MAY 19, 1863
And blood dripped like soft falling rain.
THE MORNING IS unseasonably cool but appreciated. It’ll heat up soon enough and have nothing to do with the weather. We stand at our stations along the line at the crack of dawn. The barrage on our earthworks begins promptly at 10:00 a.m. and doesn’t let up until noon. It’s the worst shelling yet. We hunker down, but it’s hard not to take a peek at the mass of cannons firing from the hills in front of us.
Sarge yells, “Anybody dumb enough to stick his head up, if a ball don’t get you, I’ll shoot you myself.” No one says anything. We simply obey.
By 1:00 p.m., the heavy smoke clears just enough to see the wide blue lines marching our way. Yank sharp shooters and skirmishers break for cover when the 26th Louisiana fires a volley. Then all is quiet. A mockingbird sings. It’s the last best sound of the day.
The Yanks make their way through gullies and hollows, crossing the small spring-fed ditches before forming up into a single unbroken line six men deep. The blue snake looks invincible, almost frightening. Almost.
Young boys whimper, but Sarge shores them up. “You better shoot when the command to fire is given. There’s too many blue-bellies to cry for your momma now. Bow your necks and be men. Fight for your mommas back home, for the man next to you.”
At 2:00 p.m., the Yank cannons fire three volleys in the fury of a spring tornado. The barrage does little more than stir up dust to blind us. That’s the signal. The blue line comes at us without resignation. They’re banking on recent successes at Champion Hill and Big Black River. Muskets gleam bright in the burning sun as company colors fly proudly over brave men who want to plant those flags atop our parapets. They don’t know the resolve of our men.
The front lines take the brunt of grapeshot, our cannons are belching without mercy, devouring huge gaps in the blue snake with each blast. The blue wave pushes hard up the hill under the cover of dust clouds. Men stumble and crawl over abatis—fallen trees laid in rows, sharpened limbs laced with telegraph wire to slow their progress. Their lines break up when they have to squeeze between the barriers. They slip and slide in the very dirt their cannons made into baking flour like powder. Not a single musket shot is fired from our lines.
A Yank sergeant yells, “C’mon boys, they done run off. I can’t see a single head pokin’ up.”
We wait an eternity of fearful patience.
Down the line, Sarge whispers, “We’ll shoot when we smell their stinkin’ Yankee breath and can count their nose hairs.”
The men next to me, J.A. and Isham, Hog Fart, and even Sarge, fidget as the blue line winds through gullies over fallen timbers through scattered brush to within seventy yards of our position. I swallow hard. Hog Fart leans his rifle against the earthworks, drops to his knees, and twitters around like a nuthatch on a shagbark hickory. The fear of death is in his eyes.
He rises to shoot. “They’re too damned close.”
I grab his shoulder to keep him from spoiling the plan. “Give it one more minute, boy.”
He nods with tears rolling down his cheeks. “They ain’t scared. They beat the hell out of our boys since they crossed the Missip, and they mean to run us over.”
“Say another word, and I’ll swat you like a fly.”
Blue sharpshooter’s bullets whistle overhead. The blue snake rumbles up the hill to the Lunette, but no one moves. Our cannons rip holes in their lines, killing twenty or more men in a swath. The gaps are filled in seconds with more bluecoats. I want to raise my head to see Jasper and James. I don’t dare, but their cannons across the gully fire as furiously as ours do here.
The Yanks march the double-quick step with glistening musket bayonets high and banners higher. They make a mad rush, but we stand still. A lone sentinel peers through a sharpshooter’s peephole. He lifts his hand for us to rise, and we throw our muskets across the top of the earthworks. A thousand heads rise as one man to aim a thousand rifles at the advancing blue line. We level down a concerted flash blasting the struggling Yankees with the weight of a sledge mall on a wedge to split a stump—heavy and hard.
It must look like a belching volcano of fire to Sherman and his staff watching from the hills in front of us. The smoke burns my eyes and chokes my throat. I cough but send my ramrod down the barrel to seat a bullet for another shot. I put the cap on quickly, and my Enfield is ready to shoot in seconds. The Yanks are cut down like a scythe cutting hay.
Thousands of men in blue have encircled our defenses. Sounds of this assault come from every direction. There are only six roads into Vicksburg with one railway all heavily fortified with redans, lunettes, cannons, and long lines of rifle pits. Ravines and deep gullies flank their narrow pathways. The Yanks must approach us on our ground we know all too well. Our 31,000 man army will make the blue snake wish it returned to its northern den.
The Yankee lines stall in the continuous fire. They buckle like the knees of a boxer knocked silly by his opponent. The firing is appalling, and the destruction is fierce. Men fall everywhere like so many toy soldiers knocked down by rocks thrown by young boys. They fall like cornstalks cut down after harvest. Their solid lines give way to pandemonium—some men trying to take the earthworks and others just trying to survive.
I see their faces—wrenching, struggling, and fumbling to make it up the hill. Two men try to establish a foothold. Every time a clump of blue gathers with any sort of effectiveness, one of our boys launches a grenade that scatters them—whole bodies or in many parts.
