Distant Flame

Winter, 1864

Winter, 1864 NEAR DALTON, GEORGIA ERRILL'S BRIGADE OFTHEEastern Army stood at the flank and stamped with cold, breath feathering the sharp blue March sky.Not far ahead, the Western Armywaited, newly armed, for the assault. Snow lay on the ground in a thick, icy shroud, and even the sunlight did little to melt it. If Merrill's Brigade could turn the right flank, they might send the Western Army back into the center of the lines where Johnston's men waited. Jaws of a winter-spun trap. "Ah, Charlie, it's pretty," said Duncan McGregor. "It's the first damned movement that's felt good since Chickamauga." "Keep your head down," said Charlie. "It ain't my head worries me," said Duncan. He laughed, a stuttering , stomach-shakingburst of genuine relief. Charlie smiled at him. The line went solid. Men began to move forward, most in a fine mood, the best since November at least. Sensing the flanking movement , the Western Army closed up and began to move toward the center of its line, forming a skirmish point in an angle. "Come at us and get yourn," said a soldier in the Western Army. "No, yourn"' said Bob Rainey. He was in line next to Charlie Merrill , who far from being a real brigade commander, was a private in Govan 's Brigade of Cleburne's Division of Hardee's Corps of General Joseph Johnston's Army of Tennessee. They called themselves Merrill's M 10 PHILIP LEE WILLIAMS Brigade as a camp joke because no one had known anyone quite like Charlie, just a boy, but a deadly shot with his Spencer rifle. (Govan's Brigade had captured half a dozen or more breech-loading repeaters during the Battle of Chattanooga, and Charlie had earned one.) "Go, boys!" Charlie cried. A wailing scream rose from both sides of the line. Some of them were laughing, but most weren't, bearing down by then, honing their aim. Merrill's Brigade, having failed to turn the flank, attacked straight forward anyway, the lines holding together until they were no more than ten feet apart. Unwilling to hold their defensive position, the Western Army moved to the engagement, drew bead, and raised their arms. The air exploded with the frosted haloes of snowballs. As soon as they unloaded, the boys leaned quickly into the heaps of wet snow and scooped up more, rough red hands on white balls, threw again. The air rang with laughter and curses, and a few angry words when a snowball loaded with a rock or a minie ball found a half-frozen cheek or neck. From the north Georgia hillside, Charlie looked down the lines and saw hundreds—no, thousands—of men engaged in the frontal assault. Some people from Dalton, even ladies, had come out to watch, and they stamped against the cold up on the high ridge behind the lines, having a wonderful time. He was turning to point out the spectators to Duncan McGregor when a loaded snowball hit him on the side of the head. He felt the stun, saw expanding , elliptical stars, fell to his knees. A rock in that one. Pay more attention. For a moment, the snow felt good on his knees, salved them after all the drilling of the past few days, but then the cold spread into his bones. Duncan was helping him up. "You got pasted, but I got the son of a bitch," said Duncan. A man from the Western Army was sitting on his rear in the ice, mouth open, showing snow on his gums. He was the one who had hit Charlie. He looked very tired, maybe worn past recovery. You could see it in their eyes when the time had come. He didn't have much strength, but he'd used all he had to hit Charlie. "Too bad I'm not General Sherman," said Charlie. The soldier in the snow laughed but seemed as if he might cry.Charlie noticed that the perspiration and snow had frozen in the man's beard, making it look like tree moss, fragile, easily broken. A Distant Flame 11 THE SNOWBALL BATTLE HADbeen approved (though soldiers started it) by Confederate General Joseph Johnston when the Southern army had moved into winter quarters in the north Georgia mountains south of Chattanooga. The men loved Old Joe as much as they despised their former commander, General...