18

HOW WE MET YOU (THE GALWAY CAPT.) IN THE WAR

—​Dec. 19, 1866—​IT IS MORNING NOW THOUGH YOU would hardly know it so dark & cold is this Guardhouse cell. You might think that terrible Jew of yours Sir was burning his own wood for how little he will put in the stove for to heat this place but that is the Army for you. It is all Tyranny & the whims of bullies.

But I did not always hate the Army as I do now. No Sir there was a time the fine blue Army of the Union was a salvation to us. The War Between The States was blessing & boon to Tom & myself as we set our boots upon the quayside cobbles of a Philadelphia summer in ’61. It was a blessing because the war was just running up to speed when we arrived from poor Ireland right in time for Uncle Sam to lift back his toasty counterpane & say “Hop into bed with me boys & I will feed you & clothe you & teach you the trade of killing Johnny Reb who wants to start up a new nation in the South & keep the poor black man in chains & in the cotton fields. And to top it all I will pay a fine wage in US Greenback Dollars for the privilege of putting the bayonet & musketball to old Seseshoner Johnny Reb!”

Not that Tom & I would of gave a tinker’s f___  for the black man’s plight at the time much concerned as we were with our own & nor could we of located the Carolinas or Georgia or grand old Virginia on a map at knife point but we could see no better start on offer & both of us liked the cut of a soldier’s bags with the warm dark wool of the Army tunic & the pretty duck egg blue of the kersey leggings & rakish set of a kepi cap on a soldier’s head. Never mind the hunger that made our bellies think our throats were cut for as I told you we spent all of our money in quayside pubs in Queenstown & so we had hardly more than a bean to eat since 2 days into the crossing. I tell we would of signed our souls over to the Devil for a plate of eggs.

So the Army it was for us & Thank God for it but we never planned (in so much as young lads as we were then can plan anything from 1 minute to the next) to spend so much as a single hour more in the Army than it took to get a fine fat lump of saved wages together for to buy a plot for grazing or some fields for tilling.

But in the beginning soldiering suited us just fine & dandy for the best part. We mourned brothers killed in our Company to be sure same as we do now for this is the most terrible thing in a War & like all men who fought in the Rebellion we blanched now & again at the sight of Johnny Reb all lined up like some grey & venomous snake a mere musketball away & like all men who fought on the Union side we did flee in terror at the horrible screams of the Rebel Yell that Johnny gave when he came down upon you in your trench or behind your stone wall out through smoke as thick as yearling’s milk. It did sound like a thousand banshee coming for you Tom said once & every Irish boy there knew well what he meant. But mostly alongside our new found brothers in Company J of the 10th Ohio Volunteers (which for reasons I still do not fathom that is where we ended up though we signed on right there on the Philadelphia quayside & you would think the Pennsylvania regiments would of been in want of men) well alongside them we mostly stood & fired & fought & stabbed & clubbed & roared our own savage roars when we bore down on poor Johnny Reb for we did it with all the might of the Union behind us & all the savagery of men thankful for the shirts on their backs & the fried mush & saltpork in their bellies. We begun as apprentices in the trade of killing & over time came to be proficient at it & did hone our talents sharp on the whetstone of the battlefield.

I tell you Sir we thought ourselves better off in most ways than we were in Ireland to spite the bloody business of the War. Well yes we did wake betimes from terrible & bloody dreams jumping & starting at loud sounds or sudden movement. Even after the War in the frail comfort of a barn amidst the warm breathing of beasts or in the flea racked bed of a tavern or doss house this can happen as if the war did burrow itself into our skulls & lays there in wait for the times when we take rest like some mad & sinister bugler calling Revellee.

But we could not complain overmuch for we had a notion Tom & myself to pool our hoarded wages & buy a small plot. It would be nothing grand or jumped up we thought but something small to work & live on & the Army would be our way of doing it if 1 or the other of us did not lose our heads to a cannon shot or leave our guts in the southern dirt. And if both of us did so fall our savings would be sent home to our brothers & sisters left in Ireland with no plan of ours mattering a winking star’s light in the heavens if we were dead & gone & buried.

It was the wager a boy made when he took on in Uncle Sam’s big show in the South seeking a new start in the world. Never mind the racking fear we felt or the night visions or nerves that snapped like bullwhips or jangled like a jailer’s keys. Never mind hands that shook & would not stop shaking so that a tin mug of coffee was hard to sip without slopping down a poor boy’s tunic. Never mind all that because in truth no soldier in this world does ever think he will be the one a bullet picks to visit.

Which was why the ball that struck Tom in the mouth came as such a living shock to the both of us casting our plans in disarray & sapping our savings in powders & curatives & whiskey & eggs & rent for a warm room in which Tom could recover once we mustered out. I say recover but more than the plans & saved wages & the power of clear speech that minie ball through my brother’s face took with it the mighty faith we had in the Army. It was a faith that if we served the Army proper & correct it would serve us the same right back.

