Bull Run

In response to Steve32's Dueling Circle Challenge, this short story is placed in the time of the Civil War at the battle of Bull Run. Just so you know, my account here on the KFM main website is MasterKorad but on the forums it's Johnny.

Private Canderous Ordo was marching to his doom, alongside him was Corporal Carth Onasi, an experienced war veteran who knew battle well. "On me! Form line of battle on me!" A sergeant was yelling and directing with his officer's blade. Canderous had just signed up in the Union Army and before he knew it he was marching to a battle nearly 300 yards away. A short time after he signed up he was given a proper uniform and a Rifle with a bayonet for close-combat. The first few weeks they had trained and drilled and trained and drilled, and some of the men said there wasn't going to be a battle at all, but they were wrong. Just about 250 yards away was a patch of tall trees where he was sure the Rebel's were hiding, just waiting to ambush them. He had seen the first company go ahead and get themselves torn apart. Nearly all the troops in the first company were hit 10 or 20 times and were dead before they even hit the ground. Now his company was going to march over there and most probably, they were all going to die. Canderous hurried to get his rifle loaded and ready to fire, at the camp they had learned to reload 3 times a minute. They continued marching.

"So what do you think?" Canderous asked Carth casually. Carth turned his head, his eyes looked as if they were a thousand years old.

"What?" He asked.

"What do you think?" Canderous repeated, "Do you think it'll be a glorious victory or a bloody defeat?"

Carth didn't answer, not at first anyway. Then finally he spoke, "I don't know, I really don't know. But I don't think it's going to be a victory here today. We have more troops but we don't have the advantage. They're troops are using those fallen trees for cover, and we have about as much chance as hitting them as we have trying to shoot a fly." He answered solemnly. They continued marching, and Canderous wondered if he would live to remember this day...

"The blue-bellies are coming!" Mission Vao yelled to the rest of the Rebel's hiding behind the fallen trees. She was peeking behind the fallen tree and saw the Union troops marching forward. The Rebel's didn't seem too worried and loaded their rifles.

"They can't get us here." Atton Rand said. "They're all going to die like the last company they sent over here."

"Ok men, you know what to do, take positions!" The commanding officer told the Rebel infantry. Mission took her spot at the log and set her rifle on it and aimed at the Union troops, they were too far away now but as they came closer they would be torn apart by a rain of bullets.

200 yards, thought Canderous, soon this will be all over, and I'll be dead. Carth marched along side him. Soon, they were within firing range.

"Present arms!" The officer shouted to his troops.

"Present arms!" The sergeant repeated. The second company raised their rifles as a hail of bullets rained down on them. There were big casualties, somewhere behind him another corporal's head flew off and more men were dead before they hit the ground.

"Fire!" The officer yelled atop his horse. Canderous fired, Carth fired, and the rest of the second company fired.

"Fire at will!" The sergeant yelled! A second rain of bullets came down upon the Union troops, Canderous thought it would be harder for the Rebel's to hit him if he was lying down. So he was lying prone. Carth was kneeling, and as an experienced war veteran, was firing and reloading about 4 times a minute. There was so much smoke they were shooting blind. So much death, everywhere people were dieing Canderous felt something tugging at his leg, he was sure he had been hit and it would be all over in moments. Bullets were everywhere. Canderous looked down at his leg, the sergeant was tugging at his leg, trying to get his attention. The sergeant had been hit once in the leg and again in the arm.

"Come on soldier, we're to retreat back to the trees." The sergeant shouted over the ear-splitting noise. Canderous didn't want to move, he wanted to stay right here and never move again. But his feet moved they followed the sergeant as he started running to the trees. Soon though, the sergeant was hit twice in the chest and once in the head and before he knew it he was down.

"Retreat to the trees!" Canderous shouted, trying to pull back the remaining troops to safety. Just then he remembered Carth. He looked back at where Carth was kneeling. "Carth, to the trees!" He yelled. Carth looked at him and nodded.

"To the trees! Pull back to the trees!" Carth shouted. But as he got up to move, 3 or 4 bullets hit him in the back and he fell down.

"Carth!" Canderous shouted. This was it, Carth was going to die, he thought. He ran over to where Carth was lying down, gasping for breath. But as Canderous reached him, he was shot again in the stomach. Now everyone knows that a belly wound was fatal, every time the med's came they would lift up shirts checking to see if you had a belly wound, and if you did, there was nothing to do but let you sit there and die a slow death. "Carth!" Canderous cried. He was crying now. This couldn't be happening, this can't be happening! Canderous thought. But as he turned Carth's cold body over and looked at his face, once filled with wisdom, was now cold, and dead.

War is always, in all ways, appalling. Lives are stopped in youth, worlds are ended, and even for those who do survive -and the vast majority of soldiers who go to war do survive- The mental damage done is often permanent. What they have seen and been forced to do is frequently so horrific and devastating that it simply cannot be tolerated by the human pshyche.

Now there is an attempt to understand this form of injury and deal with it. It is called post-traumatic stress disorder by those who try to cure it, They give it a technical name in the attempt to make something almost incomprehensible understandable, in the hope that, by doing this, they will make it curable.

But in other times, and other wars, they used more descriptive terms. In the Second World War the mental damage was called battle fatigue, and there were rudimentary efforts to help the victims. These usually invovled bed rest and the use of sedatives or other drugs.

In the First World War it was called shll shock, based on the damage done by the overwhelming use, for the first time in modern war, of artillery fire against soldiers in stationary positions (trenches). The concussion of exploding incoming rounds, thousands upon thousands of them, often left men deaf and dazed, many of them with a symptom called the thousand-yard stare. The afflicted were essentially not helped at all and simply sent home for their families to care for. Most were irrational; many were in a vegetative state.

In the Civil War the syndrome was generally not recognized at all. While the same horrors existed as those in modern war, in some ways they were even worse because the technological aspect of war being born then, the wholesale killing by men using raw firepower, was so new and misunderstood. The same young men were fed into the madness. But in those days there was no scientific knowledge of mental disorders and no effort was made to help the men who were damaged. Some men came through combat unscathed. Most did not. These men were somehow different from other men. They were said to have soldier's heart.

This quote is the foreward of the book, Soldier's Heart, written by Gary Paulsen.