Why you do what you do
by R.E.Brents
You are standing shoulder-to-shoulder in a line of soldiers with another line standing less than three feet behind you. It’s hot. The sun is baking you through the woolen sack coat you wish you’d left back in camp; your cotton shirt is soaked with sweat. Legs itch as the wool trousers tickle them and rivulets of sweat run down toward wool socks and brogans that are soaked because your Captain didn’t see that wide swampy ground that a blind man walking backwards couldn’t have missed, and marched you right through the middle of it.
You smell like campfire smoke, sweat, swamp mud and insect repellant. Your back is stiff from sleeping on the ground and you can’t get that salty disgusting taste of black powder off your tongue. Your cartridge box, canteen, haversack, belt, and rifle have all found annoying places to dig into your shoulders and back after a full day of quick-time marching through the trees. And you’re hungry.
You stand there…and wait, thankful that your beaten-up dirty old hat is shading your eyes from the bright sun and keeping the deer flies out of your hair. At the same time you hate it because it feels like an oven sitting on top of your head causing streams of sweat to dribble in your eyes and tickle the back of your neck.
You grumble out of the side of your mouth to your file partner, “I could be at home right now, watching the game on TV and drinking a cold one. WHAT the heck am I DOING here?” Like tossing a match onto a bed of dry straw, that starts the comments and jokes spreading through the company. Quietly at first, then louder as the soldiers grow bolder.
“QUIET IN THE RANKS!” bellows out from the print shop manager who is your Sergeant. “Attention COMPANY!” from the farmer wearing the Captain’s bars. All is quiet save the buzzings, thrips, and chirps of a few thousand insects annoyed at your intrusion into their field.
About a hundred yards to your front is a thick forest of pines, maples and birches. The colors are muted, tinted slightly blue and shimmering by the dense humid air and haze of the afternoon heat. A sound is filtering out of the woods. It’s muffled, but what you hear conjures a vision of cattle moving through the brush; bells clanging about their necks, accompanied by the sharp crackling of dead branches breaking under foot and the soft shuffling sound of dry leaves. Then you recognize it: Tin cups! Dozens of battered and tarnished tin cups hanging by their handles from haversack straps are banging into rifle butts and tree trunks: The sound of an approaching army. You can hear distant voices shouting commands, but can’t quite make out what they are saying.
“LOAD!” This from the Captain. He’s no farmer today; the command is strong and clear.
You reach into your cartridge box, pull out a paper cartridge, one of a hundred or so that you spent the Thursday night frantically rolling because you put it off until the last moment. You bite off the end of the cartridge and are rewarded with a flood of foul tasting sulpherous and salty, mouth-drying course black powder filling your mouth. You spit, trying to avoid the brogans of the guy next to you. What didn’t end up in your mouth is poured down the barrel of your musket. You reach into your cap pouch, pull out a tiny brass cap and place it on the cone of you rifle, hoping that THIS time, it doesn’t fall off before you pull the trigger.
From the tree line, emerges a ragged file of soldiers in blue uniforms. The Enemy! They close ranks to the commands of their officers and sergeants. Your company stands patiently, waiting for them to form up in a shoulder-to-shoulder mirror image of your company. With a critical eye, you tell yourself that your guys could have done a much faster and more professional job than that raggedy bunch of no-account Yankees.
The blue line of soldiers looks back across the field at you. They start to advance, trying to keep their lines straight as they stumble over the uneven ground and through knee-high grass. Again, you tell yourself, “We look a lot better than that!”
Spit out a little more powder, wipe the stinging sweat from your eyes, adjust the gear to a less uncomfortable position…
“READY”
All rifles come up. You scan the advancing enemy, choosing your target. There he is: That big guy with the scraggly beard. You had to listen to him telling some really bad jokes around the campfire last night when the Yankees came across the picket lines to visit, and now it’s payback.
“AIM”
You take aim (at the trees above his head). From the corners of your eyes, you see a row of rifles, left and right. Over your right shoulder, pokes another rifle as you hear the soldier behind you say quietly, “coming over” His left forearm rests lightly on your right shoulder blade to steady his aim. You ready yourself for the noise; try to ignore the grasshopper that just buzzed past your face.
“FIRE BY COMPANY…FIRE!”
A roar, accompanied by a slight kick of the rifle against your shoulder. Dense white smoke rolls away from you like a tidal wave and for a second, you can’t see a thing but that whiteness. It quickly thins out enough to see that the blue line is still standing, including that scraggly bearded chap who doesn't have enough sense to fall when you shoot him. A few gaps have appeared in their line but they are quickly closed as they continue to advance.
And that is when it hits you: Yes, you could have been at home, watching a game on TV, drinking a cold one…but then you would have missed one of the best weekends of the summer!
This is why you’re here: The sweat, the smoke that chases you around the campfire no matter where you sit, the taste of powder, wet feet, sore back, the noise, sleeping on the ground, eating bacon seasoned with wood ash, drinking coffee from a fire blackened tin mug, the feel, the experience, the camaraderie.
….and now it’s their turn…rows of Yankee rifle barrels...all seem to be pointing directly at you...
You look over at your file partner and grin. The private who drives a pizza delivery car six days a week and attends evening classes at the Technical College is grinning back through white teeth covered in specks of black powder.
THIS is why you do what you do.
