ALL THAT'S LEFT OF ME

By Jo Anzalone

Chapter 4:

Jonathon opened his eyes, still groggy from too little sleep for too long, taking a long moment

just to try and remember where he was.  Dawn was barely coloring the horizon. What...? Ah,

yes. Manassas Junction.  The long journey was behind him.  He sat up on his blanket, scrubbing

a hand over his face, trying to force his mind into enough clearness to think.  Men were rising

all around him, most of them as groggy as he was.  Sitting still, he stared at them for a while.

All of them seemed to be intently listening to something. Blowing out a long breath, he got to

his feet.

"Hear that, Johnnie?" Jimmie asked excitedly.  "Them's cannon, just off that way."  He pointed

and Jonathon's head turned in the direction he indicated.  The roar was nearly continuous, its

sound pocked by what had to be the rattle of musketry.

Jonathon licked his dry lips. Four hours. That was about how much he'd slept since getting off

the train.  The battle had obviously already begun. The battle...his first.  And he could barely

keep to his feet.  Rubbing his eyes, he then shook his head so that his slightly waving dark

chestnut hair would fall back away from his face.  As the other men were doing, he rolled his

blanket and set about starting to cook a bit of breakfast, realizing he was terribly hungry. His

meal was half-cooked when the order came to form lines.

The sun had now risen over the slope to the east, promising a day of brilliant sunshine.  With

his farmer's eye, Jonathon could easily see the countryside hereabout had been having a long

spell of drought.  Dust lay everywhere and as the wagons and horses moved about the camp, as

the men began to march, it rose, thick and heavy, filling the steadily-warming late July air,

coating everything, being sucked inside with every breath.  There was no wind and once the

dust had been stirred upwards, it simply hung there in the still air.

The 13th Mississippi had been attached to Early's brigade and was now to be hurried to the

assistance of General Nathan Evans on the Confederate left. They had been issued fifty rounds

of ammunition and marched in alternating quick and double quick for five or six miles, halting

when they reached a pine thicket.  There they waited, hot and panting, until Jubal Early came

up with a Virginia and a Louisiana regiment to join theirs. 

Jonathon rolled up his sleeves, took off his neckerchief to mop sweat where he could, and tried

to ignore the hungry growling of his innards.  When Early arrived, they were ordered to leave

their knapsacks behind, so the men hung them on bushes and low tree limbs, before forming

line again.  Then they began to retrace their steps for a way but beginning to bear more to

the right.  They were crossing old, open fields, hundreds of shoes churning up clouds of dust.

By now the sun was merciless, burning down on them as they inhaled more and more dust.

Jonathon tried to swallow, taking a long while for his throat to obey.  He didn't know when

he'd ever needed water more, but all any of them had were their rifles and their cartridge

boxes.  They'd been ordered to hurry and hurry they were, but many were beginning to fall

by the wayside, too exhausted to continue.  He had a brief thought that this march was like

the train ride, with soldiers steadily being left along the way because they simply hadn't the

strength to continue and he wondered again how many of them would be left to do the job in

the end.

Every step he took brought the roar of artillery, the sound of musketry, more loudly to his

ears.  How far were they from the damn battlefield!!  It seemed to him he'd been practically

running since dawn.  It couldn't be too much further. Now, lying in the shade of trees or

crawling toward them were wounded men, lots of wounded men.  Some of them shouted out

to the 13th as it passed, "Go to it, boys!" Most were too shot to pieces to do more than moan

or cry aloud.

Jonathon's eyes turned side to side as he made his way through them. These men,  all of them

just Southern boys like himself, now had their grey torn and splashed with blood. Something

deep inside him formed itself into a firm resolution that he and the rest of the Winston Guards

would make a difference, that these men would not have suffered for nothing.

The Federal forces had occupied a rise, almost a plateau, where the Henry and Robinson

houses stood and from there, their batteries were pounding into the Confederate line.  At

2 PM the order came to retake the plateau.  Colonel Barksdale rode along in front of them

as they formed in battle line, exhorting his regiment to fight and, if necessary, to die to

maintain the high reputation of the Mississippians.

