by Ralph Peters
“Going to be cut off, why don’t we get orders?” Sergeant Alderman wondered. That itself was cause for worry, since Alderman was a steady man in a fight.
“Here they come!” Lem Davis shouted. It took a few seconds for the rest of them to realize he meant they were coming from the front, too.
Gog and Magog, Jebusites, Midianites … the Yankees who hadn’t seemed to be doing no more than fussing around were advancing, in great numbers, heading straight for the hill, as if they couldn’t see its awful steepness, its impossibility, or lacked the sense to care.
“They’re in behind us, they’re blocking the road!” a trash Jeremiah hollered.
Nichols didn’t run at first. None of them did. They were John Gordon’s soldiers, after all. They lit into the Yankees, firing down into the packets of skirmishers and then at the oncoming ranks with their insolent banners.
But catastrophe, like Judgment, could be evaded for only so long. Nichols wasn’t the first to run, nor did he quite intend to run at all, but in a way he could not quite explain he found himself hopping rearward, doing his best to keep up, losing sight of his comrades before spotting them again and spying Colonel Atkinson, abandoned by all, attempting to free an artillery piece stuck in a ditch. Nichols’ heart said go on down and help, but he reckoned his leg about robbed him of much use.
He did not want to be captured, that was the fact of it.
As he reached the rump of the hill and witnessed the awful spectacle of an army falling to pieces, an army dissolving like a mud cake splashed with a bucket of water, he muttered, “Sodom and Gomorrah,” but he kept on going, unlikely to become a pillar of salt, but unwilling to be a captive of flesh and blood.
5:30 p.m.
Ricketts’ advance
Ricketts spotted General Crook haranguing his men and rode over to the row of captured cannon. Crook sat astride a wretched-looking nag, which took Ricketts aback until he realized it, too, was a prize of war.
“What’s the difficulty, sir?” Ricketts asked, approaching the breastworks.
“You tell me, Ricketts. You must have fifty men here, doing nothing. Why aren’t they attacking?”
Surprised, Ricketts told him, “General Crook, they’re hardly ‘doing nothing.’ They’re taking off captured guns.”
“No time for that. We need to press the attack.”
“My entire division’s attacking.”
“Not these men. You’ve got them stealing guns my soldiers took.”
“My men captured these guns.”
“Really? Were you here? I didn’t see you. And now you want to turn in these guns as your prizes.” Crook snorted, frowned, growled. “My men went over this ground before a single soldier of yours advanced.”
Ricketts felt compelled to point out that his men had been fighting for nearly two days, while Crook’s corps dallied pleasantly in the rear. And if Crook hadn’t seen him, he hadn’t seen Crook. But it was no use. Crook was still angry about the gone-astray orders at Cool Springs; the man held a grudge. He also held higher rank.
Besides, Crook was the hero of the day again.
“Yes, sir,” Ricketts said as dark clouds pressed. “I defer to your claim.”
7:00 p.m.
The Valley Pike
As darkness deepened, rain spit. The Yankees were coming along, all right, Jed Hotchkiss had no doubt. Skirmishers still gnawed the retreating army, but it appeared that Sheridan had paused at last to reorganize his force south of the battlefield. They’d come on again, though, that was sure, in a multitude. Too fine an opportunity to be missed, with not just an army of thousands, but the hopes of millions ruined.
“Fine work, Jed,” John Gordon told the mapmaker, loud enough to be heard by the cluster of officers. “You picked excellent ground.”
“One thing I’m good for.”
Beside the Pike, John Carpenter’s two guns awaited the enemy, along with a cobbled-together force built on shreds of the 13th Virginia. When asked to stop and make a stand, Captain Buck, leading twenty men, had agreed immediately. Even more remarkable in that hour, his soldiers obeyed him. Strays from other regiments joined the rear guard thereafter, but those good souls were but a scrape and a scrap of the fleeing masses.
It made for a queer command, with two generals, Gordon and Pegram, and a covey of staff officers in charge of two hundred men. Their “reserve” was a huddle of colored servants, a stripped commissary wagon, and an ambulance drawn by a mule.
It wasn’t much to face down Sheridan’s army.
