Cain at Gettysburg

by Ralph Peters

  Using his rifle as a crutch, he rose. Amazed that he could stand, that he was whole.

  “Come on,” he told Cobb and John Bunyan. “Gather up ammunition from the dead. This isn’t over.”

  “Sumbitch,” Cobb whispered.

  EIGHT

  July 1, Midafternoon

  “Get those fences down!” Colonel Krzyzanowski ordered, gesturing toward the broad fields stretching across his brigade’s front and on the right flank.

  Colonel Robinson and Lieutenant Colonel Boebel saluted and rode back to their regiments, leaving Krzyzanowski in midfield with his two aides. Hastily formed work parties rushed forward as the uproar of combat intensified. General Barlow had gotten himself into a deadly pinch. Krzyzanowski could not make out all of the details, but the volume of fire was alarming. The terrain beyond Barlow’s awkward line obscured the Rebel positions and the size of their force, but it was clear that the situation was grim.

  A dog straining on a leash, the Pole awaited orders to advance the final distance into the fight. He knew those orders would come. But why not now, while there was still a chance to eke things out? If that fool Barlow had to be rescued, the time was now. Krzyzanowski would have preferred an attempt to re-form the corps’ defense on the original line near the town, but feared that it already had grown too late.

  Abruptly, the Confederate cannon shifted their fire toward Krzyzanowski’s lines again. The guns had reappeared in their former positions on the high hill to the left. And there were more of them now. As he turned to gauge the effect on his brigade, a row of men in the 82nd Ohio disappeared in a smear of blood.

  The battle noise notched up again.

  He considered ordering the men in the ranks to lie down, but decided against it. In the confused combat unfolding on both his flanks, seconds might matter. There were times when men had to die, and he had to make them do it. That, too, was in his blood. But it was bitter.

  He put the side of his boot heels to his mount, sparing the creature the bite of his spurs again. At a canter and followed by his aides, he traversed his brigade frontage, the better to see if the skeletal 75th Pennsylvania had finished aiding the effort to block the Rebel probe of the corps’ center.

  The regiment’s commanding officer, Colonel Mahler, had performed heroically. With his horse tumbled atop him and the beast kicking in agony, the injured officer had risen to his feet again, refusing to go to the rear. With the help of one of his staff officers, Mahler had hopped back into the fray like a fellow in a sack race, cheered on by his Pennsylvanians.

  Those boys were all too few, but they were fighting on their home ground. Krzyzanowski understood. Their hearts were in it. They’d give a good account of themselves and their company-size regiment.

  Yes. Good. Mahler and his men had contained the thrust and were returning to their place in the brigade reserve. Krzyzanowski rode no farther, but turned his horse again. “Come on,” he called to his aides, two enthused young men.

  On the right, billows of smoke obscured all beyond the firing line of Barlow’s forward positions. That was where Krzyzanowski’s worries lay. He pulled up his mount before his 119th New York, trying to hear acutely, to judge the course of the hidden fighting from the intensity and direction of the firing. But there was too much noise, too much confusion. The constant report of the guns, along with the incessant rifle volleys, jumbled the world.

  The Eleventh Corps’ own batteries dueled with the Rebel artillery on the high hill again. Dilger had repositioned his guns adeptly, the man was brilliant. That much of the fight seemed subject to control, if things did not worsen. The Pole trotted over to his right flank, to his Wisconsin Germans, the Sigel Regiment. Along with his beloved Polish Legion, the 58th New York, they had made a stand at Chancellorsville as heroic as any action he had ever seen. Only to be included in the battle’s general shame, in the accusations of cowardice delivered by distant voices. Nor had the failed generals risen to defend the honor of men who had died for their errors.

  The 26th Wisconsin would be the first to catch it, if Barlow’s front collapsed or his flank was turned. Shrunken though it was, he wished his Polish Legion could be with him today. Every man would count on this field. But his 58th had been ordered to detached duty, leaving only a handful of its men on the field, positioned between the New Yorkers and the Wisconsin Deutschen.

  Lieutenant Colonel Boebel, an old revolutionary, rode out to meet him. Shells burst near enough to shy their horses, but both men were confident riders. Krzyzanowski’s aides moved off to give the commanders privacy.

