The Fight at Riley’s Farm

November 16th & 17th, 1863

The Battlefield Journal of Pvt. V. W. Terhune

G Company, 1st Arkansas Volunteer Infantry Regiment

Dedicated to Dr. Robert F. Leibmann, whose has made the old Latin word caritas, or "love of humanity" his personal ethic. His sense of his duty as a physician would have been admired in the Nineteenth Century, but is almost unheard-of today. He treated me because I needed help and could not afford it. While there are such men, Humanity may survive it's own follies.

 

Author’s note:

This "battlefield journal" is an account of a weekend of mock Civil War battles played out on the dates above, but in 1996, on the real Riley’s Farm, 8.5 miles outside of the little freeway-side town of Beaumont, in Riverside County, California. The re-enactors who have formed "G Company" spend significant sums of their own money and enormous amounts of time and effort to dress and equip themselves so realistically that if we could hop in a time machine, it would be our hope that the troops in the 1st Arkansas of 1860 wouldn't notice anything unusual about us.

To help my comrades take such a trip back in time, I have chosen to write out my notes and recollections of the re-enactment "event" at Riley's Farm as though it was a real battle. I've tried to become Valentine Wilson Terhune, a fictional veteran of the real 1st Arkansas, and write the story as he might have twenty years after the war. Yes, gentle reader, it is an attempt to copy the tone and style of Sam Watkins' authentic narrative , Company Aytch. For a biography of my narrator, please read Appendix B, which I put back there so impatient readers can get right into the story.

The soldiers of G Company are real, though they are my fellow re-enactors, and like Mark Twain, I have tried to tell as few lies in this as possible, so they can have a faithful story to show their friends and loved ones who want to know what we do during these "events", and why we're so addicted to them. It will be necessary to suspend your disbelief when V. W. is wounded in battle, but is miraculously whole again in time for the next one. Turn back to Appendix C for an editorial - I mean, discussion - of how we decide who gets shot and who does not.

November 12th, 1863

During the opening days of November, 1863, word came to our commanding officer that certain small Federal units were moving toward the little town of Beaumont. Having bigger fish to fry, the general’s staff recommended sending a tithe of troops from several Confederate regiments in the area, each to scout the Federals and converge on them when they concentrated in some place where the ground would be advantageous to attack them. G Company, 1st Arkansas volunteers were called upon to provide a platoon, and we stalwarts in 1st platoon, under the command of Second Corporal Gibson, were dispatched to do our part in stalking these blue-coated invaders and falling upon them in company with such other Southern troops as we might find and call into the fight. Under Corporal Gibson's command were Privates Ron Fox, Will Feuquay, Nick Vance, Steve Davis and my humble self.

By the evening of November 15th, we had tracked the Yankees into the hills some eight miles or so outside of Beaumont, to the apple farm of one Dennis Riley, an old Mexican War campaigner. As we were first to arrive to defend his farm, and so few (all that remained of 1st platoon after the bloody fights at Pine Grove and several small actions at a place called Pioneer), Mr. Riley offered us the comfort of a cabin on his home farm, the Yankees having encamped some distance off on the other side of his property.

We arrived about 5:30 , and at that season darkness had already fallen. The cabin was well chinked and kept out the wind, though it was small for even so few soldiers. It contained a sleeping loft sufficient for two men, , two rope-webbed, fold-down bunks, floor enough to two more men, and a pot-bellied cast-iron stove. The 1st Arkansas Volunteers gleefully unloaded their gear into La Maisson d’Arkansas as I came to call it, and when two small platoons from Hampton’s Legion arrived the next morning to camp near us, they found six very friendly, very heavily armed Arkansans in possession of the one dwelling with wind-proof walls and interior heating.. As an Arkansas regiment, many of us favor a substantial belt knife, most often a Bowie knife, an Arkansas Toothpick, or other massive edged weapon, despite their added weight on the march. Even with our rifles stacked neatly, we were not exactly vulnerable looking when the other units arrived and eyed our dwelling with unseemly interest.

