alternatehistory.com

Alright guys, this is a story that I wrote for my little sister for her 7th grade history class. It's due tomorrow, and she only just told me about it. :eek: So... the assignment she recieved was to take an existing story (the story is about an Irish volunteer during the Easter Rising in 1916, I forget the title of the story) and take part of it and re-word it to have it take place during any other war that they chose. I chose to re-write it so that it took place during the ACW. So I was thinking to myself, hey, this looks alright. So I figured I'd share it with you guys. This is a standalone one-shot piece. So here it is; please tell me what you think (and be honest, I love constructive criticism):

The next instant, before he knew what was happening, a Union soldier trotted over the bridge on a horse. He rode up the opposite side of the street, about fifty yards ahead of the sniper’s position. The Yankee rider was obviously an enemy, and was well exposed at that. One shot and he’d join countless others in the afterlife that had fallen from Confederate bullets. However, the sniper chose to wait. This Yankee rider looked like he was looking for something.

The sniper’s choice proved to be a good one, for a minute later, an old woman came round the corner and went right up to the Union horseman. They began talking and the old woman began pointing to the sniper’s side of the street. He knew immediately what she was doing. She was telling the Yankee where all the sniper’s comrades were. An informer.

The Union horseman tipped his hat to the old woman and turned his horse around. He began to ride back in the direction of the bridge, no doubt to bring information of Confederate positions back to his camp. The sniper couldn’t allow him to do that. He raised his rifle and fired off a bullet. The Union rider sagged in his saddle and fell off his horse, landing face-first in the dirt. The sniper quickly chambered another round into his rifle. The old woman began fleeing down the street. The sniper fired his rifle again. The woman screamed as the bullet struck home. She fell to the ground a moment later; lifeless.

Then, without warning, a shot rang out from the roof of the building across the street from the sniper’s. The sniper dropped his rifle and cursed every way he knew how. His rifle made a racket as it dropped to the floor of the roof. It made so much racket, he was sure that everyone and their grandmother would know exactly where he was. He bent down and tried to pick the rifle back up, only to discover that he couldn’t. His forearm no longer worked. “The Yankee got me,” he whispered.

He dropped flat on the roof and crawled to where he thought he would be safe. He felt the spot where his arm had been injured. Blood seeped through his coat sleeve. He didn’t feel any pain; it was as if the arm wasn’t even there anymore.

He unsheathed his knife and used it to rip open the sleeve of his shirt. A small hole showed where the bullet had entered his arm. The hole was only on one side, meaning that the bullet had become lodged inside the bone. The sniper figured that the arm was either fractured or broken. He bent his arm and found out that he could still do that easily enough, but that it hurt a great deal to do so. Pain ripped through him when he tried it.

He didn’t have anything with him for first aid, but, being a solder, he knew how to improvise. He used his knife to cut a piece of his shirt off, and tore it into a ribbon-like strip. He wrapped the makeshift bandage around the wound, staunching the blood flow. He used his teeth to tie the bandage.

The sniper laid back. He closed his eyes and gritted his teeth, doing his best to ignore the nearly unbearable pain.
All was quiet on the street below. The Union horse brayed and ran frantically back over the bridge from whence it came. Its rider lay face down in the street, dead. The old woman was in a similar condition about five yards away from the Yankee. She wouldn’t be doing much informing ever again.
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