Then happy to be freed from camp we march down to Washington in a noisy blue river of four regiments and are mustered in and inspected by the lofty toffs who are but black specks in the distance and we can’t hear a blessed word of speeches. Most like the same old nonsense, says Starling Carlton but any fool can tell he’s proud anyhow. The whole goddamn seething army is ranked about there and the field guns shone into an ecstasy of sparkling glory not to mention the men spruced up and shaved as best they can manage. Twenty thousand souls ain’t a sparse party. Just ain’t.
Nice boy called Dan FitzGerald falls in with us in a card-playing capacity so it’s very like old times at Laramie except we’re bivouacked under slightly shifted stars and it’s a city of blue-coated gents all around. We got wives churning uniforms in the wash-churns and we got great boys for singing and even our drummer boy McCarthy who is only eleven years of age is a card. Name sounds like an Irish but he a black boy from Missouri. Missouri don’t know if it’s Rebel or Union so Mc-Carthy he leaves while they decide. There’s big tall men in the next row of tents that are gunners in charge of mortars. You never seen such wide thick arms on men or wide thick barrels on guns. Look like cannon that been eating nothing but molasses for a year. Swole up like a giant’s pecker. They say they’ll be needed under the walls of Richmond but Starling Carlton says there ain’t no walls. So we don’t know what that rumour means. Our company is mostly Kerrymen and FitzGerald he comes from Bundorragha which he says is a filthy poor part of Mayo. I ain’t met many Irish who will talk about those dark matters but he does easy enough. He has a tin whistle does other kinds of talking. He says his family was killed in the hunger and then he walked to Kenmare over the mountains and he was only ten and then over to Quebec like the rest of us and by a miracle he didn’t take the fever just like me. I asked him did he see anyone eat another in the ship’s hold and he says he didn’t see that but he seen worse. He says when they opened the hatches in Quebec they drew out the long nails and the light came into the hold for the first time in four weeks. All they had gotten on the journey was water. Suddenly in the new light he seen the corpses floating everywhere in the bilge-water and then the dying and then everyone to the last a skeleton. That’s why no one will talk because it’s not a subject. It makes your heart ache. We shake our heads and deal the cards. No one is talking for a while. Goddamn corpses. That’s because we were thought worthless. Nothing people. I guess that’s what it was. That thinking just burns through your brain for a while. Nothing but scum. Now we’ve girt our loins with weapons and we’ll try and win the day.
There are hard fights sometimes in the camp already but it ain’t with the yellowlegs. Some of those native-born soldiers fear the goddamn Irish since in a bad mood they might knock you down and stomp on your head till they feel better but you won’t. Irish boys all stuffed with anger. Bursting into flame. Who knows. As corporal I am trying to bluster them into peacefulness. Ain’t easy. I can throw them into clink if they don’t come off the boil. They carry a grudge like hunting dogs carry the bird so I got to be fair as Solomon. But then an Irish might be the gentlest man in Christendom too. Dan FitzGerald he would feed you his arm if you was hungry. Captain Wilson he only come out from his home place last year. Says the place still going to hell by the highroad. But he is a tip-top character. He was a major in the Wicklow Regiment of Militia. It seems like his people must be swells but he ain’t high-handed and the company is content with him. Looks like if he says to do something we might do it. Starling Carlton says the trouble with the Irish sodger, the trouble with him is he thinks when he is bid to go do a thing. He turns it over in his mind. He gapes at his officer to see if the order pleases or don’t. That ain’t a good trait in a soldier. Every Irish thinks he be in the right and he will kill the whole world to make a proof. Starling Carlton says the Irish is just ravening dogs. Then he clasps my hand and laughs. Goddamn Starling Carlton, fat as a grizzly bear. He’s a sergeant so I can’t punch him as I would wish.
Dan FitzGerald and the drummer boy McCarthy has sprung up a friendship between them and Dan is schooling McCarthy in the matter of Irish tunes. Made an Irish drum out of the dried skin of a mule and a spliced barrel-stave. Whittled him a striking stick and he’s all set. The two of them go running at these dancing tunes and it puts a lick of enjoyment into slack times. Not many of them now. We’re poured down slowly into northern Virginia and we was hoping to hear that tracks had been laid but no hope of that. We’re walking.
Lige Magan’s little detail carries the colours and it’s a sight. Nice banner sewed by nuns somewhere, they say. I got to keep my men fore and back in good order and John Cole has his own bunch and it has to be allowed Starling Carlton knows his army business and we don’t feel too bad with the captain leading our company. In fact must be said all the men are in devilish high spirits and want to be running at Rebels as soon as can be arranged. Starling carries weight but even without a horse he’s strong as the centre of a river current. He bulls along mightily. We don’t miss our old sergeant’s singing but McCarthy beats out the march on his drum. Left right, left right. Eternal soldiers, it don’t ever change. You got to get from one point to another and the only way is the old forced march. Otherwise you get dawdling, fellas peeling off to drink from a stream, taking an interest in the farms we pass in case some good woman has baked cakes. Can’t be having that. And then we are stomping down into that two-faced country, it’s north Virginia, we don’t know where allegiances may lie. Could be death to find out. Got to say Virginia appeals. Great mountains stand to the west and old forests there are not thinking about us, not for a minute. They say the farms are tired worn-out places but they got the look of plenty. Four regiments is a noisy river but still the songs of birds pierce through our din and local dogs come to the edges of their domains and bark their fool heads off at us. That pack and the musket and the rough uniform got to be borne gaily. Or else it start to crush you. Best think your way into feeling strong, best. No man likes to fall out because he can’t manage a little jaunt down into Virginny, as Dan FitzGerald calls it. Anyhows aren’t we going down to show the Rebs where they went wrong. Error of their ways. We got a nice deal of ordnance and it is our wish to show them what it can do. It’s not our lot to know the orders that drive us on but that ain’t needed. Just point us at those Johnny Rebs, says Dan FitzGerald. Sometimes we sing big songs all together as we go and we don’t offer the birds of Virginia the versions on the printed sheet as you might find in Mr Noone’s hall, but new versions with every stinking word we know stitched in. Every lousy stinking low brothelly word.