by Ralph Peters
One blast swept up a line of cowering men, hurling their quartered bodies over their comrades. Fresh meat caught on branches.
The well-salted sea captain feared he was going to vomit.
“Cease firing,” McGilvery shouted. “Cease firing!”
The near guns obeyed, but the far sections roared on.
“Cease firing!” He turned to an aide and his last remaining orderly. “Stop them, damn it. It’s enough. Enough!”
His subordinates dashed for the far stretches of his gun line. In the distance, he saw advancing men in blue, sweeping toward the grove to gather prisoners.
The firing stopped and McGilvery turned away.
* * *
What have I done?
Lee sat on his horse, deep in the fields, as his soldiers streamed back around him. Even now, they took off their hats at the sight of him, releasing their grips on wounds to uncover their heads. Many wept.
Others called out in pain and shame and anger, “We can go again! Let us go again! We can whip them!”
But they could not go again, not on this day. It took all of Lee’s reserves of personal discipline to restrain his welling tears.
“It’s all my fault,” he told the passing soldiers. “It’s all my fault this time.…”
Stepping nearer, the blackened, bloodied men shouted, “No! No!”
But it was true: This debacle was his fault.
What have I done?
Men helped each other rearward, their private friendships all that remained of organization now. Hideously wounded, some defied belief as they kept their feet.
Most still had their weapons, that was something. Not all was lost.
But so much had been wasted, so much, so terribly much. He did not know if he could bear the shame.
The attack had been folly. He saw it now. But the future had been veiled. He had been too proud, too sure, and the Lord had humbled him.
But at what cost had his chastisement come? How was this just? His faith in the Lord was unshakable, but much passed Man’s understanding.
He had believed that these men could do anything, that those people could not resist their ferocious courage. But even valor had limits, he saw that now.
Lee rode farther into the field, away from the advanced battery where Alexander, bless him, kept the Englishman locked in conversation. Lee did not have the stomach for the man now, but did not want to be ungracious.
“God bless you, General Lee!” a man cried out. He had no hat to doff, but covered an eye with a hand that streamed bright blood.
A lieutenant passed in silence, glancing timidly at Lee. The downcast remnant of a company trailed him.
“Form your ranks when you get back to cover,” Lee told the defeated men. “Obey your officers. We want all good men to hold together now.…”
What have I done?
He could not, would not, think of General Longstreet. The injustice of resentment was too tempting.
I have been proud, Lee thought. It is a terrible sin in the eyes of God.
Another pack of men came up. Four of the ragged soldiers bore a litter, its burden clearly an officer of rank.
Lee nudged his horse closer.
“Whom have you there, boys?”
“General Kemper, sir.”
Something in Lee’s features made the men set down the litter. Kemper had tugged the blanket over his face against the sun. With an effort, he showed himself. His features were taut with pain.
“I hope you are not badly hurt?” Lee asked him.
Their eyes had met, but Kemper looked away. “I think they’ve got me this time,” he said.
“I trust not,” Lee said. “Oh, I trust not.”
What have I done?
The soldiers took up the litter again and moved on. Who else had fallen? Of these fine men the army could not spare?
Enough fight remained in Lee for him to hope that Meade would come charging in his turn across those fields, into his guns and the rest of General Hill’s corps, to take an equal punishment, if not a greater one. But as his soldiers struggled by, and he listened to the cheering across the fields, Lee sensed that General Meade would not oblige him.
Still … if Meade could be lured to attack … perhaps all could be redeemed?
Meade would not attack. Lee knew it bone-deep and plain. But he could not stop hoping. Even now.
Wandering back across the fields with a handful of his men, General Wilcox spotted him and approached. At the same time, the Englishman intruded, pursued by Alexander.
Earlier, Lee had needed to console Pickett, who was hurt and angry. He did not know if he possessed the self-mastery to face another chiding from a subordinate. He knew what he had done to these men, he knew it all too well. But a man could bear so much, and then no more.
