by Ralph Peters
“That ain’t no way to live,” Charley muttered.
Cobb grinned again, delighted. “Won’t be too long and many a wondrous hero of the Twenty-sixth North Carolina—which covered itself in glory, if you ain’t heard—well, he won’t have to worry about how to live no more. Deliverance courtesy of His Majesty, Jefferson Davis, and the Confederate States of America. Just toss that heroic sack of meat in the pit and throw on the dirt. Hallelujah! Amen!”
“Billie, you sonofabitch,” Charley said, “you’ll probably be the one who walks away without a scratch. I swear there ain’t no justice in the world.”
“No, there ain’t. Been saying that all the while, but nobody listens. Blowing my horn like the Angel Gabriel, and all you’re worried about is your share of the drippings.”
The lieutenant strutted up, a determined child. Blake stood. The others didn’t. No one saluted.
Standing stiff as a board, the boy looked them over. “I thought you men should know that an order’s been given to shoot any man who malingers or tries to run.”
“That’s nice,” Cobb said. “Officers included? You were back in the rear the day before yesterday, ain’t that right?”
The lieutenant reddened. “I was detailed to guard the trains.”
“These men won’t run,” Blake told him. “I can vouch for them.”
“They’re insubordinate, Sergeant. Especially that one.” He pointed at Cobb, who showed him his black teeth. Repulsed, the boy turned on Blake. “If you want to keep those stripes, I’ll expect appropriate discipline in the future.”
Little Cobb rose off his haunches and tugged up his filthy trousers. “You shit yourself already, son? Or you holding it in to dump one on the Yankees? Up real close, like?”
“I’ll bring you up on charges!” the lieutenant cried. He sounded as if he were about to weep.
Cobb laughed.
NINETEEN
July 3, Noon
Brigadier General Henry Jackson Hunt loved the army. He believed in the Union’s practical advantages, but despised his government’s nagging corruption. The army, not the pork barrel, was his passion, an obsession nurtured quietly behind a disciplined front. When he had been orphaned at the age of ten, army associates of his father and grandfather ensured he was never homeless. It was thanks to those loyal men, as well, that he and his younger brother got to West Point. Thereafter, the army had been his home and the artillery his calling, with room in his life for precious little else.
The practice of artillery was a beautiful thing to Hunt, with its combination of science and honed instinct, of art and mechanical skill. It set the purity of mathematics and the laws of ballistics against barometric pressure and the wind, against the countless tricks of the earth’s relief—and, not least, human foibles. In Mexico, he had received brevet promotions, first to captain, then to major, for his valor from Contreras to Chapultepec, but he was prouder still of his work on the army manual Instructions for Field Artillery. Hunt believed that any soldier could stand in the line of fire, but more of them needed to think.
If there was any resentment in Henry Hunt, it was that the men who served his guns never got due credit for their work. When glory was apportioned, the artillery would receive, at most, a nod. Promotions stagnated, while infantry officers and cavalrymen leapt upward. But Hunt knew what his men did. Yesterday, they had held a line the infantry could not hold, long enough to save the entire flank. If there had been a hero of that shambles, it had been McGilvery of the artillery reserve. But Hunt had lived long enough to know that the lieutenant colonel’s name would not be crowned with laurels.
Now Henry Hunt reined in his horse on the blasted forward slope of Little Round Top, beside the battery Rittenhouse had inherited from the fallen, valiant Hazlett. The position was spectacular for gunnery. Hunt regretted that the ground would not admit more cannon. Rittenhouse’s rifled ten-pounders could range nearly every target on the field.
Hunt gazed past the shot-up groves to the quieted fields beyond, envisioning what must come: long ranks of Confederate infantry, determined to cross that expanse and steal a victory. Hunt agreed with Meade that the attack would strike the center, hitting the long ridge that declined from the cemetery. He found it hard to believe that some of his fellow generals—not least, Hancock—remained unsure of what the Rebels would do. Hunt knew: An old artillery hand saw the terrain and its hidden laws more sharply than others did. And the logic of this battlefield was inexorable: Lee would come at the center.