How many times after all had we heaved ourselves over stone walls to advance on Johnny Reb the lot of us flinching white with terror but never for turning never stopping until we were upon him elbow deep in blood our ears ringing with the concussion of musket fire & whistling grape & the woeful cries of the fallen for their mammys? How many times I ask you?

But this one time when Tom took his wound & fell to the boot tramped grass of Tennessee we did stop. I tell you when that ball struck my brother he dropped down like a sack of spuds & well this time we did abandon that charge at Chickamauga & I stooped to heave poor Tom across my back big as he was & carry him to a running creek with my tunic sopped with the blood we shared as brothers. It was more ditch than any kind of coldwater stream back there behind our lines & I set down there with him washing out his wound with canteen water & whatever cornmash whiskey Tom had left in his reserve canteen after taking it some days before from the body of a dead Reb. I sat pouring them both water & mash whiskey through that hole in my brother’s face which is not a thing you would ever in your life imagine doing but the War was like that as you well know Sir.

Well Tom was unconscious to this world Thank God with his head beginning to swell up like a sweet melon & I tended to him like we later tended that sickly calf shunned by its mother.

But troubles are many in a poor man’s life & that day by the sluggish stream behind the lines at Chickamauga my tears did drop onto my brother’s face to run in with the dirty ditch water & whiskey. Truly I did not know I had so many tears in me & as I let them run we were come upon that day at the dirt water creek by a Provost Marshal’s gang & hauled up & shackled for deserting cowards.

Cowards! My hand trembles as I do write the word! I tell you as God Is My Witness we were no braver nor no more cowards than any other Bill marching under Uncle Sam’s banner but we stood as hearty uncomplaining & fierce boys when the fighting started & oft praised by NCOs & Officers alike we were for our willingness to do the wet & filthy work of the War. We could shoot but were no slouches either when there was no time for the manual of arms & the musket was turned & used as a club or with the bayonet as a fighting knife in a fellow’s hand. All in the Company did know us in short as good soldiers no better nor worse than any other & we took pride in this God Forgive Us for pride as we do well know comes riding in before the fall.

So when we were shackled by the Prov. Marshals & taken up with the other gang of cowards & shirkers & malingerers & deserters I was for the 1st time since setting foot in America or since taking on with the Army forced to speak up for the pair of us brothers. And it being the 1st & such a vital time for us it did not go well for I could not separate the Gaelic from the Bearla mixing Irish talk with English in the fear & misplaced shame of our predicament so that what came out of my mouth was a babble not likely to be understood by any man.

Now I did hear since that the Union did not shoot deserters but I also heard tell that we did & I have seen men with the cursed brand of D for Deserter burnt into their skin which in some ways may be worse than shooting. But the only thing I knew then at that moment was that we were chained up as cowards when we were no such thing! It fills me with rage to remember it now as I write!

But God’s Blessing was upon us that day & this is what I want to tell you Sir. For as we stood there with the other prisoners in the mud & my brother draped with his manacled hands over my shoulder his low pained bellows in my ears well God did send his emissary to us in the form of a brave & kindly Galway man a battlefield brevet Captain who was only yourself Sir who we were bound by fate’s rope to meet again here in this frozen waste of a Valley.

But that is later. Then we knew you only as the Galway Captain on a white charger standing some 18 hands high its white coat swabbed with streaks of red & at that charger’s tail was left only a charred stump that even in our distress was painful to look at as if it had been scorched from its rump in battle not at all docked in the proper manner. Well that horse stood there before us its hooves hopping in the dirt eyes bulging & rolling round in their sockets with the terror & hot thrill a good horse feels for battle. That beast was so vexed from the fighting that the Galway man had to hold tight to the reins while he looked upon us once over one shoulder & again over the other as the horse turned of its own will.

So it was like this that you Sir over what must of been a terrible ringing in your ears did come to hear my protestations my gabble of Irish & English words mixed together in a pitiful testimony of innocence. And hearing this you did reef your white & blood stained charger to order & look down at us. In truth I once before heard you speaking in Irish Sir & this gave me pause & comfort & some pride at the time for I did not think there was any man from Ireland’s shores with the Gaelic tongue on him who was risen to officer rank at all though I never did imagine you would 1 day speak it to me Sir.

In English you did say to the Sgt. of the Provost Marshal’s mob, “Why have you taken up these men Sgt.? These 2 men?”

“Which 2?” says the Sgt. his words showing not the proper respect due an officer of the Great Union Army. But that Sgt’s. words & their freight of disrespect did not pass unnoticed by you Sir & Thank God for that.

“Which 2 Captain,” you did reply drawing your sabre & tapping the charger’s rump with it & yanking her reins for to turn & face the Sgt. And when you tapped that mare’s haunch it did be plain to see the blood drying in the runnels of your cutlass the long curved blade much nicked & scarred by use.

Well you may not remember it Sir but that Sgt. stared up at you for a moment before correcting himself & right then looking up into your eyes I felt you would take that scut of a Sgt’s. head from his shoulders with that sabre such is the way your eyes turned so fierce & dark. I reckon the Sgt. did see them turning too for he said sharpish, “Captain. Which 2 do you mean? These 2 Sir?” He pointed at my brother & myself.

