Cain at Gettysburg

by Ralph Peters

  “Ain’t he just too pretty now,” Cobb said. “Up on that fine horse of his. Yankees going to pick him right out as the prize of the litter. Ain’t that so, Sergeant Blake?”

  Blake didn’t respond. He concentrated on getting his small piece of the regiment into its proper place in the forming lines.

  Facing eastward in double ranks, the men got their clearest view yet of the fighting. Smoke hazed the line of the streambed. Stumbling figures emerged from the dirty mist, wounded men missing weapons or caps, some bloodied visibly even at a distance. On the slope of the opposing ridge, which ran parallel to the high ground the regiment occupied, drifting clouds of gunsmoke revealed swarms of blue-clad infantrymen, then hid them again. The Yankees were drawn up in yellowing fields and amid groves cleared of underbrush. Many wore tall black hats.

  The cavalrymen appeared to have withdrawn, replaced by those dense blue lines and batteries of guns at deadly intervals. Only here and there could Blake make out knots of men in gray on the far slope. But the smoke settled in the low ground concealed much, he told himself. Things got confused, when you saw only a piece of them. The fight might not be going all that badly.

  “We going in, do you think, Sergeant Blake?” James Bunyan asked.

  “When it’s our time,” Blake told him.

  He noticed something wrong, though. The withdrawing men he had thought all wounded harbored many in their midst who appeared unscathed, still clutching their weapons. Some stopped and turned to fire into the smoke, while others plodded back up toward the road down which they had marched. Defeated.

  Blake said nothing. But he was not the only one who saw it. They were witnessing the end of something, not a beginning. The morning’s attack had failed.

  Small bands of men coalesced in the fields below them, coming together as if to divide their shame. Blake saw no colors held high, no officers attempting to rally their men. Things looked worse and worse.

  “What’s happening?” James Bunyan asked. The boy was jumpy as a colt. “Why are they coming back like that?”

  “Yankees gave ’em a whupping, that’s why,” Cobb said. “Archer’s fellers never were no good.”

  “Maybe you can show them how it’s done,” Blake told him. Instantly, he regretted having spoken.

  Cobb was delighted, though. “Well, now, that’s just what I aim to do, Sergeant Blake. Soon as all those fine gentlemen with their plumes and sashes make up their minds about it.”

  With the attack turned back, the Union gunners shifted their efforts to the new battle line atop the ridge before them. Shot screamed overhead. Other rounds splashed the slope to the regiment’s front. The Federals were bracketing their target.

  In the next company, a man toppled forward into the grass. Blake assumed the heat had brought him low, but someone called, “Sharpshooters!”

  Another man fell, spewing blood.

  Heedless of the danger, Colonel Burgwyn cantered out in front of their ranks and called them to attention.

  “Regiment … about-face,” he commanded.

  The company officers echoed him.

  “Forwaaard…,” Burgwyn called.

  Again, his subordinate commanders repeated the order.

  “March!”

  Glad to move off the exposed crest, the soldiers stepped out sharply. A man might desire to go in one direction or the other, but nobody cared to serve as a do-nothing target.

  The colonel halted them just behind the ridgetop, forty paces from their former position, where trees broke up a meadow. Some of the men had shade. Blake’s people didn’t.

  Lieutenant Colonel Lane rode along the line, telling the men to lie down in place, sparing them from all but a direct hit by plunging fire.

  Just as Blake dropped to the earth, an artillery caisson to the regiment’s left exploded, shaking the earth beneath the soldiers’ bellies. When he looked up again, Blake saw writhing horses whose legs kicked at nothing and heard their bewildered whinnies. A bareheaded sergeant walked down the harness line, shooting each beast in turn.

  “Think we’ll just quit this one?” Peachum asked him. “Pull on back and wait till we have us a bigger club to hand?” He wasn’t afraid, just figuring things out.

  Lifting his face from the spikes of hot grass, Blake saw the regiment’s officers, still on horseback, conferring as calmly as if on a parade ground. Colonel Burgwyn shone like Ivanhoe.

  “No,” Blake said.

  * * *

  Lee found General Hill hunched in an ambulance in Cashtown. It took Hill a moment to realize who was before him. He clambered down awkwardly, dressed only in his shirt, trousers, and boots.