On foot amid his staff, Wilcox wept openly. Halting at Lee’s stirrup, he declared, “General Lee, I came into Pennsylvania with one of the finest brigades in the Army of Northern Virginia … and now … now all my people are gone … they’re gone, all killed…”
Lee reached down for the general’s hand and took it as he would have the hand of a child.
“Never mind, General Wilcox, never mind. All this has been my fault, I’m the one who lost this fight.” He did not know if he could go on without breaking down himself. And someone had to remain strong for the army.
For the first time, Lee felt dangerously old.
“I’m the one who lost this fight,” he repeated. “But you must help me out of it. In the very best way you can. We need all our good men now.”
Wilcox nodded, cheeks shining with tears, and went on to rally what survivors he could.
Still they came on, so many of them. And not all their wounds were visible, Lee knew.
“It’s all my fault,” he told them, again and again.
Among the last men to retreat, a gore-covered soldier limped along, helped by a filthy comrade. When he realized that Lee himself hovered before him, the wounded man jigged over, clearly suffering at each desperate movement.
Propped up by his equally bloodied camp-mate, the old soldier found the voice to say, “General Lee, sir … I’m a dying man. Let me shake your hand.” He raised a crimsoned paw.
When Lee reached down to grant the doomed man’s wish, soldiers crowded around, expecting a miracle.
* * *
Meade rode through havoc and confused shouts, reassured only when he grasped that the men coursing toward him were his prisoners. A great mass of them.
The roar and racket of battle had diminished to the front, but a new wave of cannon fire growled on the left, in the direction of Hunt’s concealed gun line. Beside the herd of prisoners, a few men in blue were taking themselves off as well, with one of them screaming, “The Rebs are in the line, the Rebs done got us…”
One of the captive Confederates, a blood-smeared little man, cackled derisively.
Approaching the crest of the ridge from the rear, Meade spotted Lieutenant Haskell, Gibbon’s aide-de-camp. The fellow was bloodied himself, but energetically called out orders to this man and that.
Haskell saw him and turned. They met on the ridgetop. Down the slope, where rifles still cracked, smoke teased over a mad scene.
“How’s it going here?” Meade asked. Half fearing the answer.
The lieutenant smiled through the grime and gore disfiguring his face. “I believe, General, the enemy’s attack … is repulsed.”
“Already?”
“I believe so. It is, sir.”
Meade’s eyes ached, skinned by weariness, singed by smoke. He strained to see. And got a start: Rebel banners waved over his lines.
His mind caught up with his eyes. The flags had been captured. His own men were flaunting them. Through passages in the smoke, he saw his soldiers gathering in more prisoners, hundreds of them. Deeper into the fields, in a luminous haze, thousands of Confederates retreated in disorder.
“Thank God,” Meade said. Then he added, “This
is General Hancock’s victory.”
The wounded lieutenant’s expression took fire. Meade understood: Haskell had forgone promotion to continue to serve Gibbon and would not have his general slighted.
“And General Gibbon’s, of course. With credit to General Hays, as well.” He breathed deeply, yearning for fresh, clear air. Instead, he got the stink of powder and mankind. “I’m told that General Hancock has been wounded.”
“He remained on the field, sir. Commanding. Until the Rebels broke. General Gibbon’s been hit, too. Although I don’t believe his life is endangered. And Colonel Webb, sir. He may be rather bad. But we won, sir. We won.…”
Meade tasked his brain to think, but the sluggish beast behind his eyes resisted. He gave up and asked, “Who’s the senior general, then? In your corps?”
“General Caldwell, sir.”
Of course. Caldwell. He knew that.
Below him, he saw an army in disorder. But it was a victorious army. Unless … Lee came again. The firing on the left was a burr to the relief he almost felt.
He heard his wife’s frequent caution: “Oh, George, you’d see rain clouds in Heaven itself!”
Yes. Margaret. Oh, but she would be proud. If this were so.
As if summoned, his son rode up behind him, trailed by a few gathered officers from his staff.
