The Iron Game: A Tale of the War

by Henry F. Keenan

CHAPTER IX.

"THE ASSYRIAN CAME DOWN LIKE THE WOLF ON THE FOLD."

The next morning the march was resumed by daylight, the two companies remaining on the skirmish-line. The country gradually became more rugged as the route brought them near Centreville. There were no hills—a bare but not bleak champaign, mostly without houses or farms, as the North knows them. Sluggish brooks became more frequent, but none that were not easily fordable. There were no landmarks to hold the mind to the scene, nor, in case of battle, give the strategists points of vantage for the iron game. About noon, the detached groups stalking a little negligently now over the tedious plains, were startled by the unexpected.

On the green slope of a hill, a mile or more ahead, a score of little puffs of white smoke were seen, then a sharp report, and, in some places near by, the ground was broken as if by a thrust of a spear, and little scraps of clay scattered over the greensward. Then the bugle sounded a halt. A few minutes later the horsemen spread in a chain across the line of march, rode swiftly to a common center, formed in a solid group, turned to the rear and rode back of the skirmishers to the main body. Company K watched them as they galloped back, and as they reached the group at the head of the long line, a half-mile or so distant, a body of men hastened forward laden with stretchers and hospital appliances. Ah! at last! It is now real war. The bugle sounds Forward! and with an elastic spring the groups of four push dauntlessly ahead. Their eyes are fixed on the brow of the hill, separated from them by a narrow depression.

The whole line—perhaps three miles wide—but, of course, not at all regular, conforming largely to the difficulties encountered, moves down the sloping bank on a run. Before they reach the bottom they are an excellent target, and for the first time that most blood curdling of sounds—the half-singing, half-hissing z-z-z-ip of the minie-ball—numbs the ardor of the bravest. It is such a malignant, direct, devilish admonition of murder; it comes so unexpectedly, no matter how well you are prepared, that Achilles himself would feel a spasm of fear. And when it strikes it does its work with such a venomous, exultant splutter, that there seems something animate, demoniac in it. The volley, as I said, came as the men were hurried down the hill by their own momentum and by the sharp fall in the ground. The balls passed too high or too low, but they impressed the fact on enthusiasts, who had longed for battle, that one might die for one's country and not die gloriously. It seemed such an ignoble, such a dastardly, outrageous thing, that death could come to them from unseen hands, for as yet they had not seen a soul. But now they are at the foot of the hill—though it is not correct to so call it, for it was a long, winding valley, through which ran a dancing streamlet, very welcome to the thirsty warriors when they had succeeded in breaking through the vicious natural chevaux de frise of blackberry-briers and nettles. But now there wasn't much time to slake thirst. The bullets had begun to come regularly; and suddenly, as Jack conducted his squad across the stream, he was startled by the exclamation, uttered rather in reverence, it seemed to him, than surprise or pain:

"My God, I'm hit!"

Yes, a fair-haired lad—one of his class—tottered a second in a limp, helpless way, and fell headlong, pitching into the little stream. Jack ran and lifted him out; but even before the hospital corps came the boy was dead. The bullet had gone quite through his heart.

However, now the first numbing terror of the bullet was changed to a sort of revengeful delight. Relinquishing any return fire for a moment, the company, with a great shout, that sounded all along its front, dashed up the hill, through the scrub-oak at the brow, and then they could see the enemy slowly retiring, a chain of them a mile or more wide. While one of the rebel ranks fired the other knelt, or lay flat upon the ground loading, where there were no natural obstacles to take shelter behind. A vengeful shout ran along the Union lines.

"Capture them—don't fire!" and with one impulse the groups lied forward so swiftly that the enemy, believing the rush only momentary, delayed too long, and in two minutes the Union line was pell-mell among them.