Friday night turned cold - so cold we found ice half an inch thick on the table outside where the hand pump spilled water. We were warm enough while the stove was lit, but the available cut firewood was limited, over dry, and burned all too quickly. Nonetheless, we had a grand time sipping hot apple cider (yes, I really did bring a gallon of it to an apple farm. How was I to know?). The level of humor was very high if you reckon it by the amount and heartiness of the laughter, or very low if you don’t appreciate life from an infantry soldier’s point of view.

After settling in a bit, we all mooched off in the dark, minus Pvt. Nick Vance, who burrowed into the loft and went to sleep like the veteran soldier he is. We stumbled across the farm to where some suttlers were setting up, and there met Mr. Randy England and his wife who were unpacking to set up his minstrel’s tent, if you can credit such a thing. The pending contest of arms between North and South seemed so well known in the neighborhood it was becoming a county fair. We helped hold up the poles for the canvas fly in front of their tent, and visited with the photographer who had come to take tin-type pictures of the battle and had pitched his tent next to the England’s.

Finally we bumbled back to the cabin and turned in for the night, Nick and Corporal Gibson in the loft, my humble but aged self and young (but large) Private Will

Feuquay in the bunks, Steven Davis and Ronald Fox on the floor, and Mr. Riley’s mongrel dog Shiloh on the porch outside, radiating hopeful friendliness and a desire to warm somebody’s toes indoors, if you please. Mr. Riley informed us Shiloh would give warning if any bears came down from the hills, and the gentlemen on the floor decided the risk of bears, and fleas, dictated that Shiloh should do his duty as sentry outside.

Some while after we retired (our candles and our cider having all been consumed) Private Davis, growing cold in the night, added a log or two to the stove at intervals through the dark hours. To his chagrin and our shivering mirth the next morning, we found that early on in the night, the fire had gone out. By dawn, Private Davis had filled the stove chock-full of wood so it all but raised the lids - all unburned and too large to light. We had to empty the stove and huddle shaking with cold as Corporal Gibson patiently rebuilt a bed of kindling and some splits of wood and used my box of Lucifers to light a stump of candle under it to start our breakfast cook fire. We soon discovered that it was warmer outside than inside La Maisson d’Arkansas.

Private Davis and I, undismayed by the failed combustion of the previous night were determined to lay in a supply of wood calculated to be sufficient for a whole night’s warm, snug rest. Farmer Riley forbade us the use of his own woodpile, but lent us his double-bitten ax and pointed up the hill behind his house. "Up there, boys, is all the wood you want. Good morning to you." Off we marched, ax at the ready, and ‘’’up hill" it was indeed. More than once we used the ax to catch hold of a root up the steeps hillside above us and pull ourselves up. Once up that vertiginous mount, however, we did indeed find fallen wood in plenty, much of it held off the ground by falling into other trees, thereby being seasoned without rotting on the damp earth. I cut and pitched logs down to Davis, who more than once had to skip lively to avoid their tumbling career downward. At last I cleared away the smaller branches from a large log I felt would keep us all warm by itself. Stubbornly, it caught on every limb and root as I struggled to aim its butt down hill, until all of a sudden it went, and I with it, somersaulting down hill with Farmer Riley’s ax in my hand. As I spun, I managed to snag it in some roots, and by hanging on with a death-grip, halt my descent. I lay upside down on my back, feet up-hill and head down-hill, gazing straight into Private Davis’s wide, startled eyes as he stood below me, paralytic with surprise. Afterward, he said he expected bits of me to rain down upon him, watching that ax whirl about in my pell-mell journey. As I slung myself around feet downward and slid the rest of the way down on the seat of my pants, privates Fuqua and Vance joined us to carry home the booty and help chop it up. Thus my day began, in more peril from my own clumsiness and Farmer Riley’s ax than from the perfidious foe.

As we were stacking our firewood carefully inside La Maisson d’Arkansas., about a dozen men from Hampton’s Legion arrived and turned out to be a very amiable group. It was jointly agreed that a temporary combination of forces was in order, though it put us under the command of the Hampton’s Lieutenant (whose name I disremember) expanding their dozen troops to eighteen - just adequate to form a small company of three platoons.