Meade watched for a moment as his soldiers—his soldiers—brought gray-clad prisoners over fences and walls, their spirits broken.
“Thank God,” he muttered again.
The lieutenant before him wobbled. Wounded. Hot. Meade felt embarrassed by his lack of consideration, his selfishness. At this moment, of all moments.
“Haskell, you’re wounded yourself.”
The lieutenant declined the sympathy. “Not so badly, I don’t think, sir.”
“You must be tended to.”
“Yes, sir. A few more things…”
Meade realized still more: The aide had been left to take charge of the division. And the lieutenant had been doing so when Meade interrupted him.
“All right,” Meade said, embarrassed. “And my compliments to General Gibbon. When you see him. Well fought, Haskell. Well fought, indeed.”
Still, those guns were roaring on the left.
Nonetheless, the rising, thinning smoke revealed a true disaster for Robert E. Lee.
Meade turned his horse toward the hill and the cemetery, seeking a clearer view from higher ground. Exuberance rose within him, quickening his nerves, waking him fully. As if from a troubled dream.
Followed by his son and a swelling crowd of horsemen, Meade rode a zigzag course through the confusion left in the fighting’s wake: shouting officers, limping wounded, still more prisoners, intermingled regiments and brigades. Men sprawled everywhere, some of them wounded, others drained of all but life by the heat.
He realized that what they had accomplished still had not sunk in for those soldiers any more deeply than it had for him. They were all too accustomed to losing, their minds resisted the evidence of victory. Not a few officers stared in a daze as the army’s commander rode past.
They had beaten Lee. He warned himself not to be lulled into folly, to wait, to be certain to the last degree. But everything he saw around him said that Robert E. Lee had been defeated. In what looked to have been the greatest attack of the war.
He also saw that his own plans would have to change. There would be no prompt and sweeping counterattack by his own men, that had been a fantasy. His soldiers could barely keep their feet—indeed, many men could not—and the confusion appeared immense. The army had survived, but it was stunned.
The men needed ammunition, water, and food. He had eaten, but these men who defeated Robert E. Lee had not.
For all that, it struck George Gordon Meade again that he commanded a victorious army. An army he had led for less than a week. That no other general had managed to lead to victory. He had faced the worst that Lee could do. And he had won.
He turned to tell his son that his mother would be terribly proud of them both, but young George had trailed off somewhere.
Meade kept riding.
He found Howard and a bevy of his officers standing on the hillside in clear air, just below the gun line.
Before Meade could dismount, the corps commander and a dozen others crowded around his horse, calling out congratulations and reaching to shake his hand.
More officers rushed up. Enlisted soldiers gathered to see him, stepping as close as they dared.
It was … overwhelming.
Beaming, the normally somber Howard touched Meade’s hand with the fingers that remained to him, but immediately broke the contact to point southward.
“Look there!” Howard cried. “Look there, on Round Top.”
Meade turned. A semaphore message flashed up the line.
“What does it say, Wheeler?” Howard demanded of one of his officers.
The captain took up his field glasses.
They all waited. Less than patiently. Meade realized, only now, that the guns on Hunt’s line had ceased firing.
“Is it all right?” Meade asked.
The captain replied with a grin, directed first at Meade, then at Howard, and back to Meade again.
“It says, sir, that the enemy has been repulsed on every part of the line.”
The officers erupted in a cheer.
Meade saluted them. Howard stepped closer to his stirrup. The bearded, severe face shone above the grave beard.
“General Meade,” the corps commander said, “you must ride the line. The men will want to see you.”
Would they?
Meade had never dreamed of such a day. He had not dared. Even his rarest hopes of victory had not reached to this.
Forgetting that he had just saluted the gathered officers, he saluted them again, reined his horse about to clear a path, and applied the spurs.
