Westways: A Village Chronicle

by S. Weir Mitchell

  CHAPTER XXIV

  It was near to seven when he went down to his parked guns, seeing as hewent that the ways were kept clear, and finding ready hot coffee andbroiled chicken.

  "Where did you get this, Josiah?" he asked.

  "Kind of came in, sir--know'd he was wanted--laid two eggs." The colonellaughed and asked no further questions.

  "Pull off my boots. Horses all right?"

  "Yes, sir."

  Without-undressing he fell on his camp-bed and, towards dusk thinkingwith grim humour of his wife and the Penhallow guns, fell asleep. Aboutfour in the morning the mad clamour of battle awakened him. He got up andwent out of the tent. The night air was hot and oppressive. Far to ourright there was the rattle of musketry and the occasional upward flare ofcannon flashes against low-lying clouds. From the farthest side of theTaneytown road at the rear he heard the rattle of ambulances arrivingfrom the field of fight to leave the wounded in tent hospitals. They cameslowly, marked by their flickering lanterns, and were away again moreswiftly. He gave some vague thought to the wounded and to the surgeons,for whom the night was as the day. At sunrise he went up past the alreadybusy headquarters and came to the bush-hidden lines, where six thousandmen of the Second Corps along a half mile of the irregular far-stretchedCrest were up and busy. Fires were lighted, coffee boiled and biscuitsmunched. An air of confidence and gaiety among the men pleased him as hepaused to give a sergeant a pipe light and divided his tobacco among athankful group of ragged soldiers. All was quiet. An outpost skirmish onthe right, as a man said, "was petering out." He paused here and there totalk to the men, and was interested to hear them discussing withintelligence the advantage of our short line. Now and then the guns farto left or right quarrelled, but at eleven in the morning this third ofJuly all was quiet except the murmurous noise of thousands of men whotalked or lay at rest in the bushes or contrived a refuge from the sununder shelter of a canvas hung on ramrods.

  Generals Gibbon and Webb, coming near, promised him a late breakfast,and he went with them to the little peach orchard near the headquarterson the Taneytown road. They sat down on mess-chests or cracker-boxes,and to Penhallow's amusement Josiah appeared with John, the servantof Gibbon, for Josiah was, as he said, on easy terms with every blackservant in the line. Presently Hancock rode up with Meade. GeneralsNewton and Pleasanton also appeared, and with their aides joined them.These men were officially Penhallow's superiors, and although Hancockand Gibbon were his friends, he made no effort to take part in thediscussion in regard to what the passing day would bring. He had hisown opinion, but no one asked for it and he smoked in an undisturbedprivate council of war.

  At last, as he rose, Newton said, "You knew John Reynolds well,Penhallow. A moment before he fell, his aide had begged him to fallback to a less dangerous position."

  "He was my friend--a soldier of the best."

  "The Pennsylvanians are in force to-day--you and I and--"

  "Oh, colonels don't count," laughed Penhallow; "but there are Meade,Hancock, Gregg, Humphreys, Hays, Gibbon, Geary, Crawford--"

  Hancock said, "We Pennsylvanians hold the lowest and weakest point of ourline--all Pennsylvanians on their own soil."

  "Yes, but they will not attack here," said Newton.

  "Oh, do you think so?" said Hancock. "Wait a little."

  The headquarters' ambulance drove up with further supplies. The chickenswere of mature age, but every one was hungry. Cigars and pipes werelighted, and Newton chaffed Gibbon as the arrogant young brigadier incommand for the time of Hancock's Corps. The talk soon fell again uponthe probabilities of the day. Penhallow listened. Meade grave and silentsat on a cracker-box and ate in an absent way, or scribbled orders, andat last directed that the picked body of men, the provost's guards,should join their regimental commands. About a quarter to noon thegenerals one by one rode away.

  Having no especial duty, Penhallow walked to where on the Crest theeighteen guns were drawn up. The sky was clear as yet, a windless, hotday. Gibbon joined him.

  "What next?" said Gibbon, as Penhallow clambered up and stood a tallfigure on the limber of one of Cushing's guns, his field glass searchingthe valley and the enemy's position. "Isn't it like a big chess-board?"

  "Yes--their skirmishers look like grey posts, and our own blue. They seemuneasy."

  "Aren't they just like pawns in the game!" remarked Captain Haskell ofthe Staff.

  Penhallow, intent, hardly heard them, but said presently, "There areguidons moving fast to their right."

  "Oh, artillery taking position. We shall hear from them," returnedGibbon. "Hancock thinks that being beaten on both flanks, Lee will attackour centre, and this is the lowest point."