  “Are you in health?” Lee asked. Powell Hill’s scarecrow flesh was the color of bone.

  “Yes, sir. Just a morning distemper. That’s all.”

  “Can you explain the firing I hear?”

  Hill shook his head, struggling through a cloud. “Not completely certain what that’s about. Told Harry Heth to find out what’s ahead of him. He knows…” Hill jerked up a hand to scratch his scalp. “He knows he’s not to bring on an engagement. Orders were to report back immediately, if he came up against Federal infantry … anything but their cavalry.”

  The distant cannonade did not sound as if it were waged against a few horsemen. Lee struggled to maintain a proper tone. “Are you certain you are fit to command your corps, General?”

  Hill straightened. The message had begun to penetrate. Lee could not offer sympathy. Sick or well, men had to do their duty or pay the price. Hill would have to rally and do his.

  “I’m fit, sir. Fit and ready. Just a touch of something. It’s let up now.”

  “Don’t you think, General Hill, that your place might be forward at such a time?”

  “Yes, sir. I was just about to go.”

  “I must understand what we have before us, General,” Lee told him.

  “Yes, sir. Going to look into it myself.” Drawn by Lee’s presence, Hill’s staff had gathered round. A. P. Hill turned toward the nearest man. “My horse. Get my horse. Where’s my horse?” His voice grew testy and color returned to his face.

  An aide hurried up with Hill’s coat and hat, but the horse did not appear.

  “I must wait here, General,” Lee told him, “until the rest of my staff comes up. Then I shall join you. For now, though, I must stress again that I cannot have a general engagement. Not until this army is concentrated and we know the disposition of those people. Do you understand me, sir?”

  Hill’s long, limp hair seemed a dead thing, but sparks enlivened his eyes. Hill was good in a fight. Battle brought him to life. That was why Lee had given him a corps. The problem was that Lee did not want a battle. Not yet.

  Led by an orderly, Hill’s horse appeared. It looked considerably more robust than its master.

  “Go now,” Lee said softly, “and see what General Heth has made of things.”

  As Hill gained the saddle, it was evident to Lee that the man was suffering. But he would have to bear it through the day. Duty cared not for the body’s tribulations.

  Major General A. P. Hill saluted and spurred his horse. Soon, he was lost to sight amid an army hurrying forward.

  * * *

  They saw the town ahead. It lay under drifting smoke. Lieutenant Colonel Boebel bellowed the order to advance at the double-quick.

  “Mein Gott!” Bettelman cried. “I can’t, I can’t!”

  But the watchmaker could, and he did. Groaning.

  The regiment had covered at least a dozen miles in haste, through drenching rain and mire, then under a punishing sun. For the last three-quarters of the route, there had been no pause for rest. Canteens were empty, gullets were dry. Schwertlein could not remember a harder march. Yet, surprisingly few men had fallen out. Spirits had quickened at the sound of the guns.

  And the regiment’s shirkers were gone now. The men marching beside him had suffered wrongs after Chancellorsville that this day might redress. Nor did they want their comr
ades’ disapproval. No man sought death, but fate would have its say. There was nothing left but to fight.

  The road led up a slope toward a cemetery. The town grew across a broad swale to the left. Its nearest streets teemed with blue-clad columns, with guns rolling forward and caissons jangling rearward. As the regiment trotted closer, ambulances became distinct from commissary wagons. Lightly wounded soldiers made their way back from the fighting on their own, some walking in pairs, as if another’s strength might keep death from surprising them. Officers shouted, their purposes uncertain. A dog howled.

  Across broad fields, through buildings and trees, Schwertlein could make out stretches of the battle line to the west. The army had made its stand along a ridge. As the road climbed, he saw the orange belch of cannon in the distance, followed by black bursts that thinned into gray.

  Up on the cemetery hillock, officers huddled, watching the fighting across the roofs of the town. Schwertlein recognized the corps commander, General Howard, behind a pair of field glasses. He was a man who cared more for his Sundays than he did for his soldiers, and who made his disdain for all things German apparent. As Schwertlein sweated past on the road below, the general lowered his glasses and spoke to an officer beside him. Schwertlein would have liked to hear what was said.