"Surrender!" Jack shouted to the squad just ahead of him—"surrender, or we'll blow your heads off!" and along the line for some distance to his left and right he could hear his own exultant demand echoed. There was nothing to do for the rebels, who had neglected to keep their enemies at the proper distance, but throw up their hands. Jack's squad sent back twenty-three prisoners to Major Mike, who took them in proud triumph to General Tyler, riding with the head of the column, now that the tenacity of the rebel skirmishers made it seem probable that there would be serious work. But though the firing kept up as the Union forces advanced, no obstacle more, serious than the thin lines of the skirmishers revealed itself.

At dusk the bugles, moving with the captains in the rear, sounded the rally, and then the scattered groups came together in company. They were to bivouac on the spot to await their regiment when it arrived. Meanwhile, to the bitter discontent of the Caribee companies, their post of honor was taken by new troops, and they knew that next day they would march in line. They had so enjoyed the glory of the first volleys, the first deaths, and the first prisoners, that, not remembering military procedure, they resented the change as an aspersion upon their valor.

When the regiment came up, however, they forgot their mortification in the eager questioning and envious jocularities of the rest. Companies K and H were so beset that they forgot to boil their coffee, and would have gone thirsty to their dewy beds, if the other companies' cooks had not shared their rations with the gossiping heroes. As darkness fell, the sky was reddened for miles with pillars of fire, and for a time the Caribees thought it was the enemy. But Tom Twigg, who had been with the major at headquarters, explained to Jack that the army was divided into three bodies of about ten thousand men each, and that Tyler's column, of which the Caribees were the advance, were the extreme northern body; that they were now at Vienna, far north of Manassas, where Schenck had been beset a month before in his never-enough-ridiculed reconnaissance by train; that in the morning they were to push on to Fairfax Court-House and thence to Centreville, where the army was to come together for the blow at the rebels. Jack and his friends were a good deal chagrined to learn that they were not as near the enemy as the column to the south of them, whose fires had been mistaken for Beauregard's. Though the levée came to an end at "taps," no one felt sleepy, and the excitement banished the pains of fatigue. Major Mike, sauntering through the dark lines near midnight, heard the tale still going on in drowsy monotone, but, good-naturedly, made no sign.

Though not given the skirmish-line next day—the 17th—Jack was delighted to find that the Caribees led all the rest. With them rode the commander of the brigade, Colonel Sherman, whom the soldiers thought a very crabbed and "grumpy" sort of a fellow. His red hair bristled straight up and out when he took his slouch hat off, as he did very often, for the heat was intolerable. His eyes had a merry twinkle, however, that won the hearts of the lads as he rode by, scrupulously striking into the fields to save the panting and heavily laden line every extra step he could. Often, in after-days—when Sherman had become the Turenne of the armies—Jack, who was often heard to brag of his gift of detecting greatness, used to turn very red in the face when he was reminded of a saying of his on that hot July day:

"That chap is too lean and hungry to have much stomach for a fight; he looks better fitted for wielding the ferule than the sword. Schoolmaster is written in every line of his face and stamped in his pedagogue manner."

The march that day was south by a little west, and about nine o'clock a cool morning breeze lifted the clouds of dust far enough above the horizon to reveal the distant blue of the mountains. The whole line seemed to come to a pause in the enchanting, mirage-like spectacle. "The Shenandoah," Jack said, mopping the dust, or rather the thin coating of mud, from his face and brow, for the perspiration, oozing at every pore, naturally covered the exposed skin with an unpremeditated cosmetic. The march to Fairfax Court-House, for which judicial temple the curious soldier looked in vain, was but eight miles from the point of departure in the morning, but it was two o'clock in the afternoon when the Caribees passed the hamlet, turning sharply to the right. They marched up the deep cut of projected railway, where, for a time, they were shaded from the sun by the high banks. But, emerging presently on the Warrenton pike, they saw evidences that other columns—whether friends or foes they couldn't tell—had recently preceded them. Scores of the raw and overworked were breaking down now every hour.