  "Well," said Haskell, "it would be madness--can Lee remember MalvernHill?"

  "I wonder what Grant is doing?" remarked Gibbon. At that time, seatedunder an oak, watched at a distance by John Penhallow and a group ofofficers, he was dictating to unlucky Pemberton the terms of Vicksburg'ssurrender.

  Penhallow got down from his perch and wandered among the other guns,talking to the men who were lying on the sod, or interested in thebattery horses behind the shelter of trees quietly munching the thingrasses. He returned to Cushing's guns, and being in the mental attitudeof intense attention to things he would not usually have noticed, he wasstruck with the young captain's manly build, and then with his delicacyof feature, something girl-like and gentle in his ways.

  Penhallow remarked that the guns so hot already from the sun would be tooeasily overheated when they were put to use. "Ah," returned Cushing, "butwill they be asked to talk today?" The innocent looking smile and thequick flash of wide-opened eyes told of his wish to send messages acrossthe vale.

  "Yes, I think so," said the colonel; "I think so,"--and again observanthe saw the slight figure straighten and a quite other look of tendersadness come upon his face.

  "How quiet they are--how very quiet!" Then he laughed merrily. "See thatdog on the Emmitsburg road. He doesn't know which side he's on."

  Penhallow looked at his watch. "It is one o'clock." Then his glass wasup. "Ah!" he exclaimed, as he closed it, "now we shall catch it. Ithought as much."

  A mile away, far on Lee's right, on the low ridge in front of hisposition, a flash of light was seen. As the round ring of smoke shotout from the cannon, the colonel remembered the little Leila's delightwhen he blew smoke rings as they sat on the porch. Instantly a secondgun spoke. The two shells flew over our line and lit far to the rear,while at once along Lee's position a hundred and fifty guns rang out andwere instantly answered by our own artillery from Round Top to CemeteryHill. General Hunt beside him replying to the quick questions he put,said, "We could not place over seventy-five guns--not room enough."

  "Is that all? They are distributing their favours along our whole front."

  At once a vast shroud of smoke rose and hid both lines, while out of itflew countless shell and roundshot. At first most of the Confederatemissiles flew high and fell far behind our Crest. The two officers werecoolly critical as they stood between the batteries.

  "He must think our men are back of the guns like his own. The wall andbushes hide them."

  "The fuses are too long," said Hunt quietly. "That's better and worse,"he added, as a shell exploded near by and one of Woodruff's guns went outof action and the ground was strewn with the dead and wounded. "We shallwant some of your guns."

  Penhallow went in haste to the rear. What he saw was terrible. The ironhail of shells fell fast around him on the wide open space or even as faraway as the hospital tents. On or near the Taneytown road terror-strickenwagon-drivers were flying, ammunition mules were torn to pieces or lyingmangled; a shell exploded in a wagon,--driver, horses and a load of breadwere gone. Horses lay about, dead or horribly torn; one horse hitched toa tree went on cropping grass. Penhallow missed nothing. He was in themood peril always brought. Men said he was a slow, sure thinker, andmissed seeing things which did not interest him. Now he was gay, tuned tothe highest pitch of automatic
watchfulness, as this far-sent storm ofbursting shells went over and past the troops it was meant to destroy.Hurrying through it he saw the wide slope clear rapidly of what was leftof active life. He laughed as a round shot knocked a knapsack off a man'sback. The man unhurt did not stay to look for it. Once the coloneldropped as a shell lit near him. It did not explode. He ejaculated,"Pshaw," and went on. He came near the Taneytown road to find that hisartillery had suffered. A score of harnessed horses lay dead or horriblymangled. His quick orders sent up to the front a dozen guns. Some werehorsed, some were pulled with ropes by the cheering, eager cannoneers.Their way was up the deserted slope, "well cleared by the enemy," thoughtPenhallow with a smile. Once he looked back and saw the far flight of ashell end in or near an ambulance of the wounded beyond the Taneytownroad.

  During his absence gun after gun had been disabled and a caissonexploded; the gun crews lay dead or wounded. What more horribly disturbedPenhallow was the hideous screams of the battery horses. "Ah! the pity ofit. They had no cause to die for--no duty--no choice." As he assisted inreplacing the wreckage of the guns, he still heard the cries of theanimals who so dumb in peace found in torture voices of anguish unheardbefore--unnatural, strange. The appalling tempest of shells screamed onand on, while the most of them fell beyond the Crest. Penhallow looked upto note their flight. They darted overhead shrill-voiced or hissing.There was a white puff of smoke, a red flash, and an explosion.

