Shattered Nation Page 12

  Those men who were lucky enough to receive a letter howled with glee, as though they had discovered buried treasure, and hurried off to a quiet place where they could read the precious letter in peace. Those who did not receive a letter, a decided majority of the hundred or so men of the 7th Texas, turned away in disappointment, with a few doing their best to hide tears. McFadden, of course, had known from the moment mail call had been announced that he would not be receiving a letter.

  Two hours after the Yankee fire had ended, Collett called McFadden.

  “Sergeant McFadden!”

  “Sir!” McFadden stood to attention

  “Since the fighting seems to have stopped, I’d like to have the men clean up. We’ll go one company at a time down to the river. The men will wash their clothes and take a bath. You will go first.”

  “Certainly, sir. Company F! Prepare to move out!”

  The men of McFadden’s company gathered the necessary equipment for washer duty and collected them into the regiment’s last remaining twenty-five gallon oak bucket. Then, with pairs of men taking turns carrying the rope on either side of the bucket, the twenty-two survivors of Company F began walking south toward the river.

  They headed south on a dusty road some pioneering unit had scratched out of the ground. McFadden led the way, not only because he was in charge of the company but because it would minimize the efforts by his comrades to engage him in conversation. The Texans behind him chatted amiably with one another, and occasionally called out to friends they recognized from other units as they passed by.

  “What flag is that?” Pearson asked as they walked past the encampment of yet another regiment.

  “Are you blind?” McFadden called back. “65th Georgia. Walker’s Division.”

  The Texans groaned. The loathing that existed between General Walker and their beloved General Cleburne was an open secret throughout the army. It didn’t much matter, as Texas troops tended to hold Georgia troops in contempt anyway.

  “Hey, Georgia boys!” Private Montgomery called out.

  “What do you want?” a Georgia soldier shouted back.

  “If you end on up on either of our flanks in the next fight, you’d better hold your damn line! Otherwise, we will shoot you ourselves and no mistake!”

  “Go to hell, Texas!”

  The men laughed and continued marching. McFadden knew that Montgomery had been joking, but he himself would happily shoot down a fellow Confederate who ran away. Such cowardly actions put others in danger and increased the likelihood of defeat. If a few examples were made, it would be to the benefit of everyone.

  The Lone Star Rifles kept moving south, passing by numerous other regiments as well as the general detritus that formed in the rear area of an army. There were broken down wagons being repaired, makeshift bakeries turning out loaves of bread, improvised workshops attempting to repair broken firearms, and other such random sites. Occasionally, clusters of officers could be seen talking earnestly with one another. As always, there was the large number of men wandering about in confusion, no doubt searching for excuses to avoid returning to their units on the front lines.

  Finally, they reached the bank of the Chattahoochee River. They came upon it suddenly, as the ground on both banks was thickly wooded. It struck McFadden as a lovely sight, quite wide but not very deep. Numerous rocks poked out from the water at various points of the stream.

  A pontoon bridge crossed the river directly from the point the road met the water, and two other pontoon bridges were visible several hundred yards downstream. McFadden directed his men over to a patch of ground just off to the left of the bridge, and there they set up their cleaning station.

  McFadden directed Private Pearson to get a fire going, for as irritating as he found Pearson, he had to admit that the man was the best in the company when it came to starting a fire. As water was heated over the fire in one of the few cast iron pots the regiment had left, the men stripped naked and soaked their clothes thoroughly in the river, happily splashing about and dunking one another while doing so. As time passed and the water began to boil, the clothes were dumped into the pot and left for a time. Lice and other pests which inhabited their uniforms were boiled away. After they had boiled the clothes, the men began the laborious process of scouring them on rough scrub boards.

  They sang songs while they cleaned. They chatted and felt relieved to be away from the pressures of the front line, even if it was only for a short amount of time. When they put their clothes back on, they felt the blessed sensation of clean cloth on their skin for the first time in weeks.