The Federals were about 300 yards in front of where Jonathon stood, trying to wipe enough

dust out of his eyes to focus on them at all.  He saw them run up several flags and then begin

rapid sharpshooting.  For the first time in his life, someone was shooting at him, many

someones.  At that distance most of the bullets were kicking up dirt in front of him, but some

sung past him, though only three of the whole regiment were hit as they stood there awaiting

the order to charge.  He heard a bellow of pain and looked to the side where down the line

one of the men crumpled, shot through his right thigh.

Barksdale ordered, "Charge bayonets!" and his regiment surged forward, leaving the two

others behind.  They ran through a pasture filled with persimmon sprouts that smacked

against Jonathon's legs.  More dust rose, thicker than any before, almost obscuring the

scene.  Then the first company of the 13th to the right of the colors began to break ranks

and run in every direction, some of them in circles.  There had been wasp nests in the

persimmons and now about 50 men were swatting with their hats, trying to elude the attack

of an unforeseen enemy.  Barksdale rushed into the middle of it but the wasps began to go

for his horse and the Colonel, who was not well-known for his horsemanship, was only adding

to the near circus-like ruckus.

General Beauregard was trying to observe the action from a hilltop but with all the dust and

the sudden melee of soldiers, he couldn't discern for a while if they were Union or Confederate

and it wasn't until a gust of wind from out of the still sky flung out the banners that he let out

a breath of relief.

Jonathon had little attention to spare for the wasp-dodging men. The brow of the hill was

lined with some 5000 well-equipped troops and he was one of about 1100 Rebels charging

up toward them.  It came to him naturally, with no forethought, no real effort at all...that

wild, piercing, rising and falling yell ripping out of his throat.  It was a sound that could only

be made by a running man, a man charging at his enemy.  That was a requirement for its

production.  A man standing still could never form the tones, the heart of the thing.  The

pulse must be pounding in the veins, the body in full forward motion, its nerves, tendons,

and muscles stretched to the uttermost.  He had never done the yell before, never heard it

done by a group of men as he now heard it, never really even heard it at all. But every

Southern boy had the instinct for it. It came up from the toes, spreading and expanding

as it went until it became too big for the body to hold and it burst out of the throat, tearing

the very air into splintering shards.  He felt an almost untamed joy in the making of it, in

the fact that his making was joining with that of hundreds of others, and together the force

of it rolled ahead of them up the hill.

The Federal troops had never heard it before, either, and somehow presumed the Rebs

were fresh and in greater numbers than they had looked at first. When Jonathon reached

the brow of the rise, all 5000 of the enemy had fled.  He gasped for breath, the yell having

been torn from a throat coated with dust.  Briefly, he tried to lick his cracking lips, but

there wasn't enough moisture on his tongue to wet them at all. Lungs bursting, he ran on,

chasing after the fleeing troops.

Kemper's battery off to his left was showering death down on the Federals as they pounded

back toward their lines.  Confederate cavalry was closely pursuing and Jonathon and the Guards ran as fast as they could behind them. Before long they reached a small creek and

all the men who'd gone so long with no water, who'd breathed in dust for hours and for

mile after mile, stooped, scooping in handfuls of it as they dashed through it.  They'd been

running through Federal dead and wounded and the creek was discolored with blood. It

was a measure of how unendurable their thirst was that they scooped it into their mouths

anyway. 

As they passed beyond the bloody creek, the dead lay in actual heaps scattered all around.

Wounded men begged them for water as they ran by, but no one had a canteen, and there

was nothing to offer them.  The land was littered with knapsacks, blankets, swords, guns,

anything that would slow a Federal soldier's flight.  The 13th passed through all that, going

for three miles until they simply had to stop. 

Barely managing to stack his gun with the others, Jonathon, his knees giving way, lay down

in the field.  All the men who'd made the charge with him did the same, flopping heavily

to the ground.  Some men were ordered on another hundred yards or so as pickets, and

Jonathon sent up thanks to the good Lord that he was not among them.  The regiment

simply lay down where they'd stopped running, and with no shelter, no covering, with

nothing to eat or drink, spent the night.

Sometime in the heavy darkness it began to rain.

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