Normally, a platoon would be at least as large as this resulting company, but our six-man platoon would was not unusually small, due to the horrific casualty rates we had suffered. I have known instances of six-man companies, though such tiny groups were usually reassigned to fill out other units. Later in the war our own 1st Arkansas vanished in this way, and its survivors were melded into the 15th Arkansas and other units.

As the morning progressed, we reconnoitered the farm discretely, and found all sorts of troops arriving. To the best of my recollection, they included representatives from the following units:

Confederates:

A section of field artillery from the 13th Louisiana Tigers, who brought with them, to our great satisfaction, a 12-pounder Parrot Rifle and two six-pounder Napoleons. (Their Major took active command of the Southern forces, though Mr. Riley felt small compunction at offering him tactical advice, it being his farm and all.)

For cavalry, we had a small contingent of the 13th Virginia Sussex Light Dragoons.

For engineers, a few men from the 3rd (National) Engineer Regiment.

For infantry, we of the 1st Arkansas, and Hampton’s Legion, were joined by a contingent from the 7th Virginia Infantry.

Federal forces, as reported by scouts, included small groups from the 6th US, 55th Ohio and 19th Indiana Infantry regiments.

All together, the approaching battle would be fought by perhaps eighty to ninety infantrymen on each side, with some kibitzing by our Southern artillery and cavalry, such as it was. (Though the Infantry is the acknowledged Queen of Battle, one must admit that three guns and even a hand-full of dragoons gave us a bulge on the Yanks.)

The Major chose to open the action with his Tigers serving as infantry with the 7th Virginia, holding the 1st Arkansas and Hampton’s in reserve. Corporal Gibson immediately seized the opportunity to drive us through skirmish drill back in the orchard, as two of us privates (my humble self and Private Fox) had fought few actions requiring this not-inconsiderable military skill. The ground was fairly carpeted with fallen apples, and after an hour’s scrambling about in response to Corporal Gibson’s exasperated commands, we had managed to attain some semblance of competence as skirmishers and pound about a hundred bushels of fallen fruit into apple butter, liberally daubing it on our brogans, the knees of our trousers, and such other body parts and items of equipment as came in contact with the ground.

As the drilling Arkansans grew more proficient, and the apple butter increased in depth, and a parade of local citizens drove up in their carriages and whipped their teams straight through our formation on their way to view the inevitable glorious Southern victory. Our wonder at this parade became outright disbelief when we learned that enterprising Farmer Riley was busy at his front gate charging admission to the battle. I have seen circuses in my time less well attended, and we soldiers could scarcely credit what our eyes and ears told us. Perhaps it is a military prejudice, but soldiers tend to take getting shot at pretty seriously, and we were more than somewhat irked at having a pleasant morning’s drill among the apple cores disturbed in this manner. It was suggested that if the Tigers could be induced to drop a short round or two near these on-lookers, it might help them share our sober view of the day’s impending conflict, but the Tigers were otherwise engaged and the crowds grew denser by the hour.

We were peremptorily summoned to attend further skirmish drill in company with Hampton’s Legion, the first battle of the day having ended inconclusively. The contending force had pushed each other back and forth through a patch of orchard practically in Farmer Riley’s front yard (indeed no more than a hundred yards down a small road leading to his apple-packing sheds. The action was more a feeling-out exercise by each commander, to see what he was up against than a pitched battle. The Yankee commander withdrew his men up into the hills beyond some high fields above the packing sheds and the Tigers’ Major called all officers and NCO’s into conference to plan for a resumption of hostilities.

Things paused an hour or so while the Major formed all his troops for an up-hill assault on the Yanks. In some inexplicable defiance of geometry, every march we made at Riley’s farm, whether to a fight or from it, seemed to be up-hill. Perhaps all the down-hill marching was being saved up for summer, when it would be too warm for up-hill strolling. In any event, I was huffing and puffing as we headed toward the ground the Major had chosen for the next phase of the battle.

Now I may have neglected to mention that of the six men of the First Arkansas, I am next oldest, younger by two years than private Fox. We two looked back over a mighty span of years compared to our comrades, and I found it just possible to hold my place in the ranks as we marched along the little farm roads to a pumpkin field, beyond which we saw a long incline planted with apple trees in neat rows.

