The Battle of the Crater: A Novel

by Gingrich, Newt

  “Come on, boys! Come on!” The charge swept forward.

  James had to look even though he already knew what he would see. But he had to tell his friend the truth, what he had actually seen. Swallowing hard, he mounted the ladder, climbing halfway out of the trench, crouching low. The lip of the trench was a writhing mass of dead and wounded. The charge was going forward; no lines, just a mass of men. In the dawn light, their ragged blue uniforms looked black with shades of dark brown and gray. And on each back was a piece of paper. He focused on a man for an instant, the paper fluttering—blown off as a bullet exploded out of his back, the man collapsing. They were not falling by ones and twos—they were collapsing by the dozens with each step of the advance. They were falling all up and down the line as far as he could see, until the vast stage was concealed by morning mist and smoke. The charge was going forward.

  No cheers. This sound was different, sending a shiver of anger through him. The men were not cheering, some were braying like sheep. They were going forward as ordered but now voicing a final contempt for those who had ordered this … brave men, three-year veterans of the Union Army of the Potomac baa-ing like sheep even as they charged.

  The original flag-bearers for the regiment were down. Others picked up the colors, advanced a few paces, and then collapsed as well.

  The charge was barely fifty yards from the trenches and already disintegrating. The Rebel lines were concealed in roiling clouds of yellow-gray smoke, illuminated with hundreds of flashes of light. There was a continuous roar punctuated by blasts of artillery from their reserve line, which was higher up and a hundred yards back.

  And then it was over. The lieutenant holding the national colors went down on his knees, struggling to hold the flag aloft. He was hit several more times and fell; the flag lay in the dust. There was no one left to pick it up.

  Hundreds were down on the field, not a single man still standing. Some had gone to ground and by ones and twos, crouched low, tried to run back toward their trench. A burst of fire and they, too, collapsed.

  To his right came a flare of thunder; another regiment, come up from the reserve trench, was trying to go forward. The Rebels to James’s front shifted their aim, pouring enfilading fire into the flank of the charge. It broke apart in a matter of seconds, the survivors turning about, diving back into the trench for protection.

  Fire slackened. A Rebel yell erupted but somehow it was muted, no roar of triumph like he had heard when they swept the field at Chancellorsville and Second Manassas.

  “For Christ’s sake!” came a cry. “This is murder! For Christ’s sake you damn Yankees, go back. Go back!”

  Not everyone felt the same compassion. Those with colder hearts gunned down wounded soldiers who stood and tried to hobble back. Three years of war had left an indelible hole in such things as chivalry and pity for far too many.

  A bullet slapped close to James’s face, and he realized that for some time he had been crouching atop the lip of the trench. A plume of dirt snapped up by his bent knee. He tumbled over, falling back into the trench, landing on the body of man who had been hit in the chest, driving out the last gasp of air from the bloody corpse.

  Young Billy stood, looking up at the lip of the trench, sobbing, while trying to take hold of the ladder with the hope of going up.

  “I’m not a coward, I’m not a coward,” he babbled. James grabbed hold of him, pulling him back. The boy was shaking like a leaf. He pushed him back and set him against the opposite wall.

  “You are not a coward, son. The wounded need your help.”

  The boy looked at him wide-eyed. The front of his trousers were soaked. In his terror he had wet himself.

  The boy saw him gaze down, realized his humiliation, and, collapsing, he curled up and continued to sob.

  “I absolve you in the name of the Father…”

  He turned away from Billy. Father Hagan was making his way up the trench, kneeling by each of the fallen, bending low to kiss a forehead, making the sign of the cross, crawling a few feet to the next man to do the same … and the same yet again.

  “Merciful God, what have we done?”

  James looked up. It was General Horace Porter, trusted friend and adjutant of General Ulysses Grant. Emerging from the communications trench he stood in silence, obviously overwhelmed.

  James stood, the general coming toward him, shuffling as if stricken.

  “My God, what have we done?”

  “You’ve killed an army, that’s what you’ve done,” James hissed.

