The seventeenth and eighteenth all divisions moved nearer to Winchester. The nineteenth the battle of Winchester had its moment in time,—a battle very fortunate for the Confederates early in the day, not at all so fortunate later in the day,—a fierce, dramatic battle, in which the blue cavalry played the lion’s part,—blue cavalry very different, under Sheridan in ’64, from the untrained and weakly handled blue cavalry of the earlier years,—a battle in which Rodes was killed and Fitzhugh Lee wounded, in which killed and wounded and missing the blue lost upward of five thousand, and in killed and wounded and captured the grey lost as many—a bitter battle!
Steve had to fight—he could not get out of it. He was out on the Berryville road—Abraham’s Creek at his back. The Sixty-fifth was about him; it was steady and bold, and he got some warmth about his heart out of the fact. In the hopeful first half of the day, with a ruined stone wall for breastwork, with Nelson’s and Braxton’s guns making a shaken grey rag of the atmosphere, with Ramseur standing fast, with Gordon and Rodes sweeping to Ramseur’s aid, with Breckenridge, the “Kentucky Gamecock,” fighting as magnificently as he looked, with Lomax and Fitz Lee, with the storm and shouting, and the red field and blue and starry cross advanced, with about him the strength of the Golden Brigade and the untroubled look of the Sixty-fifth, Steve even fought as he had never fought before. He tore cartridges, loaded and fired, and he grinned when the wind blew the smoke, and the opposite force was seen to give way. When the Golden Brigade went forward in a charge, he went with it a good part of the way. But then he stumbled over a stone and fell with an oath as of pain. The Golden Brigade and the Sixty-fifth went on and left him there near a convenient cairn of stones with a reddened vine across it. His action had been largely automatic; he had no longer in such matters the agony of choosing; as soon as fear entered his heart his joints acted. Now they drew him more securely behind the heap of stones. Far ahead, he heard, through the thunder of the guns, the voice of the Golden Brigade, the voice of the Sixty-fifth Virginia charging the foe. He looked down, and to his horror he saw that he was really wounded.
This was high noon, and at high noon the grey thought with justice that they had the field, had it, despite the fall of Rodes, a general beloved. Now set in a level two hours of hard fighting to hold that field.... And then wheeled on the afternoon, and the tide definitely turned. Crook’s corps, not until now engaged, struck the left on the Martinsburg Pike, and the blue cavalry, disciplined now and strong, came in a whirlwind upon the rear of this wing, pushing it and a cavalry brigade of Fitz Lee’s back—back—back through Winchester—back on the centre and right, now furiously attacked by all three arms. The tide raced to its ebb with the grey.... Gordon found his wife in the street in Winchester, pleading with Gordon’s men to go back and strike them anyhow. Her tears were streaming. “The first time I ever saw Confederate lines broken, and I hope it will be the last!”
They were broken. It was not wild panic nor rout, but it was a lost battle, known as such at last by even the most stubbornly determined or recklessly brave. By twilight the Second Corps was in retreat, moving in order up the Valley Pike, sullen and sorrowful, torn and decimated and weary, heartsick with the dead and wounded and captured left behind. Kernstown! They looked at the old field with unseeing eyes.
Steve, behind his cairn of stones, had viewed with agony a blue cavalry charge coming. It passed him in dust and thunder, the hoof of a great chestnut actually striking his shoulder. It passed, but the dust had not settled before infantry of Rodes, pressed this way, overran his fraction of the field, behind them another wild cavalry dash. It was sickening to see the horses ride men down, ride them down and strike them under! It was sickening to see the sabres flash, descend all bright and rise so red! It was sickening to hear cries, oaths, adjuration, and under all a moaning, moaning! And the smoke, so thick and stifling, and a horror even of taste and smell ... Steve, with a flesh wound across his thigh where a bullet had glanced, got up and ran, dropping blood.
As he went he found about him the wildest confusion. Units and groups of cavalry, infantry, and artillery were shaken together as in a glass. Here infantry preponderated, here mad horses, larger than nature, appeared to rear in the smoke, and here panting men tried to drag away the guns. Here were the wounded, here were shouting and crying, here were officers, impassioned, rallying, appealing, coercing, and here were the half-sobbing answers of their men. “Lost, lost!” said in effect the answers of the men. “Lost, lost! You, the leaders, know it, and we know it. You would lead us to noble death, but we must keep to life if we can. We have fought very well, and now we are tired, and there is something to be said for knowing when you are beaten and trying another tack.”—“Lost, lost!” said the shot and shell. “Lost, lost!” said the wind whistling from the sabres of Merritt’s charging cavalry. “Lost, lost!” said the autumn night. “Lost, lost!” said the dust on the Valley Pike.
Steve tried to get taken on in an ambulance, but the surgeon in charge first laid practised fingers around his wrist, and then told him to go to hell—in short to walk to hell—and leave ambulances for hurt folks. “Gawd!” thought Steve, “’n’ I saved this army on the road to Buford’s!”
