A staff officer from David Birney’s division headquarters sat his horse nearby fretting and muttering that the process of deployment was taking too long.
The noise to the west continued to grow in strength. Smoke was beginning to drift through the trees from that direction.
The dog sniffed the air.
It was clear that the woods were on fire.
Devereux and Quick watched in amusement as Hays ignored the staff man and went on with his methodical preparations. Finally, around four o’clock he was satisfied and told the staff man that he would advance in fifteen minutes. He then walked over to a tree and urinated against its trunk.
The dog looked interested but kept its place with Quick.
Standing in the road, Hays raised his voice.
“Brigade will advance! Guide Center! 17th Maine is the battalion of direction! “Forward! March!”
He said something inaudible to a bugler who rapped out the short call for “the advance.”
The notes were repeated over and over as each regiment’s bugler repeated them.
The troops walked forward into the woods, going west through the thick brush in regimental columns four men wide at the front and hundreds deep. Drummers struck up a steady beat to provide a sound to guide on in aligning the move through the tangled brush and second growth timber. It was slow going from the moment they left the road.
Hays’s staff party inserted itself into the space between the 17th Maine and the regiment to its right.
Devereux and Quick followed Hays. They led their horses. The dog followed Quick, sniffing the air and looking fearful but unwilling to leave its new friends.
The tangle of underbrush pulled and tore at clothing. It was so thick that detours around deadfalls and hanging Virginia Creeper were frequent. The smoke was thick enough to conceal the features of men only a few yards away. A rifle bullet hit a tree somewhere. It struck the trunk above the height of a man, carried to that collision by the ballistic curve of its trajectory. The horses shied from the sound, but the dog plodded on behind Quick.
After that first bullet, the number of unwelcome arrivals from the territory of the unseen enemy increased steadily. They began to hum and sing through the scrub, buzzing like bees or cracking like a whip if they happened to pass directly overhead. Men went down, struck by random lead. For the most part these wounded men could not be seen, but their cries of shock and pain were heard on every side. The brigade moved forward through the wood for half an hour.
Devereux began to see orange clumps of flame in the dry leaves of the forest floor. The fires were spread by sparks carried on the steady breeze from the west. As the fires multiplied and merged it became more and more difficult to see anything more than the nearest trees. The sound of men breaking through the brush became more scattered as the formation inevitably spread.
Devereux and Quick were soon isolated from the mass of moving soldiers.
The volume of Confederate fire coming through the trees grew until it became a continuous menace.
Claude began to think of his options. Did he really want to walk straight forward with these Yankees into the “maw” of this inferno of fire?
He emerged from a clump of trees in a small clearing and looked around.
Hays sat his big horse in the middle of the open space, standing in the stirrups and peering to left and right through the smoke. The general was unhappy. His careful deployment of the brigade had broken into fragments as soon as the line entered the forest. He had sent messages up and down his line of troops, but the enemy fire, the growing flames, the smoke and the resistance of the thickets had made a mockery of his careful arrangements. He had never seen a wood like this one and would not see another.
Devereux stopped, looked down at his clothing and saw that his beautifully tailored tunic had been ripped open by the stunted hardwood trees and that he was bleeding from scratches across his chest. He looked around and could see that he, Quick and Hays were alone in the smoke. He thought of the blood wet red Carolina color that Hays and this horse had defiled at Gettysburg.
Time for retribution, he thought. Time to act…
He tied his mount to a tree, drew the beautiful Colt revolver and walked up next to Hays’ bay horse. He grasped the reins. He looked around once more to be sure...
Quick was grinning at him.
Alexander Hays looked down at him and snarled “What the hell are you doing?” Devereux smiled at him. “Do you remember Gettysburg, Alexander? Do you remember the flag you dragged down the ridge?
Hays stared down at him. He tried to pull the horse’s head away.
“Listen to me, Alexander! I want you to remember that flag now! Do you see it? I do!”
“What? Let go, damn you!” Hays tried again to pull the horse away from this threatening figure. He moved to draw his pistol.
Quick raised his voice from behind. “The dog’s name is Maude, jinrul, Maude like yer bitch relatives.” He looked down at the dog. “Maudie, don’t yeh think the jinrul makes a fine figure on the byootiful horse, Don’t yeh, Maudie?” He was petting the dog now and laughing from deep in the chest.
Hays twisted in the saddle to stare at Quick.
“This is for my brother,” Devereux said.
That was the last thing Alexander Hays heard. Devereux’s bullet hit him in the temple. He fell heavily from the horse and lay gasping on the leaves while smoke eddied around him.
Claude leaned over him. “I said you would pay, Alexander. I said it on the ridge at Gettysburg. And now, you have.”
Hays’ mouth opened and closed like a dying fish. There was no sound that rose above the crackling of the woodland fires around them and the distant musketry.
Quick walked up, stared down for a second and then spat on Hays who was now comatose.
