I come to with a pair of Rebel soldiers holding an ankle each and hauling me, upside down, over the breastworks. I feel like my head is going to explode every time it bumps against a log. It doesn’t, but I keep blacking out.
When I finally wake up, it must be the next day. I’m surrounded by about thirty other Union prisoners, most with a bloody rag wrapped around some part of their bodies. I don’t recognize any of them. My head is pounding, there’s dried blood all down my cheek and my right eye is almost closed from the swelling.
That morning we are forced to stagger the two miles to Gaines Mill, where we are locked in an old barn. We are held there for several days. It’s hot, uncomfortable and stinks of the animals that were here before us, but it gives us a chance to recover. The pain in my head eases and the swelling goes down. There is even a water pump outside that we are allowed to use once a day, so I can clean the dried blood off my face. There’s not much food, and the Rebel soldiers tease us about how easily they beat us, but for the most part, they’re decent and share what food and tobacco they have.
At first I hope for another attack that might free us, but nothing happens. A few more wounded from the attack on June 3 are brought in. They all complain bitterly that General Grant didn’t ask for a truce to collect the dead and wounded. It seems I’m lucky to have got so close to the Rebel lines before I was wounded. Those farther back died slowly, their screams and cries echoing across the field for days.
One morning the barn door is thrown open and a grinning Rebel officer yells: “Grant’s skedaddled. We whipped you boys good. Reckon you’re with us till we get to knock on Abe Lincoln’s door in Washington.”
I feel abandoned, but I don’t have much time to fret. That morning we’re formed up under guard and marched out.
For almost three weeks we travel, sometimes this way, sometimes that, sometimes held under guard in an open field for a day or two. Once we travel for three days by mule, and a couple of times we have the luxury of a train. That’s where we are now, in a horse wagon on a train from Macon, Georgia. I don’t know where we’re headed, but I sense our journey is almost over.
“What day is it?” The soldier beside me is small, skinny and nervous. I don’t much like him, but he seems to have attached himself to me and, despite my discouragements, won’t leave.
“I don’t know,” I grumble.
“I reckon it must be near the end of the month, twenty-eighth or twenty-ninth. How much longer do you reckon they’ll keep us moving?”
“Until we get where they’re taking us,” I reply testily.
“I heard they was taking us to a place called Belle Isle. Know where that is, Jake?”
“They’re not taking us to Belle Isle,” I say, angry at the kid’s stupidity. “Belle Isle’s in Virginia, outside Richmond. We’re in Georgia and we’re going in the opposite direction.”
I wish the kid would shut up and leave me alone, but the harsher I am with him, the more he seems to want my approval.
“Probably a prison camp,” the kid says. “We’ll be all right there, Jake. I got some money.” He clinks some coins in his pocket. “I’ll share it with you.”
I ignore the offer. It’s a miracle he still has his money. I have some, but it’s sewn into the lining of my jacket. Ma put it there before I left home.
“There’s some rough types out there, Jake. You save this for a rainy day,” she said.
I’ve not been in the army long, but I’ve learned not tell anyone about my money. The kid brags about his coins proudly to anyone who shows him the least kindness.
“How can you be so stupid?” I ask. “Sew that money into the lining of your jacket or the first person you meet will steal it.”
“You’re right, Jake. You’re right,” the kid whines. “I should’ve listened to you before. I’ll sew it into my jacket as soon as we get somewhere. But I meant it when I said I would share it with you.”
“Shut up,” I order.
The kid looks crestfallen, but he falls silent. I don’t want to hurt him, but he’s two things I don’t want right now: a friend and a distraction.
I don’t want a friend because friends get killed, and I don’t want a distraction because I just want to ignore everything else and think. And the more I think, the stupider I realize I have been.
I was stupid to think this War between the States was a glorious crusade for the Union and against slavery. I was stupid to think of Jim as a hero, a knight in shining armor going off to save the world. And I was most stupid to believe his letters home.
Jim must have realized what war is like—I have after only a few weeks and one major battle—but he continued writing me those cheerful, lying letters about what a big adventure it all was and how much fun he was having. Tell Zach and the others left dead and rotting in front of the Rebel breastworks at Cold Harbor how much fun war is.
Worst of all, Jim treated me like a child. I suppose he wanted to protect me from knowing what war is really like, but he didn’t give me the credit of thinking I might be able to understand what was going on.
But maybe I’m being unfair. It had taken weeks of war and death for me to grow up from a farm boy, whose greatest dream was to be a hero and return home with a chest full of medals and a mind full of exciting stories, into a bitter soldier. Maybe I wouldn’t have believed Jim’s letters even if he had told me the truth. But he should have tried.
A change in the sound of the train’s wheels makes me look up. The view past the guards and out the open door of the wagon is still mostly pine trees, but now they are thinning and I see patches of open ground and occasional shacks. We are arriving somewhere at last.
With much clanking and shuddering, the train groans to a halt. A cloud of white steam swirls past the door.
“Git down,” one of the guards shouts.
Awkwardly, we scramble out of the wagon and onto the flat ground by the railroad tracks. A small station house has Andersonville Junction painted above the door.
“Come on, you lazy blue-bellies, form up.”
With a lot of shouting and prodding with musket butts, the guards form us into a rough column. They’re a lot busier and active than I have seen them before. I think it’s because they are being watched by an officer on a white horse. The man is small, with narrow features partly hidden by a thick black beard. He is wearing a white, immaculately pressed linen shirt and trousers and has a gray cap pulled low on his forehead. He wears a Colt Navy revolver on his hip, but it seems ridiculously large for the man. He looks almost comical, but something about the way his eyes move, missing nothing, and the deference the guards show him make me think this is a man to beware of.
“Andersonville Junction,” the kid says as we form up. “Never heard of it. You think this is where they’re taking us, Jake?”
I ignore his chatter. We walk a short way along a dusty path through the trees. I’m sweating under my thick jacket. It’s been an inconvenience many times as we’ve stumbled along under the summer sun, but some instinct tells me not to discard it. It’s not going to be summer forever, and who knows where I’ll be come January.
The man in front of me stops walking, and a cloud of brown dust swirls up around us. We’ve just come out of the trees, and as the dust clears we can see an open valley in front of us. In the center is a large rectangle surrounded by a double stockade wall. A stream runs into the stockade midway along the far side, crosses the compound and exits below us. Several neat barracks and houses are scattered outside the stockade, some surrounded by colorful gardens and low white fences.
The compound itself is crowded with tents of all sizes and shapes, and masses of dark figures move slowly between them. It is crisscrossed by a network of narrow paths.
“It don’t look too bad,” the skinny kid says.
I’m not so sure. The camp looks very overcrowded. The stream, clear where it leaves the trees, becomes a wide muddy mess in the middle of the compound, and off to our right there is a long shallow pit and a field of graves. Worst of all, there’s a smell. It’s mostly the smell of human shit, but there is an underlying sweetness that I recognize from the slaughter shed on the farm. It’s the smell of death.