“What do you have them up for?”

“Deserters Sir,” says that b______. “We found them here by the ditch this one sitting in his pal’s lap like sweethearts Sir. And I don’t even need to tell you that here is a long way from where the fighting is at.”

“That man is wounded Sgt.” You did point with your cutlass. “Any fool can see it.”

“Yes but—​”

It was said (though I never knew the truth of it) that the P.M. gangs were given quotas of cowards to fill & fill them they must or they would be sent as lowly guards to one of the back line Union prisons packed with typhus & mutinous Confederate boys. So maybe that Sgt. was thinking of his quota & what his C.O. might say while my brother moaned in my ear & begun to feel dead heavy about my own shoulders. Says he, “With all respect Sir it don’t matter. Any found conscious or without mortal woundings behind our lines is a yellow deserter & we has orders to hook them up.”

I found my voice at this my English like a child’s then like the thick & unschooled Greenhorn that I was with a head full of useless Gaelic.

“I am no deserter no yellowbelly at all by f___ & nor is my brother but he is shot through the gob & didn’t I bring him back here to—​”

I could not think of the right word. I said, “aira tubbartdo” which I now know means to tend or care for in English & were the words I was feeling in my heart but for which I had no English. In my desperation I did look up at you & change to Irish. “Sir we are no deserters but staunch Ohio fighting men. Only for the brother is shot through the mouth we came back here. He would of died. He might still God Forbid It but he would of surely if I left him there on the field for the crows & worms & litter bearers who come in their wake.”

At this Tom unhooked his shackled hands from my shoulders & bent himself double at the waist the low groan coming from him now sounding for all the world like the wind in the rigging of the ship that brought us to these shores.

“Unshackle them Sgt. & be quick about it,” you did say then Sir while your blood streaked charger danced a turn & shrugged up her blackened stump of a tail & pissed a long heavy stream into the bubbling dirt.

But the Sgt. did not move & made like he was contemplating in the way of all soldiers the consequences to his own prospects should he obey one man’s order at the expense of another’s.

Finally he did say to his troop of 6 men in full earshot of Tom & myself but perhaps not yourself, “Unhitch these two lucky bucks & whatever we done here stays here So Help You God. If I hear tales told I will have your skin for stockings.”

Your warhorse huffed & danced some as our manacles were removed & I waited for the chained snake of deserters to move off under the Prov. Marshal’s guard before thanking you Sir. But now it was like your mind was on another thing altogether.

I thanked you in English but to my surprise you answered me in your Galway Gaelic which is someways different to ours but the same in most ways & all ways in the heart of it as it is spoken. You spoke to me Sir as if remembering why you stopped for us in the 1st place as if there is some comfort in the old talk of Irish for you. I think you were then a good man a kind one with a kind word for any pitiful fighting soldier & maybe this is why you stopped for us.

“Get your brother to the Dressing Station & report back to your 1st Sgt. Tell him what happened & that I sent you.”

You did jig your mount’s reins as if to leave but turned her again & still in Irish said to me, “And you may not be so lucky next time. If one of you falls keep fighting. No one man brother or not is more precious to any soldier than the other men he fights beside & you would do well to remember it.”

I snapped a salute knowing you to be correct but yet entirely wrong & because you spoke to me in the Gaelic your reprimand was softer as if in the language we share there was an understanding of a brother’s plight run up alongside the truth of soldiering as you told it. I think now it is only in Irish that I could take both such notions together the softness along with the hard truth of a thing. English as I later learnt to speak it does run much harder at a thing & much more direct at what a fellow reckons is the truth so that betimes the meaning of a thing is lost to me beneath all that truth.

“Yes Sir,” said I & with nothing more to say as if saving the skins (the very souls!) of two men came as easy to you as the taking of them on the pitch of battle you did show me your charger’s arse its chardocked tail & trot off with your white mare’s shoes making a sucking sound in the blood soaked earth.

It was that sucking sound I recalled & your warning about the brotherly way of things when I watched you arrive here in this wintering place. I was one of the men who carried you into the hospital barracks from the cold on that Indian litter. You were 1/2 dead Sir & well wrapped up but even so I knew your face & something in my bones did tell me your coming would be the start of something for Tom & myself or the end of everything. I did not know which but I knew it would not be a good thing your coming to spite not knowing that night that you were sent to hang us. God Forgive Me I wish that I never again rested eyes upon you.

But there is no going back. You are here & you will have your account. It is because of that day at Chickamauga & the fair turn you did us on the bank of that dirt water creek that I will give it to you. You are owed the truth of things so I will try to give you this though it makes me heartsore & shameful to write it.

The guard is changing now outside my cell. I pray it is one of the Irish boys so that I will have a hot meal at least. I can hardly feel my hands to hold the pen & the ink is thick as strap molasses in the bottle. Forgive—​