Death Piled Hard: A Tale of the Confederate Secret Services

by W. Patrick Lang

  The bullets struck the Stonewall Division, staggering the ranks, dropping men in the slush.

  The whhzzz around their ears made Balthazar's battalion pull in their necks like turtles.

  The volley's crash hit them like a blow. It rang in their heads as their minds grappled with the moment.

  Balthazar turned to Raphael Harris beside him. "Johnson is overmatched! He must come back quickly!"

  As though intent on making him a prophet, the Federal infantry began to climb over the fence.

  Out in the field, Major General Edward Johnson waved his cane, swinging it in frustration at the frozen tufts of grass. He cupped one hand to yell at a man far to his left.

  The tiny figure waved an arm in understanding.

  Another, on the right held up a hand.

  In front of the fence, the Union troops gathered themselves up, straightened their lines, and stared into the faces of the brown death facing them.

  The Rebel infantry began to retire, coming back in leap-frog bounds, grudgingly backing away from their enemy. A volley ripped along their line, a demonstration of their unyielding hostility.

  Smoke hid them from the battalion, dropping a curtain across the landscape, drifting toward Balthazar’s men in the edge of the woods.

  Out of this acrid fog a rank of Johnson's men emerged, coming halfway across the grass, turning to face the Federals hidden in the billowing grey.

  Flashes of orange marked another exchange of fire within the smoke. Bullets passed through the ranks knocking several men flat, sending one kicking and rolling about, staining the white as he writhed on the ground.

  The whirring Minie balls reached the battalion.

  Randall, the "B" Company commander spun on a heel, grabbing his shoulder, dropping to a knee.

  Smoot knelt to look in his face. He always worried about shock in a newly wounded man. "William? You're gonna be with us, aren’t you?" he asked.

  Red stained the brown fabric between Randall's fingers. He worked his arm in a small circle, showing his teeth in a grin of painful cheerfulness. "Still works... Help me up, will you?"

  Smoot pulled open Randall’s jacket and shirt to inspect the wound. It was small and round, with blood seeping around the skirt of the bullet just below the skin. "Spent round, William. Must have bounced off a rock. We'll get you to Johnson's surgeons. They're by the pike."

  Fagan, the Britisher peered around Smoot. "I can get at that," he said, pulling a long-handled tool from a black leather pouch at his side.

  Two riflemen from Randall’s company gripped their leader while Fagan held a match to his instrument. He then reached into the hole for the bullet, spreading the jaws inside the puncture to get a grip on the rings of the conical projectile.

  Randall groaned. The sound came out slowly, seeping through his clenched teeth.

  Smoot held his hand, pressing hard against the pain.

  Fagan whistled a tune unknown to the Americans. The sound rose at the end as he pulled the forceps from Randall's shoulder, clutching the bullet in its bloody grasp.

  The company first sergeant, standing anxiously behind Fagan reached forward to hand Smoot a clean shirt to pack in against the wound.

  Smoot buttoned the jacket over it, and looked Randall in the eye. "Go to the rear, William! Sergeant Mathieu here will take over. Go to the rear!"

  The two soldiers tightened their hold on Randall's arms, looking around to mark their path back to the road.

  Randall shook his head. "No. This is my company, I believe." There was a question in his voice.

  "Yes".

  Randall drew himself up. "Mathieu, you stay by me. Thank you for your assistance gentlemen...”

  "Smoot!" It was Balthazar. He had his red beads in one hand, silver whistle in the other. "Look there!" he cried, waving with the beads.

  Beyond the flank of Johnson's long fighting formation, a Yankee line of battle had come out of the forest, standing at a right angle to the Confederate force.

  The sweet, pure sound of the silver whistle pierced the air again. Balthazar swung an arm at the shoulder indicating a path through the wood that led to the flank of the new enemy.

  The men turned in their fours, turning and breaking into a trot all at once, two hundred acting as one.

