After three days' rest and nine good meals, we pick up our entrenching tools and commence to dig. Digging one long trench around Vicksburg is hard, sweaty work in this heat. The sun beats down on my head like a hammer. My hands are as rough and callused as Mr. Cleary's hands. But I prefer digging to fighting. So does everyone else.
After ten days of digging a trench all around Vicksburg, Major General Grant's Army of the Tennessee and General Sherman's Army of the Ohio are now a twelve-mile ring around the town, one regiment deep all around the ring. What Rebs remain alive in Vicksburg must be running out of supplies. Nothing can get in or out without our leave.
Robbie tells us that all those troops we saw marching near our camp the night of Champion Hill are posted in a second ring around Vicksburg on the Indianola Road. The Rebel General Pemberton can call for reinforcements until the cows come home. No one will get through to help him.
Our navy controls the Mississippi north of town, and south of town as well.
For the rest of May we dig underneath Vicksburg. We dig, then blow our way through rock with explosives. Meanwhile, our artillery, across the river in de Soto, blasts away at the town. We counted them once—two hundred cannon are firing at Vicksburg pretty much all the time, nights included.
Our fortifications are trenches with crisscrossed logs on top for extra protection. We plug the open spots in the logs with sandbags filled with Mississippi mud. When those bags dry out, they're as hard as stone. I can run the trenches without stooping over. It reminds me of running through the corn rows back on Mr. Cleary's farm. Taller soldiers are obliged to hunch over at the waist.
We're dirty as hogs and infested with vermin. We haven't had our clothes or boots off in four weeks. Trying to stay clean is so utterly hopeless that no one bothers. There's hardly any good water to drink; our coffee tastes like mud laced with gunpowder. The Mississippi is slick with whale oil from all our gunships. My canteen smells like rotten fish.
I try to remember to slouch, since my constant companion is no more. We're all so miserable, and I've lost so much weight, no one gives me a second glance.
On June 1 the storefronts on one of the back streets catch fire. We didn't do that. No Union troops or gunboats are within range. No artillery in de Soto can reach that far. The citizens are burning and looting their own town.
The Rebs are so close, we smell their bourbon rations when the wind is right. They gamble in card games and curse their bad luck.
Every evening Johnny Rebs stand in the parapets of Fort Beauregard and serenade the Union troops with war songs. They sing in fine voices and close harmonies. "You Can Never Win Us Back" is a favorite, as is "The Bonnie Blue Flag." Their way of showing us their opinions, I reckon.
One evening a fine baritone rises on the still air with a song I've not heard before. Company G listens intently. No one moves.
"'Oh Johnny, oh Johnny, I weep to see you go.
Let us join up together—no one will know.
My chest I've bound; I'll wear my cap down low.
Won't you let me come with you?'
'No, my love, no.'"
The words chill my blood. Surely these men can't suspect that there are women soldiers among them? Or is this a song about wishing it were true?
"'Oh Johnny, oh Johnny, your words I can't abide.
Let us fall in together an' fight side by side.
Kit and rifle I'll carry; my hair's been shorn away.
Won't you let me come with you?'
'Nay, my love, nay.'"
Oscar Vander Zee sighs sadly. As does Michael McGill.
"'Oh Johnny, oh Johnny, don't be so impolite,
For I love you far better than all of mankind.
I love you far better than words can e'er express.
Won't you let me come with you?'
'Yes, my love, yes.'"
I steal glances at my fellow soldiers. Each is lost in thought, perhaps thinking of a Belvidere sweetheart. We're dusty, dirty—our trench floor is an ankle-deep, buzzing ooze of blood, torn flesh, and flies. Reb sharpshooters are the stuff of legend now—we live with our dead until the runaways have a chance to bury them in the skulk of night.
Who would ever want his sweetheart here in this trench? Who would ever want to see her living like this?
Suddenly, Michael McGill calls out, "Don't sing that one again!"
Other men shout in agreement.
There is silence on the parapet—as though Johnny Reb is thinking it over as well.
A drawl twangs out of the twilight. "For once we agree, Billy Yank!"
We never hear that song again.
The people of Vicksburg have taken to digging caves in the earth in front of their houses. The caves give them some protection from our artillery.
Vicksburg looks like a massive prairie-dog town.
While on picket duty one bright evening in early June, Sergeant Andrus lets me look through his spyglass.
"See there!" he says excitedly. "We've licked them, Private Cashier. What do you see? No, in the middle of town—just there."
