The Battle of the Crater: A Novel

by Gingrich, Newt

  Vincent hesitated, as if what he was about to say was distasteful.

  “By orders of General Burnside you will be shipped to the Dry Tortugas for the remainder of the war.”

  Some muttered against this, that they were not helpless slaves to be beaten, but others hushed them down, hissing that anyone who disobeyed the order deserved to be hanged and not just sent to the most distant, noisome point of exile in America.

  “Have I made myself clear?”

  There were nods of agreement.

  “I want the Second Brigade to form to your right, by column of regiments in column by company. First Brigade over there, where the white marker flag is, two hundred yards away. Form as well in column of regiments in column by company.”

  No one moved for a moment. And Vincent nodded to the leather-lunged Malady.

  “You heard the officer! Fall out and form up as ordered!”

  Close to four thousand stood for a moment as if riveted. So much had just been imparted. Since their arrival to the encampment behind the lines, a few regiments had been allowed brief stints along quiet sectors of the front in the reserve line, but otherwise they were kept isolated. Rumors had been rampant that regardless of the promise of their officers, they would, in the end, be marched down to City Point, mountains of boxes pointed out to them, and instructed to get to work moving them.

  But this?

  Garland tagged behind Colonel Russell, who trotted up to Colonel Thomas, commander of their brigade; the other four regimental commanders gathered round as well.

  Thomas looked at them, grinning; he had obviously been in on the secret.

  “Colonel Russell, the 28th is to form the lead. I want the 29th behind them!”

  Russell turned away before Thomas had even finished.

  “28th column by companies, form on me!” he shouted, racing over to where a white flag atop a high pole had been set.

  Garland broke away from his side, moving among his men, guiding them into place. They had, of course, drilled this way scores of times back at Camp Morton in Indiana, but this was different. For the first time it felt truly real.

  “Uncase the colors!”

  Color guards pulled the canvas sheaths off the National Flag and the sky-blue flag of the USCT, holding them aloft as a guide. Helping to chivvy the last of the companies into place, Garland went back to the very front of the column.

  The front of the column, Garland thought, beaming with pride. They would lead the charge!

  Malady, who had been standing with arms folded and equidistant between the two columns forming up, trotted over to where the Second Brigade was forming, stopped at one side, leaned over with an exaggerated gesture, closing one eye as if squinting to sight along a rifle, then straightened up.

  “Now you bastards listen to me for I will only say it once. I might, someday, like you. Someday, you might like me. All I ask is that we get along. Do any of you have a problem with that?”

  He gazed across the ranks and centered in on a corporal gazing at him angrily.

  “Corporal, I don’t think you like me.”

  The man stood silent.

  “Speak up, or did your master geld you and cut out your tongue for good measure? What is it you want to say, you dark African son of a bitch?”

  The corporal, a man with Company B, muttered under his breath.

  “Think you can take me, boy?”

  The corporal stood silent, but his anger was evident.

  “Well, if you think you can take me, now is your chance.”

  The corporal looked around at his comrades, more than a few grinning at the thought of their burly leader beating the tar out of an arrogant mick sergeant.

  “Come on, Corporal. What is it?”

  The corporal looked over at Colonel Russell, who was making it a point to gaze in the other direction, as if not hearing a word of the exchange.

  “Well, what is it?”

  The corporal finally lowered his gaze at the sight of the burly Irish sergeant, built like a brick wall, fist half raised in anticipation.

  “No, sir,” the corporal finally whispered.

  “I am not a sir, I am a sergeant, by Christ,” Malady snapped. “Merciful Mary, you call this a column? I’ve seen drunken, dumb Polacks and micks line up better in front of a saloon, waiting for it to open, by God. Now get this column aligned straight!”

  Without waiting for a reply from any enlisted man or officer, he stalked off to deliver the same chewing-out to the other column.

  Russell looked over at Garland and winked; Garland was surprised that as a colonel he had not objected to Malady’s tone and obvious lack of respect for rank.