  As he helped boil another bunch of white shirts, McFadden heard a sudden excited but hushed conversation among of his men. He looked to see what the matter was and found that several of his men were intently staring at a fashionable two-wheeled buggy passing on the road and onto the bridge. Immediately he saw what had caught their attention. Sitting next to the older gentleman holding the reins was a woman.

  During the months of winter encampments, women had constantly been with the army, whether the officer’s wives in elegant dresses, old washerwomen, or syphilitic prostitutes whom wise men avoided. But when the campaign for Atlanta had commenced two months before, General Johnston had ordered all females sent away for their own safety. Seeing any woman at all had become an exceedingly rare and pleasant occurrence.

  This particular woman was far from ordinary. She had raven black hair and a soft, milky-white complexion. McFadden found her exquisitely beautiful. He quickly checked himself, for most of the women he had known had been either the assorted females of the winter camps or the rough women of the Texas frontier. Surely he was not qualified to make any judgment on feminine beauty. But looking at her face, he was suddenly reminded of the poems by Dante about the lady Beatrice.

  McFadden suddenly realized that many of his men were still naked. Horrified, he spun around.

  “Cover yourselves, men! Quickly!”

  “Why?” Pearson asked with a grin. He raised his voice loud enough for the woman to hear. “I want the lady to see these fine goods! I’ll give them to her for free if she wants! Want this, lassy?”

  Upon hearing these words, the woman turned and looked at Pearson, horror on her face. The man seated next to the woman shouted out.

  “Damn you, sir!” he said. “You’re speaking to my daughter!” McFadden noticed that the man had a wooden leg, which likely meant he was a veteran.

  “I’ll speak to anyone I want, old man!” Pearson rejoined laughingly. “She’s a fine morsel, your daughter!”

  McFadden turned and punched Pearson in the face as hard as he could. Letting out a pathetic yelp, Pearson was sent rolling over like a log and splattered down onto the ground in a large puddle of mud.

  The men laughed, happy to see Pearson get the treatment most of them felt he had deserved for far too long. The father of the girl said nothing, whipping the horse into a slightly greater trot.

  Turning back toward the buggy, McFadden had a moment of eye contact with the girl. At this distance, he couldn’t tell whether her eyes were blue or green, but they seemed to be some combination of the two and more beautiful than either. She smiled at him and he felt some unfamiliar emotion tug at him.

  He turned away, not wanting any more distractions. The buggy soon began to creak over the pontoon bridge, taking the woman away. He was certain he would never see her again and that the whole episode would simply be remembered for the pummeling of Private Pearson. He turned his attention back toward finishing the clothes washing job. The sooner they finished, the sooner they could return to the redoubt. Besides, he was hungry.

  McFadden’s determination to complete his immediate work lasted less than a minute. From behind him on the river, he suddenly heard the sound of sharply cracking wood, followed by the sound of a woman screaming. Turning, he saw that one of the wheels on the buggy had disintegrated, perhaps fifty yards down the bridge. To his horror, the entire wagon dipped over the right side of the bridge
and plunged into the water, throwing both the woman and her father into the river and dragging the horse in as well.

  Without thinking, McFadden tore off the white shirt he had just put back on, dashed to the edge of the river and plunged in. He didn’t consider himself a good swimmer, but he doubted if any of the men in his company even knew how to swim at all. When would they have ever learned? Frantically, he swam toward the collapsed buggy, which was rapidly sinking. The confused horse jerked about in terror as it was pulled beneath the water.

  “Help us!” the man’s voice screamed.

  McFadden swam for all he was worth. Though it was difficult to see as his arms pulled him through the now churning water, he headed toward the two flailing shapes he thought must be the man and the woman. The fall of the wagon had tossed them a few yards away from the bridge, but by the way they were struggling it instantly became clear to McFadden that neither of them knew how to swim. Fleetingly, the thought dashed through his mind that it would be a shame for them to drown with the bridge so very near to them.

