O'hara's Choice - Leon Uris [4]
The Marine line held a good position, looking down the knoll from Jerome House to Bull Run Creek and a hill beyond it.
The crest of that hill soon filled with enemy. Artillery gone. Marine battalion broken. One choice only. Muskets were of short range, so Paddy would have to let the Rebels cross and come up the knoll to within sixty or seventy yards. It would take a steady hand.
The cannon fire stopped and Johnny Rebel let out terrifying screams as they poured down and over Bull Run Creek, certain that their artillery had cleared out Jerome House. Capture! Consolidate! Then organize a breakthrough to the turnpike itself! The Rebel yell became a single earth- and sky-shattering scream.
“Fire!”
Remnants of the First Philadelphia held off the first charge and took up new-loaded muskets. From the slope, some of the Confederate wounded crawled forward and picked off two Marines, three . . .
Another wave of Rebels charged and were again beaten back, and now another, but they were coming with less determination. Paddy’s line became thinned out pitifully when a breakthrough came.
The drummer boy caught a flick of a look into the wild eyes of a Southern soldier. Wally fired a pistol as the Rebel boy plunged his bayonet home.
In one of the few places of Union valor that day, the knoll before Jerome House Hill was littered with Southern dead. The attackers took covered positions, not eager to charge again.
The strength of the First Philadelphia’s numbers had dwindled to a half-dozen men. If the rebel captain had known, all he had to do was sneeze hard and break through.
Wally Kunkle’s side bled, his hands and face blistered, but he kept his position until the pain in his shoulder became so terrible he could not fire.
Paddy got to him, tore open his shirt, said something foul, and went to work. Wally hung in . . . hung in . . . He screamed. Paddy put the ether to his nose and Wally began giggling . . . “Good boy, good boy, there you go, lad . . . I think we got the bleeding stopped . . .
“Come on, darkness, come on,” Paddy said. “God, Mary, I’m praying to every Catholic saint . . . come on, darkness! Please, blessed darkness, please fall!”
A peek of the moon over the hill. The Rebels were pulling their wounded back to the creek. The firing stopped. Thirsty men drank and dried up their blood, and soon Paddy could see their campfires over the way.
He had four men left, including a somewhat helpless Wally Kunkle and himself. Kunkle was a burden, badly messed up and flying high but still salvageable.
What to do? Crawl down to the rebel line and try to shoot them back across Bull Run? Never work with three shooters. Paddy reckoned the rebels had taken a large number of casualties at Jerome House and would not make a night assault. Night assaults were a barbaric way to fight a war. Their energy must be as low as ours. And water . . . they’d die of thirst halfway up.
However.
The Rebels would probe with patrols. They might harass all night. Come the dawn, this position was done in. Two choices, maybe three.
Send the other two lads back to get reinforcements. He’d stay with Kunkle.
All three go back and leave Kunkle.
Go back as a unit and carry Kunkle, but that would eat up time. Jesus and Mary, what’s a fucking corporal to do?
Wally Kunkle became conscious as a bit of daylight flitted through the trees. Oh Jesus, it hurt! Paddy O’Hara’s face came into view above him, hard to recognize.
“Hey, Paddy, where are we?”
“On the turnpike.”
“How’d we get here?”
“Patiently.”
He propped Wally against a wagon wheel. Wally clutched the corporal. The turnpike was clouded and dirty with