  “Irish sergeants, Garland. You might hate their guts, but usually they’re right, so we all better get used to it. The man knows what he’s doing.”

  Long minutes passed as Malady tramped back and forth, demanding proper alignment, cursing no one in particular, just the world in general. Then at last he seemed satisfied, walked up to Captain Vincent, who had been standing calmly throughout without uttering a word, and saluted.

  “Columns ready, sir!”

  Vincent stepped forward, his gaze sweeping from one column to the other.

  “At my command, which will be a pistol shot,” and he held up his revolver, “all of you will step forward at the same time. I want no breaking up of ranks, no spacing between regiments. All of you are to step forward and march up that slope. You will advance at standard march pace. I will fire my pistol twice more, which will be the signal for double time.”

  He pointed to the Rebel works.

  “Your goal will be the white flags on the far side of the entrenchments. You must go down through the moat, up over the parapet wall, then form on the far side. You must maintain ranks and intervals throughout. I will see all of you on the far side of the fortifications.”

  Without waiting he held his pistol up and fired it once.

  “Forward, boys, forward!” The cry was picked up from one of the columns to the other. Being at the fore, Garland could see it all, his heart racing. In his mind’s eye he could see the flash of gunfire from the works ahead, wondering how he would react when this would be all too real. But at this moment, he was too excited to care, for if they were doing this drill, unlike anything they had ever tried before, it was obvious that something was truly in store for them … a chance to prove what they were really capable of.

  Two more pistol shots were fired, barely heard over the tramping of four thousand men advancing in the two columns.

  “At the double!”

  The pace picked up. He heard loud cursing and looking back, Garland saw where a man of Company B had tripped up, falling; others stumbled to get around him.

  They reached the front of the fortified line and now, for the first time, saw the mud-filled moat, at least ten feet across and several feet deep. The forward line hesitated for a second.

  “In, boys, in and over!” Garland cried.

  Men of the second, third, and fourth ranks began to bunch up behind the stalled soldiers.

  They slipped down the slope. The mud was not deep but many were clutching at their shoes, more than one man losing a shoe completely, but then being shoved on forward, unable to retrieve his precious boot.

  Hitting the slope of the entrenchments, they scrambled up, more men slipping, sliding back, those behind them cursing. Garland gained the crest and looked back for a brief second. The entire column was bunching up around the moat, regiments to the rear colliding into those which had slowed in front. Cursing and yelling erupted.

  He looked forward and was surprised by the chasm that lay ahead. The parapet concealed a trench eight to ten feet wide, well built, with wooden floor, logs built up and staked in place, delineating the forward and back walls.

  Even Russell hesitated for a second.

  “In and over, boys!”

  He jumped down into the trench, grabbed hold of the far wall, and climbed back up.

  “Flag-bea
rers, come on!”

  The first line of men did as ordered, but behind them the trench, within seconds, was piled up with men cursing, yelling, and trying to push forward. Back down the slope the regiments behind them were either tangled in the moat or spilling over to either flank of the column, trying to pick their own way across, free of the tangle.

  He heard pistol shots and a loud bellowing voice.

  To their left was a massive earthen fort, smack in the middle between the two columns. Standing atop the parapet was Sergeant Malady, holding a pistol straight up, shooting, emptying the revolver, and cursing some mighty curses in English and what he guessed was the Gaelic tongue of the old country.

  The tangled mob fell silent.

  “Stand in place, you benighted bastards! Stand in place!”

  Some of the men down in the moat were still trying to push forward, and a fistfight had broken out between several men from different regiments.

  Malady lowered his revolver and pointed it at the brawlers.

  “You there. You want to have a fight? By God, come up here, and I’ll kick your black ass clean back to whatever damn plantation you hauled it away from.

  “Come on, do you want to try me?”

  No one spoke.

  Garland looked at Colonel Russell and could see that he was less than pleased—in fact furious—and that Malady’s harangues were starting to get to him.

