Life Death Life

I fought in the Battle of Fresno a couple of years ago (the material at the dead link is reproduced below). Or Battle of Kearney Park, depending I guess on which side you were on. I’m planning to go fight it again in a couple months -– damn this see-saw war that never ends. Didn’t we show ‘em last time?

I learned a thing or two. How to fall into line. How to keep “farb” out of sight of the general public. How to wear suspenders and a straw hat while sitting on a hay bale, listening to fiddle music, and passing around a pewter flask of Bushmills. I also learned how to have fun when I die.

There was a soldier named Ken who positioned himself behind me in line and whispered instructions. I’d had a quick one on one lesson from the drill sergeant, but that sort of thing doesn’t stick. The time to really learn how to do something is when you’re out in the hot sun, hundreds of people watching, your fingers fumbling for the paper-wrapped cartridges as you struggle to get loaded in time for the command to fire and then quickly change positions according to the arcane instructions encoded in the movement of the guidon. Ken picked me out as a newbie and took it upon himself to keep me from going too many steps in the wrong direction, see that I was ready to fire when needed, and did not fire out of order when delivering a volley. In other words, he went out of his way to keep me from embarrassing myself before the crowd and the other men.

He was the dramatist of the bunch. The unruly soldier, the jokester, the card who talked back from formation through unmoving lips while everyone else suppressed laughter. He shouted insults at the enemy and howled when he charged. He also died with a grand clutching of the chest, rifle flung wide, and a fearless fall to the ground, so hard sometimes that he bounced. Why not, he said, give the folks a show.

He died for real a week ago, thirty eight years old. Out at a lake with his family, standing in waist-deep water, he suddenly fell and was gone before they got him to shore. A sudden heart failure -– myocardial infarction, pulmonary embolism, the sort of thing that can happen unexpectedly to any of us. I knew him very briefly, but his family, now having to rebuild from the shock, is in my thoughts as I hope for the best possible path for them going forward (like me, he was unreligious, and his family does not ask for prayers).

In honor of his memory and his love of the hobby, I’m reproducing here the story I wrote for the unit newsletter. Reading it reminds me of him, and that all of us really need to live while we have the chance.

* * * * *

We grouped under the trees or sat on tables in the shade. No one took off their kepis. No one talked much. It was enough to watch and wait.

A bugle call drifted down from the other end of the field, followed by the thunder of hooves. Sunlight glinted on sabers clashing. Horses milled about. Pistols cracked in the distance.

Sweat collected across my brow. I watered up from my canteen. The muzzles of cradled rifles were black against the sunlit grass.

Cannon faced each other from either end of the field, just in front of the trees. They spoke and a shock wave hammered past. Great booms echoed into the sky. White smoke billowed up into the sycamore trees. An artillery volley – great explosions in sequence from one end of the line to the other – was followed by a drift of applause.

An orderly galloped up from the rear and spoke to the lieutenant. The lieutenant barked orders.

“2nd Mass! Assemble at the guidon!”

We lined up by twos, shoulder to shoulder, carbines at the carry. They lay barrels up and triggers forward in the crooks of our right arms.

“By twos! March!”

The ground shook as the cannon roared. Cavalry galloped past. We walked into the open, two dozen of us in blue wool jackets with yellow piping and black leather across our chests. Upon command, we spread out into a broad front, marching forward two deep, lines dressed to the guidon. Ahead, less than a hundred yards, the shade of a few trees held men watching us, men in butternut and gray, men loading their muskets.

“Skirmish lines!”

We spread out further into a staggered formation.

“Halt! Load!”

Somewhere else, rifles were firing. Somewhere else, men were shouting. Somewhere far away, people clapped and a public address system droned unintelligibly. I concentrated on loading my carbine: open the breech, blow into it to remove any stray powder grains, reach around to the pouch in the small of my back, fumble about for a handmade paper cartridge, stuff it into the barrel, close the breech and cut off the tip of the cartridge, half-cock the weapon, fish around in my cap pouch for a firing cap, insert the cap, and then shout “Loaded!” I had only learned all this an hour before and did not know the terminology, only that it was all done with the right hand (the wrong hand for me) and I was deathly afraid of dropping things or jamming them up. But it worked, and the first sergeant yelled:

“Volley by file from the right! Ready!”

