Samuel fluttered his eyes open. Where the hell was he? And why did his head hurt? There were questions coming at him faster than he could answer them. Did he have any answers? At the moment, he wasn’t sure.
After he laid there for a moment, some started filtering in. He knew his name: Samuel David Cooper. He knew he was from Virginia. He knew he fought for the Confederacy in the War Between the States. Once he’d remembered that, it all came flooding back to him.
In 1862, Jefferson Davis, President of the Confederacy had asked for volunteers to help fill out the Army of Northern Virginia. Sam had eagerly joined up, and liked his life as a soldier well enough. He was certainly going somewhere in life. Better than being stuck on a farm in Southwest Virginia.
Now, on to a more pressing question…why did his head hurt? The last thing he remembered was shouting to his cousin to get his head down before he got it shot off, and then everything went blank. He started to reach his left arm up to feel the side of his head, but found he couldn’t move it.
He looked around, as best he could, and found that there was somebody laying on top of his immobile limb. He looked around a little more and found that there were many somebodys laying around. He was all tangled in with them. He could see the ground up above him. He must be in a pit.
If he was in a pit, surrounded by bodies that weren’t moving, this must be a grave. And if this is a grave, did that mean that he was dead? It couldn’t. If he was dead, he wouldn’t be conscious and wouldn’t be having any thoughts, much less these.
Working for what seemed like a long time, he finally managed to pull his arm free and raised it up to his head. Just above his ear, and along the side of his head, there was a messy gash, and it was bleeding pretty good. Well, if he was unconscious and bleeding from the head, that makes sense why people thought he was dead.
When he pulled his hand down in front of his face and looked at it, not only was there a lot of blood, but even a few maggots crawled around on his fingers. How long had he been here? Everything (possibly everybody) around him smelled of death and decay. The stench was everywhere, and seemed to be crawling inside his nostrils with every breath.
Sam pushed a body off his, and found movement a much easier task. Once he had freed his legs, it only took a little while longer to climb out of the pit. Yes, it was a burial pit. He had been lumped in with all the other dead Confederates, killed in the wilderness somewhere close to his home.
He looked back into the pit from which he came. A pile of bodies wearing Confederate grey filled the hole. Sam didn’t know most of the people, and that was good. Looking down there too closely, he was liable to see someone he did know, and that would haunt him for a very long time, to be sure.
“First things first,” Sam said out loud. Or, did he think it? At this point, the cobwebs were still fresh, and he couldn’t be sure. He got up and decided to try and find a creek or stream or some kind of water source. He had to wash his head off, and he was about as thirsty as he had ever been. When he felt his canteen still slung around him, Sam decided that he should relish the small victory that that was.
As he looked around to get his bearings, he spied the body of a Yankee lying behind a tree just south of his position. When he turned the corpse over, he noticed it was without a head. He also saw that beneath the unbuttoned blue tunic, Billy Yank wore a white button down shirt. That would have to make due for a bandage for the moment.
Sam pulled the blue coat off the mysterious dead man and then took off his gear. Then he unbuttoned the shirt and pulled it off. Once he’d gotten it off, he tore it into strips that were reasonably similar. He hoped this Yankee was the clean sort.
Listening quietly, he could hear running water, and decided to follow the sound. Just downhill from where he was, Sam found a stream. The water was clear and cool to the touch. All at once, he came to the conclusion that it was not the Devil’s lake of fire, and that he must really be alive. That was good news.
He bent down and washed his head off. It stung a bit to touch the wound on the side of his head, and when he dipped the bloody strip of cloth in the creek again, it ran crimson. More maggots floated away in the rush of water, too. The cool water did feel good against his head when he brought the cloth back up, though.
After doing it a few more times, there was less blood on the strip. He pulled out another (clean) strip of shirt and wound it around his head. He tied it at his ear, figuring that should hold it on for a while. It would just have to do; after all, he wasn’t a doctor. Until the war started, he’d only ever seen 1 doctor in his whole life.
Now, it was time for another decision – what to do. He should catch up to his unit and go back to the fight, but that problem carried with it a whole host of others, so he’d come back to that decision.
He could go home. After all, he was dead, wasn’t he? They couldn’t exactly try him for desertion. But, he decided, they would eventually find out. Somebody would squeal. He was in the company with a bunch of people from his hometown. So, he put that idea out of his head quickly, too.
He could just find any old Rebel unit and join up with them. But what if the next group of guys to come through were a bunch of bluecoats? He sure wasn’t going to join them, and that would mean he’d have to take on a whole mess of them by himself.
Ok, the decision was made – catch up to his company. Now…how to do that? Sam thought for a long minute, and it suddenly hit him. He should look for tracks. The problem with that occurred to him, too. What if he was following Yankee tracks? He didn’t want to walk into a bluecoats’ camp all decked out in his battle grey.
He dwelt on that problem for a while before he’d made his decision. The light of the day had started to fade. In September, the light goes quickly. Sam had to make a decision about what to do, and he had to do it fairly quick before it got dark on him.
Looking around did manage to provide a few clues. The first of which being the pit he’d crawled out of. Yankees laid around haphazardly, but the Southerners had at least had the time to bury their dead. To Sam, that must have meant they won the battle. Fleeing Yanks wouldn’t have even buried the steaming loads in their trousers. That thought made Sam smile.
Ok, so tracks that look like marching formation must be Confederates. A quick search produced some. He decided those must be the right ones to follow, so that’s what he did.
Sam gathered his things and looked around for anything else he could use that might come in handy. The Yankee he’d taken the shirt off of had some Minie balls. He took them for his own and set out.
His head still really hurt, but daylight was burning. He expected that the farther he got away from the battlefield, the less he would smell the rotting corpses of those he left behind. That supposition didn’t seem to be living up to being true , however.