  Porter focused on him for a moment; there was a flash of recognition for the artist from Harper’s Weekly.

  “I told Grant, I told him and Meade…” and then his voice trailed off.

  He knew Porter to be a good man, one who would stay loyal to his general.

  “I told him…” and again his voice dropped.

  “Told him what?”

  Porter stood silent.

  He sighed and lowered his head.

  “This war will go on forever,” and his voice was choked.

  “No,” James sighed. “We will lose if it goes on like this; then it will end.”

  He started back toward the trench leading to the rear, but a column of men were emerging, heads bent low, blocking his way.

  “What is this?” James cried.

  “The next wave,” was all Porter could say.

  “May God forgive you.” It was Father Hagan, glaring at Porter, eyes cold.

  “Yes, Father. May he forgive us all.”

  The last of the regiment, another veteran unit—colors of the 12th New Jersey as tattered as those of the 23rd New York—emerged from the communications trench, filing to their right, away from James. On the back of each was pinned a slip of paper: FRANK SMITH, 43 BROAD ST., NEWARK NEW JERSEY, 12TH NEW JERSEY, MOTHER: RACHEL; CHARLES ANDREWS, NO FAMILY BURY ME WITH MY COMRADES …

  A procession of the walking dead.

  James forced himself to remember one of the two reasons he was there that day. Lifting up his sketch board and using a blunt pencil—the one the now-dead lieutenant had handed back—he drew a few quick lines. Jotting down notes and a numbered code he and other artists at the front used to indicate where to put the enemy line, how many men were in the charge, where to put the colors … all to be turned into rigid steel engravings, churned out by his employers in New York; rigid steel engravings, of rigid men, in lockstep, going forward to yet another victory. The engravers, turning out a dozen etchings a week for the public, could never possibly capture the impossible contours of the dead or the hollow eyes of a priest—and besides, the paper was anti-Catholic and did not show priests favorably. It could not capture the urine-stained drummer boy, curled up, sobbing, nor would it ever show a general in shocked grief, or a colonel who had lost his nerve and yet still tried to lead. In his newspaper, generals were wise and heroic; colonels poised with swords raised.

  And how—how could he ever capture the image frozen into his heart forever? That field just over the lip of the trench. The hundreds of bodies, each with a slip of paper pinned to his back … PATRICK CALLAHAN, 44 PEARL ST., NEW YORK CITY, 23RD REG’T. WIFE: KATHY, FOUR CHILDREN … QUENTIN O’NEAL … ROBERT THOMPSON … So many names. The first stirring of morning breeze was setting the slips of paper fluttering.

  How could he ever name them all?

  But there was someone he could tell it to. The other reason he was here, which no one but his friend knew. The communications trench to the rear was clear now, except for the walking wounded who filled its shadowy darkness; walking, some crawling, men helping each other. He turned back and grabbed the drummer boy.

  “Come along, son. You can help this man like the brave lad you are.”

  Stifling back his sobs, the boy put his arm around a man who was hobbling on one foot, his left leg a mangled wreck below the knee.

  “God bless ya, laddie.”

  In the half-light of the covered trench he continued to sketch even as he walked, turni
ng a page, drawing quick outlines of the boy and the wounded soldier leaning on him: the boy crying, the wounded man murmuring words of comfort even as he left a trail of blood with each step.

  How could Harper’s capture in its engravings the blood—the blood that was in drips, trails, and pools within the trench? The body of a man who had collapsed and was dead, face down in the trampled earth? TIM KINDRAID … 21 EXCHANGE ST., PORTLAND, 17TH MAINE,… MOTHER: ELIZABETH, FATHER: WILLIAM.

  Gunfire rose up again. A second wave going in, and in less than a minute, dropped off. He hoped the men had refused to go, or had just made a sham of it for a moment to please those in the rear and then ducked back down.

  Most of the veterans had learned that game by now. Their generals might urge, but they knew the reality far better. After the annihilation of the first wave, no man with any sense of battle would go into that killing ground, no matter who ordered it. This army was fought out.

