the urge to belong

the urge to belong

fiction
Edward w Pritchard


Ask any soldier what was the one most eerie aspect of soldiering and most would mention phantom walk on comrades.

Walk on comrades were friends or members of the unit who had been killed who showed up for duty late at night.

Inevitably the dead walk on soldier would have an arm blown off and his uniform would be drenched and dripping in red clotted blood. Often he would be struggling to still carry his rifle with his good arm.

It happened to me while I was on front line guard duty in the uppermost front trenches in the siege of  Petersburg Virginia . I wasn't the only soldier to report seeing a dead Union soldier show up in the trench there in the dark while alone sitting in the misty cold listening and peering all night on vigil for Reb spies and assassins to infiltrate our front lines.

I don't like staying in one place too long after battle; it gives our dead and fallen comrades a chance to find us again. It's probably comforting to the dead and fallen to still belong after brutal battlefield death to the same unit and to still wear the same familiar uniform and to still carry their same trusty rifle for a while after death but it' spooky as Hell to be alone on guard up in the front trenches at night secretly scared of getting your throat cut by Rebs and to peer into the darkness and to see Jeremiah Parker, aide to General Grant, a private from Cario, Ohio who got hit by a sniper at supper last month standing over you in a bloody uniform in a dark musty trench at three ten in the morning.

Why do one armed apparitions with a blood soaked dripping uniform who have been dead and buried for a full month always come back to their units at three ten in the morning? I am not the first on guard duty alone to talk secretly of such things. I heard lieutenant Johnson say "don't be to hard on our mates boys, all old soldiers just have a will to belong even after they are a month or two dead."

I guess it's all right for lieutenant Johnson to call eighteen year old private Jeremiah Parker an old soldier after Parker showed up in my trench a month after he was hit in the shoulder by a sniper at supper but it sure was spooky as Hell to me to see such a weeping young one arm comrade standing over me in a dark misty trench in the middle of the night in 1864 a few miles outside of Petersburg, Virginia.

I know I'll never forget the look on young Jerimiah's face that night way back then just before the end of the Civil War.