by Ralph Peters
Flinging sweat despite the morning’s coolness, the courier made straight for Merritt, drawing a folded scrap of paper from his pouch and extending it before his horse had steadied.
Yes. It was an order to move north of Middletown, to establish a line, halt the rearward flow of soldiers, and block the Rebel advance.
He couldn’t resist tormenting Custer, though, and kept the order to himself for a few delicious moments. He even made his face show disappointment.
George squirmed in the saddle, a child with worms.
“Anything in there for me?” Custer begged.
Merritt tightened his brow, affecting to squint at the handwriting.
“What does it say, Wes? What does it say, are we in it?”
At last, Merritt passed the note over to Custer. “You’re to leave a detachment to keep an eye on Rosser. But we’re in it, George.”
8:45 a.m.
The Valley Pike, south of Middletown
Brigadier General George Washington Getty still couldn’t see a damned thing beyond pistol range. But he had his division in hand. He always did.
With their line crossing the Pike at a slight diagonal, his men had thrown back a flurry of Rebel assaults. But even as Getty held his ground, the army crumbled around him. He hadn’t seen Jim Ricketts for an hour and guessed that he’d gone to do what he could for Wheaton.
Lew Grant, commanding his Vermont Brigade, found Getty in the white air acrid with gunsmoke.
“Sir, my flank’s dangling like bait on a hook. I’ve sent out flankers to reestablish contact, but Wheaton’s boys are plain gone.”
“Gone to Hell,” Getty grumped. “Bugger this whole goddamned day.” Dressed with the meticulous care of a Regular, he stiffened his spine to match his starched high collar. “Going to pull back, Lew. Nothing for it. But I want no running, no disorder.”
“Vermont men don’t run.”
“We’ll see.”
“Position in mind?”
“I always have a position in mind.” Getty was instantly sorry he’d said that, it sounded too much like a brag. But it was true. He’d learned early on, in fighting the Seminoles, that an officer had to pay attention to every slight variation in the terrain. He’d carried that habit with him through peace and war, never occupying so much as a temporary camp without inspecting the ground for fighting positions, as if he might be attacked at any moment.
As the army had been attacked this cursed morning.
“Sounds like they’re getting ready to hit us again,” Grant said. “Bringing up artillery. Listen.”
Getty snorted. “Probably our own guns they’ve captured. Sonsofbitches.” He turned back to business. “Keep your alignment. We’ll pull straight back, west by northwest. Get through that creek gully quick and up the other side. We’ll make a stand on that ridge with the cemetery.”
“Yes, sir. I know it. Good ground.”
“It’s the only ground, goddamn it. Steep slopes, clean fields of fire. I’ve sent orders to McKnight to shift his guns. If the earth hasn’t swallowed him whole.” The forty-five-year-old former artilleryman added, “Guns or no guns, we’re going to hold on to those heights like a whore grips a gold piece.”
“Johnnies may ignore us. Head straight north through the town and cut us off.”
“They won’t. Flies to honey. They’ll swarm on us, wait and see.” The nearest Rebs sounded truculent, ready to try them again. “Too much damned talk. Get your boys back on that ridge. In good order. I’ll get the rest of this division moving.” He almost smiled, but even on the best of days Getty had little capacity for mirth. “I’ll be watching, Lew. To see whether Vermonters run or not.”
Truth was, Getty would not have traded the Vermont Brigade for any other in the army. But it didn’t hurt to give Lew Grant something to prove.
As they withdrew through the fields that dropped from the Pike, the Rebs did hit them. Twice. But the assaults were hasty and disorganized. Noisy, but not strong enough to break his division’s ranks.
Lonely damned place, though. He couldn’t tell if a single other division remained engaged. Ricketts’ boys under Keifer had just vanished, and it didn’t sound as though Wheaton was doing much. Mostly, it felt like Rebs out there in the fog—which was weakening, but still not thinned enough for aimed shots and accurate gunnery.
