Hard Passage North

"They clambered across the fence to the road and formed their files again, before starting up the hill. Back over their right shoulders, along the distant wooded curve of the creek valley, the smoke rose into the air as cannon still fired across the now trampled and disputed fields. Across, on the higher ground to the south of the village, more smoke billowed as southern guns maintained their fire on those creek bluffs, to dissuade the enemy, who had crossed over the bridge, from coming further. But no sign of an advance was to be seen, so this was no longer full battle. All around the fields, though the thud of artillery was unceasing, the musketry had faded so that now it was little more than a spatter of picket line fire. The blue columns of the enemy had halted. They had been held, and bled, and stopped, and showed no sign of renewing their attacks. The thought found its way into Daniel Ryan’s tired mind that this battle might well have spent the worst of its force and he found himself profoundly hoping that this was so.

The surviving men from the bridge trooped steadily up onto a flatter part of the road, and on again to a further stretch where it dipped slightly as it led towards the edge of the smoke engulfed town of Sharpsburg. The men moved wearily, plodding through the now dried mud, passing fragments of formations and smaller groups of men in the meadows beside the road. Some simply lounged or lay, finished with fighting for the day by their lethargic appearance, while others sluggishly reformed, responding to the shouts of officers, who encouraged or berated them in turn to return to the fight. It was a scene of perplexing confusion. What kind of a struggle, shook this many men away from their units to the rear of the army’s fighting line? What did their absence from their units portend for the battle’s outcome, if they could not be prevailed upon to rejoin their comrades? These thoughts were in other minds too as the comments up and down their own files showed.

“Helluva lot o’ skulkers around here.”

“Lot o’ boys takin’ a day’s furlough right now.”

“Anybody in this here army still fightin’ Yankees?”

Presently the men ahead began wheeling away off the road to the left, with the column following on into a field of scorched yellowed grass, where still more groups of idle men sat or lounged. Their own files were directed past most of these and on to the far end of the meadow where a substantial grove of oak trees stood. On reaching the tree shelter, the men were halted. Details were called by the sergeants and dispatched to seek rations and water, while those spared duty on them were stood down, to move away under the trees where other groups of men already lay, flopping in their turn onto the shaded grass there. Some of them, in spite of the continuing artillery duels beyond the town, were asleep within seconds."