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A Civil War Ghost Story
Feb. 19th, 2005 07:27 pm~
Over near Chancellorsville, where the whippoorwills began calling plaintively soon after sunset, now as then, the mood was much the same. The fighting had been heaviest around here last year, and there still were many signs of it, including skeletons in rotted blue, washed partly out of their shallow graves by the rains of the past winter. No one but the devil himself would choose such ground for a field of battle, veterans said; the devil and old man Lee. In an artillery park near the ruin of the Chancellor mansion, which had burned to its brick foundations on the second day of conflict, a visiting infantryman looked glumly at a weathered skull that stared back with empty sockets, grinning a lipless grin. He prodded it with his boot, then turned to his comrades - saying "you" and "you," not "we" and "us," for every soldier is superstitious about foretelling his own death, having seen such words come true too many times - and delivered himself of a prediction. "This is what you are all coming to," he told them, "and some of you will start toward it tomorrow."
-- The Civil War: Red River to Appomattox by Shelby Foote
( Because everyone loves a history lesson on a Saturday night! Monk's blog - where the fun never ends! )
Over near Chancellorsville, where the whippoorwills began calling plaintively soon after sunset, now as then, the mood was much the same. The fighting had been heaviest around here last year, and there still were many signs of it, including skeletons in rotted blue, washed partly out of their shallow graves by the rains of the past winter. No one but the devil himself would choose such ground for a field of battle, veterans said; the devil and old man Lee. In an artillery park near the ruin of the Chancellor mansion, which had burned to its brick foundations on the second day of conflict, a visiting infantryman looked glumly at a weathered skull that stared back with empty sockets, grinning a lipless grin. He prodded it with his boot, then turned to his comrades - saying "you" and "you," not "we" and "us," for every soldier is superstitious about foretelling his own death, having seen such words come true too many times - and delivered himself of a prediction. "This is what you are all coming to," he told them, "and some of you will start toward it tomorrow."
-- The Civil War: Red River to Appomattox by Shelby Foote
( Because everyone loves a history lesson on a Saturday night! Monk's blog - where the fun never ends! )