  “Well, Hans,” Krzyzanowski called over the roar, “you’ll be in for it soon enough.”

  “Too damned soon, I am thinking. Young Meister Barlow’s made a barnyard slop of it. If the Secessionists don’t turn his flank, they have no brains at all.” At the report of a shell, his horse pranced. The German tightened the reins.

  Krzyzanowski understood what his subordinate was thinking: Chancellorsville again. Except this time we made the same mistake in broad daylight, when we had the choice right in front of us. But the Pole would not, could not, say it. Chancellorsville would not be mentioned, not by him, not today. He had to appear confident, not only willing to fight, but ready to win. The art of command had a great deal to do with convincing lies.

  Boebel spoke again. “I think I would as soon shoot this Barlow as any of the Rebels.”

  Krzyzanowski smiled bitterly. “Better not, Hans. General Howard adores him. Barlow speaks prettier English than you or me.” The Pole’s expression lifted one wing of his mustaches. “The boy even looks like an Englishman. The way he pouts. Even when he isn’t pouting.”

  That was as far as Krzyzanowski would go to criticize a superior, even the dreadful Oliver O. Howard. He remembered Howard’s condescension in the last fateful hours before Jackson struck at Chancellorsville, the obstinate refusal to shield the army’s flank, despite mounting indications of an attack and the pleas of his foreign-born subordinates. The Pole remembered all that. And his dead.

  Finished with the work of dismantling the fences before them, Boebel’s men hurried back to their places in line. Krzyzanowski had wanted the fence-line to their right torn down as well, but the sergeants in charge of the details had left the work incomplete.

  Everyone had nerves now. The men were impatient for action, for collective motion, for anything but this awful waiting in the vale of artillery fire. Krzyzanowski understood the soldiers he commanded, sensing each shift in mood, the slightest change in spirit. Nonetheless, any slighted task annoyed him. All of the fencing should have been pulled down.

  He nearly chided Boebel, but it wasn’t the proper time. The man didn’t need pestering. More important matters lay ahead than fences. And no matter how skillfully and promptly he and his regimental commanders made their decisions and gave their orders, graver errors awaited them.

  Battle was a litany of mistakes. The goal was to take fewer missteps than your enemy. Krzyzanowski had seen enough of war to be skeptical of the claims made for dead heroes. Perfection took no part in any war, and even the greatest genius needed luck. Wars were won not by the most competent army, but by the least incompetent on a given day. You did your best, praying that you and those above and below you bungled less than the men on the other side.

  And there already had been bungling enough. Beyond his brigade’s right flank, wounded men streamed back from Barlow’s lines, not a few of them helped along by comrades glad of an excuse to leave the fight. Most of Barlow’s men held on tenaciously, but their exposed position was impossible.

  It was always like that: There were always madly brave men, as well as inventive cowards. The only time he had seen men fight without a single one running to the rear had been at Chancellorsville, when his own two regiments had made more of a stand than he’d asked or expected. To get them to withdraw and save the remnants of themselves, he had needed to do everything short of dragging each one off by hand. He had never seen men fight so. Only
to be humiliated by newspapermen who had never smelled a battle.

  Beside him, Boebel looked careworn and worried.

  “Sieht nicht besonders gut aus, Herr Oberst.” It doesn’t look particularly good, Colonel.

  “Naja,” Krzyzanowski answered, “die Soldaten kämpfen aber richtig. Auch für den blöden Barlow.” But those soldiers are fighting well. Even if it’s for that fool Barlow.

  They often slipped into German as tensions rose.

  Suddenly, cannon opened up, battery after battery, from the right. With a mortified look, Boebel saluted and hurried back to his regiment. Krzyzanowski could see only the muzzle flashes through the smoke, not the guns themselves. But the Confederates now had the entire corps in a crossfire.

  As he stared into the fire-specked clouds, he felt his face go pale.