The rain picked up enough to sting their faces. If the day had been warm, the night promised to be cold.
“Where’d you last see Early?” Gordon asked.
“Back on the field,” Hotchkiss answered. “Cursing the men to damnation. Sandie probably saw him after I did.”
Sitting atop his dusky-white horse, Pendleton told them, “He came off, I’m fairly certain. Probably headed for Woodstock to rally the army.”
“Let’s hope,” Gordon said wearily. “Ed Atkinson wasn’t so lucky. Captured trying to bring off a gun, I swear it galls me. I’m getting sick to death of senseless valor.”
Pegram rejoined the party. “Buck just told me about his run-in with Early.”
“What happened?” Gordon asked him.
“Old Jube ordered the Thirteenth Virginia to fire on Ramseur’s men. Of course, they refused.”
“Early’s like to charge them all with mutiny. If he remembers.”
Pegram shook his head. “Couldn’t make it stick, if he dared try. His stock’s already low on the Richmond exchange. And now this.” Annoyed, he lifted his hat, shook off the rain, and quickly resettled it. “Be ashamed of himself, when he comes to his senses.”
“Shame,” Gordon said, “is not among Early’s salient characteristics.”
Hotchkiss was surprised that Pendleton didn’t leap to Early’s defense. In the past, Sandie had taken such comments to heart.
Shots. Just to the north. Yankees hunting stragglers.
“Never thought I’d see a day like this,” Pegram declared. “Never thought I’d live to see the day.”
“At least you lived,” Gordon said. Turning to Pendleton, the Georgian suggested, “Sandie, you ought to get along, find Early. He’ll need you. Help him patch this army back together.”
The younger man shook his head. His face seemed ghastly pale in the wet night. “I’m minded to stay here, sir. Make sure these boys don’t bolt, give the Yanks free passage.”
“Sam Buck won’t run,” Pegram said.
“Artillerymen might. Despite all Carpenter’s efforts. Hasn’t been their best day. Anyway, I have a mind to stay.”
In lieu of further argument, Pegram grunted.
“Well, I suppose every man’s his own commander now,” Gordon allowed. “But one of you needs to go catch up with Early. Can’t have his whole staff captured and hauled off like the Nervii chieftains. You’ve even got Hennie Douglas playing cannoneer.”
“Jed, you go,” Pendleton said. His voice was spectral in the darkness. “You organized this position, you did your part. I’ll see it through.”
“Just as soon stay myself,” Hotchkiss countered. It wasn’t that he truly wished to remain, but his sense of obligation went soul deep.
“Damn it, this isn’t some ladies’ sanitary committee,” Gordon snapped. “One of you two, get on down the Pike. You, Jed. Get along. Sandie’s right, you’ve done your part. Go find Early. Help the man, he needs you.”
“Same might go for you and me,” Pegram said. “Put the cob to chivalry, this ain’t proper employment for men who ought to be rounding up their divisions.”
“All of you go,” Pendleton said. “This doesn’t call for generals.” Hotchkiss was startled by the tone the chief of staff took with men who outranked him by several grades. “If I can’t handle this, I’m not worth a plug of tobacco. You go, I’ll try to hold them for an hour. Maybe a tad longer, given the rain.”
“Optimistic, y
oung Leonidas,” Gordon said. “But I’m for optimism, given the alternative. Sweep that road, when they come strutting down it. And thank the Almighty for this rain and darkness, they’ll waste time calculating what all might be waiting for them. Trick is to keep them pondering.”
“Gain what time you can,” Pegram put in. “But don’t be a damned fool, Pendleton. Come off this hill before you end up dead or on Johnson’s Island.”
The rain had skirmished. Now it attacked. Hotchkiss wished he had his oilcloth cape, but all of his belongings remained on the field, a threadbare feast for Yankee scavengers. None of those present had rain covers, for that matter. He wondered if they even had an army.
Sam Buck strode up to the clot of mounted officers, all of whom outranked him by a mile.
“Gentlemen,” the Virginian said, “I do believe the Yankees are coming along.”
8:00 p.m.
The Valley Pike
Captain Samuel Dawson Buck did all he could to fortify his men, but more and more rifles misfired in the rain. A few soldiers had already slipped away.