He had spent the morning watching the proof develop. The Confederates had been shifting guns all morning, amassing an impressive concentration directed unmistakably at the ridge. The odd shots that had pocked the calm were obvious ranging efforts. Yet, Hancock had argued with him that, while an attack might be in the offing, an artillery barrage could also provide cover for Lee’s withdrawal. That was nonsense. Lee wouldn’t have enough ammunition left to waste on a deception. And the Army of Northern Virginia still had fight in it. Lee had come close to a win the evening before. He wouldn’t quit now. The artillery bombardment, when it came, would play for all or nothing.
Without resort to his field glasses, Hunt could see the distant ranks of cannon in front of the treeline, from the high ground by Sickles’ damned orchard to the southern edge of the town. Lee was massing everything he could.
Hunt was ready. Meade had left him a free hand to direct the army’s guns, and he’d made the most of it. Rittenhouse’s lone battery on the heights was only a tiny part of his scheme of fires. Hunt was determined to devastate the advancing Confederate infantry so severely that few, if any, would reach the Union lines. Let other men claim the glory if they craved it, the third day of this battle would hinge on gunnery.
Before riding back down the hill to begin his third inspection of the day, Hunt turned to Lieutenant Rittenhouse.
“No nonsense,” Hunt said. “Every shot to be aimed, and delayed if the target’s obscured. One round per minute, no more. No squandering ammunition. Ignore the rate of fire of the enemy. Excitement is no substitute for effectiveness.”
A gleaming boy, the inheritor of Battery D, Fifth U.S. Artillery, nodded earnestly. He saluted sharply as Hunt turned his horse to lead off his detachment of staff men and couriers.
Discipline was everything. Or damned near it. If he could prevent the gun crews from firing madly into the smoke, they’d have rounds in plenty to meet the Confederate infantry—while leaving enough reserve stocks to carry on. For all of gunnery’s geometry and formulae, the ultimate calculation wasn’t hard: You needed more ammunition than your enemy when the crisis came, and you didn’t achieve that superiority by creating thunderous shows that accomplished nothing. Fools measured success by rates of fire—which only mattered for canister and close combat. Accuracy and discipline were the keys.
Convinced by long experience that anything neglected would go wrong, Hunt headed down to the low ground and the great surprise he had got up for Lee. He let his horse go easy and a few members of his retinue edged ahead of him. Their horseshoes sparked off the rocks of the forlorn hillside. Only when they reached a farm lane did Hunt spur his mount to a trot.
McGilvery occupied the bottomland that Sickles had so detested. His concealed gun line stretched from the sunken meadows where the evening’s attacks had withered, to the flank of the corps defending the Union center. As Hunt led the way past cannon after cannon, he was pleased to see their crews had filled again. Infantry volunteers replaced yesterday’s casualties, some of them men who imagined they’d have an easier time with the guns than in their old ranks. They had no idea of what was waiting for them.
Absorbing bad habits as well as good from the veterans, many a man had stripped to the waist to stoke the guns in the furnace of the day. A believer in a soldierly appearance, Hunt let the violations pass this time: The heat was heavy and worsening, and all that mattered now was the work ahead.
He found McGilvery at the foot of the ridge inspecting a fiel
d piece.
“Well, Freeman?”
Face smeared with yesterday’s powder, the lieutenant colonel smiled. “It’s the most beautiful site for guns I’ve ever seen.”
Hunt thought so, too, but declined to be effusive. It was no time for overconfidence. The position was superb, though, although it took a seasoned gunner to see it. Few of McGilvery’s thirty-nine pieces were visible to the Confederates. Neither could his men see the Rebel gun line, but that didn’t matter. The purpose of these batteries wasn’t to duel tit for tat with Lee’s artillery, but to sweep the attacking infantry from the flank, and neither the Lord nor the devil could have better shaped the ground to such a purpose. The batteries sat on a rising lip in the trough Sickles had abandoned. As soon as the Rebel infantry passed the middle of those fields—focused straight ahead and unsuspecting—they’d be exposed to McGilvery’s raking fires. The effect would be shattering.
Hunt spared McGilvery one of his lectures. The fellow knew his trade. Nodding his approval, Hunt trotted on up the long ridge to the batteries in the center, the guns that would bear the brunt of the Rebel barrage and had to hold on to send canister into any attackers who made it through his crossfire. Not all of these exposed guns or their crews would survive, and he had positioned reserve batteries to their rear, their number another cold-blooded calculation.
He paused at Cushing’s battery, its guns positioned between a small grove and a sharp jut of the fence that marked the line. The guns here belonged to Hancock, who could be difficult. A master of leading men, Hancock was less skilled at employing artillery, the sort of officer who judged the effect of his batteries by the amount of noise they made.