  Following orders, he had moved up his brigade to a position from which he could advance rapidly to buttress Barlow’s line, if that was the decision of the generals. But through all of his brigade’s evolutions, he had hoped against hope that Barlow’s men would beat back the Rebels long enough to let them withdraw to their proper position, denying the corps’ flanks to the encroaching enemy. If he were ordered to back up Barlow now, it would uncover the corps’ center. And there was already a quarter-mile gap on the corps’ left, between von Amsberg’s men and the First Corps on the ridge off to the west. Its casualties unreplenished and stripped of a division, the Eleventh Corps was simply too small to defend the extended frontage: They offered little more than a glorified skirmish line. And Barlow had worsened their situation immeasurably. The Confederates had their choice of weak points to strike.

  The corps’ line would not be restored. The fact sank in with finality. And the fight, when his turn came, would be a damned melee.

  Krzyzanowski stood in his stirrups. Straining to see through the smoke and muddle on the right flank, where the crisis was impending. Still unable to distinguish the Confederate positions or numbers, he could not anticipate the most effective way to deploy his regiments. It would come down to hasty decisions in the murk of smoke and noise.

  Signaling to his aides to remain in place, he rode forward a few yards, back turned to the men under his command. As ever when combat was imminent, he folded his hands on the pommel of his saddle and closed his eyes for stolen seconds to beg the Virgin for grace and courage. At that moment, he saw an ancestor, leopard-skin over his gleaming breastplate and sword in hand, leading his winged hussars against the Tartar onslaught. The Black Virgin shone above him, she would always be with Poland. And Poland was wherever her sons fought. America, too, was Poland. The land of his birth wasn’t only a plot on the map, but a faith, an idea, a willingness to struggle against hopelessness. His forebears had stood by Potocki amid disaster at Korsun, when the Commonwealth was under siege by traitors, and led banners of hussars under Sobieski, when the Polish king drove the sultan’s janissaries from Vienna. His ancestors had marched to Moscow not only in 1812, but in 1612 as well, then saved their homeland from a Swedish king deemed invincible.

  Now he was here, on a field far from Poland, in Poland’s endless heart.

  Krzyzanowski straightened himself in the saddle, touched a mustache tip, and turned from the past to the present. He wheeled about to judge the damage done by the artillery enfilade: Not yet so bad, not so very bad. The Confederate gunners were still seeking the proper range. The drifting smoke cut both ways. And his men were stalwart, if weary.

  What of the Rebels across the field? Were they weary, too? How long had their march been to reach this place? Krzyzanowski understood that only the prospect of battle had revived his men. But such energies could be fragile. How long would their strength last? Longer than that of the Rebels? Of such things, too, were victories and defeats made.

  A rider approached at an all-out gallop. Coming from the corps rear. It would be an order from General Schurz, the acting corps commander.

  Instinctively, the Pole turned away from the courier to scan Barlow’s lines again. Yes. He could see it. The great crumbling had begun. Undercut by folly, valor succumbed. The barrage unleashed by the newly emplaced Rebel cannon had signaled a renewed attack by their infantry.

  In the middle distance, he spotted gray patches amid the blue now.

  “General Schurz’s compliments, sir,” the major panted. He held out a written order. Schurz was a fine soldier. He gave orders in writing, whenever possible. Protecting his subordinates, not himself.

  “What does it say, Gerhard?”

  “You’re to move to General Barlow’s aid. Without delay. In the manner you see fit.”

  “And the corps’ line? The center?”

  The major shook his head: He didn’t know about that. Such decisions were not his to make.

  Krzyzanowski tucked the order into his pocket. He had known what it would say. He nodded to the major, releasing him. The officer pulled his horse about and raced back toward his duties in the rear.

  “Sasha!” the Pole called to his senior aide, Captain Maluski.

  The aide drew closer, followed by Lieutenant Brueninghausen.

  To his regret, Krzyzanowski could not take the time to put his own orders on paper. “The Eighty-second Ohio advances with its left flank on that road, maintaining contact with von Amsberg’s right, but refusing the brigade’s flank, if pressed. The Seventy-fifth will move forward immediately at a right oblique and establish a line of battle two hundred yards behind Barlow’s left. Clear?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Then go.”

  Maluski whipped his horse like a demented Cossack.