That was a blessing at the moment, though. The ground his men had to cover lay wide open, and the drop to the streambed waited. If the Rebs caught them down in that gully …
The Johnnies missed their chance. His division crossed the trickling run and made the high ground intact, as close to a miracle as the morning offered. Hard training paid in gold. Soldiers didn’t like it—hell, they hated Lew Grant for trying to outdo the Regulars—but in hours such as these fierce training saved Heaven and earth: Even frightful commands were obeyed instantly.
All through his career, George Washington Getty had prided himself on executing orders promptly and fully, no matter how they grated. He expected no less of his men.
Atop the ridge, a grove stretched northward to a balding cemetery. Getty rode back and forth, without a thought for his safety, testing the ground and firming up his lines, but unable to resist supervising the positioning of McKnight’s battery—which hadn’t disappeared, after all.
In ten minutes, his new line was as ready as it was going to be, with Bidwell’s brigade stretching northward beyond the gravestones and facing the town, Lew Grant and his Vermonters in the center where the hardest blows would land, and Warner’s brigade bending back to the right, overlooking a still-invisible Belle Grove. He even had the unexpected luck of finding a brigade of cavalry dismounting to guard his right flank.
And luck mattered. Study all the books about war you wanted, but luck mattered.
He heard the Rebs before he saw them, what must have been a full division, tramping toward them, roostering their war cry in poor-white voices. Cannon fired blindly over their heads, hunting Getty’s position.
“Steady, boys,” he snapped. “Those sonsofbitches don’t know what they’re in for. Officers, have your men lie down. No need to give the Johnnies easy targets.”
He also knew that men lying down were far less apt to run, simply because of the extra effort required. Law of inertia, taught to you at West Point, though not for this purpose.
West Point. So long ago.
Just had to get the men back on their feet at the last moment. Inertia was the science, judgment the art.
What the devil had happened to Jim Ricketts? Jim was another old artilleryman, a fellow veteran of Mexico and of many a lonesome, under-rationed garrison. Getty had always felt he could count on Ricketts, despite the fuss over Fitz John Porter’s court-martial—he didn’t know one officer with nothing on his conscience, so he wasn’t going to shun Ricketts over that business. But Jim seemed to have let the corps break up.
No point in blaming Ricketts, Getty corrected himself. Not Jim or anyone else. Blaming others was the resort of the lowest kind of officer. Just do your duty, Getty thought, and let other men see to their own concerns.
Jesus Christ, though, how had the Rebs pulled it off?
He heard them coming closer, thrashing dew-heavy grass, with their officers calling orders to straighten ranks and their intervals, shouting in accents he knew so well from the old Army they’d shared.
This war was madness.
“Steady, steady!” he called out. “Nobody rises or fires until they’re within thirty yards. Just stay down, boys, and listen for your commands.” He gulped breath. “Officers, do your duty. Thirty yards, thirty yards.”
He’d already spoken more than his wont. His preference was to issue orders and let his subordinates see to their tasks unbothered. But this day was an exception, reeking of disaster and desperation.
And Getty didn’t mean to be part of the failure.
He saw man-shadows down below, in the fog that clutched the brook. And he listened, again, to those ever-familiar voices. T
hey echoed from bygone garrison parades, from late night poker rounds fueled by poor cigars and poorer whiskey, handsome voices ordering men to kill him.
McKnight let them have canister. Getty felt, could not quite see, the gashes torn through the lines and the bloodied air.
“Steady!”
He knew what the men were feeling, their worry that their officers would tell them to rise too late, that the Rebs would be atop them. Training and discipline couldn’t banish fear. They just helped a man resist his natural impulses.
And there they were, bursting through curls of mist, a dozen, a hundred, hundreds, banners waving, a horde of screaming men rushing up the thigh-tormenting slope, lines melting into a swarm.
He saw beards. Faces. Eyes.
“Now!”
With not a second of hesitation, his officers got the men to their feet, raced through the briefest commands, and unleashed a volley that stopped the Rebs a third of the way up the slope.