  Out in the field Johnson spun around to stare at their disappearing backs. Blood suffused his cheeks. He shook his cane at them, enraged to see his suspicions confirmed.

  Balthazar had never been good at running. His massive torso and short legs made him lumber along when forced to run.

  Because of this, Smoot and the men were surprised to see the speed with which he overtook the head of the column, tearing through the brush, leaving behind a trail of split branches and turpentine oozing from a hundred wounded trunks.

  Pounding along through the trees, the battalion kept an eye on the Federals out in the snowy field. Between the pines they watched the end of the line seem to rotate as they passed.

  A few of the blue soldiers spied them passing among the trees, heard the thunder of their brogans. They pointed at the forest to their right, begging their officers to turn their eyes from Johnson's men.

  The whistle called, its music keening through the ranks, stopping them suddenly, all together, heaving with the exertion of the run, filling the spaces between them with the fog of their ragged breath.

  Three short blasts followed by two long faced them to their right, moving from column into line, facing into the end of the Union force.

  "Battalion! Forward! March!"

  They came out of the tree line a solid mass of butternut, bristling with the steel of their rifles and bayonets, the two long lines staggered so that every weapon would bear. They halted ten yards into the meadow.

  Out in front of them the Northern commander tried desperately to pull his flank around to face them. Drums rolled, officers shouted commands. The end of the line began to swing back.

  "At my command!" Balthazar's baritone rang across the field, clearly heard by the enemy as well as his own men. "Present!" The wall of Enfield muzzles came up to stare unwinkingly with its tiny black eyes at the Federals. "Fire!"

  Flashes of orange and sudden, dirty brown smoke hid the battalion from the Union division ahead. Out of the smoke came the crashing voice of the volley and its burden of leaden lightning. The swinging wall of blue soldiers fell to pieces before it, chewed by the .577 caliber teeth into dead, dying or despairing humanity. Through the smoke the Union men heard the rattle of the ramrods, then the strangely accented words.

  "Present! Fire!"

  The scythe swung among them again.

  "Load!"

  The ramrods chattered again.

  Edward Johnson watched first in amazement, then with a spreading smile as his situation was transformed. All fire ceased from the force on his left flank. They were fully occupied.

  The original Yankee phalanx to his front seemed uncertain and confused. He could see men looking around.

  "Drummer!" he called out.

  "Sir?" a Black musician spoke from nearby.

  "Beat the advance! Now!"

  The drumsticks came up smartly to parallel the ground at the level of the man's nose. His brown sleeve glistened with slick, freezing mucous. The sticks came down in a staccato roar which straightened backs across the Stonewall Division.

  The Rebels looked at their enemy, seeing them in a new light.

  The charge started at a walk.

  Their officers counted cadence to hold the formation together.

  They started to shuffle after a few steps. The sound in their chests came out of them at first as high pitched laughter. This had nothing to do with humor. There was something hysterical in the sound. As they broke into a trot across the dirty snow and clumps of grass, it changed to a scream, carrying with it the sobbing anger and unqualified murder which they held deep in their hearts.

  The Union infantry watched them come for a moment, then broke and ran for the woods behind them. Offic
ers tried to hold back the rout until they realized that they would be left alone to face the Johnnies.

  Johnson's men chased them all the way back to the fence over which they had climbed, and then pursued them into the trees beyond.

  The people in front of Balthazar saw their comrades run and found in this an excuse to do the same. Suddenly, the only blue soldiers in the field were prostrate in the snow, or standing in clumps with their hands in the air.

  O'Brien, the "A" Company commander yelled across to one group. "Hey! You lot! Get your arses over here before som'un shoots yuh!"

  His Irish voice made Balthazar smile.

  "He sounds like my grandfather," Sergeant Harris said beside him.

  "The Paddys are everywhere," Fagan commented from his post nearby behind his company.

  "You too, sor!" O'Brien called to a captain who held an injured arm with a free hand.