  General Gibbon, coming back from the long line of his corps, said, "Mymen have suffered very little, but the headquarters behind them are inruin. Meade has moved back." As he spoke the shells began to fall on theCrest.

  "They seem to be more attentive to us," said the battery CaptainWoodruff. "Thought we'd catch it!"

  "Horrible!--Those horses, Gibbon," said Penhallow.

  At last there seemed to be more concentrated firing on the Crest. Manyshells fell near the imperfect wall-shelter of the crouching men, whileothers exploded among the lines to left or right in the bushes.

  "They are doing better now, confound them!" said the young generalcoolly. "Our men at the wall seem disturbed.

  "Come with me," he said to Penhallow and Haskell of the Staff, who hadjust joined them.

  They went down in front of the guns to where behind the low wall lay thetwo thin lines of the Pennsylvania regiments. He spoke to the Colonel ofthe 71st, who with other officers was afoot encouraging the men.

  "Keep cool, boys," said Gibbon.

  The men laughed. "Oh, we're all right, General, but we ain't cool."

  Gibbon laughed. "Let us go over the wall and try to see a little better,"said Penhallow.

  A hundred yards beyond the lines they sat down. The ceaseless rain ofshot and shell from both sides went over them, the canopy of smoke beingso high above that the interspace between the lines was now more or lessvisible. Far beyond them our skirmish outposts were still motionless onguard; and yet further farms and houses, some smoking in ruin, lay amongthe green fields along the Emmitsburg Pike.

  "It is pretty safe here," said the Corps Commander, while far above themthe shells sang their war notes.

  Penhallow looked back. "They've got the range--there goes one of theguns--oh! and another."

  "Let's go back," said Gibbon, rising, "we are too safe here."

  They laughed at his reason and followed him, Haskell remarking on thelessening of the fire. As they moved about the forty-foot spaces betweenthe disabled batteries, the last cannon-ball rolled by them and boundeddown the slope harmless. At once there was movement,--quick orders,officers busy, as fresh cannon replaced the wrecked pieces. Many ofthe unhurt cannoneers lay down utterly exhausted. The dead were drawnaside, while the wounded crawled away or were cared for by thestretcher-bearers and surgeons. Meanwhile the dense, hot, smoke-pallrose slowly and drifted away. The field-glasses were at once in use.

  "It is half-past two," said General Hunt; "what next? Oh! our skirmishersare falling back."

  "They are going to attack," said Haskell, "and can they mean our wholeline--or where?"

  The cannoneers were called to their pieces, and silently expectant thelittle group waited on the fateful hour, while the orderly quiet ofdiscipline was to be seen on the Crest. The field-glasses of the officerswere searching with intense interest the more and more visible vale.

  "Pretty plain now, Gibbon," said Hunt.

  "Yes, we are in for it."

  "They are forming," said Penhallow. A line appeared from the low swell ofground in front of Lee's position--then a second and a third. Muskets andbayonets flashed in the sun.

  "Can you make out their flags?" asked Gibbon, "or their numbers?"

  "Not the flags." He waited intent, watchful. No one spoke--minute afterminute went by. At last Penhallow answered. "A long line--a good halfmile--quite twelve thousand--oh, more--more. Now they are advancing _enechelon_."

  To left, to right, along our lines was heard the thud, thud, of theramrods, and percussion-cap boxes were slid around the waist to be handy.Penhallow and others drew their pistols. The cannon were now fullyreplaced, the regimental flags unrolled, and on the front line, longmotionless, the trefoil guidons of the two divisions of the Second Corpsfluttered feebly. The long row of skirmishers firing fell back more andmore rapidly, and came at last into our lines.

  Penhallow said, turning to Gibbon, "They have--I think--they have nosupporting batteries--that is strange." Haskell and Gibbon had gone as hespoke and the low crest was free at this point of all but the artilleryforce. To left, the projecting clump of trees and the lines of the SecondCorps--all he could see--were ominously quiet.

  Gibbon came back to the crest. He said, "We may need backing if theyconcentrate on us; here our line is too thin." And still the orderly greycolumns came on silently, without their usual charging-yell.

  "Ah!" exclaimed Penhallow without lowering his glass, as he gazed to ourleft. The clamour of cannon broke out from little Round Top.

  "Rifles!" exclaimed Gibbon. "Good!" Their left made no reply, but seemedto draw away from the fire.

  "I can see no more," said the Colonel, "but they stopped at theEmmitsburg road."

  The acrid odour of musketry drifted across the field as he turned togaze at the left wing of the fast coming onset. Far to our right theycame under the fire of Cemetery Hill and of an advanced Massachusettsregiment. He saw the blue flags of Virginia sway, fall, and rise nomore, while scattered and broken the Confederates fled or fell underthe fury of the death messages from above the long-buried dead of thevillage graves. "Now then, Cushing!" cried Hunt, and the guns on theCrest opened fire.