The dust and heat were insupportable. Whenever the march came near water, all thought of discipline was forgotten, and the panting, miner-like hosts broke for the inviting stream. The officers were powerless to enforce discipline; when these breaks happened the column was forced to come to a halt until every man had filled his canteen—and here is one, among the many trivial causes, that brought about the reverses of McDowell's masterly campaign. A march that ought to have been made in twenty-four hours, or thirty at the utmost, took more than three days! One of those days saved to the army would have enabled McDowell to finish Beauregard before the ten thousand re-enforcements from the Shenandoah came upon his flank at Bull Run. But we shall see that in proper time, for there is nothing more dramatically timely, or untimely, than this incident in the history of battles, unless it be Blücher's miraculous appearance at Waterloo, when Napoleon supposed that Grouchy was pummeling him twenty miles away.

There was no provost guard to spur on the stragglers; and when, late in the afternoon, the way-worn columns spread themselves on the western slope of the hamlet of Centreville, at least a third of each regiment was far in the rear. Nearly every man had, in the heat and burden of the march, thrown away the provisions in his haversack, and that night ten thousand men lay down supperless on the grateful greensward, happy to rest and sleep. Mother Earth must have ministered to the weary flesh, for at sunrise, when the music of the bugles aroused them, they started up with the alert vivacity of old campaigners. Provisions, that should have been with the column the night before, arrived in the morning. While the reinvigorated ranks were at coffee, there was a great clatter in the rear, and presently a cortége of mounted officers appeared, General McDowell among them. Dick Perley, who was at the brigade headquarters, with Grandison, came to the Caribees presently with great news.

The battle was to begin that very day. General Tyler was to go forward to a river called Bull Run, where Beauregard was waiting. The whole army was to spread out like a fan and fight him. He had seen the map on the table, and the place couldn't be more than four miles away. Yes, they all looked eagerly to the westward now. The mountains in the distance rolled themselves down into lower and lower ridges, and just about four miles ahead could be seen a range that seemed to melt into a wide plateau fringed deeply with scrub-oak and clusters of pine. Jack had provided himself with a field-glass. Standing in the middle of the Warrenton pike, a fine highway, that ran downward as solid as a Roman causeway, for four or five miles, he could see the break made by the Bull Run River, and—yes, by the glaive of battle!—he could see the glistening of bayonets now and then, where the screen of woods grew thinner.

The general, too, was examining the distant lines, and Jack took it as a good omen that Sherman grew jocose and appeared to be making merry with Tyler, whose face looked troubled, now that the decisive moment seemed at hand. But the day passed, and there was no advance. It was not until late in the evening that the cause became known. The army had been waiting for supplies, ammunition, and what not, that should have been on the field the day before. The Caribees were made frantic, too, by what seemed a battle going on to the south of them, a few miles to the left. The camp that night was a grand debating society, every man propounding a theory of strategy that would have edified General McDowell, no doubt, if he could have been given a précis of the whole. How such things become known it is difficult to guess, but every man in the columns knew that the general had planned to put forward his thirty thousand men in the form of a half-moon, covering about ten miles from tip to tip. The right or northward horn was to be considerably thicker and of more body than the left or southern. When the time came this right was to curve in like a hook and cut the ground out from the left wing of the rebel army.

This is the homely way these unscientific strategists made the movement known to each other, and it very aptly describes the formulated plan of battle, save that, of course, there were gaps between the forces here and there along this human crescent. Long before daylight Sherman's brigade, with a battery of guns and a squadron of cavalry, set out due south, leaving the broad Warrenton pike far to their right hand. Such a country as the march led into, no one had ever seen in the North outside of mountain regions—deep gullies; wastes of gnarled and aggressive oaks, that tore clothes and flesh in the passage; sudden hillocks rising conical and inconsequent every few rods; deep chasms conducting driblets of water; morasses covered with dark and stagnant pools, where the pioneers fairly picked their steps among squirming reptiles. A stream, sometimes large as a river, crawling languidly through deep fissures in the red shale, protected the left flank of the column. The cavalry was forced to hold the narrow wood road, as the bush was hardly passable for men.