  The blue soldiers looked at each other and at the wounded officer, and then trudged over to the battalion.

  General Johnson rode up as Balthazar, Smoot and Sergeant Mathieu knelt around Randall, re-dressing his wound with another piece of clothing. It wasn't bleeding much anymore, but he was beginning to look blue around the mouth.

  Balthazar stood and saluted.

  Johnson looked down at them. His long nose seemed a monument in a clean shaven face. A stiff leg stuck out strangely in front of the horse's chest. "I am in your debt, sir!" he said to Balthazar. "These fellows of yours saved the day for us here!"

  Balthazar had his red beads in one hand. "La shukr 'ala waajib," he replied.

  Johnson was puzzled.

  "No thanks for duty done," Smoot translated. "Its one of his favorites."

  "What language?" the general asked.

  "Arabic," Balthazar replied.

  Johnson shook his head gravely. "Well, major, you can give me lessons in Chinese if you keep these men fighting this way. What's the matter with him?"

  Randall raised his head, smiling palely from the ground. "A little disagreement with one of their Minies." With his unwounded arm, he waved in the direction of the enemy’s departure.

  Johnson squinted. "Randall, my god is that you?"

  "Yes, general. It is my humble self."

  "I thought you had gone home! I have been writing to get you to come back for a place on my staff...”

  They all turned to look at the man on the ground.

  "Kind of you, General, but I believe I'll roost with these folks for a bit."

  Johnson blinked at them. "Snowing again," he said, brushing at his cheek with a gloved hand. "Major Balthazar, take your men back to the road, sir, and I will make my surgeon aware of Captain Randall's wound. How many other casualties do you have?"

  "Three, general," Raphael Harris reported. He was standing beside Johnson's horse.

  The general looked him over. He shook his head again, turning his horse away.

  They watched him go.

  "Fine man," Harris said. "No foolishness in him."

  "You West Pointers always hang together," Smith remarked.

  Harris looked startled by this comment.

  Balthazar watched Smith closely.

  My, my, where did that come from? What unknown history lies there?

  “Thank you, gentlemen,” he said ending the discussion before someone took offense. "Let us carry Captain Randall and the others to the surgeon and find our wagons. I do not wish to see our men sleeping in the wet tonight. Mister Harris, I would like you to talk to these prisoners. See if there are any among them who might interest us...”

  "Oui chef."

  After the repulse of this Sixth Corps attack on his line of communications, Lee withdrew ten miles to the west and dug in astride the Orange Turnpike with his left on the Rapidan.

  Meade then tried for several days to make his army do his will. He searched for Lee's right flank to the south of the turnpike. He thought he had found it, but could not bring his greater force to bear in a turning movement. After a while he gave up this effort to gain a fairly bloodless victory through maneuver and marched west down the turnpike straight at Lee's position on Mine Run. He should not be blamed for this lack of subtlety. The politicians in Washington were hard at his heels.

  ----------------------------------------------------------“Meade isn’t the man for facing down Robert Lee,” Devereux said. “As you British would say, he hasn’t the stones for it. I saw him in action at Gettysburg. He is a good man, but too careful and civilized to deal with Lee. You need a real bulldog for that, someone who either does not care about the amount of abuse that Lee will heap on his army or who will just put his head down and suffer and suffer and then go on. I hope they don’t find that man. Maybe George Thomas would do, but they would never trust him that far, after all, he is a renegade Virginian.” Claude looked satisfied with that thought.

  Major Robert Neville, late of the “Rifle Brigade,” thought that over in silence for a few seconds, and then took a sip from his glass of whisky. “I still have not recovered from the first sight of you in that uniform, old boy,” he said. “A brilliant move, but, from what you just said, have I guessed correctly that they do not trust you fully…yet? Oh, I almost forgot. What do you think of Ulysses Grant?”

