A Sinister Splendor

by Mike Blakely

  The enemy guns commenced to fire on the U.S. advance, the balls bouncing and rolling among the soldiers. Looking to his left at the wrong moment, he saw the head of a foot soldier explode from the direct hit by a cannonball. The man’s splintered musket stock, and even his very skull, became shrapnel that tore into and injured several men around him. After the ball bounced, it slammed into the side of Captain John Page’s face, tearing away his lower jaw.

  Stunned by what he had just witnessed, Grant could only march onward and hope the projectiles would miss his men. The sun had joined the horizon. He placed his hand on his saber hilt, expecting at any moment to hear the bugle call for a charge. Nerves twisted every muscle in his body into taut cables. He decided to pry his thoughts out of his own self-absorbed plight by looking at the battlefield as a whole. He was an officer, after all, and might have to lead men someday as commander of a company, or even a regiment. He had better learn to function through his fear, to think strategically.

  Grant looked to the right for danger of the enemy flanking his regiment’s advance. He saw no such threat. The Fifth and Third infantries also supported the flank, as did a battery of flying artillery. To the rear, Captain May’s dragoons had reloaded their carbines and regrouped. Briefly, Sam thought about his former West Point roommate and future brother-in-law, Frederick Dent, marching with the Fifth.

  Now, through sporadic musket and cannon fire, he heard faint drum and bugle calls from the faraway left flank. Looking that way, through a mile of smoky twilight, he could just make out a company of Mexican lancers harassing the U.S. left flank. Just as quickly, he saw the muzzle blast of Duncan’s guns repulsing the enemy horsemen.

  Now he felt the awesome strength of the advancing American line in its entirety. A mile of moving muscle and weaponry. Again he was impressed by the power coordinated groups of trained men could wield. The thought that one man—General Taylor—could control two thousand soldiers so smoothly struck him with wonder. He looked over his shoulder toward Taylor’s position and saw him in the distance, riding serenely astride Old Whitey. He could not help shaking his head over the calm leadership of the general. Courage was one thing. The ability to make decisions under fire was quite another. He wondered if Taylor would order the long-anticipated bayonet charge. But as the light dwindled and the flying artillery found the range on the enemy units in front of Grant’s regiment, the Mexican left melted away into the tall timber, leaving the Fourth Infantry holding the field.

  Releasing his talon-like grip on his saber hilt, Grant looked down at the ground his company now occupied. He saw dried, black blood soaked into the dirt. With the next step he saw fresh, red blood dripping from stalks of grass trampled by the enemy retreat. Drumbeats signaled a halt to the advance.

  “It looks as if we’re to hold this ground,” Grant said to the enlisted men near him. “Prepare to make camp while we still have the light.”

  His subordinates began breaking up empty wooden crates left behind by the Mexicans. Campfires flared as stars appeared. Each company formed up for roll call. In Grant’s company, one man had been killed—the man hit in the head with the cannonball—and five wounded, including Captain Page.

  Captain McCall pulled him aside. “Grant, send a platoon with all the canteens of the whole company. Order them filled at the duck ponds near the supply train. Send a sergeant and a guard with them. There may be sharpshooters in the chaparral.”

  “Yes, sir,” Grant said. He winced at a scream from the surgeon’s tent.

  “Are you all right, Lieutenant?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  McCall placed his hand on Grant’s shoulder. “Today we saw the elephant.”

  Grant nodded. “We didn’t order a volley all day.”

  “Perhaps tomorrow we will draw the claret,” McCall said grimly.

  Grant sent the canteen detachment to the pond and strolled about his company’s camp.

  “Sleep on your arms tonight, men. The enemy is still near at hand.” He looked toward the southeast, at the flickering campfires of the Mexican Army six or seven hundred yards away, some of them camped in the open prairie, others tucked into the chaparral.

  He continued to walk aimlessly about his company’s camp. Some of the men ate heartily from provisions brought from the supply train. Others barely nibbled at hardtack or salted pork. One of the men offered Grant an ear of corn that had been roasted over an open fire. He took it, gnawed at it.

