by Ralph Peters
Bettelman gestured to the left. Schwertlein’s eyes followed. Colonel Krzyzanowski was conferring with his surviving officers by a campfire. Normally as straight up and down as a rifle barrel, the Pole was bent at the shoulders, pressing his left side with one hand as if stanching the flow of blood.
“Look at Kriz,” Leo said. “He’s in a bad way. But the fool won’t take advantage of it. He has a wife and brats, too. And I hear he had a thriving business in Washington, selling crockery and the like. He could go home. He’s done his part. He could take advantage of his misfortune and turn it into the best of luck. But he won’t. The fool.”
“Would you?” Schwertlein asked.
Behind them, the voice of the eternal sergeant barked at laboring soldiers to deepen a shit trench.
“Yes. Without a second thought. If I had such a wound. When I complain on the march, I’m never joking. I’d go home and count my blessings.”
“What if you could just go home? Without a wound? Just walk away.”
“That’s different.”
“Why?”
“Even watchmakers have their pride.”
A cracker fleck had wandered up into his nose and Schwertlein sneezed. Recovering, he said, “I don’t think any of us will be allowed much pride after today.”
“Fritz! Forget them, would you? They didn’t know, they weren’t there. And they need someone to blame. Tonight they have their stew, tomorrow we’ll have ours.” He murmured a sound meanly related to laughter. “They couldn’t very well blame one of their own kind, after all. That hochwohlgeborener Arschloch Barlow, for example.”
“I hate the injustice of it. After how we fought.…”
“And you’ll write a proper account of it all for your paper. To set the record straight.”
Schwertlein waved that away. His arm was darker than the gathering night: The summer day continued its rearguard struggle. “It won’t matter what I write. It’ll reach them too late, after everyone’s cast their views in iron. The New York City papers will write that the ‘Dutchmen’ ran again. And the Chicago papers will repeat what New York decrees. And the English-language papers in Milwaukee will delight in passing on the word about the husbands and sons of their German neighbors.”
“The truth will come out in time. It always does.”
“That’s a lie! Leo, that’s as great a falsehood as a man ever uttered. The truth is what the strongest voices say it is.”
To their left, a line of skirmishers bounded over the wall and trotted down the slope to the nearest buildings. Order was returning, measure by measure.
“Tomorrow will be an interesting day,” Bettelman said, changing the subject. Their roles had reversed, with Bettelman now the optimist, while Schwertlein wallowed in doubt. “I hope the damned Rebels will only let us sleep. That’s all you need, Fritz.”
Bettelman hadn’t felt Schumann’s embrace, though. He hadn’t known that near-kiss or felt the smear of gore. He had not gotten that last horrid breath in his nostrils.
Schwertlein dreaded sleep. Schumann was lurking out there. Waiting. If he saw and felt the corpse slap against him so vividly while awake, what would it be like when he lacked the defense of light and the armor of reason?
“They didn’t know.” On a scraped tongue, Schwertlein tested the words Leo had offered him. “They weren’t there.”
“At least,” Bettelman said, “the whole army isn’t running away this time. Who knows what tomorrow will bring?” He broke off another piece of the flinty cracker.
“I’ve never had the desire to kill men before,” Schwertlein said. He wasn’t certain he was speaking to Bettelman any longer.
“But you have it now? A desire to kill?”
Schwertlein didn’t answer. He stared at the last hint of light over the mountain. He watched it die. Clouds were pressing in, felt as much as seen. Your husband’s dead and sends you greetings. He imagined himself touching the breasts of the woman he had loved so long in secret. Pawing her with hands covered in blood.
“Damn it again!” the watchmaker cried. His trill of pain was so sharp that, for an instant, Schwertlein thought his friend had been hit by a sharpshooter.
“Damned crackers!” Bettelman explained. “I just broke a tooth.”
* * *
At noon, he had still hoped to fight at Pipe Creek. By six, he’d decided to move the army to Gettysburg. Now, at ten, he finally felt able to leave for the field himself. As soon as Butterfield finished the last dispatches for him to sign.