The section I was with was sent forward as skirmishers, across those thrice-cursed little early-November pumpkins that rolled under our brogans and threatened to send us sprawling flat on our faces in front of the whole battalion. Once across the field, we trotted up through the orchard until we ran smack dab into the whole Yankee line, poised for a down-hill attack. We cut loose, our four Enfields against about half of their forty Springfields, and as you might imagine, most of us were hit. I went down hard, mostly from exhaustion after the climb up the slope, and from sheer fright as lead buzzed all around me, and winding myself by falling on my canteen. My side hurt so that I was convinced I’d been shot through and through.

            I lay there under an apple tree, crabbing feebly around, all tangled up in equipment - my haversack strap, canteen strap, cartridge pouch strap, rifle sling and a foot and a half of bowie knife sheath and oak handle - trying to find the death-wound I surely felt in my ribs, while the Yanks rolled down the hill over us, shooting and hollering, toward the waiting Confederate line.

At the order of a Yank Lieutenant, a little drummer-boy stopped, for by then I was exhausted and only flopping a bit trying to find some part of me to lay on which didn’t hurt or wasn’t bound up with my gear. He gave me water, and a while later some danged newspaper fellow stopped to inquire as to my health. "You shot me, Billy Yank," says I. "Not I, Sir," he replied. "I am a Journalist." I could hear that capital J, and held back my opinion of members of the Third Estate (and why in tarnation they newspaper scribblers thought up such a grand appellation for themselves I have never determined) They might well have kept this whole blamed war from happening if they had only paid more attention to the "base ball" game Mr. Abner Doubleday had invented and less to the squabbles in Congress over States’ Rights, slavery and tariffs.

Presently he move off, only to come scurrying back up the hill ahead of some retreating Federals who had the unmitigated gall to pat my pockets for loot! They found none, as I had nothing but my rifle, ammunition, and the canteen which I had determined by this time was the author of my "wound". I though it best, if our lads were coming, to let these fleeing wretches think me a dying rebel, not worth another bullet. With a bit of feeble writhing and a few piteous moans, I was pretty much ignored by both sides until our troops had pushed the Federals once more up into the hills.

At that point, I climbed up Martha Jane (my rifle-musket, named for a dear but stern spinster elder sister), got my feet under me, and hobbled on in Victory’s wake until I found the 1st Arkansas by the packing sheds, replace those fired at the fleeing foe. We proceeded "at the mosey" as Corporal Gibson ordered us, back to La Maisson d’Arkansas to recover ourselves with a few cups of cider and await events. Not much over an hour, Farmer Riley came running pell mell up to us, hollering about a bunch of Yankees advancing from our left flank toward his house. We scrambled into his front yard and had barely loaded our rifles when sure enough, a crowd of about twenty or so dismounted Yank cavalrymen and infantry came out of the trees toward a little bit of a creek running down beside the house. We knelt behind what cover was to be had by an open tool shed, and blazed away, but before I got a fourth round loaded, something whacked my head an almighty bell-ringer and set me first back on my heels and then flat on my back. The other men skedaddled with al due haste as the Federals sprang across the creek and sent two or three volleys after them.

A Confederate engineer who had come a-runnin’, but without his rifle, was trying to pull private Fuqua’s from under his body. I could see Will wasn’t killed, but hurt some and too mazed with the shock of it to help out. The Yanks ran right up to that engineer, still a-tuggin on that Enfield, and just watched as he go redder and redder in the face with the effort. Will is no small man.

I might have enjoyed they show more if my head wasn’t fit to bust open, first from whatever whomped me, and then when some consarned Yank with an old .69 caliber smooth-bore "pumpkin-flinger" let off a shot that crashed in my ears like the crack of Doom. The yanks seem to have an endless supply of these man-carried cannons, old flint-lock military pieces made in the 30’s and converted at the Springfield Arsenal from 1842 until the outbreak of the War to a percussion lock . When they fire, they touch off about a hundred grains of FFg black powder, pushing a lead ball the size of my granny’s roll of yarn and let out a crash like thunder.