“Ready, Cushing?”
“Yes, sir.”
“General Hancock been round?”
Cushing smiled. “Of course, sir.”
“Offering advice?”
“Mostly encouragement. ‘Give ’em the devil, boys.’ That sort of thing. I appreciate the replacement limbers, sir.”
“Lucky we’re not both dead. Your boys gave as good as they got, though.”
Just hours before, a Rebel shell had hit one of Cushing’s limbers, with the knock-on chain of explosions destroying three of them. He and Cushing had been talking with a sergeant just yards away. Their escape had been miraculous.
“Who’s got Brown’s battery now?” Hunt asked.
“Walt Perrin, sir.”
“Know his business?”
“Walt’s steady.”
“Good.”
As the morning tightened into noon, Hunt stared across the fields again, imagining it all one more time. Cushing and his fellow Second Corps officers just had to survive the coming bombardment, which would concentrate on their portion of the line. Everything about the ground, its little tricks, the drops and folds a hasty glance overlooked, told Hunt the attackers would funnel down to a point near this nick in the line, that stone wall and clump of trees. Charging men invented goals to aim at. In the absence of better landmarks, the copse would draw them.
He considered sharing his ruminations with Cushing, then decided against it. There was a line that must not be crossed between alerting subordinates and alarming them. Cushing was a sound officer, he’d sort things out for himself.
By way of good-bye, Hunt looked down from the saddle and said, “General Hancock will roar like a bear, but you keep back enough rounds to repel an assault at close quarters. He’ll be thinking of his infantry, he’ll want you to fire just to keep up their morale.” Hunt swept a hand toward the waiting soldiers. “It’s up to you to keep those poor bastards alive, Cushing. Your guns are the best friends they’ve got.” He gee-upped his horse and rode northward.
Another ranging shot struck behind the men of Hays’ division, beyond the right-angle turn in the boundary fence. They were coming. Soon. A great damned lot of them. Only a slumbering fool could fail to see it.
Hunt wondered why the Confederates were waiting.
That ranging shot encouraged him, though. The Confederate gunners were still firing high and long, their usual practice. If they failed to correct their elevation now, they’d put most of their shells behind the ridge, once the smoke made everything a guessing game.
He spotted Hancock atop the ridge, haranguing an officer whose men were hurrying forward. Hunt decided not to pay his respects. Hancock would only demand more guns for his front, where there wasn’t space to deploy any more effectively. Hancock was the kind of man who wanted more of everything, field pieces, food, or glory: a magnificent fighting soldier, but ever a bit of a trial.
As he rode up along the next stretch of the line, Hunt saw regiments ranked behind regiments, as if the fields had sprouted thick blue crops. Whatever his artillery failed to finish, these men would conclude. He believed he sensed something different today, an alacrity—a vengefulness, perhaps—as if not a few of the men foresaw everything as he did. After so many heartbreaking reverses, the time had finally come to turn the tables.
Hunt knew soldiers. For virtually all of his life, he had lived among them, often in intimate circumstances that let no man hide weaknesses. From syphilitic drunkards to shining knights from the pages of Walter Scott, he had known them by the thousands, even in childhood. He had not been quite eight when his father took him along on the expedition he led across the Missouri, founding Ft. Leavenworth on the western bluffs. Hunt remembered days of boundless prairies, food that you just got down any way you could, lilting songs raised by dusty throats—music hoarse and wonderful—and the disappointment he felt upon meeting Indians at last: Instead of whooping, attacking, and making a spectacle, they had carried themselves submissively, men broken and ashamed. He recalled the immense, immeasurable strength of his father, a captain in Army blue, who died two years later and was thereafter hopelessly, terribly gone. A man in his prime years himself now, Henry Hunt could not imagine another life with such an eminent purpose. He pitied the man who never had served in uniform.
At last, Hunt came to the cemetery atop the commanding hill, where Osborn had staged the Eleventh Corps’ strongest batteries. The prospect was even grander than the view from Little Round Top, a flawless panorama of the Confederate gun line glinting a mile away. Behind them, hidden in those distant trees, how many Rebel soldiers waited to charge? Twenty thousand? Thirty? Hunt would not have liked to cross those fields, no matter the numbers allotted him, but it struck him that even thirty thousand men would be hard-pressed to carry his army’s lines.
