Death Piled Hard: A Tale of the Confederate Secret Services

by W. Patrick Lang

  “Chaarge! Bayonets!” Balthazar roared. The rifles came up into fighting position presenting a hedge of steel to the front.

  “Bat-talion! Forwaard! Maarch!” The troops stepped off together, headed for the prize. They marched down the hill with lines as straight as a yardstick. The enemy had not yet recovered from the defeat of the Zouave attack and there was little fire to interfere with this demonstration of Balthazar’s methods. Halfway to the cannon, he gave his assault order.

  “Guide Centerr! Double Time! Charge!”

  As he started to run, Harris glanced to his left to see what the 33rdVirginia was up to and saw that they had faced away and were firing into the rear of the regular Union infantry still trying to fight their way forward into the trees.

  He looked to his front. Balthazar, Sergeant Major Roarke, and Joe White were ahead of the front rank running in a group with the color party.

  Smoot was on the right. Someone was running alongside him.

  Must be his “runner.” Harris thought. Good, I told that boy to stick to him like a burr!

  The man in front of Harris jumped over something and looking down he saw that it was a wounded Zouave. “Get down!” he yelled as the lines swept by. Glancing back, he saw that the man was watching them go.

  The guns were close now. Harris could see fear on the faces of the gunners. They had been slow in focusing on this oncoming threat.

  Target obsession, bad thing boys! You’re going to pay for it today...

  The red-legged artillerymen began trying to swing the two pieces and load them at the same time.

  Harris guessed that they would not have enough time to bring their weapons to bear on the approaching battalion.

  The Union Army gunners were looking over their shoulders at the oncoming Confederates as they tried to finish loading. Fear and duty warred in them for supremacy. Fear won. With the assault fifty yards away, they bolted for the far side of the meadow leaving the section’s horses, limbers, and caissons standing alone in the tall grass.

  The battalion’s lines swept past the two cannons, past the caissons and the horses. The animals looked around wildly, startled by the infantry lines as they passed. As he went by the horses, Raphael Harris, artilleryman that he was, marveled that they were all alive and unhurt.

  They ran so fast that no one shot the horses, not us or them...

  Balthazar blew his whistle to halt them. The blue tinged forest ahead seemed to heave and surge with the human mass gathered inside. The battalion halted and stood in an arc, its face to the forest, to the fleeing Zouaves and to the departed artillery crews.

  Harris heard Balthazar call his name. Balthazar pointed at the Napoleons.

  It took a minute for Harris to understand what was being said. He shook his head to clear the fog that the charge had brought. “You want the guns?” he asked to be sure he understood.

  “Get them limbered up, and moved to the rear!” the Frenchman yelled back over the noise of battle. “Take men from each company,” he added. “You have five minutes, don’t leave anything! He turned back to watch for signs of life from the enemy troops across the field to the north. “Give Lieutenant Harris the men he needs,” he yelled at the company commanders.

  They waved back.

  The artilleryman in Harris came suddenly to the surface.

  The troops in the ranks knew something interesting was going to happen now. A number of them were looking back at him. Harris recognized faces from his old battery in the Louisiana Guard Artillery. He beckoned to several, knowing they would be happy to return to their old arm of service. “Jones, Fredericks, Robichaux! Pick enough men for two crews! Pick our old gunners first, hurry! We are taking these two pieces. Get enough drivers for everything.”

  The federals had left behind half a complete four-gun twelve pounder Napoleon battery. The two smooth bore bronze guns stood silent on the grass. Behind them were two wheeled limbers, each with an open ammunition chest on top. Behind the limbers were two caissons, each with its two ammunition chests. Between the two stood a wooden contraption on wheels called a “battery wagon.” The five six-horse teams were nearby; left behind and staring about, looking for men they knew.

  A cannon fired in the Union held wood ahead. A shell from a three inch ordnance rifle whizzed in to bury itself in the dirt near one of the teams. Providentially, it did not detonate.