  “Wash?”

  “Sir?” Lieutenant Brueninghausen asked.

  “The Hundred Nineteenth New York advances at the oblique, echeloned twenty-five yards behind the right flank of the Seventy-fifth Pennsylvania. They’ll guide on the Pennsylvanians. Understand?”

  The lieutenant nodded, fighting to master a horse disturbed by the growing roar.

  “Wait a moment.”

  Struggling with his mount, the lieutenant turned his face to the colonel again.

  “You will then ride to General Schimmelpfennig and request a battery, or even a section, to go into position in front of those big buildings on the right, where Barlow’s men are falling back. We’ll use the guns as a pivot, if we’re forced back ourselves. Do you have all that?”

  “Hundred Nineteenth advances right oblique, guiding on the Pennsylvanians, twenty-five paces behind their right. Any available cannon to those buildings.”

  “If the general has any guns for us, stay there and guide them into position yourself. If he doesn’t, ride on to General Schurz and ask him. Now go!”

  The boy’s mount was only waiting to be unleashed. It carried him off powerfully.

  Krzyzanowski turned his own horse toward Boebel and his Wisconsin men. He was not hopeful that Schimmelpfennig or Schurz would find a battery or even a section of guns for him, but he had asked, anyway. There were times when a single twelve-pounder changed the course of a fight. You asked, you hoped, you fought.

  “Hans?” he called above the roar.

  The big German waved his head up and down in acknowledgment in substitute for a salute.

  “How many men mustered today? Four hundred?”

  “Three.”

  “Well, the fight’s on your shoulders. And theirs. And let the devil lick our asses for dinner. When the Hundred Nineteenth goes forward, you’ll follow, guiding on their right. They’ll make an oblique movement toward those Confederates. Watch your right. Refuse your flank, if necessary. Don’t wait for my order. Use your judgment. Klar?”

  “Jawohl, Herr Oberst.”

  Boebel looked off to the right, inspecting the vast stretch of the battlefield his whittled-down regiment faced. The German fixed his attention on the broad smoke-swathed vacancy Barlow’s advance and collapse had uncovered. At least two brigades of Confederates could get through that gap, if they had the men present and saw the opportunity. And t
hey would see the opportunity. No half-capable officer could miss it. The only question was whether the Confederates had the men present to seize their chance. It looked and sounded as if they did.

  The German’s eyes met Krzyzanowski’s. They were both thinking the same thing: This has the makings of a colossal, stinking, steaming shit.

  “Do what you can, Hans,” Krzyzanowski told him.

  The lieutenant colonel’s eyes had darkened to a combative shade. “Oh, we’ll make those pigs squeal, before they take over this barnyard.”

  To the left, the two men saw the 75th Pennsylvania stride forward, the miniature remains of a valiant regiment. Bayonets fixed, the 119th New York followed on the right, in echelon. The voices commanding them carried only faintly on the acrid air, as if the shouting officers were already ghosts.

  Krzyzanowski kicked his horse into motion, letting Boebel get on with leading his regiment and aiming for the rear of the 119th, seeking a vantage point from which he could observe the advance of the 82nd Ohio, whose few hundred men had to hold the division’s center.

  He now had a frontage to defend that would have taxed a full-strength division. And barely 1,200 men under arms to cover it, hardly more than the strength of a regiment in the war’s first year. The 75th Pennsylvania had only 158 men in the field, less than the tally of two Confederate companies.…

  A massive Rebel yell, a scream from Hell’s depths, soared above the roar of the guns and the crackle of rifle fire. The Pole yanked his mount around again.

  And there they were, coming on at a dogtrot. The line of men in gray seemed endless as it crushed Barlow’s right and swarmed past it. As Krzyzanowski watched, the entire Union line before his turning brigade began to unravel.

  Some of Barlow’s companies and a few shredded regiments maintained their integrity as they withdrew, fighting for every step. But the Rebels seemed to be everywhere. They were pouring around Barlow’s left now, too, headed straight for the heart of Krzyzanowski’s brigade, while still more swept down the road toward the 82nd Ohio, a mighty gray torrent that seemed unstoppable.