Say what you wanted about the Eleventh Corps, Osborn had the stomach for a fight. Already protected by the terrain, McGilvery had been able to dig in his guns and throw up a parapet, too. But Osborn’s best lines of fire were from the cemetery itself, which hardly lent itself to eager digging: No gunner wished to disturb a grave, fearing bad luck to come. Major Tom Osborn could put shot and shell on nearly every point likely to be crucial, but the Rebels could answer in kind. If Lee’s artillerymen were smart, they’d concentrate on Osborn, giving his batteries precedence even over those in the center. But Hunt doubted they’d be smart that way—the pressure would be on them to knock out the guns positioned directly in front of their infantry. Unless Lee had artillerymen with sense as well as backbone, enough of Osborn’s cannon would survive to play Hell with the charge. Lee’s gunners were brave, even daring, but Hunt regarded their skills as second-rate. Having trained a number of them himself in the pre-war army, he regarded their failings as a personal embarrassment.
An infantryman could afford to think in terms of a few hundred yards, but artillerymen had to grasp the entire battlefield.
And Hunt had arranged the entire line to his purposes: McGilvery would rake Lee’s infantry from the Union left, making a grim surprise of it, while Osborn poured in shells from the other flank, achieving a crossfire as close to perfect as Hunt had ever seen outside of a textbook.
Lee would have to be mad to send his divisions across that field. And Hunt was sure he would do it.
The artille
ry commander dismounted, stretching his forty-three-year-old bones and marveling at the prospect laid out before him.
“Rebs were damned fools not to take this hill two days ago,” Osborn said. “Could’ve done it, too.”
“But they didn’t.”
“Well, they’re going to pay for it.”
Hunt nodded, then said, “I expect you’ll take some fires from your own flank, from your rear there. It may get hot.”
Osborn chuckled. “I hear it got a little hot for you this morning, sir. First report was that you’d been killed by a lucky shot.”
“Ranging shot. Not lucky enough.”
“Cheroot, sir?”
Hunt declined. He didn’t believe it was proper to take a subordinate’s cigars or his credit. He would have liked a smoke, though.
Lighting up, Osborn asked, “Who’s got that battery out in front of Hays? Devil of a place to be, thrust out like that.”
“Woodruff.”
“Brave man.”
“Following orders. Not my orders, by the way. Speaking of limbers, you might want to move yours back behind the ridge.”
“I’ll need the rounds handy,” Osborn said. He, too, had his plan.
“You know my instructions. Preserve ammuniton. Wait before returning fires. Only fire at identified, worthwhile targets.”
Osborn smiled. “‘No more than one round per minute.’ Yes, sir. I understand.” He gestured toward the fields beyond the town and below them, at the baking expanse awaiting triumph or tragedy. “They come marching out of those woods, we could fire blindfolded and knock ’em down like pins.” Lowering his eyes, the major shook his head. “Almost hate to see the poor devils try it. Sheer murder. Nothing but.”
“Murder’s what we do,” Hunt said. “Make sure your men have water.”
* * *
Black murdering buggers they were, the English, and ’twas down to their account that Daniel Francis Gallagher never married. For he had no wish to wear himself the black shame he had seen on his father’s face, the shame of a man who knew not how to feed his wife and brats. They were Mayo people, his Gallaghers, and the wind from the sea carved the faces of the women, just as the poteen muddled those of the men. But a life it was, if never grand, until black ’47, with the praties gone mush in their beds and the black English shipping off cargoes of grain while starvation whittled Irish bodies boneward. Black bastards they were, the landlords, absent or not, come over to the one true church or not, black buggers and bastards all to ride past the shame of a man who cannot feed his kind, riding horses whose price would buy up a village. Then the black typhus came in that black, black year, and his mother, father, and sister did not starve to death, for the spots on their slack, white skin did the trick for the hunger, the three of them dead, all three, and him left to wonder what doing should come next, for the rest of his people were dead or tramping about the lanes worse than tinkers, or gone to America. All but the house-proud Castlebar Gallaghers, shopkeepers so mean the cholera always spared them, his blood kind to whom he walked in that black year, only to be shut out of doors and kept there for fear of the typhus. He’d learned to steal, but better to hate, for little there was to steal in those black days and hatred filled the belly better than love, oh, didn’t it, though?