The Long Roll
section opened with canister at one hundred and fifty yards. All the
Valley marksmen of the 5th let fall the lids of their cartridge boxes,
lifted their muskets, and fired. The blue withstood the first volley and
the second, but at the third they went back to the wood. An order
arrived from McLaughlin of the Rockbridge, "Lieutenant Poague back to
the straw stacks!" The battery horses, quiet and steadfast, were brought
from where they had stood and cropped the grass, the guns were limbered
up, Jackson's aide and the men of the 65th fell back, the six-pounder
shared its men with the howitzer, off thundered the guns. There was a
stir in the 65th. "Boys, I heard say that when those fellows show again,
we're going to charge!"
The battle was now general--Fulkerson on the left behind the stone wall,
Garnett in the centre, the artillery and Burk with three battalions on
the right. Against them poured the regiments of Kimball and Tyler, with
Sullivan coming up. The sun, could it have been seen through the rolling
smoke, would have showed low in the heavens. The musketry was
continuous, and the sound of the cannon shook the heart of Winchester
three miles away.
The 65th moved forward. Halfway up the slope, its colonel received an
ugly wound. He staggered and sank. "Go on! go on, men! Fine hunt! Don't
let the stag--" The 65th went on, led by Richard Cleave.
Before it stretched a long bank of springtime turf, a natural breastwork
seized by the blue soldiers as the stone fence on the left had been
taken by Fulkerson. From behind this now came a line of leaping flame.
Several of the grey fell, among them the colour-bearer. The man nearest
snatched the staff. Again the earthwork blazed and rang, and again the
colour-bearer fell, pitching forward, shot through the heart. Billy
Maydew caught the colours. "Thar's a durned sharpshooter a-settin' in
that thar tree! Dave, you pick him off."
Again the bank blazed. A western regiment was behind it, a regiment of
hunters and marksmen. Moreover a fresh body of troops could be seen
through the smoke, hurrying down from the tall brown woods. The grey
line broke, then rallied and swept on. The breastwork was now but a few
hundred feet away. A flag waved upon it, the staff planted in the soft
earth. Billy, moving side by side with Allan Gold, clutched closer the
great red battle-flag with the blue cross. His young face was set, his
eyes alight. Iron-sinewed he ran easily, without panting. "I air
a-goin'," he announced, "I air a-goin' to put this here one in the place
of that thar one."
"'T isn't going to be easy work," said Allan soberly. "What's the use of
ducking, Steve Dagg? If a bullet's going to hit you it's going to hit
you, and if it isn't going to hit you it isn't--"
A minie ball cut the staff of the flag in two just above Billy's head.
He caught the colours as they came swaying down, Allan jerked a musket
from a dead man's grasp, and together he and Billy somehow fastened the
flag to the bayonet and lifted it high. The line halted under a
momentary cover, made by the rising side of a hollow rimmed by a few
young locust trees. Cleave came along it. "Close ranks!--Men, all of
you! that earthwork must be taken. The 2d, the 4th, and the 33d are
behind us looking to see us do it. General Jackson himself is looking.
_Attention! Fix bayonets! Forward! Charge!_"
Up out of the hollow, and over the field went the 65th in a wild charge.
The noise of a thousand seas was in the air, and the smoke of the
bottomless pit. The yellow flashes of the guns came through it, and a
blur of colour--the flag on the bank. On went their own great
battle-flag, slanting forward as Billy Maydew ran. The bank flamed and
roared. A bullet passed through the fleshy part of the boy's arm. He
looked sideways at the blood. "Those durned bees sure do sting! I air
a-goin' to plant this here flag on that thar bank, jest the same as if
't was a hop pole in Christianna's garden!"
Fulkerson fought on grimly by the stone wall; Garnett and the other
Stonewall regiments struggled with desperation to hold the centre, the
artillery thundered from every height. The 65th touched the earthwork.
Cleave mounted first; Allan followed, then Billy and the Thunder Run
men, the regiment pouring after. Hot was the welcome they got, and
fierce was their answering grip. In places men could load and fire, but
bayonet and musket butt did much of the work. There was a great clamour,
the acrid smell of powder, the indescribable taste of battle. The flag
was down; the red battle-flag with the blue cross in its place. There
was a surge of the western regiment toward it, a battle around it that
strewed the bank and the shallow ditch beneath with many a blue figure,
many a grey. Step by step the grey pushed the blue back, away from the
bank, back toward the wood arising, shadowy, from a base of eddying
smoke.
Out of the smoke, suddenly, came hurrahing. It was deep and loud,
issuing from many throats. The western regiment began to hurrah, too.
"They're coming to help! They're coming to help! Indiana, ain't
it?--Now, you rebs, you go back on the other side!"
The blue wave from the wood came to reinforce the blue wave in front.
The 65th struggled with thrice its numbers, and there was a noise from
the wood which portended more. Back, inch by inch, gave the grey,
fighting desperately. They loaded, fired, loaded, fired. They used
bayonet and musket stock. The blue fell thick, but always others came to
take their places. The grey fell, and the ranks must close with none to
reinforce. In the field to the left the 4th and the 33d had their hands
very full; the 2d was gone to Fulkerson's support, the 5th and the 42d
were not yet up. Out of the wood came a third huzzahing blue line.
Cleave, hatless, bleeding from a bayonet thrust in the arm, ordered the
retreat.