"Sweet Jesus in the Morning, don’t do that no more!" I begged him, and I don’t know if it was the shock of finding a live reb literally under his feet, or my profanity, mis-using the Lord’s name like that, which is not my habit unless unbearably provoked, but he actually said, "Excuse me!" in a most apologetic tone and then bolted for greener pastures as the 1st Arkansas and a herd of reinforcements came around the corner of the house, firing as they came. It was too much for me - I yanked the brim of my hat down over my ears and curled up in a ball until the hullabaloo settled down.

That skirmish seemed to satisfy both sides for the day. Once again the Yanks plodded up into the hills, and we limped and staggered back to La Maisson d’Arkansas and lit a cook fire out in front so we could fix what rations we had. I pried open a can of beans and beef I scavenged out of a broken-down Yankee supply wagon the previous week. Privates Fox and Vance stayed at the cabin with me, while privates Davis and Fuqua went with Corporal Gibson to see what merriment the crowd of civilians was getting up to.

After an hour or so, they came back round-eyed with wonder. "They’re havin’ a fancy-dress ball in that apple packing shed!" exclaimed the Corporal. "There must be more’n a hundred of ‘em in there. More like a hundred and fifty maybe, all gussied up like they was in Richmond, a-goin’ t’ President Davis’s inaugural ball. Wa’rnt they somethin’, Davis? Wa’rnt they just somethin’?" Steve and Will agreed fervently, allowing as how angels just weren’t in it next to those ladies in their satin, hoop-skirted finery.

Corporal Gibson then imposed on Private Davis’s good nature, sending him out once again into the dark to appropriate some beer the Corporal had spotted in a wagon. Will went along, and soon they returned laden with drink Things grew merry, so you might think we’d sleep through the extinction of our fire again, but with the walls of the cabin nearly lined with cord wood now, and our floor-sleepers were more watchful, periodically stoking the fire hot and closing the damper to keep it going longer.

By dawn, I’d been up for an hour, sipping hot coffee and preparing myself for the battles ahead. We all knew that after a day’s sparring, neither side could afford to fiddle around. Today it would be "Katy, bar the door!" As the others woke up and started preparing their gear, I stepped out on the porch and sawed open a can of peaches I'd foraged and dumped them over some oats I'd scrounged up. Why save the best vittles for some Yankee to loot off me? Sure as Hell Fire, lots of boys would get shot today, and my hide's no thicker than any other man's.

What an odd existence for field soldiers, used to marching for weeks with no comforts we did not carry on our backs: to sleep indoors instead of on the earth with a single thin blanket to huddle under, and boiling coffee on a stove instead of skimming off the ash from heating it in a bed of coals from last nights campfire. I’d have given anything for a tintype of Corporal Gibson and private Davis at their ease on the porch, lounging in chairs made of old apple barrels cut in half, smoking their corn-cob pipes.

This idyll could not last, of course. When the Major and the officers who had attended the ball at last arose and confabulated a while, we were formed up and quick-timed across the farm, up the hill where the packing shed stood and on up to a large area, perhaps ten or twenty acres of plowed ground rising from west to east, with a corn field along the bottom edge.

Hampton’s Legion (all dozen of them, with G Co. of the 1st Arkansas attached) were send into the corn field as skirmishers, to watch for the Yankees coming down out of their camps in the hills. corporal Gibson was ordered to position G Company in the extreme south-western corner of the corn field, the most likely route along which the Yankees would approach,

He made us kneel with out muskets upright like corn stalks, and "uncover" (remove our hats) to make us less visible. Every couple of minutes, he would stage-whisper to me, "What do you see, private?" "Why, cornstalks, Corporal!" I would reply, growing more exasperated by the moment. Fortunately, private Vance who is not much taller than his musket chose to stand up and get a better view, diverting the corporal’s attention. They debated the advisability of standing up somewhat hotly for a few moments until some cavalry came along the road in front of us. They wore light blue uniforms, and in my ignorance, I was drawing a bead on their officer the corporal Gibson called out, "Hold yer fire, boys! Those are our dragoons!"