He watched, merciless and pitying at once, as gray-clad officers—brave men—lashed their soldiers with words and wielded the flat of their sabers, demanding a more-than-human effort. But their orders grew confused. Some demanded that their soldiers charge on and break Getty’s lines, while others halted their men to return fire.
His own men discharged a second, disciplined volley, dropping Rebs by the score, some within ten paces.
One of McKnight’s guns wheeled about to clear the slope with more canister. A round swept the Reb line diagonally. Blood cascaded, blink-quick.
A third volley from his men repulsed the attack.
His soldiers cheered. It was the first Union cheer he’d heard that day.
“Officers, see to your men. Get the stretcher-monkeys up. Prepare your lines to receive another attack. They’ll come back up.”
“And we’ll send ’em back down again,” a soldier responded, his voice Northern, flinty, formed by woodlands and mountains, an accent more foreign to an old Regular than the cawing and drawls of the enemy.
Getty rode his line northward, pausing at the highest point of the cemetery, straining to see. He did believe the mist was thinning to haze, but he’d thought the same thing earlier. Did seem to be patchier. He would have liked to get a look at the battlefield. But if the fog lifted and he could see the Johnnies, the Rebs would see his men, too. Exposed to their artillery.
Off in the murk, his enemies sent up a whoop. Signaling another triumph? Over whom? Or was the ruckus a greeting for some general?
He heard a voice call out his rank and name, but couldn’t spot the man.
“Up here,” Getty shouted. “Top of this damned boneyard.” Hoping he wasn’t summoning Rebel sharpshooters as well. Even in this muck of haze and smoke, he dreaded sharpshooters. Remembering Uncle John Sedgwick.
The courier, a major, found him. Getty recognized him as one of Wright’s staff boys.
“General Getty? General Wright’s compliments. General Ricketts has been wounded, sir. You’re to take command of the corps.”
“How bad’s Jim hit?”
“Bad, sir. In the chest.”
Getty felt an unaccustomed pang. Of course, Jim hadn’t let him down. Couldn’t do much with a bullet deep in your meat.
“He’s a tough bugger,” Getty said. “As for the goddamned corps, I don’t know where it is. Just this division.”
“Other side of Middletown, sir. The officers are rallying the men. General Wright wants you to—”
“Emerson’s bunch? Crook’s lot?”
Wary, as staff officers often were, the major hesitated. “The Nineteenth Corps is … there are signs that order may be reestablished. Given time, sir.”
Well, I’ve goddamned well been giving you time, Getty thought.
“Crook’s pack?”
“Very much reduced. Not presently effective.”
“Any sign of Sheridan?”
The staff man shook his head. “Not that I know of.”
“Christ. Where will I find General Wright?”
“North of town, sir. Rallying the troops. He wants you to—”
“I know what he wants, Major. But, near as I can tell, this division’s the only thing keeping the Johnnies from finishing what they’ve started.”
“Yes, sir.”
“Oh, bugger it. All right.” Reminding himself of his boast that he never disobeyed orders, he realized that he had to leave his division. As senior brigade commander, Lew Grant would have to see this business through. Well, the men could do worse than that hardheaded bastard. Tell him to hold, and Grant would be stubborn as stones.
“All right, Major. You come along with me. Let me transfer command and we’ll get going.”
He spotted Grant as the Rebs swept forward again. Surprising Getty, the second assault, instead of having been reinforced, felt weaker than the first.
As he and the staff major rode up behind Grant, the brigadier cut a fine figure on his mount, hewn from cold blue granite. Getty let him fight his action, which proved blessedly brief, with the Rebs hurled back again.
Still unaware of Getty’s presence, Grant rose in his stirrups, shaking his fist at the retreating Johnnies and calling, “Vermonters don’t run, damn you! Vermont doesn’t run!”
He’ll do, Getty thought.
Brusquely, he told Grant, “I’ve got the corps, you’ve got the division. Hold this ground. Until I send further orders.”
As he turned his horse northward, a red sun burned through the mist.
10:00 a.m.