  It was plain that the long Confederate lines, frayed on each flank, hadcrowded together making a vast wedge of attack. Then all along our milesof troops a crackle of musketry broke out, the big guns bellowing. Thefield was mostly lost to view in the dense smoke, under which thecharging-force halted and steadily returned the fire.

  "I can't see," cried Cushing near by.

  "Quite three hundred yards or more," said the colonel, "and you are hurt,Cushing. Go to the rear." The blood was streaming down his leg.

  "Not I--it is nothing. Hang those fellows!" A New York battery gallantlyrun in between disabled guns crowded Cushing's cannon. He cried, "Sectionone to the front, by hand!"

  He was instantly obeyed. As he went with it to the front near to thewall, followed by Penhallow, he said, "It is my last canister, colonel. Ican't see well."

  Dimly seen figures in the dense smoke were visible here and there sometwo hundred yards away, with flutter of reeling battle-flags in thesmoke, while more and more swiftly the wedge of men came on, losingterribly by the fire of the men at the wall along the lines.

  Cushing stood with the lanyard of the percussion trigger in his hand.It seems inconceivable, but the two men smiled. Then he cried, "MyGod!"--his figure swayed, he held his left hand over a ghastly woundin his side, and as he reeled pulled the lanyard. He may have seenthe red flash, and then with a bullet through the open mouth fell deadacross the tr
ail of his gun.

  For a moment Penhallow was the only officer of rank near the silentbattery. Where Cushing's two guns came too near the wall, the men movedaway to the sides leaving an unguarded space. Checked everywhere toright and left, the assailants crowded on to the clump of trees and towhere the Pennsylvania line held the stone wall. Ignorant of the ruinbehind them, the grey mass came on with a rush through the smoke. Themen in blue, losing terribly, fell back from a part of the wall inconfusion--a mere mob--sweeping Webb, Penhallow and others with them,swearing and furious. Two or three hundred feet back they stopped, aconfused mass. General Webb, Haskell and other officers rallied them. Thered flags gathered thicker, where the small units of many commands stoodfast under the shelter of a portion of the lost wall. Penhallow lookedback and saw the Massachusetts flags--our centre alone had given way.The flanks of the broken regiments still held the wall and poured in amurderous fire where the splendid courage of the onset halted, unwillingto fly, unable to go on.

  Webb, furious, rallied his men, while Penhallow, Haskell and Gibbonvainly urged an advance. A colour-sergeant ran forward and fell dead. Acorporal caught up the flag and dropped. A Confederate general leapedover the deserted wall and laid a hand on Cushing's gun. He fellinstantly at the side of the dead captain, as with a sudden roar of furythe broken Pennsylvanians rolled in a disordered mass of men and officersagainst the disorganized valour which held the wall.

  The smoke held--still holds, the secret of how many met the Northern menat the wall; how long they fought among Cushing's guns, on and over thewall, no man who came out of it could tell. Penhallow emptied hisrevolver and seizing a musket fought the brute battle with the men whoused fists, stones, gun-rammers--a howling mob of blue and grey. And sothe swaying flags fell down under trampling men and the lost wall waswon. The fight was over. Men fell in scores, asking quarter. The flankingfires had been merciless, and the slope was populous with dead andwounded men, while far away the smoke half hid the sullen retreat of thesurvivors. The prearranged mechanism of war became active. Thousands ofprisoners were being ordered to the rear. Men stood still, gasping,breathless or dazed. As Penhallow stood breathing hard, from the rightwing, among the long silent dead of Cemetery Hill, arose a wild hurrah.It gathered volume, rolled down the long line of corps after corps, anddied away among the echoes of the Pennsylvania hills. He looked about himtrying to recover interest. Some one said that Hancock and Gibbon werewounded. The rush of the _melee_ had carried him far down the track ofthe charge, and having no instant duty he sat down, his clothes intatters. As he recovered strength, he was aware of General Meade onhorseback with an aide. The general, white and grave, said to Haskell,"How has it gone here?"

  An officer cried, "They are beaten," showing two flags he held.

  Meade said sharply: "Damn the flags! Are the men gone?"

  "Yes, sir, the attack is over."

  He uncovered, said only, "Thank God!" gave some rapid orders and rodeaway beside the death-swath, careful, as Penhallow saw, to keep his horseoff of the thirty scattered flags, many lying under or over the brave whohad fought and lost in this memorable charge.