It had taken the devil’s own determination to remain at his Taneytown headquarters, where he could not even hear the dueling cannon and remained at the mercy of intermittent couriers who often bore contradictory scrawls from generals on different portions of the field. He had wanted to rush off, to see the situation for himself. But he was not going to repeat Hooker’s error and let the army commander’s purpose go unanswered: He meant to lead all of his army, not merely the portion engaged.
Orders had to go to every corps, some countermanding earlier directives. Command relationships needed to be resolved, priorities assigned, roads allocated. Who should march first along that route, the next increment of the artillery reserve or an ammunition train? Or was the road best cleared to hurry on a division? Commissary wagons, ambulance columns, missing signal elements … it wasn’t as damnably simple as the stay-at-home politicians and the newspapermen assumed.
Reynolds dead, John Reynolds dead. That news had been followed by his dispatch of Hancock to take temporary command of the field, but no sooner had Win rolled off in his ambulance than guarded reports that reeked of a bloody mess began filtering in, followed by Buford’s chilling note that there “seemed to be no directing presence.” Later, word came that Hancock had propped things up, leading to a brief sense of relief—which ended again when Hancock’s less-than-manly assessment of possible courses of action arrived in the evening:
The battle is quiet now. I think we will be all right until night. Then it can be told better what had best be done. I think we can retire; if not, we can fight here, as the ground appears not unfavourable with good troops.
What kind of pussyfooting was that? “… the ground appears not unfavourable…” Meade understood, of course. Hancock was a lion on the battlefield, but he wasn’t going to put himself in a position to be blamed for a defeat, if one was coming. All the responsibility would be on Meade.
He was disappointed in Hancock’s lack of manliness, though. He already had accepted that defeat, if it came, would belong to him alone. He could see it already: If the army emerged triumphant, the generals and colonels would squabble over whose bold action made the decisive difference. Let things go poorly, and there’d be no chests thumped to claims of “I made the fatal mistake.”
“George, see if General Butterfield has those papers ready for me to sign. The man’s slower than a Spaniard repaying a debt. And ask if anyone’s found my spectacles yet.”
He needed to get to Gettysburg now, to see the ground for himself. If the clouds blew past, there would be a good moon later, enough light to let him judge the terrain’s potential. And he wanted to hear from Warren, his fellow engineer, a man who saw the details other men missed.
Out on the road, an endless column creaked by. An army’s march was marked by a queer disturbance of the air, something more than a collective breath or the obvious concert of noises. There was a life to it that evoked no comparisons. Even more than battle, the march was the essence of the soldier’s world.
He had longed to implement his scheme for the Pipe Creek line, but the day had a will of its own. The army had to go to Gettysburg. That did not mean, even now, that the army would remain there for the campaign’s climactic battle, but it had become unthinkable to withdraw his two battered corps, even had Lee been willing to let them retreat without further molestation.
The thing of it was, Meade understood, that the army could not bear another episode of quitting. To flee Gettysburg in the stink of defea
t would have broken its last morale. He would have to put up at least enough of a fight to call it a drawn match before he could withdraw to give battle elsewhere. And there still was the possibility that he could concentrate his army more swiftly than Lee, after all. The Confederates now on the field might be overconfident. What if he slammed into them with two corps and staged a double envelopment with the remainder? Would the ground allow him to do that? Yes, the dispatches had informed him that he held the high ground. But how high? How expansive was the position? Could the flanks be anchored securely? If forced to defend, were his lines of fire strong enough to sweep the advancing enemy? He needed to know these things and many more, but still possessed no good map.
“Sir?”
“What is it now, George?”
“General Butterfield’s ready for you.”
“Oh, is he? General Butterfield’s ready for me? Well, I suppose I’d better snap to. Hadn’t I?”
“It wasn’t like that, sir. I spoke poorly.”
“Oh, I know Dan Butterfield, don’t think I don’t. Where is the man?”
