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 Posted: Sat Aug 06, 2011 7:45 pm
The Long Way Home
I just got bored and decided to write- this is what I came up with so far. I rather like it, and think I will continue Mike's journey. To where?
This takes place just after the soldiers of the Confederate States Army finds that their commanding general, Robert E. Lee, is going to surrender. Michael Lynch can't stomach the thought of surrender, and as a result of blind fear and disgust, runs away, effectively deserting his regiment despite the fact that the war is soon to be over. What will his bullheadedness lead him to?
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Posted: Sat Aug 06, 2011 7:49 pm
Tears stung my eyes as I turned and fled. This couldn't be happening. The Old Man was surrendering. It was all over. Everything I had fought for for the past four years was worthless now. Because Robert Lee was surrendering the army.
I couldn't take it. I bolted upon hearing the news, flinging my hardtack aside and shoving past my messmates to escape. This simply shouldn't happen, couldn't happen. How could he be surrendering after all we had fought for? I had lost everything because of this war. My family's home had been burned during Sherman's ransacking march. He'd torn through the southern states, ravaging every property in sight. Mine was no different. My wife died in that fire, along with my ailing brother, who had been wounded and shipped home from the war three weeks prior. Jen and I had just been married three months before, when I went home on furlough, and now she was dead. My mother was the only remaining family I had, as Father had been killed early in the war at the first engagement at Manassas. My other brother, Charles, was wounded and captured at Gettysburg. I never heard from him again, until mother sent me a letter stating that Charley's friend Tobe had stopped by after being paroled to say that Charley had caught fever while imprisoned, and had died. I lost three toes off my left foot, and a finger off my right hand, along with most of my right ear. And I suffered a load of pain through the years, having been wounded a total of thirteen times, and captured by the enemy twice. And now I was finding out that it was all for naught.
"Michael! What's gotten into you?" demanded Foxhugh, one of my messmates.
"Lynch! Get the hell back here!" Sergeant June hollered, rising to his feet.
"Corporal Lynch!" Someone else was taking up the call after me now. I could say nothing; I simply ran without looking back.
"Lynch!"
I could not look back. My only instinct was to run and hide, for I could not register what was happening. Everything I had done in these four years of blood and suffering meant nothing, and I wasn't taking the thought well. All I could think to do was keep running, tearing through the freshly-plowed field the regiment was situated in, dirt spraying into the air behind my heels.
"Mike! Come back here- MIKE!" Foxhugh's voice yelped over the calamity sounding behind me, and a gunshot split through the din. I felt a breath of air at my temple and knew that the shot had just missed me. An inch more, and it would have planted me. "MIKE!"
I heard Fox's warning, but I could not turn around. Tears streaming down my face in the misery of it all, I could only keep running. I had to get as far from them all as I could, because I was not going to watch them all surrender, laying down arms despite everything we had done together. I would not surrender.
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