  “Look at you, you damn fools. Look at you!” and he stood with hands on hips. “Now think about a bunch of Rebs sitting up where I am now, and just laughin’ between taking shots at your woolly heads, smashing them like pumpkins with them minié balls. Look at you!”

  He looked to heaven and made the sign of the cross.

  “Sweet Mary, what sin did I do to have me cursed with this?” and Malady lowered his head and shook it. “You will now untangle yourselves. You will go back to where you started. You will advance at the walk with the first shot and double-time with two. You will get across the moat, over the parapet, cross the trench, and form on the far side, as ordered. And, by God Almighty, if it takes us day and night until Judgment Day—which believe me is coming damn soon for you—we will do this right! Now move it!”

  “You heard the man,” Russell said quietly. “Back we go, boys.”

  “Damn it, sir,” and Garland saw Lieutenant Grant come up to the general. “This is insane. We both know what will happen if we have to charge works like this.”

  “Just follow your orders, Lieutenant Grant,” Russell said calmly. “Let me worry about the rest.”

  As Garland climbed out of the trench and headed toward the rear, he caught sight of a civilian wearing a long white duster, sitting on the edge of the fort, sketchpad balanced on his knee.

  He remembered the man. Reilly was the name; he had been back at Arlington that last rainy day before they moved out. Garland felt a pang of guilt. Their orders to move out had come so quickly he had not had time to fulfill his promise to dig a separate grave for the man’s brother.

  Reilly looked up from his pad and caught Garland’s eye. There was hesitation, then recognition, and a nod of the head. Garland waved back, wondering what the man was doing here, behind the lines, when in the distance one could hear the steady rumble of the siege guns bombarding the Rebel lines.

  The two groups of men, little more than a disorganized mob at this point, many of them filthy with mud, tramped back to the marker flag. A couple of medical orderlies were hauling off two men, one of them obviously with a badly broken leg, the other ashen faced—an older man who had just simply collapsed from exhaustion and the heat.

  Long minutes passed until at last a pistol shot rang out, the column starting forward, thirty seconds later two pistol shots, and again they drove into the moat. From the corner of his eye Garland could see Malady standing atop the fort, taking his hat off, throwing it to the ground, cursing madly.

  All could sense that under this particular tyrant it was going to be a very long day indeed.

  CHAPTER SIX

  WASHINGTON, D.C.

  JULY 3, 1864

  “James, it is good to see you,” Lincoln announced, coming out from behind his desk and extending his hand, which James Reilly took warmly.

  “I had just ordered some coffee,” Lincoln announced, motioning for James to take the seat alongside his desk. After the long trip on the mail packet, which had no accommodations and meant sleeping out on the deck, James was glad to settle into a comfortable padded chair and was a bit fearful he might actually start to nod off.

  A servant brought in the coffee. Lincoln, acting as host, poured James a steaming cup and pushed it over to him.

  “Bit like the old days isn’t it, James,” Lincoln said with a chuckle. “But, back then, you were always the one greeting me with a cup of coffee as I came into the office.”

  James smiled with the memory of sleeping on a cot in Lincoln’s law office back in Illinois, getting up early to build up a fire if the day was cold, and heating up some coffee to greet his boss.

  “Let me see what you have,” Lincoln said in a friendly tone, motioning to James’s haversack. James drew out the sketchpad and handed it over.

  “Now, talk to me while I look.”

  “Well sir, there’s not much to say really. I got to the front to witness the assaults of June fifteenth to seventeenth.”

  He hesitated, and like any artist, a bit nervous when someone else is examining his work for the first time, half stood up, leaned over, and pointed to several sketches on the third and fourth pages.

  And like any artist nervous about a first viewing of his work, James moved around to Lincoln’s side, looking over his shoulder as Lincoln slowly turned the pages.

  “I tore out the best ones that could be printed and sent them directly to my publisher. Those are the preliminary sketches you are looking at.”