Meade entered the headquarters tent, impatient to be gone and ready to leap on any fault he could find. But he found none, other than a few misspellings by clerks assigned to the copying work.
“This penmanship’s hardly legible,” Meade said.
“The men are tired, General Meade,” Butterfield said.
“Damn it to Hell, I’m tired, too. Which one of us hasn’t slept in three days?”
Butterfield shrugged. “That would be pretty well everyone.”
“Me, that’s who. The army commander. Because I have to check every damned clerical nook and cranny and do all the work myself.”
He knew he was being unfair. He knew it all too well. But he could not stop himself. He really did need sleep. But there would be none again this night.
Butterfield took the rest of his licking in silence, unwilling to give Meade the argument he craved. The army’s commander scrawled his name on the last order.
“These need to go out immediately. I don’t care how many damned horses you kill. Or couriers, either. No more overnight delays, the way you did with Pipe Creek.”
“The orders will go out immediately. If you’ll allow me?”
Meade stalked off. “George, is my horse ready? Who has my horse? And get my other spectacles from my tent. Is the escort mounted?”
But before the commander of the Army of the Potomac could make his way to his horse, riders hurried into the headquarters camp.
It was Hancock. With Warren. Their appearance startled Meade. For a moment, he feared disaster had overtaken the army, that the two men had fled the field.
But as the generals stepped into the cast of a lantern’s light, their faces wore no hint of panic.
They spotted him and saluted.
“Hancock? What are you doing here? And you, Warren?”
“Thought you might want to hear more than we could put in writing,” Hancock said. His voice was good, strong. “Slocum’s up, he’s taken command. Need to look in on my own corps, too. So you don’t court-martial me for dereliction of duty.”
“It’s been a devil of a day,” Warren, the chief engineer, said. A lean man with a cavalry mustache, Warren had the bearing of an English squire and the eyes of a bird of prey.
“It’s been a shit of a day,” Hancock said. “And I need to piss like the horse that drank the creek dry. My kidneys aren’t what they used to be.” He tipped his fingers to his hat again. “If you’ll excuse me for a moment, General?”
As Hancock disappeared into the darkness, Meade asked Warren, “How bad is it?”
“Bad. But not irretrievable. Lee had a nasty morning of it himself. His numbers told, though.”
“Is his whole army up?”
“I can’t say. There were enough of them to swarm us on both flanks. Hill’s up, his entire corps. Ewell appears to have two divisions present. No one knows for certain about Longstreet.”
“Sharpe places him in the rear of the army, strung out behind Hill. But he may have reached the field already.”
Warren took that as a proposition. The man even smelled tired, reeking of a long day in the saddle. “I doubt Longstreet’s up. Or they would’ve tried to take the high ground while they had us reeling. And they didn’t. They ran out of fight in the town.”
“How good is the ground?”
“Good. What I saw of it. Defensible. Better than the ground Lee holds. Although his isn’t bad: low ridges, with open fields between us. He has the town, but it’s no help to him. He couldn’t launch his main attack through those streets, he wouldn’t have space to debouch and form for the assault.” Warren paused to take out a cigar. Striking a match, he caught himself and offered a cigar to Meade.
“No. Thank you.”
Narrowing his eyes at the first bite of smoke, Warren said, “Howard may have made a royal mess of everything else, but he got that one thing right: He saw the good ground right off. Kept von Steinwehr’s division on it, with enough guns to hold. May have cost him the fight north of town and most of his corps, but old Oliver bought us a day.”
“How many men did we have on the field when you left?”
Warren blew a gun-cloud of smoke and said, “Couldn’t say with any precision. They were still streaming in. Enough to eke by for now, I think.”
Meade nodded. “If the ground’s good, and Lee spares us the morning…” He tallied the march tables in his head again. If Sedgwick drove his corps hard, the entire army could be unified by the next evening. Should his own inspection of the ground confirm that Gettysburg was the place to give battle, so be it.