  Penhallow could have known of the battle only what he had seen, but a fewwords from an officer told him that nowhere except at this part of theline of the Second Corps had the attack been at all fortunate.

  On the wide field of attack our ambulance corps was rescuing the hundredsof wounded Confederates, many of them buried, helpless, beneath thebodies of the motionless dead. Two soldiers stood near him derisivelyflaunting flags.

  "Quit that," cried the Colonel, "drop them!" The men obeyed.

  "Death captured them--not we," said Penhallow, and saw that he wasspeaking to a boyish Confederate lieutenant, who had just dragged himselflimping out of the ghastly heap of dead.

  Touching his forehead in salute, he said, "Thank you, sir. Where shall Igo?"

  "Up there," replied the colonel. "You will be cared for."

  The man limped away followed by Penhallow, who glanced at the tornConfederate banners lying blood-stained about the wall and beyond it. Heread their labels--Manassas, Chancellorsville, Sharpsburg. One markedFredericksburg lay gripped in the hand of a dead sergeant. He crossed thewall to look for the body of the captain of the battery; men were liftingit. "My God!--Poor boy!" murmured the colonel, as he looked on the whiteface of death. He asked who was the Rebel general who had fallen besideCushing.

  "General Armistead," said an officer--"mortally wounded, they say."

  Penhallow turned and went down the slope again. Far away, widelyscattered, he caught glimpses of this rash and gallant attack. He wasaware of that strange complex odour which rises from a battlefield. Itaffected him as horrible and as unlike any other unpleasant smell.Feeling better, he busied himself directing those who were aiding thewounded. A general officer he did not know said to him, "Stop thefiring from that regiment."

  A number of still excited men of one of the flanking brigades on ourright were firing uselessly at the dimly seen and remote mass of theenemy. Penhallow went quickly to the right, and as he drew near shouted,"Stop those men--quit firing!" He raised his hand to call attention tohis order. The firing lessened, and seeing that he was understood heturned away. At the moment he was not fifty feet from the flanking line,and had moved far down the slope as one of the final shots rang out.He felt something like a blow on his right temple, and as he staggeredwas aware of the gush of blood down his face. "What fool did that?" heexclaimed as he reeled and fell. He rose, fell, rose again, and managedto tie a handkerchief around his head. He stumbled to the wall and laydown, his head aching. He could go no further. "Queer, that," hemurmured; "they might have seen." He sat up; things around him weredoubled to his view.

  "Are you hit?" said Haskell, who was directing stretcher-bearers andsending prisoners to the rear.

  "Not badly." He was giddy and in great pain. Then he was aware of theanxious face of Josiah.

  "My God! you hurt, sir? Come to look for you--can you ride? I fetchedDixy--mare's killed."

  "I am not badly hurt. Tighten this handkerchief and give me yourarm--I can't ride,"

  He arose, and amazed at his weakness, dragged himself down the slope,through the reforming lines, the thousands of prisoners, the reinforcingcannon and the wreckage of the hillside. He fell on his couch, and moreat ease began to think, with some difficulty in controlling his thoughts.At last he said, "I shall be up to-morrow," and lay still, seeing, as thelate afternoon went by, Grey Pine and Ann Penhallow. Then he was aware ofCaptain Haskell and a surgeon, who dressed his wound and said, "It wasmere shock--there is no fracture. The ball cut the artery and tore thescalp. You'll be all right in a day or two."

  Penhallow said, "Please to direct my servant to the Sanitary Commission.I think my friend, the Rev. Mark Rivers, is with them."

  He slept none. It was early dawn when Rivers came in anxious andtroubled. For the first time in years of acquaintance he found Penhallowdepressed, and amazed because so small a wound made him weak and unableto think clearly or to give orders. "And it was some stupid boy from ourline," he said.

  His incapacity made Rivers uneasy, and although Penhallow broke out tohis surprise in angry remonstrance, he convinced him at last that he mustreturn to Grey Pine on sick leave. He asked no question about the army.Insisting that he was too well to give up his command, nevertheless hetalked much of headache and lack of bodily power. He was, as Rivers saw,no longer the good-humoured, quiet gentleman, with no thought of self. Ina week he was stronger, but as his watchful friend realized, there wassomething mysteriously wrong with his mental and moral mechanism.

  On the day after the battle Penhallow asked to have his wife telegraphedthat he was slightly wounded, and that she must not come to him. Riverswrote also a brief and guarded letter to Leila of their early return toGrey Pine.

  In a vain effort to interest the colonel, he told him of the surrender ofVicksburg.--He asked where it was and wasn't John there, but somewhatlater became more clear-minded and
eager to go home.