  The bastards are going to kill the horses. Harris thought.

  “Hurry, up, damn you!” he screamed at no one in particular. “Get your asses moving before they wipe out the teams!”

  Behind each company a little group was forming.

  The men Harris needed ran to the guns and teams. The horses looked at them in distrust, trying to pull their heads away.

  More shells struck the ground nearby.

  The first team was hitched to a gun, then the second. All at once, everything was ready.

  More shells screamed in, searching for the animals, hoping to hit an ammunition chest.

  “Come on, lets do it!” Harris yelled, and turning his back on the Yankees ran up the gentle grassy slope in the direction from which they had attacked a few minutes earlier.

  Smoot and Balthazar watched as soldiers slapped some horses on the flank and dragged others into motion. Somehow everything started moving uphill.

  Another shell from a rifled gun whistled in. This one struck a soldier in “B” Company who happened to have his back turned so that he did not see it in flight. It hit him in the torso, cut him in half and threw blood, intestines, and other inner parts all over the men around him.

  They looked down at what was left of their friend. They looked at each other. One picked up the man’s rifle and threw it away when he saw the damage done by the shell. Another picked up the dead man’s hat, and put it on.

  Once again, the shell had not detonated.

  The teams were almost to the trees now.

  Balthazar ordered a retirement by alternating companies.

  The fight between the Stonewall Division and the regulars had ended. The Rebel troops were busy in the edge of the forest digging in with whatever came to hand. The Federals had mysteriously disappeared.

  “A” and “C” Companies went back up the hill a hundred yards, then stopped and faced the enemy. “B” and “D” Companies passed back through their lines to take up a position behind them and three quarters of the way to the woods.

  Harris stopped in the trees from which they had attacked. He was wondering how far back he should take the guns and what an infantry battalion would do with them when Joe White passed him at a dead run.

  “Got to get the Colonel’s mare,” he sang out as he rushed through them.

  The skittish horses tossed their heads and pulled away. One reared.

  “God damn it, Joe,” someone yelled! “I’ll kick yur black butt, you scair these husses agin!”

  Joe just waved and ran on into the forest.

  Harris was facing to the rear watching Joe run through the trees when cheering started in the woods to his left.

  Everyone stopped doing whatever it was they were doing to listen to that sound. It was distinctive, Southern soldiers did not bellow out “huzzah” in this way. The sound got louder and louder, moving closer and closer.

  Harris got his group moving again. He went back farther into the trees and stopped to listen. The cheering kept getting louder. The ripping, tearing sound of a hard infantry fight at close quarters began to fill his ears. He suddenly realized that the loudest part of the noise was moving away from him, toward the Southern rear.

  Confederate soldiers ran out of the noise, coming through the trees, fleeing the fight.

  Harris drew his revolver and stepped in front of one. “And where would you be going?” he asked the man.

  Unfocused dread filled the big, brown bearded face. “Yankees ev’rwheer! ev’rwheer!” the soldier gasped. “They killed Gen’rul Jones. Shot him thu’ the head. Shot him dead!”

  Raphael Harris l
istened to the fight. Clearly, the Rebel line had broken in Jones’ Brigade.

  Someone will counterattack... There must be some reserves back there, surely...

  Balthazar came up behind him. Harris gave his opinion on the situation while the French soldier inspected the military refugee. His attention wandered from the receding fire fight in the woods on the right to the soldier and back. “Lieutenant Fagan,” he called.

  “Sir! Yes Sir!” came the reply from nearby.

  “Please take charge of our guest, and any others, like those over there!” Balthazar pointed at two more coming through the brush. Major Smoot!” John Balthazar had his own schedule for promotions. “Take a detail from the companies, and get these prisoners under control, and their arms collected.”

  There were defeated Zouaves everywhere. They were standing aimlessly in groups, glassy eyed at the moment but apt to recover their senses and sense of duty at any time. There were abandoned rifles scattered over the ground. “Get them out of here and back down the turnpike.”