On the crest of the bank there was confusion and clamour, shots and
shouts, the groans of the fallen, a horrible uproar. Out of the storm
came a high voice, "It air a-goin' to stay, and I air a-goin' to stay
with it!"
Billy Maydew had the flag. He stood defiant, half enveloped in its
folds, his torn shirt showing throat and breast, his young head thrown
back against the red ground. "I ain't a-goin' to quit--I ain't a-goin'
to quit! Thunder Run and Thunder Mountain hear me what I am a-sayin'! I
ain't a-goin' to quit!"
Allan Gold laid hold of him. "Why, Billy, we're coming back! There's got
to be a lot of times like this in a big war! You come on and carry the
colours out safe. You don't want those fellows to take them!"
Billy chanted on, "I ain't a-goin' to quit! I put it here jest like I
was putting a hop pole in Christianna's garden, and I ain't a-goin' to
dig it up again--"
Dave appeared. "Billy boy, don't be such a damned fool! You jest
skeedaddle with the rest of us and take it out of them next time. Don't
ye want to see Christianna again, an' maw an' the dogs?--Thar, now!"
A bullet split the standard, another--a spent ball coming from the
hillside--struck the bearer in the chest. Billy came to his knees, the
great crimson folds about him. Cleave appeared in the red-lit murk.
"Pick him up, Allan, and bring him away."
It was almost dusk to the green and rolling world about the field of
Kernstown. Upon that field, beneath the sulphurous battle cloud, it was
dusk indeed. The fighting line was everywhere, and for the Confederates
there were no reinforcements. Fulkerson yet held the left, Garnett with
conspicuous gallantry the centre with the Stonewall regiments. The
batteries yet thundered upon the right. But ammunition was low, and for
three hours Ashby's mistake as to the enemy's numbers had received full
demonstration. Shields's brigadiers did well and the blue soldiers did
well.
A body of troops coming from the wood and crowding through a gap in a
stone fence descended upon the Rockbridge battery. Four regiments of the
Stonewall brigade clung desperately to the great uneven field which
marked the centre. The musket barrels were burningly hot to the touch of
the men, their fingers must grope for the cartridges rattling in the
cartridge boxes, their weariness was horrible, their eyes were glazed,
their lips baked with thirst. Long ago they had fought in a great,
bright, glaring daytime; then again, long ago, they had begun to fight
in a period of dusk, an age of dusk. The men loaded, fired, loaded,
rammed, fired quite automatically. They had been doing this for a long,
long time. Probably they would do it for a long time to come. Only the
cartridges were not automatically supplied. It even seemed that they
might one day come to an end. The dusk deepened. They had, beneath the
red-lit battle clouds, a glimpse of Garnett, a general chivalric and
loved, standing in his stirrups, looking out and upward toward the dark
wood and Sullivan's fresh regiments.
A sergeant came along the line stretching a haversack open with his
hands. In it were cartridges. "I gathered all the dead had. 'T isn't
many. You've got to shoot to kill, boys!" A man with a ball through the
end of his spine, lying not far from a hollow of the earth, half pool,
half bog, began to cry aloud in an agonizing fashion. "Water! water! Oh,
some one give me water! Water! For the love of God, water!" A grey
soldier started out of line toward him; in a second both were killed.
Garnett settled down in his saddle and came back to the irregular,
smoke-wreathed, swaying line. He spoke to his colonels. "There are three
thousand fresh bayonets at the back of these woods. General Jackson does
not wish a massacre. I will withdraw the brigade."
The troops were ready to go. They had held the centre very long; the
cartridges were all but spent, the loss was heavy, they were deadly
tired. They wanted water to drink and to hear the command, _Break
ranks!_ Garnett was gallant and brave; they saw that he did what he did
with reason, and their judgment acquiesced. There was momently a fresh
foe. Without much alignment, fighting in squads or singly, firing as
they went from thicket and hollow at the heavy on-coming masses, the
Stonewall Brigade fell back upon the wood to the south. The blue wave
saw victory and burst into a shout of triumph. Kimbal's batteries, too,
began a jubilant thunder.
Over the field, from Fulkerson on the left to the broken centre and the
withdrawing troops came a raw-bone sorrel urged to a furious gallop;
upon it a figure all dusk in the dusk, a Cromwell-Quixote of a man,
angered now to a degree, with an eye like steel and a voice like ice. He
rode up to Garnett, as though he would ride him down. "General Garnett,
what are you doing? Go back at once, sir!"
As he spoke he threw himself from the saddle and closed his gauntleted
hand with force on the arm of a drummer boy. "Beat the rally!" he
commanded.
The rapid and continuous rolling filled like a sound of the sea the ears
of the Stonewall Brigade. Garnett, in a strange voice, gave the
counter-order. The men uttered a hard and painful gasp. They looked and
saw Stonewall Jackson lifted above them, an iron figure in a storm of
shot and shell. He jerked his hand into the air; he shouted, "Back, men!
Give them the bayonet!" The drum beat on. Colonels and captains and
lieutenants strove to aid him and to change the retreat into an advance.
In vain! the commands were shattered; the fighting line all broken and
dispersed. The men did not shamefully flee; they retreated sullenly,
staying here and there where there were yet cartridges, to fire upon the
on-coming foe, but they continued to go back.
The 5th and the 42d with Funsten's small cavalry command came hastening
to the broken centre and there made a desperate fight. The 5th Virginia
and the 5th Ohio clanged shields. The 84th Pennsylvania broke twice,