He followed tracks for hours through the woods until he finally decided that light was fading too fast for him to continue. He was going to have to make camp and continue in the morning.
Since he was by himself, there would be nobody else in camp to stand watch while he slept. He was just going to have to hide himself well and hope for the best. Perhaps he would get lucky and go unnoticed.
Not far from his chosen stopping point, there was a big rock that looked like it had been undercut by someone or something. That was a big enough space to make for good shelter. Now to make it livable.
Sam worked on the site for 15 minutes in the creeping darkness to prepare it for his large frame. He cleared twigs, logs, and rocks out from under his overhang and stuffed his bedroll up under it to make a pillow.
Next, he knew he had to gather wood for a fire. He was going to have to have some warmth and cook some food by it. He hadn’t thought about food all day, until just this moment, but it was suddenly the only thing he could think about. He was famished.
The fire didn’t seem, by comparison, all that important anymore. It was the autumn of the year, and a cool autumn at that, but strangely, he wasn’t cold. He remembered being cold during the battle, but who knew how long ago that was?
Anyway, he came to the conclusion that he’d better build a fire, just the same. So he wasn’t cold now; it was going to be a long night. It would be even longer if he suddenly woke up in the pitch black, freezing to death.
In the fading light, he assembled a small pile of dead wood that had been scattered around him. Then he pulled the flint and steel from his pocket and struck it a few times on the dried pine needles and leaves he’d accumulated. Man had rediscovered fire.
Suddenly, he could smell something besides the rotten stench filling his sinuses. It smelled familiar and inviting. A twig snapped near him, and out of the corner of his eye, he saw a rabbit hop from behind a tree.
Watching the rabbit the whole time, Sam let his hand drift slowly to his bayonet. He unbuckled it from his belt and pulled it out. With lightning quickness, he spun the blade in his hand and thrust it into the rabbit, just behind his neck.
Before the rabbit was even fully dead, Sam grabbed the flesh just behind the fatal neck wound and pulled it, skinning his prey in one quick move. He held it over the fire for a minute, until the grumbling of his stomach would wait no longer. He pulled it off the fire and slid it off his bayonet.
So it wasn’t as cooked as he was used to. It was meat; something else he wasn’t used to anymore. Sam sunk his teeth into the flesh and tore at it with his hands. It was good, and filled him, though not completely.
When the flesh of the rabbit was mostly devoured, Sam gave it a fling down the hill and heard it land somewhere in the leaves. He didn’t much care where it was, just that it wasn’t near him. Out of sight, out of mind.
Sam tried to relax by the fire. It didn’t seem to work. He was hot now and couldn’t get comfortable under his rock. He changed positions several times to try to find that elusive comfort, but it was no use.
He thought that the rabbit would have filled him, but it didn’t. That rotten stench was back in his nostrils, and suddenly, he was hungry again. What would satisfy him, if not a whole rabbit?
The night passed slowly. Sam never slept, he never got cold. He never got comfortable. In fact, his discomfort worsened. His muscles were stiff and creaky, and his head still pounded.
At first light, Sam decided he’d had enough. The fire had burned itself out during the night, and he didn’t care. He’d never fed the burning embers after it got so late, so it wasn’t a surprise.
He got up and grabbed his bedroll. After getting his bearings again, Sam started off. The tracks shouldn’t be hard to pick up.
He did pick up the tracks, and followed them for a few hours. The sun was blazing overhead, and it was about noonish by the time he spotted a fire burning off in the distance. That must be an encampment. He decided to head for it.
The hunger was still with him, and his lack of rest hadn’t quelled his headache at all. Not to mention the fact that the overpowering stench in his nostrils seemed to be getting worse by the hour.
Another couple of hours passed before he made it to the camp. He seemed to be moving slower now. That made a lot of sense, though. He was still starving, and he hadn’t rested properly since he crawled out of the pit.
Once he got close to what he supposed was the company, the stench subsided in his nostrils. It was replaced with the smell of meat. Maybe the company had killed a horse, or been given a cow by a local farmer or something. It was the sweetest smell he’d ever experienced, and he thought that he couldn’t wait to taste it.
Something moved as he got closer, and after a second, Sam recognized what it was. It was a Rebel soldier. Certainly, he must have spotted Sam and was responding.
“Halt! Who goes there?” The soldier protested.
Sam tried to utter a sound, but found he couldn’t. He realized he hadn’t heard his own voice since he climbed up out of the pit. Honestly, had he even spoken then? He didn’t know, or couldn’t remember. He just kept walking.
The soldier lowered his musket (with the bayonet already fixed) and pointed it at Sam. Nervously, he raised his voice and protested again, “Look, I’m only going to say this one more time. Who goes there?”
Sam strained with all his might, but couldn’t make the simple sounds to alert this greycoat to his identity. All he knew was the sweet smell in his nostrils and the thunderous pounding in his head.
The Rebel soldier nervously raised the shaking musket to his shoulder and pulled back the hammer. “This is your last chance,” he called out. “I’m going to shoot!”
Sam still didn’t make a sound. Try as he might, he couldn’t.
He saw the sentry squeeze back on the trigger, but didn’t have time to react before a thunderous noise, and a Minie ball tore into his right shoulder. Strangely, he recoiled a bit, but didn’t seem horribly fazed by the fact he’d just been shot.
The sweet smell was as overpoweringly good as the throbbing in his head was bad. Sam got to within a foot of the guard, and took the musket right out of his hands.
With his right hand, Sam grabbed the guard by his face and slammed his head against the nearest tree. He pulled the head back and grabbed the neck with his free left hand. He’d finally figured out what that sweet smell was – it was human flesh.
Sam dipped his head and sunk his teeth into the gaping wound on the sentry’s head. His headache instantly went away as he feasted on the fresh warm brains.