It’s worse than the blood, guts, and skinning at hog killing. That day in Winnfield with Old Bart flashes before my eyes. The screams of the wounded and dying remind me of the squealing pigs herded into town that morning. The hogs seemed to know it was their time. These men do, too.
I call on my anger to make this fight bearable. Bearable becomes survival. They just keep coming, Ohio farm boys and ridge runners from West Virginia—some too young to shave, others have gray in their beards. They’re hardened men who’ve seen action at Corinth, Shiloh, or on the road from Bruinsburg here.
Hog Fart ducks. “Look out! They throwed my grenade back over.”
A blast burns my face, scaring the daylights out of me. We’re stunned from the force of the explosion. Some men bleed from shrapnel in their backs and buttocks. I can’t hear anything. I shake my head and help the other men get up.
Five bluecoats surge over the dirt bank and kill three of our men before we can get our senses. We fly into them. They’re tough men, and I respect them. But I want to live. More Yanks press through a small breach, but we push back. A soldier near me falls into mud with a bayonet lodged in his ribs a Yank can’t pull out. I hack at the bluecoat with the knife Pa made me like a farmer chopping vines. They both go down. A Yank grabs my arm, but my pistol blows a hole in his neck just below the chin.
A loud whistle knocks me against the back wall of the rifle pit. I feel a terrible pain in my chest. “Susannah, I’ll see you soon.” I’m dizzy and dazed, expecting to die any second.
Isham falls from the parapet where sabers slash and short swords clang, pistols fire and men club with rifle butts. It all grows quiet except for Isham laughing almost hysterically with relief.
He slaps my shoulder. “It’s over, Lummy. They’re goin’ back down the hill!”
“I ought to be hearing angels sing about now.”
J.A. jumps down from the parapet. “Get up. They may come back.” He jerks me up by my jacket collar, and I sit up. I check my body. No blood. I’m happy but shocked. And then I find it. That dang Yankee minie ball struck me square on a button over my heart. The letter “I” for Infantry on the button isn’t recognizable anymore. I open my shirt, and there’s an apple-sized mark turning purple fast.
“That’ll be black tomorrow.” J.A. laughs.
“Thank God for brass buttons.” I find the bullet flattened at the nose. “This was meant for me. Thank you, Lord.”
I put it my pocket, feeling for the Yank belt buckle, gator tooth, and brass cannons. I don’t believe in luck, but charms remind me of times the Lord spared me.
All falls quiet, and the silence of a tomb and the stillness of the grave surrounds us. It unnerves some of the men. No cannons, no sharpshooting, no screams, no rebel yells. No noise. An occasional groan rises up from both sides like animals licking their wounds. I guess the Reaper has that effect on people. I lean on the rifle pit and faint away for a minute.
I awake to Isham whispering, “Get up, boy. They’re tryin’ to slip up on us. Get your smoke pole ready.” I ready my rifle and thank the Good Lord I’m still alive.
It’s times like this you either believe God is real or he ain’t. “Lord, forgive my thoughts and my deeds not of you. Forgive the anger I’m about to display before you. Forgive me, Lord, I’m about to kill human beings you created in your image.”
Isham leans over. “Good words, Lummy. I claim that prayer with you. Here they come.”
Crows flock everywhere, not to watch the battle but to wait for the feast soon to follow. I cock my rifle and find a button on the chest of a blue jacket.
“Forgive me, Lord.” I pull the trigger with hundreds of other grays and butternuts. Smoke blinds us for a minute, but the blue snake squirms like it fell into a fire pit. They come at us in a storm of smoke and lead. The second volley doesn’t stop them, either.
Smoke burns our eyes as the wounded scream and cry. I grow weary on the line. I’m no quitter. I’m tired and hungry, weather beaten and mosquito eaten. I keep loading and firing, and then I see them.
Some Ohio boys lay quiet as others charge. Over the top they hurl themselves in a screaming frenzy like demons hell bent on devastation. I fire my pistol point blank into the face of a captain whose head splits like a ripe melon. The Yanks grab for me, one stabbing at me with his bayonet. I’m alone on the parapet for just a moment when an awe-inspiring guttural rebel yell wreaks fear in the faces of the Yanks.
The boys behind me rush forward, pushing hard to throw the Yanks back over the embankment. I’m caught in the middle, shoved face to face with a big Yank whose breath stinks of bad coffee and moldy hardtack. For a second, all stops. The equal force from both sides presses me and the Yank together so close we can’t move our arms or legs.
We’re lifted off the ground with feet dangling underneath. We both look down and then up into each other’s eyes. We grin like two schoolboys at the comedy of it all, forgetting we’re enemies for a moment. Then the light goes out of his eyes. A ball enters the left side of his head and exits the right clean as a whistle. His stare is one of disbelief. His last mumbled words are “I don’t deserve this.”