I could only take is word for it. Uncle Floyd had a .44 Colt’s dragoon pistol from the Mexican War, a huge canon of a thing that weighed almost half of what my Enfield rifle musket did, and I could see now the saddle holsters he used to describe, a pair of long leather cups joined by a wide leather band with a hold in the center to fit over the saddle pommel (though these Virginians rode English-style saddles without pommels.) I could never imagine a man comfortably wearing a dragoon pistol on his belt, but letting a horse pack a pair of them for you made them far more practical.

While I was gazing at the dragoons, the Yanks came filtering down through the brush on the hillside and quietly waited for the dragoons to pass on down the road before they rose up in line of battle and began to advance into the cornfield. We had been instructed to fire into them as soon as we saw they were serious about starting a fight, but after two or three shots, we were to fall back at the double and form up in line of battle ourselves, up-hill (as always) where Farmer Riley had sheaves of cornstalks all in a row.

We had to move quickly, as the Federals apparently rested well and eaten hearty at breakfast, the way they chased in after us. I got off only two rounds, and loaded on the run back to the company line. Private Vance was ready though; after his debate with the corporal over standing up, he decided to take orders more diligently, and was patiently kneeling among the cornstalks with his hat in his hand - facing the rear. "What in God’s holy name are you doing, Vance? Shoot your rifle a those people!" roared the corporal (meaning the Yanks bearing down on us). "Why, you told me to kneel down and be ready to light out for the rear, corporal," replied Vance in a surprised tone. I guess he figured he’d finally got things right, as silly as the orders seemed, only to find out otherwise.

Not that it much mattered now; he was quick enough off the mark as we crashed through the dry corn stalks, high-stepping it like Tennessee Walkers to keep from falling flat on our faces. The plan for us to delay the Yankee advance did not seem to be working too well, but the plan to light a shuck for the rear was working as smoothly as one of those ballet dances I’ve read about. We skedaddled in fine style out of the corn, up the hill and into line just a heart-beat before the order to aim and fire. My position was in the rear rank, with private Vance in front of me, so I had no trouble firing over his shoulder into the packed mass of Yankees charging up the hill. That big breakfast I guessed they’d had was taking its toll, for we got off three or four good volleys before the Major bellowed at our lieutenant to withdraw what was left of us further up hill and into line with the whole battalion.

We did so at the double (actually about quadruple time - a swarm of Yanks storming up behind you puts wings on your brogans, though your heart and lungs pay the price as soon as fright diminishes enough to allow you time to notice.) Once more we formed up in line of battle, and after a single battalion volley, it was "fire at will! Pour it into them, boys!", which we did with enthusiasm, but the Yankees paused long enough to send a couple of company volleys at us, and pretty well shredded my end of the company, which formed the battalion’s left flank. The Hampton’s sergeant was down and numerous privates. "Somebody act as corporal!" hollered the lieutenant, and whoever obeyed the order started the old familiar chant, "Close it up there, boys! Step over that man. Close ranks! Keep your dress, private and git back in line! You git out there another step and we'll shoot you, by golly!"

I think we six from G Co. were all still standing at that time, but I do not know. At that moment our line broke and the individual companies withdrew in a more or less orderly manner further and further up hill. I remember stopping in a little clump of trees and fallen logs to snipe at the Yanks while our boys jogged past up to where somebody said there was a ditch fit for a trench to make a stand in. I left it a bit late, though, in running back that way myself, and was trying to run while at the same time tear open one of my last cartridges, pour the powder down the barrel, and carry out the complex ritual of loading.

When I got to the lip of the trench, the Yanks were too close behind, and had followed us up and around so they had the trench enfiladed - that is, they were at the end of it and could shoot down it lengthwise, right into our boys. I faced back to them, fired off my next-to-last round, and wondered what to do. Someone behind me bellowed, "Charge ‘em, boys!!" and not seeing much else I could do, I let out a screech like one of the damned souls in Hell and ran straight at them with my musket held out in the "charge, bayonets" position.

