My Lady of the North by Randall Parrish

Author:Randall Parrish [Parrish, Randall]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: 1861-1865 -- Fiction, United States -- History -- Civil War
Published: 2010-02-15T07:43:10+00:00

and then the drowsy god pressed down my heavy eyelids, and I fell asleep.

CHAPTER XXII

THE BATTLE IN THE SHENANDOAH

To me it has always seemed remarkable that after all my other battle experiences—Antietam, Gettysburg, the Wilderness, ay! even including that first fierce baptism of fire at Manassas—no action in which I ever participated should remain so clearly photographed upon memory as this last desperate struggle for supremacy in the Shenandoah. Every minute detail of the conflict, at least so far as I chanced to be a personal participant, rises before me as I write, and I doubt not I could trace to-day each step taken upon that stricken field.

The reveille had not sounded when I first awoke and, rolling from my blanket, looked about me. Already a faint, dim line of gray, heralding the dawn, was growing clearly defined in the east, and making manifest those heavy fog-banks which, hanging dank and low, obscured the valley. The tired men of my troop were yet lying upon the ground, wrapped tightly in their blankets, oblivious of the deadly work before them; but I could hear the horses already moving uneasily at their picket- ropes, and observed here and there the chilled figure of a sentry leaning upon his gun, oddly distorted in form by the enveloping mist.

Directly in advance of where we rested, a long hill sloped gently upward for perhaps a hundred yards, its crest topped with a thick growth of young oak-trees, yet seemingly devoid of underbrush. No troops were camped in our immediate front, and feeling curious to ascertain something of our formation, as well as to examine the lay of the land between us and the position occupied by the enemy, I walked slowly forward, unhindered, until I attained the crest. Numberless birds were singing amid the branches overhead, while the leaves of the low bushes I passed on my way were glistening with dew. Except for those long rows of sleeping soldiers, I seemed utterly alone within some rural solitude upon a quiet Sabbath morning. Not an unwonted sound reached me to make discord; so quiet, indeed, was all the earth that I became startled by the sudden chatter of a squirrel disturbed at my approach, and unthinkingly I stooped to pluck a delicate pink flower blooming in the grass, and placed it in a ragged buttonhole of my old gray jacket.

The fog yet held the secrets of the valley safely locked within its brown hand, and I could penetrate none of its mysteries. It was like gazing down from some headland into a silent, unvexed sea. But directly across from where I stood, apparently along the summit of another chain of low hills similar to those we occupied, I could perceive the flames of numerous camp-fires leaping up into sudden radiance, while against the brightening sky a great flag lazily flapped its folds to the freshening breeze. Evidently our opponents were first astir, and the headquarters of some division of the enemy must be across yonder.

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