When Johnny Came Marching Home Read Online Free Page A

need the body."
    Doc stepped forward and placed his hands on Virgil Harris's shoulders. "You go ahead and get ready to bury your boy. I'll keep the body here until you're in need of it."

Chapter Three
    Spotsylvania County, Virginia, 1864
    We could hear them screaming as the flames roared all around. The wounded lay in the no-man's-land between the two armies, awaiting the next assault that would allow us to drag them to safety. Then the fire had started. I don't know if it was caused by a stray artillery shell, or if it was deliberately set by one side or the other. The Wilderness in Spotsylvania County was a nearly impenetrable area of scrub brush and forest, covering more than seventy square miles, and chosen as a point of conflict by Lee's Army of Northern Virginia to limit the effectiveness of the Union's superior artillery.
    Abel and Johnny and I were holed up behind a fallen tree awaiting the command to again charge the Confederate line. But the fire had ended that. Now we just waited and listened as the wounded, Union and Rebels alike, screamed in horror as they burned to death in the raging brush fire.
    "Somebody's gotta go help them boys." Abel was staring at me as he spoke, his face covered with dirt and ash, his eyes wide with the terror of what he was proposing. He looked behind us. "Where the hell's all our officers? Why ain't they sendin' us out ta git 'em?"
    "They're keepin' their asses safe, jus' like always," Johnny snapped. "Jus' like all of us gotta do, else we'll be layin' out there gettin' burned up too."
    Another scream reached my ears as the fire reached another soldier. It was long and sustained and filled with terror, and it cut me to my gut. "We gotta go and get anybody we can," I said. I looked at Abel and saw the fear in his eyes, the same fear I felt myself. Abel gave a short, brusque nod and I knew he was ready to go with me. I turned to Johnny, who stared at me as though I were speaking in a foreign tongue. I kicked him in the thigh. "Come on, while there's still smoke to give us cover." I had been promoted to sergeant several months earlier, so I outranked them both, and I made it sound as much like an order as I could.
    Abel and I eased ourselves over the fallen tree and began to crawl forward. When we were halfway to the flaming brush I looked back and saw that Johnny had finally begun to follow.
    Miraculously, no one fired a shot in our direction. Maybe the thick smoke hid us from the Rebels; maybe they were just glad to see someone going to the dying men, hoping just like us that the screaming would stop.
    When we reached the fire we used our canteens to wet our bandannas and cover our noses and mouths. Even so the smoke pressed into our lungs and burned our eyes, and the heat from the burning brush made us feel like we were being roasted on a spit.
    Abel and I each grabbed a soldier by the collar. Their uniforms were covered in ash and soot and you couldn't tell if they wore blue or gray, or even where or how badly they were wounded. They were breathing and peering up at us with pleading, fear-filled eyes, and that was all that mattered.
    As I dragged my soldier back I passed Johnny. "Go get somebody. Nobody's shooting at us."
    "Nobody's shootin' at you ," Johnny growled back. "They're waitin' to blow my ass ta hell an' back."
    We had made three trips to the fire before some officer saw us and ordered others to help, but by then the flames had overtaken the battlefield and the screams began to lessen and finally stop, and we knew there was no point in going out again, that there would be no one left to save.
    When the smoke cleared the shooting started again, each side taking potshots at the other, the mercy we had felt an hour earlier disappearing with the smoke. We stayed low behind the log and I looked back at the boys we had pulled to safety. There were nearly a dozen and I could tell now that at least two wore Rebel uniforms. One of the Rebs stared back at me, a mixture of gratitude