Night came on, night without and night within. The outer night was a night of stars. Myriads and myriads, they showed, star clouds in the Milky Way, and scattered stars in the darker spaces. The air was very clear, and the starshine showed the road—the long, palely gleaming, old, old, familiar road. Within, the night was dark, dark! and peopled with broken hopes. Tramp, tramp! on the Valley Pike. Tramp, tramp! with sore and tired feet, with hot and tired hearts. Tramp, tramp! and all the commands were broken, officers seeking for their men and men for their officers, a part of one regiment marching with a part of another, all the moulds cracked. Tramp, tramp! Tramp, tramp! and fathers were weeping silently for sons, and sons for their fathers, and brothers for brothers, and many for their country. Tramp, tramp! and there came a vision of the burning Valley, and of Atlanta burning, burning, for not one house, said the dispatches, had Sherman left standing, and a vision of the trenches at Petersburg, and a vision of Richmond, Richmond perhaps crashing down in ruin to-night, wall and pillar, and the flames going up. Tramp, tramp! and a flame of wrath came into the marching hearts, welcome because it warmed, welcome because anger and hate gave at least a strength, like a pale reflex of the strength of love, welcome because before it fled the shadows of weakness, and in it despair grew heroic. Now the men, exhausted as they were, would have turned, and gone back and struck Sheridan. Tramp, tramp! Tramp, tramp! and there came a firmness into the sound. Throughout the night, now it came and now it went, and now it came again.
The night went by, though it was long in going. Dawn came, though it was slow in coming. When it was light we saw Massanutten, and the north fork of Shenandoah, and Fisher’s Hill. “This is a good place to stand,” said Early, and began to build breastworks. In the afternoon up came Sheridan, something over twice as many-numbered as the grey, and all flushed with victory, and took his stand on Cedar Creek, several miles from Fisher’s Hill. All day the twenty-first and part of the twenty-second he reconnoitred, and in the night-time of the twenty-first he placed Crook and the Army of West Virginia in the deep forest between Little North Mountain and the Confederate left. They stayed there hidden until nearly sundown of the twenty-second. Then he brought them out in a flank attack, so sudden and so swift!... And at the same moment all his legions struck against the centre.
Steve heard the cry, “Flanked!—We are flanked!” He witnessed the rush of arms, and then he waited not to see defeat—which came. He fled at once. Halfway to Woodstock he stopped at a Dunkard’s house, where an old, long-bearded man gave him a piece of bread and asked no questions, but sat looking at him with dreamy, disapproving eyes. “Yes, the soldier could sleep here, although to be a soldier was to be a great sinner.” Steve did not care for that. He slept very well for an hour on the floor of a small bare room above the porch. At the end of that time he was awakened by a sound upon the pike. He sat up, then went on all fours across to the window and put out his head. “Gawd! they’re comin’ up the pike—retreatin’!” He felt a wild indignation. “The Second Corps ain’t any more what it used to be! Retreatin’ every whipstitch like it’s been doin’.” Tramp, tramp! Tramp, tramp! He heard them through the dark, clear night, growing loud now upon the limestone pike. “Well, I ain’t a-goin’ along! I’m tireder than any dawg!—’n’ hurt besides.” He lay down beneath the window and shut his eyes. But he could not keep the sound out, nor a picture of the column from winding through his brain. “They ain’t got any shoes, ’n’ they’re gettin’ so ragged, ’n’ hunger-pinched. They’re gettin’ hunger-pinched. They’ve fought ’n’ fought till they’re most at a standstill. They’ve fought mighty hard. Ain’t anybody ever fought any harder. But now they’re tired—awful tired. No shoes, ’n’ ragged, ’n’ hunger-pinched—Coffin, ’n’ Allan, ’n’ Billy, ’n’ Dave, ’n’ Jim Watts, ’n’ Bob White, ’n’ Reynolds, ’n’ all of them. Even Zip the coon’s hunger-pinched. They’ve all got large eyes, ’n’ they’ve fought most to a standstill, ’n’ the flags are gettin’ heavy to carry....” Tramp, tramp! Tramp, tramp! He dozed and heard the gun-wheels in a half dream, crossing a bridge with a hollow sound. Wheels and wheels and a hollow sound. Memory played him a trick. He was lying in a miry, weedy ditch under a small bridge on the road between Middletown and Winchester. The guns were passing over his head, rumble, rumble, rumble! And then a plank broke and a gun-wheel came down and tried to knock him into Kingdom Come.... He woke fully with a violent start and the sweat cold upon his body.... The column was directly passing,—he heard voices, marching feet, officers’ orders, wheels, hoofs, marching feet, voices,—all distant, continuous sound broken, become a loud, immediate, choppy sea. “Go on!” whispered Steve. “Go on! I ain’t a-goin’ with you.”