  “Eat!” he ordered, shaking the cob at his men. “Tomorrow we will be of no use to one another in a weakened state.”

  Spotting a group of junior officers at a nearby camp fire, he trudged over to see what he might learn. As he approached, he recognized the face of his friend Lieutenant Frederick Dent in the firelight.

  “Sam, the news is good,” said Dent, shaking Grant’s hand. “Well, not so bad, I should say. We lost only nine men killed, forty-seven wounded.”

  “The number of dead will rise,” a captain said. “Some won’t survive their wounds.”

  “Captain Page?” someone asked.

  Grant’s company commander, Captain George A. McCall, answered. “He can’t survive long with no jaw. I know I wouldn’t want to.”

  “What about Major Ringgold?”

  Dent answered. “Still alive, but it’s a miracle he’s lasted this long. He’s being hauled back to the navy’s surgeon at Point Isabel.”

  Charles F. Smith of the Second Artillery shook his head. “That was something to behold. I’ve never seen anything so heroic.”

  A first lieutenant spat a stream of tobacco into the fire. “The enemy losses were no doubt in the hundreds.”

  “Should have been worse for them,” Charles F. Smith muttered. “If Taylor had ordered the bayonet charge, we would have crushed the enemy on the field instead of allowing them to escape into the chaparral.”

  McCall looked at Grant. “Do you agree, Sam? You haven’t said a word since you got here.”

  “It’s not my place to second-guess a general,” Grant allowed.

  “Brevet general,” Smith said.

  Dent nudged Grant. “Speak your mind, Sam.”

  Grant stared at the fire as he thought about the troops still surrounded at Fort Texas. “The objective of the day was to get our provisions closer to the garrison, not to attempt to destroy the entire Mexican Army in a single engagement.” He was a bit stunned to hear his own voice speak with such certainty.

  “In my view,” Smith said, “we should have destroyed the enemy today so that we could relieve the garrison in the morning. We’re only a few miles away. Now we will likely have to fight our way through the Mexicans tomorrow while the garrison remains besieged.”

  “You’re probably right,” McCall said. “And Arista now knows better than to meet us on the open field, where our artillery can pick him apart. He’ll be holed up in the brush next time. We’ll have to go in after him.”

  Frederick Dent took Grant by the sleeve and pulled him a few steps from the gathering at the fire.

  “Have you heard from home, Sam?”

  “Not since we arrived at Point Isabel.”

  “Same with me. We must try not to alarm my sisters. Or Mother.”

  Grant nodded. “I agree. No need for bloody details.”

  Dent sighed. “I must get over to the field hospital. A few of the boys in my company took hits today.”

  “Do you want me to go with you?”

  “No, Sam, you’ve got your own company to look after. Get some sleep.”

  Grant wandered back to his camp and lay on a blanket on the ground, using his rolled tunic for a pillow. He stared up at the moon. It was three days shy of rising full, and it illuminated the smoke plumes that rose from the campfires and the still-smoldering saw grass.

  He thought about Julia and longed for the reassurance of another letter from her. How could he tell her about what he had seen today? In his next letter—as Frederick had suggested—he would gloss over the carnage and declare a tacti
cal victory so that she might worry less. He wondered how long this conflict would keep them apart.

  The breeze from the Gulf felt cool, yet when it lessened he could hear the moans of injured men in the field hospital. There but by the grace of God go I, he thought.

  He remembered a Bible verse he had once memorized from the book of James:

  “For what is your life? It is even a vapor that appears for a little time and then vanishes away.”

  Eventually he fell asleep and dreamed of cannonballs rolling through White Haven Plantation.

  General

  MARIANO ARISTA

  Resaca de la Palma

  May 9, 1846

  By the gray morning light, General Arista reined in his mount as he saw Captain Berlandier pull up and gesture down the road toward Matamoras. A league away, he could plainly hear the artillery battle over the Americans’ earthen fort on the Rio Bravo.