  Couriers galloped off from the cemetery, headed in every direction. Guns unlimbered below the gravestones, establishing a rear line of defense. Regimental flags from von Steinwehr’s division were recognizable only because the color bearers waved them to call in stragglers. The air, poisoned with gunpowder, hung dead.

  As the regiment forced its way into the town, struggling to close with the rest of the brigade, the commotion of a hurrying army raised a din to rival the blast of the guns. Lieutenant Trenk rushed rearward, face set below his kepi. This time, he did not pause to talk, did not even see his friends from home as he passed them.

  A chaos of soldiers, wagons, and batteries rushing forward or being withdrawn clogged up the streets. Citizens on their doorsteps or leaning from windows cheered on their saviors. Those who had flags waved them, pretty girls, children, old men, and double-chinned wives. Their clamor lifted hearts and lightened feet.

  Upon realizing that the regiment passing before them was filled with Germans, the citizens divided their cries, the English-speakers sticking to their hurrahs as local Germans yelled themselves into euphoria in dialect as thick as pea soup. The men of the 26th Wisconsin had not been cheered so handsomely since they marched to the Milwaukee railyard to join the war.

  Struggling to force a passage for his wagon, an Irish teamster called out to them, “Jaysus, haven’t we handed the Johnnies their arses this fine day? You nivver seen such a drubbing as we’ve handed them.…”

  It seemed to be true, and wonderful. In the town square, where a cannon had spun off a wheel, a company’s worth of Confederates stood somberly, all the defiance crushed out of them, waiting to be escorted rearward as prisoners. A few men in gray still looked fierce-eyed upon the world, but others, glad to be done with the war, strode deeper into Yankeedom on their own.

  Stripped of their canvas, a pair of wagons nudged past with butchered soldiers. It seemed there were not ambulances enough. Some of the wounded moaned, some begged for water. Others were dead, gone over in the short trip back from the battle line. One wagon trailed blood through its planks. Here and there, a gore-spattered head retained its cap, bearing the circular First Corps badge. A burned man wore the last bits of a gunner’s jacket. His body shivered vigorously, but his eyes were already dead.

  “It may be over before they send us in,” Schumann said. Panting and gleaming with sweat.

  “Herrgott be merciful and let it be so,” Bettelman muttered, forgetting his vigorous atheism.

  Another contingent of prisoners, ragged and clotted with blood, passed toward the rear. A gray-clad lieutenant wept as he stumbled along. Rushing out to block his path, a burly civilian waved his fist and cursed. A Union captain sent the man back to his house, but the fellow shrieked further insults from his doorway.

  The prisoners walked on.

  For all his professed hatred of those who had forced war upon the country, Schwertlein empathized with the captive soldiers. He had never been a prisoner, but he knew only too well how men felt when they gave all they had, yet were condemned to failure. War was a sorrier business than storybooks told.

  After executing a column-right, the regiment marched between storefronts for a stretch, then passed brick homes again. As lovely as daffodils, two blond girls rushed out with buckets of water. Other civilians, young and old, distributed loaves of bread and even sausages.

  “You know what that means, Fritz?” Schumann asked knowingly.

  Schwertlein nodded as they pushed along, their pace reduced again by jostling confusion. “We’ll be on the flank. If the people still have food to give away, we’re the first ones down this street.”

  “Genau,” Schumann agreed.

  To their left, the artillery continued its work, but the rifle fire had lulled.

  “Maybe it truly is over,” Heisler said. His voice sounded brittle now.

  “Get yourself some water,” Schwertlein told him, mustering all the authority he could.

  The houses thinned, giving way to narrow orchards and broad fields beyond. Lieutenant Trenk galloped past again, going forward this time. His horse spewed green foam from its mouth.

  The blue serpent of men wound from the road into a grove of apple trees. Despite the grunting artillery fire from the ridge to the west, the world seemed oddly peaceful. Exhausted men foresaw the order to rest and dropped to the ground the moment the column halted. Some slid off their remaining equipment before collapsing, while others folded into themselves as if shot. Dappled with light and shadow, devout soldiers knelt and prayed the Vaterunser. The regiment’s militant freethinkers let them be. It was not a day for teasing.

