IT was in the early summer of 1864. We were in the trenches at Spottsylvania.
It had been raining continuously all day, with now and then a heavy downpour, just to remind us that a little rain ought not to matter to old soldiers. By the use of fragments of fence rail and such other sticks as we could secure to stand upon, we managed to avoid sinking below our ankles into the soft, red, Virginian mud.
It was a little after two o’clock in the morning, but we were all awake and on duty. For it was not General Grant’s purpose at that time to allow us much of repose. We had stood in the trenches and in the rain all day, and we must stand in the trenches and in the rain all night, and as much longer as it might please the enemy to keep us there.
The night was one of the blackest I have ever known. There was no possibility of sending couriers anywhere, and all orders had, therefore, to be passed from mouth to mouth up and down the lines.
Every few minutes a great downpour of bucketfuls would come; and, worse still, every now and then the enemy would rush forward in the darkness and come upon us at pistol-shot range without notice.
It was Ulysses S. Grant we were fighting, and that was the line on which he was going to “fight it out, if it took all summer.”
We felt the need of entertainment, so somebody called out to a sergeant: “Tell us a story.”
“No, no,” said Johnny Garrett, “let Griffith tell a story, for he never finishes, and this is a long night.”
The suggestion was applauded and insisted upon. Whether Griffith blushed or not, it was much too dark to see; but after a little chaffing he consented to tell the story. Just as he began Billy Goodwin, who always wanted to gamble on everything, offered to bet three to one that he would never finish.
“Shut up, Goodwin,” said Johnny Garrett, “and let him begin, anyhow. If he don’t get through by the middle of the night, I’ll negotiate the bet with you.”
Thereupon Griffith began.
“Well, ’taint much of a story—only a bear story.”
“Bet two to one he never gets to the bear,” said the incorrigible Goodwin.
“Be quiet, will you?” cried some one at the right of the company. The man next to him mistook this adjuration for a command sent down the line; so, to the astonishment of everybody to the left of us, the word was passed from mouth to mouth: “Be quiet, will you! Be quiet, will you! Be quiet, will you!”
“Well,” said Griffith, “’twas about six year ago, or maybe seven. No, lemme see—’twas the same year that Jim Coffee married Mirandy Adams. Must have been eight year ago, I s’pose.”
Just then came the order down the line: “Perfect silence! Enemy advancing!”
The next minute a line of bayonets broke out of the fog in front of us, and a flaring fire blazed forth in our faces. The charge upon us was a determined one, and for full three minutes it required all our efforts to repel it. After that the artillery silenced all conversation by pouring a shower of shot and shell into the retiring assailants.
“Still ready to make that bet,” said Billy Goodwin. But Griffith began again undaunted. He was a phlegmatic person, whose mind was never driven from its not very large purposes by any shock—even that of a shower of canister.
“Well, as I wuz a-sayin’, it wuz about six or eight year ago—it don’t really matter, I s’pose, how long ago it wuz—”
“No,” said Billy Goodwin, “let her rip.”
“Well, as I wuz a-sayin’—” Just then the enemy charged again.
Griffith had captured a Henry rifle two days before, in the battle of the Wilderness, and it was loaded with fourteen ball cartridges. With that deliberation which characterized him in everything, he delivered those fourteen shots in the face of the enemy, who by that time had retired. Then he turned and began to fill the magazine of his rifle again, saying: “Well, you see, as I wuz a-sayin’, Peter Coffee he taken a cawntract for a bridge over Tye River. Now Peter always pertended that he knew how to lay out bridge work. Of course I knew better. I’d been to Fletcher Massie’s school with him, and I knew just how little ’rithmetic he knew. Fletch, he carried me through the rule o’ three, and you can’t lay out bridge work till you’ve bin through the rule o’ three.”
The day was dawning, and just then came an order for us to move to the right, the extreme right, four or five miles away. We marched at once. Grant was making his celebrated move by the left flank.
When we got into position, it was necessary to throw up such earthworks as we could with our bayonets, using fence rails for revetments. This occupied us during most of the day, and scattered as we were, we were not able to listen to the remainder of Griffith’s story.
