I know little of Generals. I do not direct battles. I fight in them as a confused and trusting private. I was among those forty-five hundred who fought at Cedar Creek.
We privates were discussing our function in the army on Saturday night under the vast and rapidly chilling sky of the Shenandoah Valley. Our Sergeant, Manning Williams, told us our function was to carry an Enfield musket and not to worry about larger issues. We refined this around the campfire and finally satisfied ourselves we were actually the biological component of a 58cal. miniball delivery system. If the Department of Defense actually had to build something fitting that description today, it would probably cost 100 million dollars per unit. We figured something that carried a sword, wore gold braid and yelled "quickly, quickly" would probably come in at half that price. Having argued ourselves into a position of importance, we went to sleep.
We were still privates when we awoke at dawn and Co. B of the Palmetto Battalion put four billion dollars worth of miniball delivery systems on the dark field. The vast Federal Army had obliging yielded to the verdict of history on Saturday until they were finally driven into "B.P. Corner" where the blue host found its backs pressed against the cyclone fence of a filling station, tastefully screened by the cedars that give the area its name.
In the dark predawn tactical, the question of victory was open and we shuffled over the rocky fields and through the gullies searching for the foe. We covered a lot of ground, making occasional contact with pockets of the Federals until we embraced them in a clashing enfilade, overrunning and trapping several companies.
I have been fighting with this army for a year, laboring my large early war body over the fields of the late contest's last lean and bloody year. I am severely nearsighted and no great soldier. I have fallen down and been picked up more times than I can count. I have been careful and hurt no pard past his capacity to forgive yet. It helps to be a good cook. Hot cush covers many accidental sins.
In the dark, over the rough ground, I saw about as well as anybody. Good shoulder contact kept me in formation. Somewhere, a General put us all where we needed to be.
In the year I have fought I have come to the gradual realization that most of the Yankees I have fired on with such glee were actually my fellow Confederates wearing blue. Now that I total it up, I was wearing blue about half the time myself. I really had not invested in the Enfield to fire blanks at people from Georgia and North Carolina, but that was what had happened. It all now seemed like a practice scrimmage with its zeal conjured up in our imaginations. I believed that if I faced men who could weep over the field at Fredericksburg as I could over Picket's Charge, it would all mean something more.
When we took our prisoners that morning, I asked which state they came from and was answered "Indiana". I shook Indiana's hand, a gesture that reach sufficiently far across America to cover enough of the story to make it matter. I have never been to Indiana. My prisoner had never set foot in the Palmetto State. We privates fought each other in Virginia, each honoring in his heart a separate honor, ideal and memory that's full import only appears in contrast.
After our first batch of prisoners, our cavalry, doing something useful for once, went out in search of another. They and we soon found most of the Federal army perched on a hill where they noticed only half their problems until it was far too late. We charged up screaming in the dark, elevated guns blazing pink light into the sky. They surrendered too, allegedly three fifths of the Federal Army. Some of these were from Wisconsin. I was glad to meet them too.
Men with swords and sashes later said it was a great achievement for the General and that may have been so. I thought it might be a testament to our ability to double quick in the coal black dark. There is always abundant glory to be shared among the men in victory, just like there is always a surplus of blame in defeat and IRS audits.
When I finally found a religious service that morning which suited my faith, it was half over. On the sloping grass apron that led to the Federal Camp nearby I noticed part of the blue army engaged in drill, spread out in open order like a bunch of Chinese factory workers doing an aggressive form of Tai chi with socket bayonets. On the Sabbath they were devoting themselves not to the Prince of Peace, but Mars. It appeared we Confederates needed to pick one God or the other and get serious about it, soon.
We were serious for the final battle, the one history ordained should go to the Yankees. We expected that we would hold ourselves back and they would manage the appearance of victory, but it was not so.
There was some galvanizing for Sunday, but the backbone and muscle of the federal army still came from places where it gets cold and where they know all the dirty verses to Dixie.