  Devereux provided weekly “feedings” of information for this member of the military attaché’s staff at the British embassy in Washington. In general, he gave Neville enough material from the War Department’s files to keep the relationship alive, but only that. He did this because the connection might someday be needed. In return for present help, Devereux had received assurance from Her Majesty’s Government that help with escape and protection in a new home would be given if needed. That might or might not be a realistic pledge but it was worth having.

  The paneled bar of the Willard Hotel made a good place for a meeting so long as the conspirators were watchful for Lafayette Baker’s “helpers” among the staff.

  Looking at him in the bar’s muted light, Devereux considered the Englishman. Neville was slender, erect and immaculate in a beautiful grey frock coat. Claude remembered that his wife had said that she thought Neville was the handsomest man she had ever seen. He wondered if he had reason to be jealous.

  “No, “Devereux replied. “They do not trust me fully as yet, not yet, but I continue to work on it. I expect your help in building my position with them whenever you get the chance. You ask my opinion of Grant. What is it that you know of Grant? I saw him last month when he was here for a meeting but did not speak to him. I hear he drinks too much. I hear mixed comments on his talents as a commander.”

  Neville nodded. “Will he be appointed to succeed Meade?” he asked. “It seems likely, but a decision has not yet been made and much depends on what Meade can do against Lee in the next few days. They are looking for the same thing that I mentioned, that is, some sign of whether or not Meade has “the stones.”

  “If that is the case,” Neville replied. “I think Grant will have a new job. Let’s have oysters for lunch. Waiter!”

  Claude made a mental note to visit Colonel Jourdain the next day to compare notes on this matter of Grant’s possible appointment.

  --------------------------------------------------------------------Cain Comfort went to his death blessing his old friends. He was twentyone years old, and a rifleman of the 6th Louisiana. Born in Cork, he came to America at fifteen to work with his uncles on the New Orleans waterfront and found employment there as a newsboy.

  Years passed and Comfort came to love his new home beyond the possibilities available to truly stable men. Secession gave him the chance to show it.

  This “Tiger” had the misfortune of being captured by the U.S. Sixth Corps at Bristoe Station in October. From his point of view there hadn't been any point in rotting in a Union prison waiting for exchange that might not come, better to take the Oath, join the Union Army and desert back to his own side when the chance came.

  He was captured by his own company in the fight in which B
althazar's men first drew blood. A field court-martial listened to his story, condemned him to death and recommended clemency. He wasn't the first to have followed this route home. Balthazar had many in his ranks. They had been luckier.

  Hays and Early endorsed the court's finding, adding their weight to an appeal for mercy to the commander of the Army of Northern Virginia.

  General Lee approved the sentence of death without comment.

  The Army of the Potomac closed on the Confederate defenses in a drizzling, freezing rain. In their rubber raincoats they looked like seals glistening blackly across the landscape. They filled the ground as far as anyone could see.

  The Johnnies had cut a two hundred yard wide strip of land clear of trees and underbrush to open fields of fire to their front. The ground sloped uphill from the bottom of the valley of Mine Run. The rising earth rose gently, slowly, to the first line of stakes, abatis and chevaux-de-frise. There were rifle pits and trenches behind the obstacles. Finally, there were log revetments for artillery, but those could hardly be seen from the bottom of the valley.

  The “seals” stopped at the bottom of the slope, riveted in place by the scene at the top.

  A six foot stake stood outside the obstacles.

  Two condemned Louisiana deserters had been allowed to escape execution by Stafford's Brigade the day before. They had let them run away, and then had turned an indifferent face to the Judge Advocate General's demand to know who had done this. Lee's renewed order for Comfort's execution was then impossible to avoid.

  Jubal Early gave Balthazar the task of shooting him.

  The Confederate Second Corps stood to arms in their fighting positions. Rank on rank of warriors in brown. Cold water dripped from the brims of their hats as they stared through the rain at the “seals.”

  The firing party marched Comfort out through the abatis to the stake.

  Balthazar had thought to do this thing himself, but Raphael Harris said that it was his to do, his to do for another “Pelican.”