The Mockingbird's Ballad

The major sat by his commander beside a campfire about 10 PM. "Yes, General, we've - you've - accomplished a near transformation these last seven weeks. I've never seen or done as much training since my time with General Taylor down in Mexico after the fighting was over and we were waiting to come home. Your work here with these ruffians is showing. They ain't ever going to be good book soldiers but, by the Eternal, they are gonna be better fighters. They were pretty good before, now they're gonna be better." He blew on his tin of coffee. "We still haven't got enough of anything, especially troopers and guns, but we sure to hell are more ready with the little we've got than maybe we've ever been."

The general, warming his hands beside the flickering hickory and cedar fire, said, "Solon, we're going to face real hell this spring. The Yankee troopers don't fall off their mounts when we show up anymore. Damn if they haven't learned to be cavalrymen. We'll have more than we can say grace over soon enough. Heard my old classmate at the Point, Judson Kilpatrick, has taken over some of Sherman's cavalry. There will be the devil to pay Major. They don't call him "Kill Cavalry" because he's timid. Tough and crazy as hell. We're in for it, Solon."

"General, when haven't we been?" the major said quietly.

===

Major Stevenson sat against a large exposed limestone boulder ten feet from a small campfire. It was early August 1864. This August was hot as blue blazes and the cavalry's activities had been nearly daily actions against Sherman's pushes to get into Atlanta and to kill John Bell Hood's army along the way. The major thought, "What a change from Old Joe Johnston's cautious slap and run, hit and hide, never engage head on." It had worked for nearly six months but Richmond had wanted offense, brawling, the great underdog victory over the bully - a regular David and Goliath story. Jeff Davis wanted the victory in July of 1864 in north Georgia, with J. Bell Hood as the young shepherd. Johnston was out and Hood was in as commander of the beleaguered Army of Tennessee.

Major Stevenson grunted to himself, "Didn't know hell could be any deeper or hotter than what it was in this spring. We've had bad, tough, hard fighting in this the summer of our Lord, 1864."

He pulled off his worn out old dull brown kepi with the crossed-swords insignia. He laid it beside him on the green grass. Pulling his left hand slowly from the top of his head forward to his week's old stubbed throat, he sighed heavily. It was as if the friction of this movement would draw out the poison. Shaking his head as if to clear his mind, he rummaged in his haversack. In his notebook he read a passage of some three months ago.