  “This is the place,” Berlandier said. “Resaca de la Palma.”

  The general-in-chief studied the road. It dipped down into the resaca—a former riverbed the Rio Bravo had abandoned in its age-old meanderings. Where it crossed the resaca, the trace resembled the narrows of an hourglass. Thick chaparral crowded it on either side, pinching it to a wagon’s width. Pools of standing water, one to each side, also flanked the road. The little gully was only shoulder deep to the average man, but it would provide some cover from attack.

  “Why here?” he asked his aide-de-camp.

  “The wagons of the Americans must cross the resaca here to get to their fort. No other wagon road exists through a hundred leagues of chaparral. Only goat trails. Hold this bottleneck, and the Americans cannot get their supplies to their fort.”

  Arista felt a glimmer of hope brighten his mood. Yesterday’s battle had devastated his army’s morale. More than five hundred men had been killed or wounded. Worse yet, a treacherous rumor had been started by some ambitious junior officers personally or politically opposed to him. The rumor held that Arista had committed treason, that he had made a bargain to deliver the Mexican Army to the Americans. How preposterous these whispered accusations, and yet how readily swallowed by doubting fools. Woe to the general who had to place spies within his own ranks.

  He nodded his thanks to Berlandier. “You have chosen well, Capitan.”

  Captain Jean Louis Berlandier was a man whose opinion the general had learned to value. Since marching his Army of the North to Matamoras, Arista had found Dr. Berlandier’s council so useful that the general had made him aide-de-camp and bestowed upon him the rank of capitan. Berlandier had been living in Matamoras for several years, working as a physician, and knew the country well. But his expertise did not end there. The journey of the forty-one-year-old Berlandier had not been typical.

  Jean Louis Berlandier had been born in France, near the Swiss border. He had studied botany at the academy in Geneva, in which city he had also apprenticed under a pharmacist. It was as a young botanist that Berlandier had journeyed to Mexico, twenty years before, to collect specimens. He soon found himself working for the Mexican government as part of a boundary expedition exploring the northern frontier as far as the Rio San Saba. On the frontier, he had become familiar with soldiering out of necessity.

  He had since settled at Matamoras, where he became a pharmacist, then a medical doctor. He was adventurous, worldly, educated, and accomplished. He spoke Spanish, French, and German. Arista relied upon him, here along the Rio Bravo. His knowledge of medicine and surgery had become indispensable just yesterday, after Arista’s chief field doctor had disappeared.

  The general turned his mount about to look at the ground over which the Americans would have to approach. He saw that the resaca hooked forward to the left and right of the road, like the horns of a fighting bull. Nearing the depression, the chaparral along the road thinned out a bit, which would afford a field of view for his gunners and musketeers. Farther out, the growth was so thick that the enemy would have to approach well inside musket range to even catch sight of the Army of the North.

  Berlandier guided his mount up beside the general’s. “Resaca de la Palma is your thorny moat,” he said. “Believe me, I have collected botanical samples in this chaparral. It will scratch a careless man to bloody shreds. A charge upon this place is possible only down the narrow road.”

  This was the best news Arista had encountered since he had begun his retrograde movement at dawn. Taylor had not followed as he withdrew this morning, but Arista knew the American commander would start for the earthen star fort sooner or later. Later, he guessed. Taylor would want to rest his soldiers and their horses today. He would attack tomorrow, giving Arista’s zapadores ample time to construct breastworks on the already naturally defensible Resaca de la Palma.

  He looked into the wizened eyes of his aide-de-camp. “I will establish my headquarters south of the resaca. Call the regimental commanders to my tent for a council of war within the hour.”

  “Si, General!” Berlandier saluted and rode away at a gallop, toward the Army of the North.

  Arista waved at his personal guard, who had been waiting within shouting distance. The eight combat veterans came at a trot. Feeling confident in his army’s ability to defend Resaca de la Palma, he began looking forward to a cup of midday tea. He had reports to write.