  It was standard stuff: lines of men, drawn from behind, charging upslope; smoke-shrouded Rebel lines in the distance.

  “What you are looking at there are the roughs.”

  “I see,” Lincoln said noncommittally, turning the pages, and then he paused.

  “That I couldn’t send up, sir. I knew they wouldn’t publish it.”

  “Merciful God, what is it?” Lincoln whispered.

  “Those men there were the First Maine Heavy Artillery. They were garrison troops here, and then, because of the demand for reinforcements, traded in their hundred-pound Parrott guns for rifles and were sent to the front line. The poor damned souls, sir,” he paused. “The poor souls didn’t know the orders they had been given were suicidal. They were ordered to charge a Rebel fort frontally, in broad daylight. They did as ordered, climbed out of the trenches under fire, formed up the way it used to be done back at the start of the war, and marched up that slope.”

  He sighed.

  “Eighty percent lost in ten minutes.”

  The mere sight of the drawing brought it all back. For three days the army had stalled to a near crawl. As so typical, the privates, sergeants, and company commanders had the true gauge of affairs. The Rebel lines ahead, all but empty on June 15th, but on the 16th it started to fill out as Lee raced his men south to Petersburg, aware that for once he had been caught napping and had been flanked. By the 17th the Rebel trenches were damn near full.

  It was as if a nightmare was unfolding within the quiet office of the President. Men who had been eager, begging to go forward on the 15th were grim but still ready to go on the 16th, but on the 17th, except for green regiments that did not know better, or men led by an exceptional commander who did so from the front, rather than directing from the rear, the fight was out of the veterans.

  James recalled that the First Maine had lined up in traditional formation in a ravine. My God, here it was 1864 and they were going in as if they were fighting the First Battle of Bull Run, ranks aligned perfectly, shoulder to shoulder, just as they had practiced on the drill field. Veterans who had taunted them earlier in the day, as veterans loved
to do with new troops, fell silent at the sight of this regiment preparing for their futile charge.

  Taunts had turned to cries of protest and warning: “Don’t do it, boys. It is suicide out there!”; “Once out there find yourselves a hole, lay down damn it! It’s suicide!”; “Don’t do it!”

  Even as Lincoln gazed silently at the sketches, James felt as if he could actually hear the shouts, the yells, and then, merciful God, the long roll of the drum, the clarion call of a bugle, officers stepping forward, swords raised, the regiment coming up out of the swale in perfect rank, bayonet points gleaming.

  They were scythed down in rows. As they advanced one of them had actually turned, looked back, and screamed a defiant reply to the veterans:

  “You bastards, now you’ll see how men from Maine can die!”

  And they had died, less than one in five stumbling back into their own lines ten minutes later. The men from veteran regiments to either flank—which had refused to go forward—were openly weeping as they crawled over to offer succor, a drink from a flask. And as the fire slackened and died, the Rebs, grounding their weapons in a show of awe and pity, had shouted across that they would not shoot if the wounded were dragged in. The veterans had cautiously crawled out to help.

  James had overheard one of them, coming through the carnage back to his own regiment, shaking his head, “You know what one of them said? ‘Now we’re veterans same as you.’”

  The man had stared vacant-eyed at James. “Jesus, will this ever end?”

  “It really was this bad?” Lincoln’s question stirred him from his memory.

  He could only nod in reply, unable to speak.

  Lincoln stared morosely at the drawing. In the foreground was a body, draped upside down, lying backward into the trench, feet and torso up on the ground above, arms flung wide back into the trench, eyes still open as if staring straight at the viewer. The hurried sketch that filled most of the page was of bodies, blurring together, carpeting the ground, upslope as if the observer were peering over the lip of the trench, standing about five to ten feet back. In the foreground, sitting inside the trench and to one side of the body draped into the trench, was an officer, leaning over, hands covering his face. One could see he was sobbing, and next to him a boy was just staring off into nothingness, stunned by his immersion into volcanic violence.