  Smoot started picking men for the guard detail.

  “Harris, unlimber your two guns and face them into the brush over there in the direction the stragglers are coming from.”

  It had not seemed possible to Raphael Harris that he would actually have the opportunity to fight these two guns. The idea must have been somewhere in the back of his mind. That was clear in the way he had selected men from the rifle companies, but it had seemed unlikely.

  It took ten long minutes to get the section into battery facing in the desired direction. This was complicated by uncertainty as to how far the previous owners had actually progressed in trying to reload before they ran. This issue was resolved by firing the two Napoleons into the trees at the highest possible elevation. It made a satisfying roar, and branches fell to the ground for quite a long way in the woodland.

  To everyone’s surprise, five Union Army enlisted men then stumbled out of the brush with their hands raised. They were a mixed group from the 83rd Pennsylvania and 20th Maine Infantry Regiments. They were quite willing to talk in return for a small increase in their personal level of safety. They said their brigade commander was someone named Bartlett, that their whole division had attacked, and that a division from another army corps had attacked farther to their left.

  Balthazar sent them to the rear and then put the battalion into an “L” shaped formation with “A” Company forming the cross bar facing into what someone said was “Sanders Field,” while “B,” “C,” and “D” Companies faced into the woods where Bartlett’s Brigade had overrun the Confederates. He told Harris to put a gun between “B” and “C” and another between “C” and “D.”

  Once in place the men sat down to rummage in haversacks for rations, clean rifles or sleep.

  Harris took the opportunity to go through the contents of the “battery wagon” and to inspect in detail his new equipment. The new gun crews were in place by the Napoleons and the gun captains, both experienced men began to practice the crews, putting them through the gunnery drill that some already knew.

  The forest was on fire. Smoke came drifting through the tops of the hardwoods, wispy at first but then thicker with the acrid sting of old, damp wood burning in a bed of dead leaves. Rabbits and a fox ran out of the wood escaping from the flames. At the sight of the troops they turned and ran around the ends of the line. One rabbit ran between the wheels of a cannon. A soldier swung at it with a ramming staff, but missed and the little beast scampered away behind the battalion’s lines.

  Harris and Sergeant Robichaux looked in wonder and admiration at the “battery wagon.” It was brand new, freshly varnished, and without a speck of rust. It was immaculately lettered “U.S. Army” on the sides. It had a hinged round wooden top, and was hooked to its own limber. At the tail end there was a hinged “tail-gate” loaded down on the outside with fodder for the horses. Harris gestured to this and Robichaux nodded.

  “We’ll feed and water the horse soon, mon lieutenant” he said. Robichaux was Cajun from the bayou Teche.

  In the wagon was a chest containing carriage repair and sadler’s tools, awls, planes, saws, and other riches. The wagon body itself held oil, paint, grease, axes, shovels, spare parts for the guns and a mass of extra harness for the teams. “My, my, too bad they didn’t think to bring the battery forge as well,” Harris remarked with a smile. “We are in luck, eh, mon vieux lapin?” With that, he went to tell Balthazar of their good fortune.

  The smoke was getting steadily thicker.

  As he approached Balthazar, Harris began to hear a strange noise out in the woods. It was a steady, if irregular “pop, pop, pop” sound. After a minute he knew what it was. The fire was igniting cartridges in the pouches and pockets of fallen men.

  Chapter 16

  The Brock Road

  Figure 4 - May 6 Major General Charles Griffin rode his lathered horse into the crossroads clearing where Meade and Grant had set up a field headquarters. He climbed down and handed the reins to a junior officer of the staff. He ran, red faced, across the clearing to Meade, who stood not more than ten feet from Grant, and began to upbraid the Army commander on the subject of the lack of support his men had received in their attack across Sander’s Field. In particular, he charged Sedgwick and his Sixth Corps with a total failure to be where they were supposed to be. “God damn it, George!” he said. “Why don’t we just shoot these men ourselves, and save the Johnnies the trouble?” With that, he ran back to his mount and departed the crossroads in a cloud of dust, headed for his division.