  “Venga, hombres!” he shouted as his guard neared. “Vamos a hacer campamento!” It was time to set up camp.

  * * *

  Arista rode south through Resaca de la Palma and beyond. He chose a small meadow to the right of the road for his camp. Within half an hour his tent was erected and he was seated at his writing desk.

  “Tea is ready, General.”

  Arista looked up at the camp servant at the open tent flap. “Come in, Pedro,” he ordered.

  The servant entered with a silver tea service, tiny loaves of sugar, and goat’s milk from a nearby rancheria.

  Arista looked through his tent door to see the pack mules and supply wagons kicking up dust on the road. “Pour a cup, then leave me,” he said to the servant. “I have many correspondences to complete.”

  When the servant brought his cup, Arista took a sip and looked into the man’s eyes. The servant took from his pocket a scrap of paper. Arista took the paper, nodded at the servant, and tossed his head toward the open door.

  “The tea is good and strong, Pedro. You may go now.”

  When the servant left, the general unfolded the paper and looked at the names of junior officers written upon it. Pedro was loyal and had sharp ears. He was as much a spy as a servant, and Mariano Arista relied upon him. The general had charged him with the task of rooting out the rumormongers in his ranks. There were a dozen names on the paper.

  This went beyond insubordination to the brink of mutiny. When he put his defenses in place for the coming battle with the Americans, these ambitious young hotheads might find themselves in very dangerous places. He put his teacup on the silver tray and sighed.

  No … He would not stoop to their level of treachery. He would put the most able officers in the logical locations. The malcontents would eventually be rooted out or won over, but he would not offer them up as sacrifices to the Americans.

  Captain

  GEORGE A. MCCALL

  Palo Alto to Resaca de la Palma

  May 9, 1846

  Captain George A. McCall stood shoulder to shoulder with Captain Charles F. Smith of the Second Artillery, facing General Zachary Taylor. Remaining at attention, he struggled to contain his excitement. His lungs heaved like bellows as his heart pounded out drumbeats of war. General Taylor had just given Captain McCall and Captain Smith their orders for the morning.

  The sun had risen outside, but the coal oil lantern wick still burned inside the commander’s dark tent. Taylor stood over his war map, bathed in the lamplight, with his finger still on the spot he wanted attacked—a place called Resaca de la Palma.

  “Arista is wasting his cavalry advantage by holing up in the woods,” General Ta
ylor said. He raised the globe on the lantern and blew out the kerosene flame. “You have your orders. Proceed immediately.”

  Together with Smith, Captain McCall saluted General Taylor, faced about, and left Old Rough and Ready’s tent.

  “So, we shall take the fight to the Mexicans,” Captain Smith said, a wry grin complementing his fiery eyes.

  McCall nodded. “How long will you take choosing your hundred and fifty men?”

  “I will have them formed up within the hour.”

  “We will rendezvous where the road enters the chaparral.”

  “Agreed.” Smith peeled away for his unit at a trot.

  McCall consciously maintained the set to his jaw. His long legs carried him quickly to the company he commanded in the Fourth Infantry. Glancing about, he saw men cleaning weapons and sharpening bayonets. He located his second lieutenant, Sam Grant.

  “Grant!”

  “Sir?” the lieutenant answered.

  “I have my orders from General Taylor. Captain C. F. Smith and I are to pick one hundred fifty men each from our respective regiments and advance as skirmishers.”

  Grant’s eyebrows rose, but he made no other expression. “Yes, sir…” he said, a question in his tone.

  “You will assume command in my absence. Take good care of my company, Lieutenant.”

  Grant looked surprised, perhaps even apprehensive, but he drew himself to attention and saluted. “Yes, sir.”

  Amused at the protocol, McCall smiled and returned the salute. “I’ll pick ten or twelve men from each company in the regiment until I have my hundred and fifty. That will leave you with about forty men to command.

  “I will do my best, sir.”