IWW2 Dispatches

After the Black Smoke scare, the troops all started to get antsy. You can focus a man to a razor’s edge, but you can’t keep him like that for hours, much less days. After the first night came and went – we could still see the sky glow of Atlanta burning – someone up in the brass decided it was time for action. We needed facts.

On our way through Maryland, we’d picked up an elite cavalry company. Nowadays that would mean Zeds and PFs, but this was still the start of the war. Cavalry still meant horses. On the morning of July 9, the brass had them assemble for a reconnaissance in force. As it happened, the marshalling grounds wasn’t that far from where my spiderhole was. So, even though it wasn’t quite regulation, I got Deek to cover for me and I snuck back to watch them get ready. It was pretty stirring. I mean, I’ve seen troops on horses, but never more than a few at a time. The cavalry didn’t mix with us grunts, even during war games, and I hadn’t run across them before.

Now I watched, almost in awe, as the men in deep blue mounted up. They all wore a stern look on their face, a look of ages whether they were twenty or fifty years old. These were the best of the best and they knew it. They didn’t have time for the everyday. A bugle played a long, drawn-out tune, something with the pep of reveille but serious. The troop moved off, trotting in tight formation, not a single one looking back.

I scrambled back up to my little patch of Pike Hill. It was something, I told Deek. These guys meant business. As soon as they’d made contact with the enemy, we’d be in for it.

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The day wore on. Once or twice there was another Black Smoke scare, but it didn’t infect the whole line this time. Guys found ways to relax, to wait for the word from the recon force. It was almost possible to think this was just another exercise, that any minute the non-coms would gather us up for a debriefing and the Colonel would berate us in his quiet but devastating manner for all the mistakes we’d made.

Around sunset, there was movement from the direction of Atlanta. I tensed up, sighted my Lem gun along the ridge. There were definitely things coming our way, shapes ill-defined in the failing light and smoky haze. Then I relaxed a little bit. I could see it was horses – the cavalry on its way back to report. We’d know the situation soon enough. (“We” meaning the brass, of course.)

Then Deek tapped me on the shoulder. The color had drained from his face. I looked again and started to notice things that didn’t fit right. First, there weren’t nearly enough horses. Dozens had ridden out. Now I could only see three coming towards us. All three were stumbling and drifting. As I watched, one gave up the ghost and tumbled to the ground. The other two just kept coming. That’s what made it clear to me that the horses were riderless – the cavalry wouldn’t leave a man down, not without being under fire, not this close to the friendly lines.

Then one of them started walking in circles, letting loose a mournful, primal low. Once it turned, I could for the first time see its left side. What showed there nearly brought my dinner back up my throat. It had been seared clean through. Some skin hung limply on its side but I could see exposed bone, though blackened. How it had kept moving, I’ll never know. Some instinct to get home, I suppose. But it couldn’t carry the poor thing any further. It just walked in unsteady circles and cried its melancholy anguish.

A shot rang out next to my ear and I jumped about three feet in the air. When I had recovered, I saw Deek laying down his rifle. Looking back, I saw that the half-cooked horse was dead, a single shot through its brain.

G*d help me, the last horse just kept on coming, like it knew it was almost back to camp and it was going to brave Hell to get there. Its chosen path took it straight at Deek and me, right past our spiderholes, in a macabre reversal of its original parade out not eight hours before. Deek raised his rifle again, getting ready to end its misery too if called for. Then his eyes grew large as saucer plates. He dropped the rifle and bent over. I could hear him retch. This nearly set me off, because Deek had always been steadier than me. I’d never seen anything get his number.

But now I could the horse just like he did. It seemed remarkably intact, especially in light of its two companions. No burn marks, no blood, no scorched bones. But… but the right stirrup was empty and the left one wasn’t. Something had cut through the bone cleanly and left the lower half of the leg in place.

I held onto my dinner but barely. All I could think was, whatever had done this was out there and coming this way. I knew in my bones that, before we saw the daybreak, we’d have seen our first glimpse of Marty.

Tags: Gwinnett, campaigns //