  James reached the end of the communications trench, six hundred yards behind the line, out in the open. Shots could reach this range and reserve regiments were down on the ground. With bayonets, canteen halves, the occasional small pick or shovel, they were already digging in.

  He caught a glimpse of them. Hancock, commander of the Second Corps, still limping from the wound that had nearly killed him at Gettysburg, was pacing back and forth, head lowered. Was the man crying?

  Grant, and Meade by his side, both with field glasses raised, and staff around them. In an outer circle, there were correspondents and the usual hangers-on.

  “What was it like up there?”

  It was his friend Jenkins with the New York Herald.

  “Why ask me? Go up yourself and take a damn good look,” James snapped.

  Jenkins shook his head.

  “They won’t let us. Provost guards have been ordered to stop us. It looks bad, James. They said we’d be in Richmond by noon and the war over.”

  His voice trailed off, and he gazed toward the smoke-shrouded front.

  James actually laughed derisively.

  Jenkins motioned to his sketch board and he offered it over.

  “How bad was it?”

  James could not reply, as he was afraid he’d break.

  “What’s this?” asked Jenkins, pointing at a sketch at the corner. “Who is ‘Lieutenant’…” he hesitated, trying to read the hurried print, “‘McCloskey’?”

  James snatched the sketch board back.

  “He’s dead. They’re all dead.”

  Jenkins said nothing as he reached into his breast pocket and pulled out a flask, unscrewing the cap and offering it over.

  James took a long, grateful drink.

  “Thanks,” he whispered.

  “Looks like they’ve made some decision,” Jenkins said, nodding back to Grant and Meade, who had lowered their glasses, staff around them mounting up, hurrying off with orders.

  “I better go see what’s up,” Jenkins replied.

  “Don’t bother.”

  “Why?”

  “I can tell you already.”

  “Tell me what.”

  “We’ve lost the battle. Richmond will hold, and come November Lincoln will be defeated, and we will lose the war.”

  Jenkins stood silent, and uncorking the flask, he drained the rest of it off.

  “Coming with me?”

  James shook his head and flinched slightly as battery after battery along the secondary line opened fire again.

  He started to walk away.

  “You heading back to New York to report? If so, would you carry a dispatch for me? Word is that headquarters is blocking us from filing reports from here.”

  “No, Washington,” replied James.

  “Why there?”

  “A friend. I’m going to see a friend, that’s all.”

  “Who?”

  “Just a friend. Be careful out there, Jenkins. Don’t stop a bullet, it’s bad press when a reporter gets killed.”

  Jenkins forced a smile and turned away as James walked off.

  The sun was up, a red ball of glaring heat. In a few hours the bodies on the field would begin to swell, and by evening the cloying smell would carpet the battlefield, as it did all battlefields of this war, of any war. By the following morning, the uniforms they wore would burst at the seams, the pieces of paper pinned to their backs forgotten. When a truce was finally called, burial details would go forward with their faces covered with rags drenched in coal oil to block the stench. They would dig long trenches, no more than a foot or two deep, and then dump the bodies in and cover them over.

  James would leave it behind for now. By tomorrow night he would be at the Willard Hotel in Washington, across the street from the White House, where his friend Abraham Lincoln now lived and was waiting for his confidential report … his friend who would want the truth about what happened here at Cold Harbor, Virginia, on this morning of June 3, 1864.

  CHAPTER ONE

  ARLINGTON, VIRGINIA

  JUNE 6, 1864

  THE ESTATE OF GENERAL ROBERT E. LEE

  DAWN

  “Here they come, parson.”

  Sergeant Major Garland White, 28th United States Colored Troops, turned from his labors and looked to where Jeremiah Smith, a private from Company A, was pointing north to the road leading down from the “Iron Bridge” across the Potomac.

  It had been raining most of the night, a slow steady drenching downpour out of the east. It had done little to drop the temperature and now added to the misery of the men of the 28th who had been out toiling by lantern light since midnight. The Potomac was concealed beneath coiling fog and mists rising up from the river, shrouding the capital city on the opposite shore.