"Hi, Jack!" Barney cries, catching his breath at the edge of a muddy stream, "what sort of a place must the rebels be in if they let us promenade through such a jungle as this unopposed?"

"I have been thinking of that," Jack replies. And so had every man in the expedition—for to think was one of the drawbacks as well as one of the excellences of the soldier in the civil war. But presently, after five hours of laborious work, a halt is called. The men dive into their haversacks, and even the brackish water in the nearest sedge pond has a flavor of nectar and the invigoration of a tonic. On they tear again, the whole body pushing on in skirmish-like dispersion. Suddenly the land changes. They are climbing a rolling table-land, cleared in some places as though the axe of the settler had been at work. The march is now easier and the picket-lines are strengthened. Then a sharp volley comes, as if from the tree-tops.

The march is instantly halted. The mass, moving in a column, is deployed—that is, stretched out to cover a mile or more as it moves forward; the cavalry divides and rides far to right and left, to see that no ambush is set to enable the rebels to sneak in behind the vast human broom, as it sweeps through the solemn aisles of the pines, now rising in vernal columns thicker and thicker. The firing is going on now in scattering volleys, and soon the wounded—a dozen or more—are carried back through the silent ranks. Joking has now ceased. Lips are compressed; eyes glitter, and the men avoid meeting each other's gaze. It is the moment of all moments, the most trying to the soldier, when he is expecting every instant a hurricane of bullets, and yet sees no one to avenge his anguish on or forestall in the deadly work. But they have been moving forward all the time, the hurtling bullets sweeping through the leafy covering, now and then thumping into the soft pine with a vicious joyousness, as if to say to each man, "The next is for you, see how well our work is done." For these hideous missiles have a language of their own, as every man that stood fire can tell. The skirmishers are now all drawn in. The solid line must do the work at hand. No one but the commander and his confidants knew the work intended, save that to kill and be killed was the business to be done. The panting lines are on high cleared ground now, and they can see absolutely nothing but the irregular depressions that mark the channel of the Bull Run, as it rushes down to the Rappahannock. The line is moving along steadily. Looking to left and right, Jack can see the colors of three regiments, and his eye rests with pleasure on the bright, shining folds of the Caribees' dark-blue State flag spread to the breeze beside the stars of the Union. Are they to cross the river? Evidently, for the command is still "Forward, bear center, bear right." Then, square in front, where the thick, broad leaves of the oak glitter in the sun, there is seen a cylinder of steam-like smoke, with fiery gleams at the end, a crackling explosion of a hogshead of fire-crackers, then a rushing, screaming sound in their very faces, then a few rods behind a ringing, vicious explosion. They are in the very teeth of a masked battery. The Union skirmishers have been withdrawn too soon. The main line will be torn to pieces, for retreat is as fatal as advance.

"Lie down, men!" The command rings out and is echoed along the column. The guns have the range, and the enemy knows the ground. The Caribees are directly in the sweep of the artillery, and the command comes to them by company to crawl backward, exposing themselves as little as may be. Presently two brass guns are brought up behind the Caribees. The gunners have noted the point of the enemy's fire. The men point the big muzzles with intrepid equanimity, firing over the prostrate blue coats. For twenty minutes, perhaps half an hour, this is kept up; then there is silence on the hill beyond. The column rises to its feet, and at the command, "Forward!" they start with a rush and a cheer. Five hundred yards onward, and a solid mass of gray coats confront them. A volley is fired and returned; the exulting Caribees, with two lines behind them, give a loud cheer and, in an instant, the gray mass has disappeared, as if the earth had opened. The skirmish-line, advancing now, picks up a half-dozen or more wounded rebels, besides two or three who had become confused in the hasty retreat and run toward the "Yankees" instead of their own line. Jack's comrade held this conversation with one of the prisoners:

"I say, reb, what place is this?"