  “Help!” the voice of the woman cried out.

  “Help my daughter!” the father shouted.

  “I’m trying!” McFadden shouted back as he came within reach of the woman. As he approached her, she frantically grabbed his arm, causing him to momentarily panic as he lost the ability to control his swimming. The urgent need to save the woman’s life instantly superseded any sense of propriety, so he jerked his arm free from her grip and then wrapped it around her waist.

  A dozen or so members of the Lone Star Rifles were running toward the spot on the bridge where the wagon had overturned.

  “Over here, Sarge! Swim this way!”

  He started kicking toward the sound of the shouting and slowly he and the woman began inching closer to the bridge. She quickly calmed down and stopped struggling, enabling him to swim more easily.

  After what seemed like several minutes but was actually only thirty seconds or so, McFadden was able to bring the woman within reach of his comrades waiting on the bridge. They lifted her up out of the water.

  “Please help my father!”

  McFadden kicked away from the bridge back toward the struggling man. He had to swim around the wreckage of the buggy, making it a considerably greater distance than he had thought. The man was rapidly losing strength, but this actually helped McFadden as it meant that he could approach him without fear of being accidently struck by the man’s wild flailings. Even as he felt his own strength diminish, McFadden was able to clasp one of the man’s arms and began pulling him toward the bridge. A few moments later, the soldiers pulled him up onto the pontoons as well.

  McFadden felt great relief as he was helped up onto the planks of the pontoon bridge by Private Montgomery and Private Harrison. When he stood up, he saw that all of his men were looking intently at the woman. She was drenched, causing her white cotton dress to cling tightly to her body. Ever the gentleman, Harrison threw his own uniform coat over her to protect her modesty. The father was coughing, having swallowed a fair amount of the river water, but staggered to his feet as McFadden was doing the same.

  “God bless you, son!” the man said between coughs. “God bless all of you!”

  “Are you all right?” McFadden asked.

  “Yes, I think so. Dear Lord, we might have drowned!” He turned to his daughter. “Are you all right, Annie?”

  “Yes, father. I am fine.” She clutched the uniform coat more tightly around herself, using it as a shield against the gazes of the men.

  “We should get off the bridge,” McFadden said, seeing a battery of artillery coming up from the south bank. It wouldn’t do for them to cause a traffic jam.

  “What is your name, son?” the man asked as they walked.

  “Sergeant James McFadden. 7th Texas Infantry.”

  “I’m Robert Turnbow. This is my daughter Annie.” He took a deep breath, still recovering. “It seems that we are both very much in your debt, Sergeant.”

  “Not at all, sir.”

  “Thank you for coming to our assistance. Without your help we would surely have died.”

  “It was nothing.” McFadden did not believe this. Having witnessed their struggling in the water before he had reached them, he was convinced that both of them would surely have drowned. The girl obviously had no idea how to swim, and Mr. Turnbow had been too encumbered by his peg leg to save himself. Without intending to, McFadden caught Annie’s eyes. She quickly glanced away.

  As they walked back over to the north bank of the river, Mr. Turnbow looked out at what was left of their buggy. The horse had ceased to struggle. “Shame,” Turnbow said. “Gypsy was a good horse. Good horses are hard to come by these days, since so many have been taken into the army.”

  “I apologize,” McFadden said without thinking. He immediately thought it had been a stupid thing to say. It wasn’t his fault that the horse had drowned.

  Turnbow looked at him. “Did you say 7th Texas?”

  “Yes, sir. Granbury’s brigade, Cleburne’s division.”

  Turnbow nodded quickly. “I served in the 18th Georgia under General Lee. We fought alongside Texas regiments in Hood’s brigade. Good soldiers, you Texas boys.”

  “Thank you, sir. Where were you wounded, if you don’t mind my asking?”