  They had given all the vigor they had to the march. It seemed as though no man could go a step more. But Schwertlein forced himself to remain standing, looking about for Sergeant Arnold or one of the other noncommissioned officers from the regiment.

  He was about to order Heisler to help him gather canteens when orders rent the air: Up. Get up. Stand to.

  Corpses rose, groaning, cursing, stretching wretched backs and stiffened limbs.

  Sergeant Arnold appeared and called the roll, even as stragglers found their way to the ranks. Astonishingly, only three of the men who had answered up that morning were missing now. A hard man, Arnold announced that those three would be marked as deserters.

  Knapsacks were gathered by company, but when the musicians and the last wagons went to the rear, the knapsacks remained on the ground. The officers expected to hold their line.

  Schwertlein felt his stiffened garments rub. He needed more water. He needed rest. They all did. The battle had to be over. He didn’t see how such played-out men could fight. The spirit was willing, willing and more, but the flesh had been blown to Hell by the brutal march.

  Dismounted for the present, Lieutenant Colonel Boebel stepped out in front of the regiment. He looked like a pastor about to call down hellfire.

  Boebel moved the regiment into the sunlight, leaving the welcome shade to align the 26th with the rest of Krzyzanowski’s brigade in a great square of companies. Their footfalls trampled oats and wheat, the sound queerly massive before it came to a halt. Then the entire brigade marched forward to a reserve position at the right-rear of its sister brigade, von Amsberg’s. Barlow’s division had passed and formed in the open fields on the corps’ right flank. Shouted orders, the clank of metal, the rustle of thousands of uniforms, the squeak of leather, and the plonk of bouncing canteens summed to a thing strange and mighty.

  Exhausted as their bodies were, the visible power of the army, the blue ranks long and deep, with colors held high by the dozen, stirred the men. The cannon fire in the west had slackened, in a sulk. It seemed to them that the day was already theirs.
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  * * *

  John Reynolds had told the captain he sent as courier to kill his mount, if necessary, but to lose not a second in reaching Meade. And it was well he had done so.

  All morning, the situation had developed swiftly as Meade paced, pondered, and fretted, with Buford reporting Confederates not only to his west, along the Chambersburg Pike, but several miles to the north of Gettysburg as well. Buford had engaged troops from A. P. Hill’s corps, forces his cavalrymen could only delay, but he also had reported Reynolds just three miles distant.

  The next courier had come from Reynolds himself. A slight officer, little larger than a jockey, delivered a message scrawled in the saddle: “The enemy are in strong force … I will fight them inch by inch, and if driven back into the town, I will barricade the streets and hold them back as long as possible.”

  That was Reynolds, through and through. If Gettysburg was a proper place to give battle, John would recognize it and buy the time the army needed to concentrate. If the ground proved unfavorable, he’d cover the army’s flank while the right wing withdrew to the Pipe Creek line. Reynolds also had identified high ground near Emmitsburg, where the Confederates could be further delayed, if need be. The man was thorough, a rock for the entire army.

  Butterfield, on the other hand, had fallen behind again and been chastised again. The circular with the Pipe Creek plan had gone out only that morning, when it should have been distributed by midnight. Pipe Creek remained Meade’s preferred battleground, but he recognized that Lee and the press of events would have their say. He did not intend to blind himself with his own grandiose schemes, as Hooker had done.

  Meade believed in engineering. There was beauty in it. Not merely in the finished structures, calculated to their perfect degree as to height, width, weight, and stress, but in the clarity of the process, the sublime predictability. If forced to offer his ideal of beauty, he would have cited not a woman, but the tall and slender lighthouse at Barnegat Bay, his masterpiece.

  Yet, he had fought long enough now to recognize that an engineer’s training took a commander just so far and no more. The blueprints for battle rarely matched the result. What little he had read of Jomini impressed him not a whit. Interior lines might offer a great advantage to a commander sound in his judgments, but designing campaigns based solely on perpendiculars, obliques, and angles was the labor of an ass. The engineer might pick the ground, choosing it wisely, but then the human beast leapt into the business. In war, clear thinking laid a fine foundation, but battle was captive to the foibles of man.