We fully cocked our weapons …

“Aim!”

… took a bead on the rebels nonchalantly slinging their ramrods and observing our maneuvers …

“Fire!”

… whereupon the right-most trooper squeezed the trigger, then his mate, then his, and so on down the line from right end to left, a quick succession of black powder explosions, bang bang bang bang bang. When I squeezed the trigger my rifle kicked and banged and a cloud of white smoke joined all the other clouds of white smoke making a battle haze over the field. It was a good feeling, as firing a rifle always is, not unlike swinging a bat and making contact with a baseball; but in this case there were no projectiles, just powder, and the rebels in front were too busy reloading their muskets to pay us any mind; for they had fired too, and I hadn’t noticed.

As infantry units joined the fray to the beat of their small pipe and drum corps, and more men and guns entered into things, the artillery went largely silent lest any shock waves create a safety hazard. Though nothing like real battle, the action was driven by orders from the rear brought by orderlies on horseback and delivered via the leather lungs of elected officers and NCOs, and to a simple and inexperienced trooper the chaos was nearly complete. Only my desperate never-ending attempt to understand orders, stay in line, and not jam my borrowed black-powder rifle provided structure. All else was noise and smoke. We ran here, lined up there, retreated this way, then that; rallied; fell back; fired at will – “Pour it into ‘em, boys!” – aiming above the heads of the enemy if they were too close, happily drawing a bead right into their faces if they were far enough away. Now and then an amateur dramatist on one side or the other would wheel in pain and collapse into the grass, to lie still and pathetic and get some rest exactly as learned in the city parks of our universal playtime as nine-year-olds. I noticed that the veterans preferred to die in the shade.

We had entered the fray early. By the time I was finally able to raise my head and look at the lay of the body-littered battlefield, units were clumped all over, lined up in the characteristic fashion of the middle of the 19th Century, in rows and columns most efficient for pikes and muskets but not so clever when up against fast-loading carbines and rifled cannon and grapeshot. The Federal infantry had been pushed back towards the rear and were massing for a final defense, but we did not join them. As a dismounted cavalry unit, we did not line up well with infantry. Instead we were tasked with flanking the enemy. They didn’t think much of this, and thickened their line. The roar and concussion of opposing lines of rifles going off within ten yards of one another was made all the more fun by our exposed position. All re-enactors have a natural sense of theater, and it seemed wrong somehow to be exposed and outgunned and to not suffer any cas–

“Aahrr!”

I fell backwards to the ground, almost gently, not as though I had just had my guts torn out by a minié ball but strangely as if I was simply trying to avoid damaging my friend’s carbine. I lay still on my back with my face in the sun, my legs at an odd angle, and listened to the sounds of battle – endless rifle fire, the crack of pistols – men shouted orders and insults – a horseman galloped past my head – I saw him glance down at me over his moustache in that fraction of a second – the odd cannon blast – the unidentifiable sounds of men and equipment – metal clashing, leather creaking, booted feet drumming the ground – an unexpected lull incongruously filled by a breeze rustling the leaves overhead.

And then silence, or rather silence’s distant cousin: the echo of the last shot fading away through the trees; and from over in the 69th New York, halfway across the field, someone called out in an Irish brogue:

“Ye derrty bastards! Ye killed Kenny!”

But laughter was short-lived, as something was happening. Over my eyebrows I saw only men standing in rank, hanging by their feet from the grass that met the top of my head. In the distance there were voices, spoken firmly but civilly. I couldn’t make out the words. A silence settled over the field – I heard my heavy woolen coat move as I breathed – and from a place as far away as ancestral memory, a clear-toned bugle slowly sang Taps.

In the hands of a competent bugler, it is a haunting tune, with plenty of room for expression. This was in the hands of more than a brigade bugler; it was played by a musician. It sang of respect for the dead, of rest, of an end to strife; and especially, on this sunny day, it sang of surrender.

When it was over and had drifted beyond the trees, two thousand actors and thirty thousand spectators were completely silent for a strong half minute, until as if brought in on the tide, a wave of applause rose from beyond the ropes, and cheers and huzzahs, and the dead rose, and our unit reformed and marched through the crowds to camp, raising our kepis to the ladies and anticipating a seat in the shade and something cold to drink.