It takes a while to get used to looking through the spyglass. All of a sudden women and children leap into view. They're so thin! And gray with fatigue and defeat. The children look as though they've long since given up crying. What good would tears do them?
The women and children are prying up the floorboards from a dependency—a smaller building on the property—and taking them inside their cave. The puckered floorboards are shiny black. Behind them are piles of white clapboard and smashed chimneys.
"They're ... taking the floorboards up from their outhouses? Why would they be doing that, Sergeant?" "Not outhouses, private. The privies are in the back. Those are their smokehouses. We've licked them!"
"I'm not understanding you."
"It's the salt left over from years of smoking meat. There's no salt to be had in Vicksburg. Imagine—no salt in this heat! Those poor devils are going to be sucking on plank boards tonight to get at the salt. Poor devils."
I can't keep from staring at the children—they can't be more than seven or eight years old. All the innocent devilry of childhood has taken wing. They plod from the smokehouse to their cave like defeated old men.
I say before thinking, "My heart goes out to them."
"I feel sorry for these folks, too, the children especially." Sergeant Andrus looks at me sharply. "Don't lose sight of why these women and children suffer, Private Cashier. That fool Pemberton could have surrendered a year ago: all this suffering, and all for nothing."
"Yes, sir!" I snap to attention as Private Albert Cashier.
"As soon as Vicksburg falls, we'll open the granary ships. We've got vessels full of foodstuffs docked in Grand Gulf south of town. Did you know that?" Sergeant Andrus says softly, "Once Pemberton surrenders, these starving people will have all the food they need."
We build fascines so close to the town, I can hear people singing in their roofless churches on Sunday mornings and Wednesday evenings. They're hymning to God for deliverance.
A fascine is an aboveground tunnel made of wood. First we chopped down every tree in the vicinity. The soldiers from the Wisconsin and Minnesota lumber camps take to the work more than the rest of us. Five of those brawny lumberjack soldiers can fell a tree, chop it to size, and stack it along the fascine wall in ten minutes flat. It was the 95th's job to lay the roofline.
Our fascine looks like a giant snake winding its way to Vicksburg. We run through it to deliver supplies to the miners—gunpowder, black powder, and detonators mostly.
On the afternoon of June 25 we hear low, loud booms on the northeast side of the town. The mining engineers must have set detonators and hundreds of barrels of black powder under Vicksburg. Explosions thrum the earth under our feet like vibrating bowstrings. Solders and civilians shoot up into the air.
It surely won't be long now. It won't be long before we can feed these people and welcome them back. I remember what Mr. Cleary said that day I left his farm. We'll all have to try to forgive and forget.
On July 3 the 1st Wisconsin artillery battery fires away to distract the Rebs on what's left of their parapets. The explosives engineers pack barrels of black powder into a cave we dug right under Fort Beauregard.
BOOM!
Half the fort blows fifty feet into the air. We're standing on the riverbank, but we still run for cover as a shower of dirt, splintered planks, and body parts rains down on us.
On the morning of the Fourth of July a white flag flies out from what is left of Fort Beauregard. The main gate swings open.
"Hold your fire," Lieutenant Colonel Humphrey orders.
A man I take to be Lieutenant General Pemberton comes out of the fort and glares down the earthworks. I catch my breath, for here comes our very own Major General Ulysses Simpson Grant, Department and Army of the Tennessee, walking up to meet him. Grant, Pemberton, and a few other men stand under a stripling oak tree, its leaves and bark gray with ashes, about fifteen yards from Fort Beauregard's sally port.
Major General Grant is small, like me, and seemingly mild mannered. He looks tired yet relieved, as though a disagreeable job is over with at last.
Pemberton talks and talks. Major General Grant shakes his head sadly. The aides de camp and officers on both sides watch one another warily. The Rebs, on what's left of their parapets, watch too.
Pemberton stops talking. Major General Grant says a few words, then shakes his hand. General Pemberton looks angry enough to spit bullets.
Major General Grant and his aides turn as one and walk away from Fort Beauregard. We watch them march solemnly all the way to the river. His own son, thirteen-year-old Fred Grant, is on one of those gunboats, or so I've been told. He's come to Vicksburg to watch his da take the town.
After about five minutes of complete silence, every gunboat's steam whistle wails. We cheer as the white flag goes up Fort Beauregard's flagpole.
Captain Bush tells us that the 95th Illinois will be allowed to march through Vicksburg. We honored few are allowed to make our way to Vicksburg's courthouse on the highest hill.