The whole crowd of them stopped in their tracks and I ran right up to a lieutenant and stroked him a good ‘un on the jaw with my rifle butt and down he went. I supposed the rest of our boys had these Yanks covered, since they weren’t fighting back, so I calmly stood and loaded my last round, so as to guard all my prisoners with a loaded weapon instead off sheer gall. I noticed one of them over kind of behind me stand up and fire a shot into our positions. "You perfidious cur!" I snarled (or words to that effect, if less refined), and drew down on him to explode his head with my last bullet, when I noticed that of all the people standing around, nobody seemed worried, and everyone but me was wearing blue.

There I was, loaded, primed and aiming at this man’s back when I turned to see why he wasn’t already cut down. It was then I saw that whoever had yelled, "Charge ‘em, boys!" had evidently not considered himself one of the boys, nor had anybody else but me. There I stood in my gray jean-wool uniform, in the middle off a herd of Yanks. "You can run back to your lines, Johnny" said an old Yank First Sergeant, "or you can reverse that piece, hang your had on it and set right down here and be a prisoner."

I read once that discretion is the better part of valor, which generally seems to mean, "be brave when you have no choice, but when presented with an option, choose safety." I stood no more chance than a rat in a crate full of pit-bull dogs, and suddenly felt how totally tuckered out I was, so I took his advice and sat down with my rifle butt upwards and my hat on it. The battle was lost anyway, though we’d chewed up the Yanks bad enough to where they hadn’t the steam left to take the whole battalion prisoner, so the Major and the Yank commanding officer agreed to exchange prisoners and go our separate ways, leaving the Yanks in possession of the field - until one side or the other felt up to going at it again.

As we moved off back to La Maisson d’Arkansas "at the mosey", the corporal informed me of that only the most inexperienced soldier put ten-packs of cartridges in his cartridge tins still in the arsenal wrapper. One should unwrap them, and then when the ten loose cartridges in the top of a tine were gone, all one need do to refill it would be to lift the tin out of the case, tip the cartridges into your hand, turn the tin and tip them back into the top compartment, replace the tin in the pouch, and voi la, you’ve got ammunition to continue the fight. It turned out that many of us had never been in a fight that lasted long enough to fire twenty rounds, but moved too o allow even a second to unwrap fresh cartridges. I’d run right out of ammunition with half of my basic load of forty rounds right there in the pouch on my hip, but no more reachable in the middle of a close-quarters engagement than my favorite "kissing cousin" back in Arkansas.

Some civilians came by to ask us about the battle and all the Tom-fool questions noncombatants can think up, especially the boy children. " How much does that rifle weigh, mister? "A tad over ten pounds when I start off in the morning," I'd answer, "and 'bout a hundred by night-fall." "Sure is long. How long is it?" "Fifty-five inches- that's four foot seven, about the size of your sister there." "You named your gun, soldier?" (Rifle musket, mister. A "gun" is one of those canon yonder.) "Yessir, I have. I call her Martha Jane, after my elder sister. She's skinny and hard, and durned dangerous to anybody fool enough to mess with our kin, but a steadfast and loyal ole' girl to her friends."

We only got an hour or so to huff and puff and reload our pouches before the officers came up with a new plan, a brilliant plan, an up-hill plan (of course). This time they were on to a real idea, though. We hiked up and up and up the hills behind the big field where the Yanks were still lording it over the locals, until we were well above them. Then the Major did the one really clever thing I think I've seen an officer over the rank of captain do - he rested us until our hearts stopped hammering, we'd had a good pull on our canteens, and shared out what ammunition was left. No supply had reached us, and some of the boys were clean out of cartridges. I gave away twenty rounds, but then I am always a pack-rat when it comes to ammunition and had more than I could possibly shoot, from what I'd seen that morning.

When we were good and ready, the Major rolled us down off that hill like a gray avalanche, and we came down on those Federals a-screechin' and firing like fury, and it was their turn to face the music. Like we did that morning, they'd hold for a volley or two, but break and scamper like rabbits down hill a ways 'til some officer pulled them into line for another volley. We got round the end of one company -enfiladed them - and poured three full company volleys right down their line. We couldn't miss. Another time, I saw eight or ten of them all sort of fly to pieces when the Louisiana Tigers shot off one of their six-pounder Napoleon's loaded with canister (a canvas bag full of about 200 musket balls - like Paul Bunyan's shotgun). The 1st Arkansas was chasing down hill when we cut off three dismounted Yankee cavalry troopers. They were going to make a show of it with their Remington's leveled at us, but two of them, looking down the .58 caliber bores of our Enfields surrendered. The third one, either blind or born stupid raised his pistol so I shot him in the middle of the chest and he dropped like a sack of wet corn.