The Yankees seemed unbothered by the downpour. Gushing volleys, their lead regiments inched forward. Even if their fires were inaccurate in the darkness, the volume all but crushed a fellow’s spirit. Why didn’t the rain ruin their cartridges, too? All his men could bring to bear in return was the liquor of spite.
He heard neighing horses and dropping chains, followed by artillery commands. Canister, too, would have to be endured, as soon as they found the elevation and range. As for Carpenter’s two guns, their ammunition was almost gone. It was only a matter of time before the Yankees had things their way.
Buck wasn’t inclined to leave one moment sooner, though. He was newly embittered, driven to an irreconcilable fierceness, and Early’s tantrum had been the least of its causes. The Yankees held Front Royal and Buckton again, if reports ran true. And if the Federals had dishonored his birthplace in the past, they had at least been driven off in turn. This time it was different, an addle-headed private could feel the change. This time the Yankees meant to stay for good. Winchester was lost, and the Lower Valley with it. His family had no wealth to display—before the war, he had gone to clerking a store—but the land they owned had been theirs for a hundred years.
He doubted he’d see his parents’ home again.
“If you can’t shoot, holler at them,” Buck admonished a soldier. The men knelt or sprawled, wet through, struggling to keep the mud from their ramrods and bores, the rain from their cartridge pouches. For his part, Buck felt obliged to remain on his feet, roaming through the darkness, as much a dare to the Yankees as an example to his men.
And if he was a fool for strutting about, that lieutenant colonel, Pendleton, was the greater fool for riding high on that cream-white horse of his, another gentleman’s son playing the gallant. Buck knew his men were not about to take orders from an unfamiliar staff officer, not this day, nor were the artillerymen likely to do so, either. They had stopped to fight because they were soldiers and that other fellow, gone now, had made a case for the ground and the necessity. They had stopped to fight because they were tired of running and not fighting, not hitting back. They had stopped because they were Valley men, most of them, ruing homes abandoned, and because they were all Virginians. And they’d stopped just because they’d stopped, because it just happened.
Yankee solid shot screamed overhead. Their gun crews were seeking the range.
“I cain’t git this piece to fire,” a kneeling soldier complained. Preparatory, Buck understood, to making for the rear.
“Go out and grab a new one from the Yankees, they’ve got plenty.”
He moved on. Wasn’t much more to be done. Hold one man by the ear? While a dozen others ran? If the Yankees came on in one big rush, they were finished.
Well, let them come on, Buck said to himself. I’ll wait.
Walking close to Pendleton, Buck collided with the other staff man who’d stayed behind. After a clipped apology, Douglas stepped toward his comrade and called:
“For God’s sake, Sandie, get down off that horse.”
No sooner had the man spoken than Buck heard the slap-a-carcass sound of a bullet striking home.
A shadow, Pendleton toppled forward, groaning.
Douglas rushed to intercept his fall. Buck started to follow, then paused.
“Kate,” Pendleton called.
“Help me,” Douglas pleaded, staggering under the weight as the wounded man slipped from the saddle into his arms.
Buck just would not do it. He knew that helping would reel him in, stealing him from the fight for precious minutes—a fight that was damned well more important than any man, no matter his rank or parentage or position.
“You, Grimshaw!” Buck said. “Help out there, jump to it.”
Behind his back, the wounded man moaned piteously. Douglas cursed.
Resolute, Buck chose three other soldiers he judged apt to run anyway and sent them to help tote the wounded man to the rear. No more to be done.
* * *
“Where are you hit?” Douglas begged. “Sandie, where are you hit?”
Pendleton moaned. Rain pounded.
“Keep him out of the mud,” Douglas told the soldiers. “Hold him up until I see where he’s hit.”
He couldn’t see much of anything by the muzzle flashes.
“It’s his … it’s lower down,” a soldier told him. “I think he’s hit down there.”
The wounded man gasped, unable to form words.
“What do you mean, ‘down there’?” Douglas demanded. Then he realized. “We have to get him out of here.”
“Yes, sir. Sure now.” The voice told Douglas that however brave these men had been an hour earlier, they were yard-dog happy at being left off the rope to take themselves rearward.
