The Storm Before Atlanta by Karen Schwabach

the corner of his eye Jeremy was aware of two stretcher bearers slogging past, up the hill, carrying a stretcher between them with a man in a blue Union uniform on it. With a jolt Jeremy realized that this was real. Real Rebs were shooting real bullets and real men were being hit. This was seeing the elephant.
    “Close up that file!” called a sergeant to Jeremy’s right.
    The gunshots had stopped. The regiment marched on.
    The sun climbed high overhead, and it began to get hot. Jeremy could feel sweat trickling down his back inside his fatigue blouse, and he would have dearly loved to stop and take a drink from his canteen.
    Finally the captain called “Company halt! Fall out!”
    Jeremy was surprised to see it was already noon. The men stopped with sighs of relief. Jeremy threw his drum down on the roadside and sat on it, as drummer boys did. He pulled out his canteen and took a long swig. Then he ate some of his cooked beef. He didn’t look for his messmates. Around him men were talking. Some were singing. But Jeremy found he didn’t want to talk to anybody. The moment seemed too big for anything but his own thoughts.
    The order came to fall in again. The yellow sun beat down on them. The drumming began again, and then the marching. They moved on.
    Then the deep, hollow boom of cannon fire slammed against his ears. For a moment Jeremy could hear nothing, and thought he had gone deaf. Then gunshots answered, and the cannons roared again. The company stopped, then started, then stopped. They didn’t know why they were stopping; they didn’t know what was going on up ahead of them, except that it involved cannons. They moved when they were told to, kept on marching forward. Sometimes they passed fields, more often they passed through dense woods, and Jeremy knew that rifle fire could erupt from among the trees at any moment. The red dust stirred up by the march got in the men’s faces and made them cough. Twice Jeremy made hasty hops to avoid marching in horse droppings. Still the cannons and the guns sounded up ahead.
    Then, to Jeremy’s confusion, they left the road and began marching across the broken ground, among pine trees and hillocks. It was hard going, and he had to stop drumming. It was enough work just to keep moving, stepping high over fallen tree trunks, pushing through the undergrowth and the branches that kept trying to dislodge his drum. After a while they wheeled right. Jeremy had no idea what they were aiming for. All he could see around him was trees. Still the cannons sounded up ahead, but the order came to halt, and Jeremy stopped to beat it out on his drum. They were ordered to fortify their position.
    “But we haven’t got to the battle yet!” said Jeremy.
    “There ain’t no battle yet, I don’t think,” said Dave.
    “What’s all that up ahead, then?”
    “Just skirmishing, I think,” said Dave.
    “When does the battle start?”
    “It don’t run on a timetable. It starts when it starts. Don’t be impatient. We’ll get our turn. If not now, later on.”
    But Jeremy wanted his turn now. The air vibrated with the crash of cannons and guns up ahead, just out of sight; the smell of gunpowder drifted through the trees toward him. He was too worked up to do anything but see the elephant, and when he joined the men in cutting and dragging trees to front their trenches with, he felt it was a distraction from the real work that lay up ahead.
    No more orders came, so they kept fortifying. They dug their trenches deeper, using their bayonets and bowie knives to dig with. Still no orders came.
    “Might as well cook, even if we are dug in for battle,” Nicholas decided.
    The mess was gathered in the rifle pit they’d dug, behind a wall of logs and red clay.
    “When do we get to go in?” said Jeremy.
    “Never, I hope. We’re being held in reserve. Enjoy it,” said Nicholas.
    “Little Drummer Boy wants to get into the battle and be a hero,” said Lars. He started humming “The