"Mitchell's Ford."

"Much of your army here?"

"'Nuff to lick you uns out of your boots, I reckon."

"What did they run across the ford for, then?"

"Oh, you'll see soon enough—when our folks get ready."

"Who's in command here?"

"General Bonham, of South Carolina."

"How many men, about?"

"Well, there's right smart on to a million, I reckon. They had to cut the trees down, yonder, to get room for 'em.".

The man's eyes twinkled as he gave this precise approximation; but Barney, who had brought the humorist in, whispered to the captain to let him have a moment's speech with the man before he was sent away. The captain nodded, and Barney said innocently:

"Had anything to eat to-day?"

"Not a mouthful. The trains were all taken up with soldiers coming from
Richmond."

"Have a bit of beef—and here's a cracker or two. You can have some coffee if the guards will let you make it."

"Old Longstreet himself would envy me now," the rebel cried, his mouth stuffed with the cold meat and hard-tack, almost as fresh and crisp as soda-crackers, for the contractors had not yet learned the trick of making them out of sawdust, white sand, and other inexpensive substitutes for flour.

"Longstreet?" Barney said, carelessly.

"Yes, that's the commander of the right wing, just below, at Blackburn's
Ford."

"Blackburn's Ford?"

"Yes, that's a mile down, and really behind you uns, for the run makes a big elbow to the east. I tell you what it is, Yank, you'll see snakes right soon, for our folks are behind you."

Sure enough, a crackling to the left confirmed this, and the captain, who had listened to Barney's adroit cross-questioning, sent the man with a note to Colonel Sherman, a few rods in the rear. Ten minutes later the column fell into ranks again and moved off swiftly southeastward. A march of a mile or so brought them to a bold ridge cutting down almost aslant to the clear water of the run. The skirmishers, for some reason, had not pushed ahead to explore the ground, and the regiments, marching in close masses, came out in a rather disorderly multitude on the ridged crest. A hundred yards nearly below the water-course was fringed with thick copses of oak, and the gently ascending slopes on the western bank were completely hidden from the Union lines. A few gaunt, almost limbless trees rose up spectrally on the ridge, offering the compact masses neither shelter from the sun nor security from the enemy—if there were an enemy near.

Dick came up to Jack out of breath with great news, just as the Caribees were aligning themselves to move forward.

"General Tyler just told Richardson"—a brigade commander—"that the rebels had retreated from Manassas, and he (Tyler) is going to have the glory of occupying the works: that McDowell thought the army would have to fight a big battle to get—"

"Glory!" the group shouted, near enough to hear; and the delightful story ran up and down the lines by a telephone process that was much swifter than Edison's electric invention. A roar of gratulatory triumph broke—a roar so loud and inspiring that for a moment the densely packed masses did not distinguish an ear-splitting outburst just in front of them. But on the instant piercing shrieks among the huddled cheerers—cries of death and agony—changed the paeans of triumph into wails of anguish and mortal pain. A panic—instant, unreasoning, irresistible—fell upon the mass, a breath before so confident. A third of the regiment seemed to wither away. The colors fell in the struggling group in the center. Hoarse shouts, indistinguishable and ominous, could be vaguely heard from the staff and line.