His look strikes me as if that same bullet had struck me square in the heart. That feeling disappears as the rebel yell boils loud and forces the wad of mangled blue men over the edge and into the ditch in front of the 27th Lunette. I grasp at my comrades, and they hang on to my belt. I slip in the bloody mud, dodging sabers and a grenade exploding nearby.
I fall into the pit in front of the lunette with the Yanks.
The attack stops, and the Yanks pile up unable to climb into the lunette. Here I am, in this pit filled with dying men like a dungeon of writhing snakes. Some even hiss and can still give a death blow. I lie still, hoping the bluecoats think I’m dead. The battle rages over me, black brogans stepping on my chest, head, and legs as the Yanks try again. I pull a bluecoat over me when no one’s looking to avoid grenade shrapnel.
Lying with death all around, slowly moving in the dark smoky pit, I conjure up the memory when Hiram, Poole, and I skipped school one cool early March day to shoot gar fish spawning in the creek. I’d taken my turn with the squirrel gun, killing four or five. It’s easy to do when they’re all bunched up like that. We’d heard they didn’t taste bad once you got past the greasiness of the meat. So we gave them a try. I laid the meat on a flat rock in the middle of the fire and went to look for deer tracks.
It was cool but not so that we couldn’t take off our shirts and shoes to keep them clean. We didn’t want any mud as evidence of our playing hooky. I stood in the shade of several tall oaks on a small mound with a number of holes in the ground. The clouds parted, and the sun broke through the trees. The woods brightened like turning a coal oil lamp on in a dark room, and the sun warmed the air. The rays felt good on my face, chest, and back.
I closed my eyes, enjoying the slight breeze, when I heard a slight rustle in the leaves. Inching its way between my bare feet was a cottonmouth. It was too cold to move fast. I froze like a dead man in a coffin. I shuddered like a man with the malaria shakes.
Fortunately, his flicking tongue didn’t find me. I breathed a sigh of relief until I heard hissing. I’d stumbled onto a cottonmouth winter den. I couldn’t run and didn’t want to yell. I had to be still but also knew as it got warmer the snake’s senses would become keener.
When the sun went behind the clouds, I tiptoed over eighteen large cottonmouths and a few small ones. There wasn’t two feet between each snake. I got clear and collapsed to my knees. Hiram and Poole laughed, thinking I’d tripped on a tree root. I pointed. They gasped at the mass of creeping snakes. They took me to the fire.
I didn’t want to make more of it than it was. “Y’all gonna let the gar burn or what?”
I shudder as I wake from a dream whispering, “Oh. Susanna, oh don’t you cry for me, for I come from Mississippi with my banjo on my knee.” I must have dozed off. Maybe I passed out from exhaustion. I don’t know. I’m fully awake now, and I’m in a blue-coated snake pit.
Other men sing with me in low voices. I don’t know what to do except keep singing. The Yank next to me sings with a raspy voice. Blood oozes from his chest wound. He sings one more line, and his eyes fade into a death stare.
The fight rages on, men screaming, gasping for air, calling for their mommas and wives. Some pray for God to save them, others for Him to take them. Something trickles down on my neck. Its blood from the Ohio boy I was pressed against. I pray for him. Out loud.
I have to get clear of this mass of blue “cottonmouths” before they realize I’m a Reb. I’m exhausted, too tired to think straight, and haven’t even tried to get clear of the pit.
The last of the Yanks slides down the hill ducking the steady fire of the 27th Louisiana. Killing a soldier in retreat is like shooting ducks on the water. But a soldier killed retreating today is a soldier who can’t kill you tomorrow. A duck shot sitting on the water is still meat in the pot. My soul is not that hardened. Not yet.
As the smoky sun retreats over the hill, so do the bloodied Yanks.
When it gets dark, I whisper, “J.A., you up there?”
Dirt spills over the parapet, and a small voice falls from above. “Lummy, that you? Just knew you was a goner. Grab this rope, and when we say go, get up this hill quicker’n a bobcat with a dog on its ass, ’cause them Yanks surely gonna put a bayonet in it if you don’t.”
I hope the Yanks are too tired to shoot me.
A sergeant whispers, “I heard you prayin’ over that boy. We need more men prayin’ no matter the color they wear. Go on now, nobody’ll shoot you. Do one thing for me.”
“Sure, Sarge, anythin’.”
He folds his hands together. “Pray for me tonight. Larkin’s my name.”
“I will, for you, Mistuh Larkin, and the rest of these fightin’ men.” Calling him by his Christian name is the human thing to do.
As I crawl over dead and dying bodies, I quote a Psalm, “O Lord, thou hast brought up my soul from the grave and thou hast kept me alive that I should not go down to the pit.”
“Thanks. Keep your head down and hands folded in prayer. God’s blessin’ on you, son.”
I don’t look back. I can’t. If I make him a friend tonight, then I won’t shoot him in the morning. The 27th Louisiana boys pull me back over into the lunette without a shot being fired.
J.A., grinnin’ like a possum eatin’ a sweet tater, says, “Boy, you’re a sight for weary eyes!”
I start shaking and collapse, like the Yankee assault.