“He’s soaking with blood, just soaking,” another soldier announced. As if such things never happened in a war. “He’s bleeding away.”
“Hold him up, man.” Forbidden a lantern by the enemy’s presence, Douglas felt along the wounded man’s body, reaching, of necessity, into private spots.
Pendleton screamed.
Douglas withdrew his hand. Pendleton’s injury was unthinkable. For a helpless moment, the knowledge froze him. Then he just repeated, “Hold him up.”
“Best carry him on back now,” the soldier who seemed to have charge of the others told Douglas. “Best hurry along.”
“Stop the Yankees…,” Pendleton moaned. “Have to stop them…”
“We’re going to stop the Yankees,” Douglas promised him.
Artillery rounds struck closer as the Yankees adjusted the range.
“You’re going to be just fine, Sandie,” Douglas added. His tone sounded false, even selfish, in his ears. As if he were the one who craved assurance.
There was no hope of a litter: The soldiers allotted Pendleton’s limbs and weight between them.
“Kate,” Pendleton muttered.
“You’ll see Kate,” Douglas told him as they stumbled back from the line. “You’ll see her soon.”
“Best bring his horse along, sir,” a voice advised. “’Case somebody stole that mule from the butcher’s wagon.”
Careless of the rounds streaking the air, Douglas slopped back through the mud toward the outline of Pendleton’s horse. The animal waited calmly, uninjured and unconcerned. Leading it by the bridle, Douglas hastened to overtake the others.
When he rejoined the party, his friend was babbling: “Couldn’t get the order out … no time … couldn’t … no time…”
The Yankees fired a battery in sequence. Their final charge might come at any moment. Probably working around the flanks as well, Douglas decided. Was he glad to be leaving? Was he just the same as these four men, just armed with better manners and finer words? Was Pendleton’s wound his excuse to run to the rear?
For all that, he knew that he would not leave the side of a man whom he counted just short of a brother.
>
As they lugged him along, Pendleton gasped again and again. Each suck of breath was as dreadful as a shriek.
Poor Sandie. He had to be in agony. How could a man live on with a wound like that? Would he want to?
“How bad is it, Hennie? How badly am I hit?” Pendleton asked, as if his mind had cleared, the pain abated.
“Bad enough for a pleasant leave back home. Let Kate nurse you up, impose on the family. Let them spoil you.”
“Home,” Pendleton mouthed. His mind strayed again, returning by another door. “Must hold them. Give the army time. Must…”
“Keep him up off the ground!” Douglas barked. He imagined Pendleton’s mutilated parts dragging in the mud.
They stumbled about, half-lost, and Pendleton swooned, either from resurgent pain or loss of blood. Douglas wanted his friend to live but wasn’t sure the sentiment was sound. Of all the wounds he had witnessed in the war, no other had shocked him so.
At last, they found the ambulance, tucked behind a shanty. The orderly and driver had disappeared, but a pair of darkies lurked, as if raising the courage to steal the mule.
Douglas stiffened his back and made the Negroes do what they did not want to do: help arrange the wounded man on one of the mounted litters and belt him down.
As they gentled Pendleton’s limbs, he cried, “They’re running! Tell General Jackson!”
“That man shot right through,” a darkey commented.
“Shut your mouth,” Douglas told him. “Either of you know how to drive a wagon, drive it right? Run reins on a mule?”
“Sho’. But I can’t go. I belongs to Cap’n Carpenter, he’d take it harsh.”
“How about you?”
“Yassuh. I can drive a mule jus’ fine.”
“Here. Start by tying this horse to the back of the wagon.”
He turned to the soldier who had done most of the speaking. “What’s your name?”
“Grimshaw.”
“Rank?”
“Private. Nowadays. I been this and that.”
“Where’s your rifle?”
“Couldn’t carry no rifle and him, too.”
Reluctantly, Douglas drew out his revolver, a new Colt he had taken from a Yankee. “Here. That nigger tries to run away, you shoot him. Shoot anybody else who gets in your way. I’ll catch up as soon as I fetch my horse. If I don’t, you keep on straight to Woodstock or till you come up on a field surgery.” He looked at the others in the hard-washed night. “Rest of you men can walk, and count your blessings.”