Direr still, hideous clamor of masked cannon, right in their very faces, added the horror of surprise to the disorder of attack, and the thick blue lines broke in irrestrainable confusion. The terror of the unknown seized officers and men alike. In five minutes the crest was cleared, and the ignoble vanity, ignorance, and self-sufficiency of one man had undone in an hour the splendid work of the commander-in-chief. A mêlée of miserable, disgraceful disorder ensued. The rebel sharpshooters, hurrying to the flank, poured in hurtling, murderous volleys, filling the minds of the panic-stricken mob with the idea, the most awful that can enter a soldier's mind, that his line is surrounded. Hundreds threw away guns and everything that could impede flight. Other hundreds fired wildly wherever they saw moving men, and thus aided the rebels in killing their own comrades, for it was into the supporting Union forces they directed their random shots. The fire grew every instant more bewildering. Shots came in volleys from every direction, and the helpless hordes darted wildly together—sometimes toward, instead of from the enemy. Had the rebels been as numerous as they were crafty, the brigade could have been seized en masse. But now Sherman is at hand with fresh regiments, others are at his heels, and the contest takes on some of the order of intelligent action. The rebels, too, are re-enforced, but the dispositions made by the Union chiefs bring the combat to equal terms. The clamor of cannon and musketry continues an hour, though the lines are now among the friendly undergrowth, and the losses are not serious. But the Caribees, with the regiment supporting them, have been blotted from the scene as a factor. For hours the scattering groups fled—fled in ever-increasing panic, and it was long after dark before the remnants of the regiment came into camp at Centreville.

Poor Jack! He gave no heed to supper that dreadful night. He threw himself on the ground, too exhausted to think and too disheartened to talk. He couldn't understand the shameful panic. The Caribees were not cowards; every man in the regiment had longed for the battle. When under fire at Mitchell's Ford, an hour earlier than the disaster at Blackburn, all had stood firmly in place, fought with coolness, and gave no sign of fear. The volume of fire when they broke was not much greater than the Mitchell's Ford volleys. During the night Grandison came to camp and assembled the officers. He expressed his sorrow at the sudden shadow that had fallen on the fair fame of the regiment, but since the panic had not been followed, as such outbreaks often are, by the total destruction of the men, there would be abundant chance to redeem the disgrace of the day. He had himself begged the division commander to give the men another trial, and he had staked his commission on their doing such duty as would remove the tarnish of the afternoon from their banners.

The officers had been dispirited. Major Mike had raged over the field, through the woods, a very angry man indeed, belaboring the fleeing men with his sword and imploring those he couldn't reach to "come to me here. Dress on me. There's no call to be afeard. We've more men than they have, and we'll soon wallop them."

But the resounding blows on the backs of those near the officer did not give the encouraging emphasis to his appeal that captivates men whose reasoning faculties are almost gone for the moment. Before daylight on the next morning—Saturday, the 20th—the companies were called together and little addresses were made to the men by the officers. The substance of Colonel Grandison's words was imparted, and the hope expressed that when, in the course of that or the next day the regiment was again under fire, they would show that the panic of yesterday had not been cowardice. The men said nothing, and every one was glad that the light was so dim that the officers could not look in their faces, though, as a matter of fact, the shoulder-straps had shown as little fortitude as the muskets in the dispersion. All that day the forces rested, the Caribees providing themselves with new arms and equipments, or the two or three hundred who had flung their own away. During the afternoon an incident happened in the division that lessened the mortification of the Caribees. A splendid regiment and a battery of bronze guns came into the highway from the extreme of the line that was expected to take part in the battle which all knew would be opened the next morning. Every one was surprised to see the men moving without muskets and the colors wrapped in their cases. "Where you bound for?" some one at the roadside yelled curiously.

"Our time is out; we're going home."

Then a derisive howl followed the line as it passed through the masses of the army, and remarks of an acrid nature were made that were not gratifying to the departing patriots:

"Don't you want a guard to protect you?"

"Does your mamma know you're out alone?"

"Wait till to-morrow and we'll send Beauregard's forces to see you safe home."

The men and officers looked very conscious and uncomfortable under the gamut of jeers, for word went along the line, and all along the route to the rear they passed through this clamor of contemptuous outcry.

"Well, I thought we had reached the eminent deadly pinnacle of disgrace," Barney said, with a sigh, as a group of Company K watched the considerable number taken out of McDowell's small army, "but this sight makes me feel like the man on trial for murder who escapes with a verdict of manslaughter."