The grand review was long. Most of it was blue. During our wait, the General rode up and recited that little speech that some claim was made when General Jubal Early realized Sheridan's army had reconsolidated and its crushing force was rushing against the remains of Jackson's proud little army. The books mostly say it went something like, "Today we depend on noble South Carolina to hold the ground." You should know that in South Carolina we have other accounts of that speech that go, "You South Carolinian's started this, this is your fight." Whatever the truth is, at Cedar Creek the South Carolinian's primary retreat was into the grave.
We charged up a few hills and raced down a few hills, crossed the creek and excitedly drove the Yankee skirmish line back beyond the Heater house whose empty windows have seen it many times and once, long ago, for real. Those windows look out on a little rise which is sacred to South Carolina. That was where we were going that afternoon, but we needed help to get there.
We pushed up the last hill to meet a long line of Yankee canon, beyond which the satisfied skirmishers had disappeared. We rushed to load as the lanyard on an uncomfortably close twelve pounder snapped taught. Nothing happened. As the crew waited a safe interval to insert another primer, we opened on them with a company volley.
You can write and speak about glory and history and generals all you wish. You can refight the war and play "what if" until all the bourbon is gone in the wee hours of the morning. Truth was told in that instant. Had it been real, and had that primer ignited, cannister would have annihilated our company. Because a cheap, expendable primer failed, had it been real, a gun crew would have died. That was not a decision of generals, it was careless bloody chance. It was not a trip through some magic door to another time, but a simple lesson to those of us who put too much faith in the superiority of strategy or the quality of our cause.
We did not have much time to savor our luck because the "Huzzah!" of which we Rebels make so much fun seemed to rise from one side of the wide world to the other and a moment later there was a vast, double line of blue advancing on us, featuring the sporty Zouave regiment doing its usual splendid service to the Kodak corporation. We reluctantly fell back. Our reluctance was transformed to alacrity as we bounded down the hill and into the muddy grass of the creekbed.
Somewhere, on a horse, there was a general. He had all the answers at dawn, but was not available to offer suggestions at that moment. Our formation began to disintegrate in the creek bottom. My pards scrambled up the bank to the hill beyond.
I did not. The edge of the creek was a six foot wall of dirt and I could not drag my bulky body up it. I pushed my rifle ahead and tried again. The creekbed behind me filled with sound. The grass pulled loose in my hands. I did not want to die in the creekbed, abandoned by my friends. Adrenaline wouldn't cover the gap between what the soft arms of a lawyer could do and the six foot cliff I confronted. I wanted to make it to the top of the hill. I had come six hundred miles for that, but I couldn't do it.
I looked up, long after I should have already been up the hill to see my file partner and two friends reaching down. All two hundred pounds of me was jerked over the edge of that creek, Gertrude, my Enfield was slapped back in my hand and we were up the hill in an instant. After a year, there is more muscle in me than there was. In the 10th. South Carolina there is some to spare. Together is was enough.
Except for my file partner, my place in our well ordered line of battle had disappeared with the men who had formed it. We scrambled into position, loaded and began firing.
The creekbed filled with Federals and they boiled up towards us like a cobalt wave. They helped each other over the same cliff that had nearly stopped me. As fast as we could fire three quick rounds they were upon us, we who had orders not to retreat.
Was it ten to one in the hand to hand on the hill past Heater house? Was there some larger purpose born in the mind of a General in our little stand? I do not know. They swept over us. I was pushed and tumbled to the ground. Only our colors escaped. They would never adorn some meeting room in distant Indiana or cold, milk sotted Wisconsin. It was too late in the weekend to risk a capture.
And we were left on that hill, covering it, still, until it was over. It was of course, the same hill they dare to call a little part of South Carolina in Virginia. We rested on the bones of our ancestors, having fallen where Kershaw's men fell. For that, I thank the Yankee from Michigan who pushed me. It was where and how I wanted to fall.
The distant General who ordered us up left us no time to pray, so we prayed on the march as our feet left that ground. We left a little of ourselves behind, but took so much else away. Thanks general, whoever you were.