  “Seven Pines. The Yankees were apparently keen to take me out of the war as early as possible. I guess they were scared of me.”

  McFadden smiled. He decided he liked Turnbow.

  “I told the War Department I could still serve with a peg leg. Plenty of other people do, after all. General Hood. General Ewell. But they wouldn’t have it. They wanted me back in Atlanta to run the iron works.”

  “The iron works?”

  “Yes. The Turnbow Iron Foundry. Built it from scratch, I’m proud to say. We turn out cannon for the army.”

  “Oh. I suppose it’s good to manufacture a product for which there is such a high demand.”

  Turnbow laughed, although McFadden hadn’t intended his comment as a joke.

  “How will we get back to the city, father?” Annie asked.

  “Hmm, good question. Sergeant, I don’t suppose I could prevail upon you for further assistance?”

  “Come and rest for a few minutes with my men,” McFadden said, doing his best to sound reassuring. “I will try to arrange transportation for the two of you back to Atlanta.”

  “I thank you very kindly, Sergeant.”

  “It is my pleasure, sir.”

  They reached the edge of the river bank and McFadden directed them to sit down with his company. He was relieved that his men had had the foresight to clothe themselves once again and he saw that the task of washing the clothes was completed. Private Pearson was on his feet again, though a trickle of blood was coming out of the left side of his mouth. He eyed McFadden with resentment, but said nothing.

  McFadden sent Private Montgomery off to find an officer who would be able to help. Robert and Annie Turnbow sat down and dried off, and McFadden had his men do what they could to make the two of them comfortable. Soon, Robert Turnbow was engaged in a heated but cordial discussion with Private Balch about whether Robert E. Lee or Joseph Johnston was the better general.

  Annie stood apart from the men. She didn’t look physically uncomfortable, but McFadden could see that she was obviously distraught at having nearly been drowned. He also sensed that her father was unaware of how much it had troubled her. McFadden approached her.

  “Are you all right, ma’am?”

  She shook her head.

  “It’s just a buggy, ma’am,” McFadden said. “You and your father should be thankful to have survived the accident.”

  “I know,” Annie said. “But I could have drowned. I have never been so scared in my life.”

  McFadden nodded, though inwardly he thought Annie’s statement rather childish. He came close to death on a daily basis and the thought of being killed held no terror for him. Then he thought back to his first battle
in New Mexico and remembered how frightened he had been. Clearly, this girl had been sheltered from the horrors of war more than most.

  “Well, you’ll soon be safe at your home in the city.”

  “As safe as that is, at any rate.”

  “Why have you not yet fled the city? I can understand why your father remains, as the iron foundry is no doubt important to the war effort. But the enemy is now only a few miles from the city. I thought all women had been sent away for safety.”

  “My mother says that she shall not allow the Yankees to dictate to her where she shall make her home.”

  McFadden considered this. “I suppose that’s admirable.” He didn’t add that he thought it was foolish.

  “Yes,” Annie said, her voice momentarily becoming lighter. “My mother is a strong woman. She says that if you soldiers can’t stop Sherman’s advance, she’ll pick up a gun and do it herself.”

  “Yes, well, war is not a proper business for women.” Rumors abounded of women disguising themselves as men and engaging in combat, but McFadden thought such stories absurd.

  “No,” Annie said. “I would prefer to keep the war at as great a distance as possible. I cannot fathom the arrogance and pride that drove the politicians to plunge our people into such a nightmare. The war brings such suffering.” She paused for a moment. “And it took away my brother.”

  He nodded. “I’m sorry.” He surprised himself by feeling sincere sympathy, an emotion he had not experienced in years. After all, hundreds of thousands of other people across the country had lost loved ones in the war. One woman’s grief compared to the grief of uncounted numbers of others was merely a drop of water in the proverbial bucket. Yet McFadden found his heart going out to this woman, whom he had known for less than a half hour.

  She nodded. “He was killed at Second Manassas.”