Hancock reappeared. Despite his bulk and weariness, the man was as jaunty as a lieutenant. He clapped his hands together and announced, “Makes the night lighter and the day brighter.”
“Win, that had to be the longest piss in military history.”
“Hard ride. I’ve been holding my fire.”
“G.K. tells me that Howard at least saved us good terrain.”
“That he did, our Ollie O. And I expect he prayed on it, before he made up his mind. Divine inspiration, no doubt. Last I saw him, he was having a delightful supper in the cemetery gatehouse, while they carried in wounded men on either side of him. Model of Christian charity, our Ollie.” Hancock considered his tone, then changed it. “Hard day for the poor bugger, actually. Did his best, I suppose. Division commanders did what they could, but it looks to have been a brigade and regimental fight. And most of them did fight, don’t think the Rebs got off cheap. And we’ve got ground I wouldn’t want to attack, if I was in Lee’s bright and shiny boots. Although I suppose we really should thank Buford for that, as much as Howard. And John Reynolds, bless him.” He lightened again, refusing to be dragged down by the day’s tribulations. “It true that Buford’s Comanche-mad over you jumping up Custer and Farnsworth to brigadier?”
“I did not inquire as to General Buford’s opinions on the subject,” Meade said.
“Buford can be cantankerous,” Warren put in, “but he doesn’t hold a grudge past the next cigar. I’d worry more about Judson Kilpatrick taking it out on Farnsworth.”
Meade noted his son standing off with his horse, wary of interrupting. There was no time for army gossip now.
“Well, gentlemen,” Meade declared, “I think I’d best be off to see our battlefield. Win, you’ll want to rejoin your corps, keep your boys moving. They’ll have eternity for sleeping.” He turned to Warren, whose cigar flared to light his hawk’s eyes. “I’d welcome your company on the ride, G.K., but if you need to rest your horse…”
Warren shrugged. “You won’t be doing much galloping, the road’s packed up. Brutus and I can limp along well enough.”
Meade waved his son toward them. Young George held up his spectacles.
“This army’s done limping,” Meade said.
PART
III
THE DAY OF THE GENERALS
ELEVEN
His thoughts were not soldiers and refused to be disciplined. During the wearisome ride to Gettysburg, Meade’s ruminations had strayed to his father. Richard Meade had died, a broken man, at fifty years of age, hardly older than Meade now was himself. Trusting his fellow man had been the elder Meade’s mistake.
Born in Cádiz on New Year’s Eve 1815, George Gordon Meade missed his family’s glory days. His father had grown wealthy as a Philadelphia merchant based in Spain, a country the older man loved. During the Napoleonic occupation, Richard Meade had lent his fortune to the Spanish crown to fund its desperate struggle against the French. When the monarchy was restored at last, his father’s reward was prison for requesting the repayment of his loans.
First, the Spaniards cheated Richard Meade, then, when diplomacy freed him, the United States Congress cheated him as well. The remaining years of a bankrupt life had been spent in vain attempts to recoup lost wealth, with the family struggling to hold its social position. Upon her husband’s death, Meade’s mother had grasped West Point for a gentleman’s education free of cost, only to feel mortified when her son embraced a military life.
Now here he was, filthy and worn, in a cemetery gatehouse surrounded by an army he commanded. The odd thing was that the specter of his father had not left him wary and fearful, as it usually did. Rather, he saw a grand hope for redemption: Fending off Lee would secure his family’s place in Philadelphia for generations.
“It was a relief,” General Howard said. His pinned-up right sleeve dangled. The oil lamp pulsed. “I can’t tell you what a relief it was. Lee should have pressed his attack. I really am not certain we could have held.”
Old cigar smoke and sweat thickened the air.
“But he didn’t attack,” Meade said. “And you held.” Drained but determined, he looked around the candlelit room at the corps commanders present: Howard, Sickles, and Slocum, the latter just dismounted and in the door. Hunt, his chief of artillery, sat in the shadows. “What do you think, gentlemen?” Meade continued. “Is this the place to fight a battle? If the army comes up?”