I don't recollect what became of the other two - we were ordered back down into the corn field we'd been chased out of this morning, to chase out a gang of Yankees wearing Hardee hats (wide-brimmed, tall-crowned black hats with the right brim folded up and pinned with a regimental badge.) They fought us hard, backing up through the corn, until the 7th Virginia flanked them and they were caught between two fires. At that, they gave up and that was the last of the battle at Riley's Farm.

I don't know what became of them. The Major formed us up, cleared weapons by having us fire off a volley into the air, and then turned us loose to make our way back through the crowds of civilians "at the mosey", to return to our home units. We bade a hearty farewell to the few of Hampton's Legion who were left and they moved off down the road. By some miracle, we six were alive and whole, and moved off smartly in a pair of wagons some civilians had apparently abandoned (or at least wandered away out of sight). All together, our losses amounted to Private Fox's canteen (still hanging on the side of a wagon where he hung it while clearing stones from his brogans) and Corporal Gibson's wedding ring, which slipped off some time during our appropriation of the "abandoned" wagons.

If battles can be lovely, this one was - we all came through alive and victorious. The civilians had their show and Farmer Riley's land was saved, at least for a while longer. Though we were the 1st Arkansas Volunteers, well could we claim what is now Alabama's state motto, " Audemus jura nostra defendere, "We dare defend our rights."

Appendix A: The real Riley's Farm

 

. Dennis and his wife bought the original farm in 1978 and some years later his father bought the adjoining farm, forming quite a large area up in the hills at 5,500 feet of altitude where they grow and sell apples and apple-by-products. They’ve also built a log cabin, a blacksmith’s setup, a suttler’s store, a do-it-yourself cider press. and other 19th century attractions for school tours.

They also have lots and lots of really prime ground for re-enacting battles, which Dennis seems to enjoy immensely, not just for the per-head spectator entrance fee, but for the epic excitement of it all. He gets to arrange skirmishes between authentically equipped and uniformed soldiers literally in his front yard, and watch as the columns march past on the past his house with flags flying, drums and fifes playing, and troops with their long rifle muskets high in the air at "right-shoulder-shift." At the height of the "battles", colorfully clad dragoons gallop across his fields as full-sized cannon crash and battalions of infantry engage in swirling confusion, hammering out volleys of musket fire. I’m told he has trench-works up in the hills for World War I battles, and who knows what else. All in all, if there must be spectators (and we re-enactors don’t really object to showing off), it is as perfect a place to play out mock Civil War battles as I have yet imagined.

Appendix B

Introducing Valentine Wilson Terhune,

Private, G Company

1st Arkansas Volunteer Infantry Regiment.

 

 

 

Appendix C

The Theory and Practice of "Taking a Hit" in a Mock Battle

For any degree of verisimilitude, soldiers need to fall down "dead" or wounded - "taking a hit" it’s called. Sometimes it’s scripted as to who will fall when, but often it’s up to the individual soldier to acknowledge that when he’s looking right down the bore of a .58 caliber rifle (which looks about the size of a sewer main from that angle), it’s time to take a hit. It’s also a convenient way for fellows too tired to run anymore to drop out of the fight and become spectators.

There are unfortunately some mighty selfish reenactors who seem to wear kevlar uniforms which are impervious to hypothetical bullets, cannon balls or other theoretical forms of mayhem.. I won’t claim these bullet-proof suits are all blue, but I’ve fired many a round point-blank into Yankees who blithely ignored me.

Poor V. W. Terhune, however is a mortal man, as you will see. He can be shot, or from sheer fright think he is and then "play dead" until the tide of battle passes. He’s no hero, but a survivor in an unbelievably violent world, one it’s far more pleasant to imagine, and mimic, that it ever was to live in.