A Ballad of Love and Glory(10)

“And who are you to tell him what to do? Is it his master you are?” Quinn retorted.

“I have a need for a drop of comfort, John, a chara,” Sullivan said.

“Let him be. The poor fella deserves it,” Charlie Flanagan said. “You, John Riley, with the perfect soldierin’ you learned as a redcoat, you’ve never been punished by the Yanks, have ya? Not like the rest of us.” He pointed to the brand on his forehead, his entire sullen face illuminated by the firelight, and added: “You don’t know how the lad is feelin’, but I do.”

Riley understood his comrade’s anger. He knew that while living in the slums of Philadelphia two years earlier, Flanagan had barely survived the nativist riots that left many Irish Catholic neighborhoods destroyed. He’d enlisted in the US Army seeking protection from the wrath of Protestant mobs, only to encounter the same racist and religious rancor infecting the Yankee ranks.

“Here, Franky, ma bouchal, don’t mind him. Have another drink!” Matthew O’Brien said to Sullivan, handing him his flask. “Sláinte is táinte!”

“Sláinte is táinte!” the other men said. Riley looked at his messmates, men who, like him, had been forced into military service by circumstance and necessity but who, unlike him, had no desire to do it right. He stood up to leave. He wasn’t going to quarrel with his countrymen. If they wanted to drink their earnings instead of holding fast to them so they could provide for their families back home, that was their problem.

“Och, Riley, ’tis my last drop,” Sullivan said after he downed the whiskey. “Stay here awhile, will ya?” Then as he had every night, he began to sing a patriotic air. Soon, the others joined in too.

Riley bethought himself of home. He remembered the hard but manful days working the land with his father and brothers, the stories and songs by the family’s fireside, and visiting Saint Féchín’s holy well with Nelly. What he wouldn’t give now to spend a day with Johnny riding ponies down Omey Strand, to see his face lit up with boyish glee. He’d been obliged to walk away from them all because he and Nelly were fixed upon having a bit of land to call their own. But at what cost?

“A nation once again, a nation once again, and Ireland, long a province, be a nation once again!”

As they sang, Riley wondered if Ireland would ever free itself from the shackles of the British crown. Would he ever be able to return and live in the land where he was born and reared, instead of bringing his wife and son here to these foreign shores to start a new life in a country that didn’t want them?

“Let’s sin’ one more before the bugle sounds tattoo,” Sullivan said. And, as if sensing Riley’s melancholy and nostalgia, he chose a song not from the old country. Instead, he said, “Here’s a ditty I made up today in honor of bein’ bucked and gagged.”


Come, all Yankee soldiers, give ear to my song,

It is a short ditty, ’twon’t keep you long;

It’s no use to fret on account of our luck,

We can laugh, drink, and sing yet in spite of the buck.

Derry down, down, down, derry down.

“Sergeant, buck him and gag him,” our officers cry

For each triflin’ offense which they happen to spy,

Till with buckin’ and gaggin’ of Dick, Pat, and Bill,

Faith, the Mexicans’ ranks they will help to fill.

Derry, down, down, down, derry down.

The treatment they give us, as all of us know,

Is bucking and gagging for whipping the foe;

But they are glad to release us when going to fight.

They buck us and gag us for malice or spite

Derry down, down, down, derry down…



It didn’t take long for the men to learn the ditty, and they asked Sullivan to sing it again so that they could join along. Riley, too, joined in. He looked across the fire, at his tentmate, only six years older than his son, and he realized that this skinny, wide-eyed country boy was the only kin he’d have for now, and this mesquite campfire his only hearth.





4


April 1846

Fort Texas, Río Grande

In the morning, word spread quickly—despite the harsh punishments the day before, or maybe due to them, more soldiers had deserted in the night, including men from Riley’s own unit. As he walked to the field hospital, detailed by his commander to retrieve Maloney and talk some sense into him, Riley saw more foreign-born soldiers bucked and gagged or made to ride “the horse.” He sang Sullivan’s ditty under his breath. If the Yankee officers kept it up, they’d end up actually helping the Mexicans fill their ranks with deserters.

He found Maloney sunk in peaceful slumber on a dirty cot. Riley looked around at the dozens of soldiers, ill from the wretched diarrhea, fever, pneumonia, snakebites, or other maladies. He crossed himself and asked Jesus and his Holy Mother to watch over them. He smiled bitterly as he recalled the recruiting officers of the US Army promising their enlisted men a wholesome diet, comfortable quarters, and the finest medical care.

Maloney’s branded forehead was violently inflamed, his usually mirthful face now wan and blanched of its good-natured color. How could he disturb the poor man’s dream where there was no pain and suffering? Captain Merrill be damned. He quietly pulled a stool up to the old man’s cot. He took out a letter he received at mail call two days earlier, though his wife had sent it more than three months before. That morning he’d woken up long before reveille sounded to read and reread Nelly’s words, admiring her effort to write a good hand.