Followed by his retinue, Meade thundered down the hill, leapt a battered portion of fence, and led the way into the clearing fields. He would have liked to gallop, despite the danger of blowing his mount completely, to tear along the line for the sheer joy of it … but his progress was limited to a trot as his horse picked its way between the dead and wounded.
At first, nothing happened. Then shouts went up: “Meade! Meade!” The few shouts became many. Soldiers rushed forward, climbing wall and fence, standing atop gun carriages to see, forming a thick blue wall along the front. They crowded and jostled as if his ride were the spectacle of their lives.
Meade touched the brim of his hat in a salute.
And they cheered.
He saw his son come up, differently mounted now, but young George and all of the staff men kept a respectful distance to his rear.
Meade rode before his army, amazed and proud.
The men cheered and cheered.
For him.
TWENTY-FOUR
Epilogue
Lieutenant Colonel Arthur James Lyon Fremantle lay back and thought of England. Might as well have been there, what with the rain and dreariness. Hardly the picture one had of America. “Sunny Southland” and all that. Of course, this was the North. Still. A cooling drizzle might have been welcome enough, but this deluge was rather much.
Fourth of July. The date only deepened the gloom among Lee’s people. Who were not the grand Cavaliers Englishmen imagined. Hospitable enough, in their countrified ways. But Lee was no more than a rustic squire, while Longstreet was, at best, the yeoman-farmer sort. And the rest were as conniving as Welsh colliers. Only Fairfax seemed a thorough gentleman. Blood always told.
Bloody mess, overall. Now this bout of camp tummy. Nothing severe. But unpleasant. Dreadful conditions. Not the least proper discipline. Fought like tigers, but without adequate direction. Proper bollocks the generals had made of it.
Daren’t breathe a word of that in the regimental mess. His brother officers were convinced that the Southrons were splendid chaps, and they weren’t the sort who welcomed contradiction.
/>
Didn’t do to lie, of course. Just leave things out. Bit like dealing with women. Great deal you couldn’t tell them. Dreadful creatures, really.
Old drain wouldn’t stay sealed. Damned embarrassing. Even in defeat, Lee’s staff was given to tasteless humor.
Packing up, the lot of them. Going home to Virginia. That Union fellow hadn’t obliged them, no attack had come. No gambler, that one. Unlike these gadabouts. Born for the card table, fine horseflesh, and debts.
Would have rather liked a bath. And a glass of Napoleon brandy.
Trick now was to get across the lines and hurry home. He had his story. Devil of a fight, if a disappointing outcome. A decisive Southron victory would have made him. Eyewitness. Greatest battle since Waterloo.
But this shambles? Not what his people wanted to hear at all. The right sort back home imagined Lee as an Arthur, his paladins as knights of the Round Table. Left a fellow in a bit of a pickle.
Fellow from The Times had explained it to him. Never change the facts—you’ll get caught out—but shade ’em so you won’t spoil his lordship’s breakfast.
He needed the nod from the generals who had already crowned old Lee with victory’s laurels. They were the ones who had to say, “Well done, Fremantle!” Had to put a tasty sauce on a nasty cut of beef.
Hadn’t had a stand-out career thus far. Promotions, thanks to the memory of the pater. But he’d missed out on the Crimea, great bollocks that it had been. No service in the Mutiny, either, although that was hardly a thing to be regretted. The right sort didn’t go out to India. Squabbles over bum-boys on the Frontier, cholera and niggers everywhere. Nasty as Manchester. But service as a military secretary in Gibraltar wasn’t the way a fellow made a name.
Now he had his chance. “Daring fellow, that Fremantle! Has the spark, that one! Shall we ask him round? Hear it all from the horse’s mouth?”
But what could he say about the dreadful losses? Fifteen generals dead, wounded, or missing. Lee’s paladins certainly didn’t keep to their tents, say that much for them. Mad as drunken Scotchmen, though. And the rank-and-file losses were appalling.
Dreary, dying afternoon. Trains already off. Infantry waiting to go. Line of guns putting up a show to keep the Yankees guessing. Hundreds of wounded to be left behind.