They rushed us into line. The officers shouting, using their swords almost like a measuring stick to align us. We fell down behind a wooden fence. In mud. It was the first day in two weeks it had finally stopped raining. We wished to sink into that mud until only our noses would stick out and let us breathe. As soon as that feeling hit me came the question: ‘But how will I shoot my rifle at them then?’. It’s fear clashing against this bizarre masculine honor that makes you want to kill people so you won’t feel mortified after.

We heard them before we could see them. They were Coburn’s boys. A full brigade. Five regiments zeroing in on us. Hungry, some of them shoeless. Moving towards us like a multicolored quilt with bayonets sticking out. That’s one of the many odd things about them, many of them have completely different uniforms, and yet if you look at each of them individually, no matter what they are wearing, brown jackets, gray jackets, blue jackets taken from our dead or captured supply wagons, white shirts, red shirts, no matter, you just know: That’s a Confederate infantryman. And he will kill me if I don’t manage to kill him first.

But like I said, first we heard them. At first it was like I could hear their silence, if that makes sense. That moment the marching stops, the shuffling through trees, the cling clang clong of metal, canteens dangling from belts, officers cocking pistols, men loading their rifles. Then nothing. The sound of the rustling of the trees, inviting play and sharing food on the grass, not state sanctioned murder. The sound that doesn’t penetrate your ears, but your gut, your bones, of 2,000 heartbeats and their breathing speeding up, as they work up their dander to come at you.

And then they surge forward. Mysteriously, cause you don’t see or hear anyone give a command. After that you see them, you see them come out of the tree line, into the open, but still too far to get a good shot at them.

Then your heart drops right into your stomach, like someone pushed over its scaffolding in your chest. They start running. You feel the ground vibrate. And the yelling. The yelling. It’s not yelling. It’s the sound of something that’s decided that all it now lives for is to tear right into you and just rip you apart. A vicious lash snapping out of 2,000 throats that seems to grab you by the back of your neck to pull you into the abyss. That’s when many piss themselves. I did too. Am not as much ashamed of the fact that I pissed myself as I am grateful that at least I didn’t have shit running over my legs. At least piss dries and it’s not so obvious.

For a second you hope they will realize we are behind a fence, we will have 400 yards of open field to pour our rifles into them and they will be smart about this and turn back. But that’s not how they are built. There’s a frenzy in the air. For them nothing in the world exists anymore. Only you as their destination, their final communion with their existence on this earth and the only way you can convince them to stop is to shoot them to pieces. With some even that doesn’t work and they’ll still run, shot up, to at least get one slash or stab or smack at your firing line. They’re madmen. Very focused madmen.

And they stink. They reek. Weeks of not washing. Months of wearing the same uniforms. So now it’s not just the screaming. It’s the bubonic plague, but it moves and it’s screeching.

The sound they make cuts. Like a wounded animal you’ve angered and it has nothing to lose and will have your blood no matter what you do now.

They’re not even halfway and some of the guys next to you become like little children. They drop their rifles. First they crawl. Then they get up. Running. Some stay, but yell: ‘Our line is breaking. We can’t hold them.’ This then makes more of us skedaddle to the rear. God knows where to. Just back, away from here. Anywhere where those fatalistic lunatics aren’t.

You shoot your rifle before you realize you never took aim. You forget to reload even though you’ve gone through the whole routine a hundred times. You forget, even though the veterans have warned you, you would forget. They told you to focus on nothing but that routine in your head, nothing else, but it’s too late. You watch your own hands and they’re doing everything wrong. You pick up a rifle left behind by a fellow soldier who bolted back, back to mama, or wherever to. You shoot that one. You count to ten to steady yourself and it takes all your energy to reload. To get it right. Your brain has never had to do anything harder, and yet you know it’s not that complicated. You curse your own brain for not functioning properly when it should be doing all it can to keep you alive.

Then the first guys actually get hit. You see bullets knock through cheeks. Flesh gets torn off faces. Like you smash a pumpkin with a small pick ax. When a bullet hits a human body it’s not loud, but it’s unmistakable. It’s a unique dull popping sound. A small pebble piercing a bag of water. Now you are reloading AND praying this doesn’t happen to you or if it does that at least you get hit right in the heart so you are done with this. Your biggest fear is to be hit between your legs. Or that you turn a certain way and a bullet tears out both your eyes, but you survive. And if a head shot is coming, please, Lord, let it be fatal. You don’t want to have a hole in the middle of your face, nose gone, for the rest of your life. Imagine life where your chances with women dwindle to zero. Even hookers would refuse you.