Southern edge of Middletown
Gordon found Early just where he’d left him half an hour back. As the army reunited along the Pike, Early had resumed overall command, sending Gordon down to his division. When last seen, Early had been raving about “the sun of Middletown,” as if he’d rivaled Napoleon at Austerlitz, as if that fierce red ball’s abrupt appearance had been a tribute to Jubal Early from God.
Since then, the attack had withered and lost direction, and no orders had come down. Except for clumsy assaults on the Union Sixth Corps—identified on the ridge cradling that cemetery—there seemed to be no movement, no push, of significance.
That alarmed Gordon.
When he reached the army commander, Early was still grinning like a lunatic. Very much alive, “doomed” Dod Ramseur sat his horse beside him. Dod had found a white flower for his buttonhole, despite the turn of the seasons. Wharton had come up, too. It looked as though all were enjoying a pleasant chat.
“General Early,” Gordon began, reining in his mount, “everybody’s stopped.”
“Hah! Let me get a good look at you, now that a man can see.” Early turned to Ramseur. “Ain’t that something! John Gordon, Gentleman John Gordon, with mud up over his ass and a dirty face. Ever seen the like?”
“We did get a tad muddy down by the river,” Ramseur told him. Eager to keep the peace.
Gordon spared no time on banter. “General Early, we have to push on, to finish them.”
“Gordon, you’d shit at a wedding. Just to call attention to yourself.” But Early was in unconquerable spirits. He rebuilt his smile and said, “Glory enough for one day. Even for you.” He slapped a hand down on his thigh, positively gleeful. “You know what day this is, Gordon? October nineteenth, that’s what day it is. One month ago, precisely one month ago today, we were going in the opposite direction.”
“All the more reason to keep going northward now. General Early, it’s all very well, but we have to strike one more blow and finish this. Hit them one more time, with everything. Start by sweeping that ridge clean of those Sixth Corps boys. Strike them one more blow, and there won’t be one infantry company left standing in Sheridan’s army.”
“Want me to shoot the wounded, too? And the prisoners? Then keep on going to Washington again? Damn you, Gordon. Don’t you know a victory when you see one?”
Gordon looked to Ramseur and Wharton, but both men were determined to stay out of it. Given Dod’s premonition of the night before and ho
w such imaginings rattled even a strong man, Gordon figured Ramseur was glad the fighting was over. He’d done his part that morning, though. No holding back.
“Sir,” Gordon tried again, “just one more effort. My division’s ready. Ready enough. But we all have to go, destroy the Sixth Corps forever. Do that, and Sheridan won’t have any army.”
“God almighty, can’t you see that your men are blown, that they’re plain tuckered out? We’ve worn them to a nub, can’t ask for more. That night march of yours. Everything else. They’re plain worn out, used up.” Early sharpened his features. Gone mean. “And you want to grind them to nothing. For one last sliver of glory.” He snorted. “Half your men have fallen out, picking those Yankee camps clean. More than half of them.” He delivered a second, grander snort. With effluvia. “Seems to me that your men are a damned mob. Worse than back in Martinsburg. I doubt you’ve got enough soldiers in ranks to fight through a Mex bordello.”
That was a foul exaggeration. Some men had fallen out, indeed, but only to scoop up rations. But Gordon did not intend to be diverted by that argument. The air had cleared of haze and most of the smoke, and he pointed to the ridge not a mile to the west, still bristling with Yankees, the last shred of resistance.
“Give me Ramseur’s Division. To cooperate with my own. Just let me clear that ridge. Just that.”
Early took off his hat, scratched his head, and inspected his paw, as if he’d collected a louse under a fingernail. “No use in that. Dod’s boys already had a go at that hill, you know it yourself. Wharton here went, too. Waste of lives, at this point. Yankees are finished. That bunch will go off directly, they’ll all go directly.”
“That’s the Sixth Corps, General. It won’t go, unless we drive it from the field.”
“Gordon, sometimes you don’t know your butt from a stump. Listen to me. They’ll go, too. Directly.” Early’s grin widened, growing enormous, sharing his black-gummed, tobacco-stained teeth with the world. “Now just you look over there. Just have yourself a good look, General Gordon.”