That afternoon, to our surprise, we received a ration of three-quarters of a pound of flour to each man. When we had baked it, I happened to go by Tom Booker’s position and saw him eating the entire cake. Tom looked at me pitifully as I remonstrated with him for eating three days’ rations in advance, and he said with tears in his voice if not in his eyes: “I know it, but I’m go’n’ t’ fill my stomach once, if I starve for it. I wish I was a woman or a baby.”
A few minutes later came the order to move; our battery was at that time unhorsed. It had been planned to leave it in the rear, because its guns could not be moved for lack of horses, but with one voice the men had demanded the privilege of taking rifles and going with the battalion as sharp-shooters.
On this march the battalion was the rear guard of the army, and our rifle-armed battery was the rear guard of the battalion.
For fifty-six hours we marched without food or sleep, pausing every fifteen minutes to fight awhile, and then double-quicking to catch up.
There was no chance for Griffith in all this. But when we got to Cold Harbor, and went into the works, Billy Goodwin at a favorable moment insisted that he should resume his story.
“You see I’ve got three bets on it,” said Billy.
Just then a grape-shot passed through George Campbell’s foot, and distracted our attention for a time. Then came General Field, who ordered us to burn a barn in front that was full of sharp-shooters. The first two or three shots from the battalion did the business. The sharp-shooters ran with all their might across a thousand yards of space, while we poured upon them the sharpest rifle fire we could deliver. Some of them got to cover, and some of them didn’t.
It was not till we moved to Bottom’s Bridge that Griffith had a chance to resume his story. There we were all sick from having eaten boiled potato vines, for lack of other food. Being too ill to go to sleep, we demanded a continuation of the story.
“Well, as I wuz a-sayin’,” said Griffith, “I’d gone clean through the rule o’ three in Fletch Massie’s school, and Peter Coffee he knew it. As I told yuh, he’d taken the cawntract to lay out this bridge work; so he got his wife to write to me to come up and do the ’rithmetic. Well, just as I wuz startin’ up, Bill Linsey says to me,—you know he kept a store down there at Arrington, he says to me, says he, ‘Griffith, there’s a runlet o’ cider that’s got twenty gallon in it. Can you lif’ it?’ I says, ‘Yes, I can lif’ it and drink out o’ the bung, if you’ll let me drink es much es I please.’ I lifted it and took a big swallow of the sweet stuff, then I says, ‘I can carry it up the mountain,’ says I, and he says, says he, ‘On your back?’ says he, an’ I says, ‘Yes, on my back,’ says I. An’ he says, says he, ‘Well, you can have it ef you’ll agree to carry it up the mountain on your back, and not take no lift frum nobody.’”
Just then a battery, three thousand yards away, opened on us, and we had to run to cover, every man of us with his hands on his stomach, in physical memory of the potato vines. Our guns were not in position, and all we could do was to ensconce ourselves behind big trees. As the artillery fire kept up, General Alexander rode to this point of the lines and ordered up three batteries of rifled cannon; by the time they had finished their little controversy with the enemy, we had recovered from the potato tops sufficiently to go to sleep. So Griffith’s story was to be “continued in our next.”
Our “next” came only after we got to Petersburg. There our battery took charge of the mortars of the army. Griffith was one of the men I selected when asked to volunteer for a particularly perilous mortar service. He might or might not be able to tell a story, but he could stand fire as well as any man I ever knew.
About four o’clock one morning, when we had been engaged in a fierce bombardment all night, the fire ceased for a time, and Billy Goodwin demanded the rest of that bear story.
“You see I’ve got seven bets on that story,” said Billy, “and I don’t want to win any man’s money unfairly. One bet is that he won’t ever get to the bear, and I don’t want to take any man’s money without givin’ him a chance.”
“Well, wait a minute,” I replied, “till I start up the fire; we’ve got to have some breakfast.”
The fire was out.
“Somebody must go up,” I said, “to the next fort and get a chunk of fire. It won’t do to get fire by shooting a mortar,”—which was our usual way,—“because if we do that, we’ll start this bombardment again.”
“I’ll go,” said Griffith, “and then I’ll tell the rest of that story.”
There was a fearful hail of bullets between the two forts. The cannon were silent, but the musketry fire was incessant. Griffith started off, crouching as he went up the path so as to expose as little as possible of his person.
That was the last I ever saw of him.
As he was borne off on the litter, he sent word to me that he “hoped I hadn’t any bets on that bear story.”