Their screaming intensifies. It no longer sounds like anything a living creature can produce. It’s like the volume of it is debating with you and trying to convince you to let go, to die, to embrace the mercy of dying right here and now.

Then comes that moment that you know. If you wait even 20 more seconds one of them will literally jump at your throat, pin you to the ground and strangle you to death by pushing his rifle against your throat with both hands. It’s already happening to one of your acquaintances five yards away. And yet you do nothing to pull the assailant off him.

It’s pointless to try and reload. This is where your bayonet training should kick in. But it doesn’t. You weakly throw your rifle at them. Thinking it will fly like a spear. It does no such thing. It just sticks in the ground. Now you run. You run like a little boy who’s five years old and thinks he will never see his mum and dad again if he doesn’t run. You run like a lost boy searching for his parents at a busy market and believes the market is endlessly big and home can never be found again.

You step on a wounded comrade and in a flash you notice you pushed his nose into the mud. This may make you responsible for his death. Yet you don’t stop. You don’t go back to turn him around. Now it’s like every aspect of you that you could ever be proud of stepped out of your body and is sitting with that comrade you drove deeper into the mud.

You crash through the lines of a friendly brigade that is now forming to stem the rebel tide. From the look on your face some of them are already trying to turn back, but their officers are still in control and shove them back into line. For a second you think: Where are your officers? Why couldn’t they keep us steady?

Once behind this fresh brigade you collapse on a tree log. There’s a few seconds of relief, but then shame. Teamsters trying to get ammunition wagons closer to the front already know what happened to you. They pity you.

A small sniper unit is way up in a tree behind you. One of them loading rifles on the ground for his comrades above looks at you and ask: ‘You alright their, mate? They’re on us thick like fleas. They’re turning our flank. Damn rascals are outnumbered two to one and they’re mauling our flank.’

Your head hangs between your legs and you say ‘it’s a real mess out there, we had no artillery support’, but the guy probably never hears you, your voice doesn’t go as loud as you intended.

You know you are making excuses. They ran towards your line. They did the more dangerous part. Artillery or no, the line should have held. Besides, in these thick woods it’s nearly impossible to use artillery effectively. That’s why they dare to attack an enemy that outguns them. They chose the worst possible nightmare of a battlefield cause they are desperate enough and this wilderness doesn’t make a difference anymore. They are used to conditions that break most humans, your side isn’t. You get 4,000 calories to eat most days. They get 1,200 on a good day. Even their corpses decay differently. Theirs just get bleached over time, the corpses on your side swell and then break open.

An officer drags you from the tree log. ‘Get yourself a gun, lad.’ He shoves you towards about 20 wild eyed young guys like yourself. One asks: ‘Who’s this glory hunter?’ A guy answers: ‘It’s some lieutenant with the 3rd Vermont. He has something to prove, I guess.’

The lieutenant comes back with about ten more men and a new crate of rifles. He shoves a rifle into your hands. ‘Form a line. The boys up yonder need us.’

You’re thinking: not this madness again, but you can’t just make off now.

As the lieutenant orders this makeshift infantry company forward, a courier rides up on a magnificent black horse. ‘Orders of general Burnside, everyone fall back to the bridge immediately. The rebs are rolling up our flank.’

You ask if he knows anything about the rest of the front. All he says is: ‘Not good.’

He then rides off to find the divisional commander to order a retreat all long this line.

The lieutenant is visibly dissapointed, but gives in.

‘Alright then, boys, follow me.’

Once you are far enough removed from the fighting a feverish, compelling urge takes over. You want to apologize to the boy you stepped on. You stop boys passing by, put both hands on their shoulders, shake them and say with a pleading voice: ‘I am sorry, I am so so sorry. Please believe me, I am sorry!’ Each time one shoves you away you grab another one. One has to bite you in your fingers so you let go of him. This continues until one with the most innocent, big, watery green eyes says simply: ‘I forgive you.’ With tears streaming down your cheeks you explain what you did. The boy’s eyes go moist too, but with a very steady, calm voice says: ‘After this war, whenever you can pick someone up, pick them up. That’s all you have to do. You are forgiven.’

The boy, though not older than you, strokes your cheek and your hair like a father would, then walks away, in search of his own regiment.

That is how Henry got saddled with running the first homeless shelter in a boom town out west a few years after Lee surrendered to Grant at Appomatox.

A role he half hates, half loves, and can’t quit, because as soon as he thinks of going back to farming like he did before the war, he feels that wounded man’s head under his foot again.