep, and every one was
hungry, and the tobacco was all out. _What were they doing at home, by
the fire, after supper, with the children playing about?_
At dawn the bugles blew. Stiff and sore, racked with pains and aches,
coughing, limping, savagely hungry, the men rose. Time was to come when
even a dawn like this would be met by the Confederate soldier with
whimsical cheer, with greetings as to an oft-encountered friend, with a
courage quaint, pathetic, and divinely high--but the time was not yet.
The men swore and groaned. The haversacks were quite empty; there would
be no breakfast until the wagons were caught up with at Unger's. The
drivers went down the hillside for the horses. When they came to the
strength that had drawn the guns and looked, there was a moment's
silence. Hetterich the blacksmith was with the party, and Hetterich
wept. "If I was God, I wouldn't have it--I wouldn't have a horse treated
so! Just look at Flora--just look at her knees! Ah, the poor brute!" So
frequent had been the falls of the day before, so often had the animals
been cut by the carriages coming upon them, that many were scarred in a
dreadful fashion. The knees of Flora had been badly cut, and what
Hetterich pointed at were long red icicles hanging from the wounds.
At Unger's the evening before, in a narrow valley between the silver
hills, the infantry stacked arms, broke ranks, and listened with sullen
brows to two pieces of news. At Hanging Rock, between Unger's and
Romney, the advance, composed of a regiment of militia and a section of
artillery, had come into touch with the enemy. The militia had broken,
the two guns had been lost. "Fool Tom Jackson" was reported to have
said, "Good! good!" and lifted that right hand of his to the sky. The
other tidings were to the effect that the troops would rest at Unger's
for three days, to the end, chiefly, that the horses might be
rough-shod. Rest--delicious sound! But Unger's! To the east the
unutterably bleak hills over which they had toiled, to the west Capon
Mountain high and stark against the livid skies, to the south a dark
forest with the snow beneath the trees, to the north long, low hills,
with faded broomsedge waving in the wind. Upon a hilltop perched a
country store, a blacksmith shop, and one or two farmhouses, forlorn and
lonely in the twilight, and by the woods ran Buffalo Run, ice upon the
shallows to either bank.
In the morning, when the artillery was up, when breakfast was over, roll
called, orders read, the army fell to the duties upon which paramount
stress had been laid. All the farriers, the drivers, the men who had to
do with horses, went to work with these poor, wretched, lame, and
wounded friends, feeding them, currying them, dressing their hurts and,
above all, rough-shoeing them in preparation for the icy mountains
ahead. The clink of iron against iron made a pleasant sound; moreover,
this morning, the sun shone. Very cold as it was, there was cheer in the
sky. Even the crows cawing above the woods did not sound so dolefully. A
Thunder Run man found a tree laden with shrivelled persimmons. He was up
it like a squirrel. "Simmon tree! Simmon tree!" Comrades came hurrying
over the snow; the fruit was dropped into upheld caps, lifted toward
eager mouths. Suddenly there flamed a generous impulse. "Boys! them poor
sick fellows with nothing but hardtack--" The persimmons were carried to
the hospital tents.
Before the sun was halfway to the meridian a curious spectacle appeared
along the banks of Buffalo Run. Every hundred feet or so was built a
large fire. Over it hung a camp kettle, full of water--water hot as the
fire could make it. Up and down the stream an improvised laundry went
into operation, while, squad by squad, the men performed their personal
ablutions. It was the eighth of January; they had left Winchester upon
the first, and small, indeed, since then had been the use of washing
water. In the dire cold, with the streams frozen, cleanliness had not
tempted the majority, and indeed, latterly, the men had been too worn
out to care. Sleep and food and warmth had represented the sum of
earthly desire. A number, with ostentation, had each morning broken the
ice from some pool or other and bathed face and hands, but few extended
the laved area. The General Order appointing a Washerman's Day came none
too soon. Up and down Buffalo Run, in the zero weather, the men stripped
and bathed. Soap was not yet the scarce and valuable commodity it was to
become; there was soap enough for all and the camp kettles were filled
from the stream as soon as emptied. Underclothing, too, flannel and
cotton, must be washed.... There came discoveries, made amid "Ughs!" of
disgust. The more fastidious threw the whole business, undergarment and
parasites into the fire; others, more reasonable, or without a change of
clothing, scalded their apparel with anxious care. The episode marked a
stage in warfare. That night Lieutenant Coffin, writing a letter on his
last scrap of pale blue paper, sat with scrupulously washed hands well
back from the board he was using as a table. His boyish face flushed,
his lips quivered as he wrote. He wrote of lilies and moss rose-buds and
the purity of women, and he said there was a side of war which Walter
Scott had never painted.
Three bleak, pinched days later the army again took the road to Romney.
Four miles from Unger's they began to climb Sleepy Creek Mountain,
mounting the great, sparsely wooded slope like a long line of warrior
ants. To either hand the view was very fine, North Mountain to the left,
Capon Mountain to the right, in between a sea of hills and long deep
vales--very fine and utterly unappreciated. The earth was hostile, the
sky was hostile, the commanding general was hostile. Snow began to fall.
Allan Gold, marching with Company A, began to think of Thunder Run, the
schoolhouse, and the tollgate. The 65th was now high upon the
mountain-side and the view had vastly widened. The men looked out and
over toward the great main Valley of Virginia, and they looked
wistfully. To many of the men home was over there--home, wife, child,
mother--all hopelessly out of reach. Allan Gold had no wife nor child
nor mother, but he thought of Sairy and Tom, and he wondered if Sairy
were making gingerbread. He tried to smell it again, and to feel the
warmth of her kitchen--but then he knew too well that she was not making
gingerbread! Tom's last letter had spoken of the growing scarcity; flour
so high, sugar so high. Everybody was living very plainly, and the poor
were going to suffer. Allan thought of the schoolhouse. It was closed.
He could see just how it looked; a small unused building, mournful,
deserted, crumbling, while past it rushed the strong and wintry torrent.
He thought suddenly of Christianna. He saw her plainly, more plainly
than ever he had done before. She looked starved, defeated. He thought
of the Country. How long would the war last? In May they had thought
"Three months." In the flush of triumph after Manassas they had said "It
is over." But it wasn't over. Marching and camping had followed, fights
on the Peninsula, fights on the Kanawha, at Leesburg, at Cheat Mountain,
affairs in the far South; and now McClellan drilling, organizing,
organizing below Washington! with rumours of another "On to Richmond."
When would the war be over? Allan wondered.
The column, turning to the right, began to descend the mountain, a long,
slipping, stumbling downward going, with the snow falling heavily and
the wind screaming like a banshee. At the foot was a stretch of bottom
land, then, steep and rocky, grimly waiting to be crossed, rose Bear
Garden Ridge. High Top loomed behind. The infantry could see the
cavalry, creeping up Bear Garden, moving slowly, slowly, bent before the
blast, wraith-like through the falling snow. From far in the rear, back
of the Stonewall Brigade, back of Loring, came a dull sound--the
artillery and the wagon train climbing Sleepy Creek Mountain. It was
three o'clock in the afternoon--oh, leaden weariness, hunger, cold,
sickness, worn-out shoes--
Back upon the mountain top, in the ambulance taken at Manassas, Mr. Corbin
Wood, better than he had been for several days, but still feverish, propped
himself upon the straw and smiled across at Will Cleave, who, half carried
by his brother, had appeared beside the ambulance an hour before. Swaying
as he stood, the boy protested to the last that he could march just as well
as the other fellows, that they would think him a baby, that Richard would