  “Who the hell was that?” Grant bellowed, recovering from his shock at what had happened. “Who was that general? What is his name? I want that bastard put under arrest for insubordination! Maybe mutiny! Who was that?”

  Meade came to stand close to him and began to button up Grant’s uniform coat as though he were a small boy on the way to school. “Now, now,” he said calmly. “That’s Charlie Griffin, you remember him. A better man is not to be found. He’s just a little upset right now. Now what were you saying about the pontoon bridges?”

  “I want them taken up.”

  Meade’s buttoning fingers stopped. “All of them?” he asked. “Yes.” Grant saw the look on the other man’s sober face. “No. Leave one

  down for ammunition re-supply and evacuation of wounded.” “All right, Sam, I’ll take care of it,” Meade replied.

  Grant remembered what he had been about to say when Griffin arrived.

  “Send a courier to Hancock. Tell him to put his people in line facing west on that road down ere.” He pointed south. “What’s the name?”“ “The Brock Road,” was the reply.

  At three o’clock that afternoon, Devereux was standing beside a dusty road in conversation with Winfield Scott Hancock and Alexander Hays when a galloper arrived to inform Hancock of Grant’s desires with regard to his corps.

  The continuous sound of rifle fire to the west had been a companion to the discussion from its beginning and it was growing louder.

  John Quick, the horses and the dog stood to one side watching Hancock’s men pass by on the road. Everyone and everything was moving south.

  Devereux kept looking at the dog, wondering if it would lose interest in them and wander away. He half wished it would. That would be one less thing to worry about, but the dog sat next to Quick looking at him and sometimes turning to Devereux as though seeking something it needed.

  Quick talked to it occasionally and it stared up at him when he did.

  A small, country church was visible down the road through the thicket.

  The noise to the west became louder. That meant the fighting was moving toward them.

  Hancock read the order and sat on a stump to write instructions for his divisions. When he was finished, and had sent couriers, he called Hays to him. “We are going to form front to the west and move forward to tie into Warren’s people on our right. By my map, we are about a mile from them. They have been fighting along the Orange Turnpike
to the northwest of here. It seems that it might be Ewell’s Corps. If that is so, then the rest of Lee’s army should be coming straight east along this other road right in front of us.” He pointed on the map and squinted. “It says here that it is a plank road.” He looked up from the map.

  His staff and that of Hays’ brigade had crowded near to hear what they could. It was warm and over the distant sounds of fighting and the nearby sounds of marching men and animals you could hear birds in the trees and the insect buzz so common in summer.

  A soldier who had wandered off into the woods to relieve himself now stumbled out of the thickets into the dusty road. He was still buttoning himself up and looked surprised to see all these officers gathered at the spot where he had left his company. His regiment had moved while he was in the woods and now he trotted off in pursuit of them. He was carrying most of his equipment in his arms, eager to escape the gaze of so many colonels and generals.

  The dog looked at him as he ran off, and stood up. Then she looked at Quick and sat down.

  Hancock pointed in the direction of the noise to the west. “Hays, I want you to go straight west through these woods until you find Warren’s left flank, then deploy into line on his left. I have written to General Birney that you will do that. There is a north-south road over there,” he said pointing, “where General Meade’s note says you will find Warren’s people.” He looked at the note. “It is called the Block Road.”

  “Brock Road,” Hays corrected. He was looking at his own map.

  “Yes,” Hancock replied, but the main thing is to extend Warren’s line to the left.” He and his staff rode south in the direction of the church.

  The infantry moved to the sides of the road to let them through.

  It took Hays forty-five minutes to get his collection of undersized veteran regiments disentangled from the woods along the road and spread out as a line of regiments in columns with the heads of the columns facing roughly west. As he placed them, the colors of each regiment were not more than fifty yards apart.