The American: A Middle Western Legend Read Online Free

turned once more, and saluted.

VIII
    They marched through Washington, but they were not proud any more. Their uniforms were faded and dusty, and their shoes crunched ankle-deep in the June mud. Two weeks of training had convinced both them and their colonel that they would not be soldiers, yet they had learned how to load their rifles, how to fire in unison in the same general direction, and not to sneer at that legendary figure, Johnny Reb. They had learned too to make camp and break camp, and they were beginning to learn how to march. In Washington, they were just another regiment passing through, and there was an endless stream of such regiments, and in the end they all came back, limping, decimated, on litters and in wagons—or sometimes they did not come back at all and they would be canceled, as it was termed, since you can’t reconstitute a regiment out of two or three survivors, not when you’re in a hurry, not when the situation is as desperate as it was then, in the summer of 1864, so desperate that this bedraggled line of Ohio farm boys was ordered to the front, as the colonel said, “To murder?”
    â€œTo murder, if you think of it that way,” the general answered.
    â€œWith two weeks of training? They’re not troops, they’re nothing.”
    â€œThey’re men, aren’t they?”
    â€œThen it’s murder.”
    â€œIf you want to call it murder, call it murder,” the general agreed.
    Of this, only rumors came to Pete; he knew that they were marching south, and already he had seen more of the world than he had ever dreamed existed. He had seen great cities, and he had seen the nation’s capital. And the edge had gone; fear came into his heart and mind, and into his legs too, the whole fabric of him, fear that hung like a pall over the nation, so great was the slaughter, so constant, so fruitless. Yet he was harder than he had any right to be at the age of sixteen, harder than the ten or twelve who had run away already out of homesickness and terror, harder than the one who was caught, brought back, and hanged before parade ranks. Sergeant Jerry O’Day said he had the makings of a soldier, and some of the men shared chewing tobacco and liquor with him, and he was strong as a young horse, used to going barefoot, so that when the paper soles of his shoes wore through, his feet did not bleed, but only became tougher than before. If not for the fear, if not for the sense of disaster which increased constantly as they moved south, translating itself into confusion, hesitation, marching and countermarching, he would have been reasonably happy. He had enough to eat, and marching was not as hard as work. They no longer sang, it was true, but at night, in bivouac under the summer stars, he had men around him who were his comrades; he had never known that before. There was talk, and he loved talk, loved to listen to it, to the sound of words, to the soft, lazy American accents, and to the wonderful commonplace of:
    â€œGod, I’m tired.”
    â€œSonovabitch, I ain’t going to have no feet left, just wear them down to the ankles and polish the bones:”
    â€œTell you something, Jed, you wear them down to the ankles and sure enough they’ll send you home.”
    â€œYou ain’t going home a long time, soldier.”
    â€œGoing to write a letter to Johnny Reb.”
    â€œHow?”
    â€œGoing to pacify us both—just meet and shake hands.”
    â€œJust shake, stranger, huh?”
    â€œThat’s right.”
    â€œAnd he puts a lead in your belly, huh?”
    â€œThat’s right.”
    Every night there was such talk, so much of it. Pete didn’t want to be shot—be heard terrible tales of men who were shot; but he didn’t want to give up this life either.
    He was not a demanding person; he complained less than the average soldier, and he was so grateful for small favors that the men in his company came to