War in Springtime

The poet T. S. Eliot says, “April is the cruelest month”, and a generation living though a major war in springtime knows well what he is speaking of. The painful tension between hope at the rebirth of nature, and anguish for our troops and the civilians caught in the storm of battle is something that is difficult to cope with. We are not alone in that struggle. Looking back to another Civil War and the young Warwick men who fought through three springtimes far from home in the most horrific conditions possible, we find that this prior generation came to terms with its experiences.

The “Warwick Boys”, Company D of the 124th Regiment, were mostly young men in their teens and early twenties when they enlisted to fight. A history of the regiment, also known as “The Orange Blossoms”, was later written by Charles Weygant, In recent years Charles LaRocca has authored books and articles on the 124th, as well. But recently a more local view was made available to the Historical Society of Warwick by Tom and Joan Frangos-- a speech given by Capt. James W. Benedict, of Warwick, the leader of Company D. The stone home he grew up in still stands on Colonial Avenue, near the Village line.

Benedict titled his speech “Sherman’s Deffinition of War”(sic) , after the General’s famous rejoinder to a request for a short summary of his experiences: “War is Hell.” It is not written in the restrained, formal language one would expect from an official of his time, but is the impassioned cry of a man wounded in body, mind, and soul, who in later years has come to a kind of balance, if not peace, with the experiences he endured.

We offer here a few excerpts of it, and warn that even though we see graphic images of war in our homes each day, the descriptions are disturbing.

“I followed Burnside across the Rappahanock, on that Pontoon Bridge in front of Fredericksburg on that fateful afternoon of Decr. 12th 1862.

“On yonder frowning heights, the bloody heights of bloody Mayrie; a hundred and fifty black mouthed cannon are vomiting forth through their fiery throats, solid shot and shells, and great chunks of Rail Road Iron into our midst in the vain endeavor to destroy the bridge, thereby severing our Army, and capturing us in detail. From behind the chimneys on yonder housetops, scarce a stone’s throw away, three hundred and fifty Rebel sharpshooters are pouring a deadly fire of leaden hail into our ranks, and at every click of a trigger, at every puff of smoke, at every report of a musket, at every crack, crack, crack of a rifle, some poor fellow down there on the bridge would throw up his hands and with a shriek he would plunge head formost into the icy waters of the murkey Rappahanock, and as his life blood mingled with those cold, dark waters and his spirit rose in great bubbles to the surface and bursting, soared up through cloudland into the presence of Him who gave it, His body floated down the crimson colored waters of the icy Rappahanock. ‘Food for the Fishes.’ ….Burnside, are you crazy? Burnside, are you drunk? Burnside; are you a fool? If you charge those men up against those impregnable works again, the blood of 15,000 of our brave boys in blue will be upon your skirts. But Burnside says Forward, and again those now depleted ranks move forward.

“What about Getteysburg (sic)? Getteysburg, O Getteysburg; Thy hills, and thy valleys, and thy plains are enriched by the blood of nearly 24,000 loved ones. Gettysburg; O Getteysburg! I close mine eyes, What do I behold? A vision comes to me today as plain as was the reality on those awful days of carnage in July 63. Gettysburg; O Getteysburg! I see thy brooks, thy rivulets, thy rills run red with the very best Gore of the Nation.

“I prayed then, and there, that mine eyes might never gaze on such a field of slaughter and carnage again. But God in His Infinite Wisdom, deemed best not to answer that prayer, for in the Wilderness Campaign a scene met my gaze that (if possible) seemed to outdo even Getteysburg.

“On a piece of ground some 3 miles in length and a mile in width, where the contending armies fought for two long terrible days and nights, Neither side giving the other the time or opportunity to care for their wounded, or bury their dead, in places three deep. After the battle I went over a portion of that field, and I believe I could have traversed the entire length and breadth of that ground, and not touched foot to Mother Earth, Just walked on Corpses and dying men, and O, the awfulness of that battle field. Could you have been there and listened to the cries and the groans, the curses and the prayers that fell upon my ears, you would have said, Surely Sherman knows what War is. From all quarters of that battlefield came those piteous cries:

“Water, Water, For Gods sake, give me some water. Others begged of one to hand them a loaded musket that they might put an end to their suffering by their own hand. And the poor fellows died there, and the Wilderness was enriched by the Blood of 20,000 boys who wore the Blue…”

Captain Benedict in this lengthy speech gives descriptions of several of the other major battles in which he participated, and his humanity is found in every anguished sentence and misspelled word as he rushes along in the grip of memory. He concludes,

“Now, I hear someone Ask, did it pay? Yes, I answer, it paid… It struck the shackles from off 4,000,000 Slaves and made them free men and free women… What was the Cost? In money, billions of dollars…What else did it cost this Nation, the North? It cost us 400,000 lives… It made for us 200,000 Widows… It gave to us 500,000 orphans… War is Hell, and I was an Orange Blossom.”