  The first of a long line of ambulances, emerging out of the mists, was drawn by two mules, ghostlike in the morning light, followed by another and another, mud splashing up from the hooves of the mules and the wheels of the wagons.

  “Back to it, Jeremiah. I want it dug straight.”

  “Ain’t no difference, parson, we be filling it back up shortly.”

  He put a fatherly hand on Jeremiah’s shoulder, guiding him back to the hole, seven feet by three and supposedly six feet deep.

  “It’s not parson, it’s sergeant major now,” Garland said. “Do as you are ordered; back down there you go.”

  Jeremiah looked at him sullenly, as Garland released his hold on Jeremiah and reached down to lend a hand to Private Thompson, who had finished his half hour stint in the hole.

  “Come on, Willie, take a quick break, there’s hot coffee under the tarp.” He helped the private, covered head to foot in warm clinging mud, out of the ground and pointed to where the regimental cooks had ten-gallon vats of the brew waiting.

  “Thank ya, Reverend … I mean, Sergeant Major, sir.”

  “I’m a sergeant major, not a sir, save that for … the officers.” He almost said, “your boss man,” but caught himself.

  Taking Willie’s shovel, he handed it to Jeremiah and helped him slip down into the hole.

  “Hurry it up, men,” Garland announced, stepping back, his voice carrying to the rest of the regiment. “They’re almost here, and I want this done right and proper now.”

  “Sergeant Major, damn it, it’s like trying to shovel out the Wabash River.”

  Garland turned, struggling to control his anger as he gazed down at Corporal Turner in the next hole over. He bent over at the waist, fixing the corporal with an icy gaze.

  “Corporal Turner,” he hissed, voice pitched low, remembering it was not proper to reprimand another noncommissioned officer in front of the men, or the officers for that matter. “I will not tolerate profanity in my presence. Next, I will not tolerate profanity on this ground, which is consecrated and…”

  He hesitated.

  “Damn it, I will not tolerate beefing from someone who is supposed to lead. If you don’t like that, Corporal, you can climb out of there right now, take off those two stripes, and I’ll find someone else
to wear them.”

  He gazed down at the mud-drenched corporal.

  “Do I make myself clear, Corporal, or is it Private?”

  “Yes, Sergeant Major.”

  “You can stay down there and keep digging until I tell you different.”

  Turner said nothing, though the next shovelful up, containing more water than muddy earth, landed within inches of Garland’s feet.

  Garland turned away and noticed that young Lieutenant James Grant was looking his way. The lieutenant gave a nod of approval and turned away, going back under the tarpaulin where the officers of the regiment had gathered while the men labored.

  Grant had wanted to “dig in” with the rest of the men of his company. As the detail started their labors in the pouring rain, however, Garland heard Colonel Charles Russell, commander of their regiment, restraining Grant, saying that this was an enlisted man’s job, besides, the lieutenant had to keep his uniform relatively unspoiled for the brief ceremony which would commence in a few minutes. Grant was a good man, a three-year veteran of the war, who at heart still acted as if he were a sergeant. He led by example and Garland deeply respected him for that, even though he was not much more than a lad of twenty.

  He left Turner’s hole, and continued down the long line—a long line of seventy-one graves.

  Seventy-one graves for seventy-one men—men who had died the previous day in the dozen military hospitals that ringed the city of Washington. Seventy-one graves for men wounded in the grueling campaign, which had started exactly one month ago today, on May 6th. Seventy-one graves for men transported back across rutted roads and aboard hospital ships from the Wilderness, Spotsylvania, the North Anna, and according to the newspaper reports, a new battlefield just six miles short of Richmond at a place called Cold Harbor. Graves for men who had survived all that, only to die in Washington and now be buried here.

  Garland’s regiment had come to this city from Indianapolis at the beginning of May. Five months of training had prepared them for combat, for battles that every last man of them longed for, a chance to prove themselves, a chance to show that they were of the same blood as their comrades with the 54th Massachusetts. They wanted to show that they were as worthy of the honor of serving as any other citizen, white or black, and that they were therefore worthy of the rights of freemen.