03-01-2007, 02:19 PM
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Premium Member
Posts: 34
Join Date: Feb 2007
Location: Iowa
Age: 28
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Battle
This is the story of a little known page of history. In the year 1863, the Civil War was in full fury in the United States. Thousands of men on both sides had died in battle. Many many more had died of disease and other causes. There were wounded by the tens of thousands on both sides. Many wounded lay for days on abandoned battlefields with no help or care for their wounds. This is the story of one such man.
I am a soldier of the Confederacy and a simple private. I come from South Carolina and have been in the army for 3 years now. It is a lovely spring day here in eastern Tennessee with the mist rising off the fields in front of us as the first rays of the morning sun peek through the trees around our camp. Word is that the Yankee army is close by and that there will be a battle either today or very soon. I have just recently acquired a new Sharps rifle. It is a beautiful gun and deadly accurate. When I took it off a dead Yank, I also found a bullet mold in his pack. With lead picked up on the battle field and dug out of trees, I have made up 100 rounds, so I am ready for anything. A friend of mine from Texas was killed last month, and I am now carrying his ‘bowie" knife. It is a wicked thing, about 14 inches long and sharp enough to shave with. I have plans to show it to some Yankee sob soon. The captain just came by and gave orders to break camp and fall in to marching formation. Oh well, it is a nice day for a walk. The company forms up quickly and we start marching off to the northeast. Nobody seems to know where we are going, but most of us are sure that we are in for a fight soon. We walk for about an hour and then fall out behind a long stone fence. There is no sign of a blue belly anywhere, but it is very very quiet. We lay behind the fence and wonder about the future. Will the yanks attack us here? Will we be able to hold or be beaten back? What are the chances of being wounded or even killed? Will I be able to kill the one who wants to kill me? Why is it so very quiet. What are we waiting here for? These questions and a thousand more go through my mind. It is getting hot as the sun is almost over head. Now comes the sound of a distant thunder. There is a roaring sound overhead, and a shell explodes in the field behind us. It is followed by several dozen of its fellows, all exploding well behind our line. I look across the field in front of us and nothing moves. I look to the left and right and see the faces of friends I have come to know in the years of war. The thought crosses my mind that I will not see some of those faces tonight. The roar of cannon fire stops. From across the field comes the steady roll of a lone drum. Moving out from the trees opposite comes row after row of Union soldiers in dark blue uniforms and carrying rifles with bayonets fixed. We crouch lower behind the fence and await the command to fire. The enemy draws closer. He is within one hundred yards now and I see their faces more and more clearly. I aim at a man wearing sergeants stripes and lock on his face. "FIRE" the order roars out down the line. Fifty guns along the wall spit fire and death. The first and second ranks of Union soldiers are down, but the rest keep coming. I kneel to reload and our second rank fires over my head. Loaded and ready, I raise my head to look over the field just as a Union soldier jumps up on the fence in front of me. I fire without taking aim and his face explodes in a red mist. I kneel again to load and feel a shaft of fire strike me low in the stomach. It hurts. Oh Lord, it hurts. I fall back onto my back, clutching myself and feeling the wet blood running through my fingers. All goes black. I awake with a dull ache in my body. Night has fallen and I can see no one. The smell of smoke from the battle lingers as well as the copper smell of blood and the strange sweet odor of violent death. I can hear the sound of some wounded men around where I lay and nothing else. The night is dark and only a few stars appear among the slow moving clouds. I try to move but waves of pain course through my body and I lay back. It slowly seems to grow light and I smell the scent of fresh corn bread cooking and hear my mother quietly singing to her self. It is late and I should be going home for dinner, but somehow I just can’t move. I hear her calling me but I can’t answer her. It is getting so cold and dark. Momma. All that remains of the battle is a rusted barrel of a Sharps rifle and the badly corroded blade of a big bowie knife in the hands of a skeleton laying buried under the rocks that once formed a wall around a farm. By Oso. 3/1/07
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 Oso   
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