The people of the town watch us march to the courthouse. I've never seen so many starving, haggard-looking people. Not here, I mean—not in America. The children look shrunken, their hair as dull as dried-out grass. Their mothers and grandmothers are covered in grime and gray with exhaustion. They don't even have the wherewithal to look resentful. They just stare at us, hollow-eyed, as we march by.
The sight is too much for one of our own, Corporal William MacLean. He has small fry back in Belvidere. He walks up to a woman with four skinny children all trying to hide among her dusty skirts.
"Why didn't you surrender sooner?" he demands. He gives her his hardtack and salted beef and runs back into formation before she can thank him.
The surrender is announced. We all cheer as the Stars and Bars is taken down from the courthouse flagpole. We all cheer louder as the Stars and Stripes shoots up the flagpole in its stead.
Just as Sergeant Andrus had promised, as soon as our flag goes up the flagpole as a signal, the granary boats sent up from Grand Gulf open their holds.
Every church, every store, every public building with a chimney and hearth still standing, is used as a kitchen. The 95th feed the starving fried eggs and bacon, cornbread, apples, carrots, turnips, pecan pie, flapjacks, side meat, with plenty of coffee or lemonade to wash everything down. There's milk for the children. It's a fine Fourth of July picnic.
"I didn't come all this way to be a cook and caterer's man," Oscar Vander Zee grumbles. Several others mutter in agreement.
We're in what's left of somebody's house, the front rooms blown away. Civilians are on the lawn, eating as though in a trance. We've found enough unbroken dishes to serve fifty people at once.
A child laughs. I look up in wonder, for I scarcely remember what a child's laugh sounds like. Her mother, perhaps a few years older than me, stands behind her son and daughter in the rations line. Their clothes are as dusty as old horse blankets, but their hair, faces, and hands are clean.
I stare at the little girl. She can't be more than five. Her eyes are light blue; her hair, the very color of marmalade, is tied back in a black satin bow.
She looks just like me at that age!
"This is for you, lass," I say, handing her a plate full of bacon and eggs, cornbread, pie, and a pretty red apple. She turns shyly away. Her brother's hand, as quick as a bird, pecks three slices of bacon off her plate.
"Boy!" I shout. "You'll not be taking your sister's bacon off her very plate. Give it back, boy!"
He stares at me, terrified. The bacon goes back where it belongs.
"Respect your sister, Tom." My voice is shaking.
"My name is Roland," the boy whispers.
I hand him a plate with the exact same amount of food as his sister's—two eggs, four slices of bacon, a square of cornbread, a slice of pecan pie, and an apple. "Be on your way, then."
Frank is watching, his brow frowning in puzzlement.
"He can always come back for more if he's still hungry." My heart is pounding. I take deep breaths to calm myself.
That evening a song is borne along on the purple twilight. The words seem to come out of the very air, or maybe out of the flames of hundreds of camp-fires, both blue and gray.
"The Battle of Vicksburg," to the melody of "Oh, Susanna," seems to have always been here, waiting for us.
"On Vicksburg's globes and bloody ground,
A wounded soldier lay,
His thoughts were on his happy home,
Some thousand miles away.
"'Oh, comrades dear, come close to me,
My heart's with you today,
Come hear the words I have to send,
Some thousand miles away.
"'An' when you meet my mother dear,
Be careful how you speak,
The cords of life are almost run.
Her heart may be too weak.
"'An' there's another so dear to me,
She's gentle as a fawn,
She lives behind yon distant glow,
Down by the murmurin' stream.'
"The blood fast trickled down his side,
A tear stood in his eye,
He sighed, 'I ne'er shall see thee more,
Sweet maid, before I die.
"'Oh, comrades dear, come close my eyes,
An' make my last cold bed,
Before the mornin' sun shall rise
I shall be numbered dead.'"
"Was it worth it, Frank? Do you think it was worth it?" I stare into the campfire. "General Grant called for nothing less than an unconditional surrender. There's scarcely anything left of Vicksburg to surrender."
Frank thinks for a moment. "If the surrender makes the war end sooner, then it was worth it."
"Aye," I say doubtfully. I hadn't noticed how low his voice is pitched, like the Mississippi as it murmurs over rocks along the shore.
Charlie Ives's voice is starting to change. It squeaks higher, then cracks lower. I decide to change my voice too. From now on I won't utter a word unless the pitch is as low as Frank's.