Johnny Reb he’s happy then and all the ruckus slowly ceases and then we got the curious pleasure as a man might say lying in his teeth of seeing their faces up close. Well truth to say they don’t look too devilish. Some of them laughing at us, pointing their muskets to round us up. If ever a man felt like a goddamn errant sheep it was then. Flocks of sad-looking bluecoats gathered in. God damn it. We feel shame and hurt much worse we find than bullets. Maybe a tincture of relief that we ain’t been butchered straight. They say Rebs like to kill their prisoners in harsh country but these cold-looking boys don’t do that. We never do hear no good story about the Rebs and we don’t like to be so close. Seems these boys be a division out of Arkansas, some place like that. Speaking like they got acorns in their mouths. God damn it. Dan FitzGerald says something to his captor and he gets a full box in the mush. Dan goes down and then gets up again, keeps silent. One of our companies is a bunch of them coloured boys and these is unpicked from the weave of prisoners. We got guards all thickly about us and looks like we being prepared for a march. Orders are given in their queer Southern voices. To take an order from a Reb. Most holy Jesus. We still have the hearts of free men though now we’re prisoners and those hearts are bursting with a wretched force. The Rebs line up the coloured company, faces to an old field ditch. About a hundred boys. They don’t know what’s happening no more than we do. An order is shouted and fifty Rebs are firing into the blacks and then those not shot start to run and cry out and then fifty other Rebs step forward with loaded guns to finish the task. The soldiers fall into the ragged ditch and then the job is ended with pistols and then the Rebs step away like they been shooting birds. John Cole looking at me with wordless amaze. Maybe here and there a doubtful gaze. But also a grimness here and there and here and there a glaze of satisfaction. Job that needed doing and it done, the Reb faces seem to say. Then the rest of us is told to form ranks and then we are told to move and then we move.
Andersonville. You ever hear tell of that place? Five days it take to march us down and if ever a spot weren’t worth the walk that’s it. All we got for our strength along the way is filthy water and soggy lumps of cornbread as they call it. Neither corn nor bread you ask me. A regiment of yellowlegs to guard us and they don’t have nothing either but the same foul fare. Worst-looking lot of soldiers I ever seen. Some of them got the shakes and some goitres and worse. It’s like being herded by ghouls. Hundreds fall on the trail and those with wounds must seek a surgeon in heaven. Bodies kicked away into ditches like the blacks was. Guess there must be many a poor bluecoat sleeping the eternal sleep in the ditches of Tennessee and Georgia. Feet swole up till you can’t keep your boots on or fear to take them off for never getting them back on. Hunger in your belly like a growing stone. The weight of hunger weighing you down mile by mile. And such a sick heart and a drenching fear. Third day a big thunderstorm and it only a huge song singing of our distress. Hard to get the darkness out of your head. Full ten thousand acres of dark blue and black clouds and lightning flinging its sharp yellow paint across the woods and the violent shout and clamour of the thunder. Then a thick deluge to speak of coming death. Tramping on and on, barefoot or clacking boot. Our faces round and sere and bleached like the seedpods of the flower honesty. If we had hidden knives we would fillet out these Rebels’ hearts. That the first day and the second. Looking about wanting to rend and ruin if we given a chance. John Cole says he keep seeing floating in his mind the drummer boy McCarthy who done his utmost and died. And then he seeing over and over the coloured men dropped foully into the ditch. Keep your thoughts quiet, John Cole, I say. Then the third day in the thunderstorm we suffer a change. The sun of Death burns our innards and the moon of Death pulls at our blood. Our blood slows and youth is cancelled and we feel like aged men full of years. Dejection and despair. Such weariness as was never recorded in the annals of warring men.
Well we come into this wide compound and see a great horde of poor bedraggled men. Union soldiers as once was. We got maybe a thousand tents Sibleys and A-frames. That’s our city. Avenue of dirt between making two halves and fifty paths into these curious residences. Must be three thousand prisoners maybe more. Hard to make out. Forlorn and ragged trees also look like prisoners of something beyond the high log fence. Watchtowers looking down on us. All we Irish troop in. Guards everywhere standing with muskets sloped and Confederate boys sitting by their propped guns maybe waiting for the order to annihilate us. We don’t know. A stench like it were coming from the arse of the devil. Heavy crust and smear of filth everywhere that has killed every growing thing. We can see soldiers taking a shit at the sinks as open as a field. Bony moony arses. Then we sit in thirteen to a tent, me and John and Dan among the rest. Dan keeping close to us because his mind be dark with remembering. He seen all this before, he says, at first I can’t catch what he means. The journey’s not been good to Dan, his feet are leaking yellow water looks like. If there’s a surgeon he must be on furlough, we don’t see them. Goddamn guards puts in two blacks with us, seem to think it’s humorous judging by their grins. One of them got a hand falling off where he took a swipe of a sabre and he’s missing some toes. This boy needs a doctor and he groaning all day and night on the filthy floor. All I can do is watch him. His friend tries to clean him up but everything’s too sore I guess. His friend says his name is Carthage Daly and at first he looks at us to see if we haters. I guess we ain’t because he tells us they been fighting now a year. Seen action in Virginia and also was under the walls of Richmond as the saying goes. Seems like a decent man and he tries and helps his friend who he says is called Bert Calhoun. Young Bert Calhoun needs a damn doctor is my opinion but there ain’t one. The whole prison camp full of this need. The Reb in charge of our little merry lane of tents is First Lieutenant Sprague. Any question you ask him he laughs, as if to say, you filthy bluecoats funny boys. We amuse him greatly. I ask the guard is there something to be done for Bert Calhoun and he laughs too. Guess we must be one of them comedic acts of Mr Noone. Probably could tour the South judging by the laughter. That boy’s hand is hanging by a thread, I say. Can’t you get someone to do for him? Surgeon won’t attend no nigger, says the guard. Private Kidd is his handle. Ain’t you got to tend a man so sick? says John Cole. I don’t know, says Private Kidd. He should a thought of that afore he thought to fight us. Goddamn niggers. There’s another dark-haired boy in the tent with us wants us to stop asking to help Bert Calhoun. Says they shoot anyone that helps the niggers. Says the niggers put in with us to find out where we stand. Says he seen just yesterday a guard shoot a bluecoat sergeant because he asked just the same question John Cole did. I’m looking at John Cole now see how he taking this. John Cole nods like a sage. Guess I understand, he says.