“Take the two horses and “Maude” and go home,” Devereux said, never taking his eyes from Hays. “Your papers will get you there if you leave now. I am going in with the attack to see if I can get across.”
Quick looked unconvinced.
“I didn’t ask your permission. Maybe my wife would like the dog…”
Maude sniffed Hays body. She lost interest. She had seen many dying men. Her attention turned to the west again. The noise was growing closer by the minute.
Sergeant Quick looked down once more at General Alexander Hays.
The big man’s face was now the blue grey of impending death.
Turning away, the Irishman held out a hand in farewell and without a word gathered the reins of the horses and walked toward the east through the trees.
Maude looked back once and then followed him into the smoke.
Hays’ horse stood by the dying general. Devereux went through the saddlebags, and retrieved the bottle of Rye whiskey. He took the bridle off the animal, pushed it around until it faced east and slapped its rump hard. Startled, it departed into a new and harsh world in which it would fend for itself.
There was a creek nearby. Devereux carried the bridle to the bank and threw it in. It sank nicely. He could hear voices out in the smoking woods somewhere and fearing that they would find the clearing with him in it walked away from them into the underbrush. He stopped twenty yards inside the forest to listen.
The cries behind him soon indicated that Hays’ body had been found.
He walked back into the clearing. Soldiers were gathered by the prostrate form. Their surprise and grief saddened him and after a few seconds he told the senior officer present, a major, that they should send the body to the rear and get on with the movement to the Brock Road. The silver eagles on his shoulders and the severity of his presence carried the day.
After an interminable and protracted struggle with the undergrowth, Devereux and the men with him walked into the back of the brigade’s main line.
It was halted for some reason. Men stood around coughing and spitting in the gloomy smoke. Some sat on the ground.
“What’s this?” Devereux shouted. “Get moving,
damn you! Where’s the road?”
“Right in front of you, colonel,” a private said from somewhere in the line of men. “Right in front of you.” The soldier hacked and rasped in the acrid smoke. Even so, the accent of northern New England was clear in his voice.
Devereux peered through the drifting haze and saw that the light brightened sharply ahead in a way that always meant an open space.
Bullets still clipped bits of greenery in their passing overhead but the Confederates seemed to be shooting high today.
Devereux would normally have been unhappy with that, but in this case could only thank whatever god he still believed in. “Get up,” he yelled. “Get moving you damned Yankees…” It had been instinctive, but he realized instantly what he had said. They did not seem to have noticed.
The color party of the 17th Maine was fifteen or twenty yards away.
He pushed his way through the color party and grasped the national color’s staff. “Come on, damned you. Follow me,” he cried. He tried to wrench the flag from the color sergeant.
The color sergeant would not surrender it to this strange, wild looking officer. Every man in view now watched him.
Devereux looked back at them and the old hunger came over him, the hunger to be accepted as the leader of men who saw him as their chief. Suddenly, he saw them as his, his alone… All rational thought of what he was committed to doing left him. The blood hunger that had been fed by Hays’ death was still strong in him. “Come on, then,” he cried, and ran towards the light in the west. As he went, the federal infantry rose and followed him. He came out of the trees and jumped down from a little bank into the ruts of the road.
There were Southern skirmishers in the trees on the far side of the dirt road when he reached it.
The 17th Maine came out of the woods on either side of him. That probably saved him from a wound or death. The grey sharpshooters in the trees automatically fired at the color party without focusing on the idea that the blue officer with a revolver in his hand was probably a better target. The color sergeant of the regimental color went down with several bullets in him. The sergeant major grabbed for the falling flag and fell himself across the first man’s body. They bled and writhed on the ground for a second and then the sergeant major crawled away towards the wood line.
“Volley fire!” Devereux yelled “At the woods!” He pointed with the hand that held the Colt. “Fire!”
The rifle muzzles rose. A sheet of lead slashed at the unseen Southerners. A cloud of powder smoke suddenly threw up a screen that hid the confused scene along the little road.
Time slowed down for Devereux. He looked at the brushy forest twenty yards to his front. There were shadowy figures behind the flashes of red. His vision narrowed and the old, hot, sweet, intoxication of the battlefield descended on him. He fired at one half seen silhouette in the smoke. It disappeared, but above the noise he heard the liquid gurgle and cough that meant a hit in the chest.
He picked up the blue regimental color and started across the road. The man with the national color followed him. Devereux began to shout at the men to either side. What the words were, neither he nor they could have said, then, or later. The line surged forward into the brush behind him.
Sounds of breaking branches retreating from the advancing line made it clear that the Rebel skirmishers were running for their lives.
Devereux stepped across a prostrate brown form. He had both hands full with the flag.
An officer of the Maine regiment caught up with him and asked for the flag.
Devereux gave it to him and then bent over the fallen Confederate. Rolling the body over, he found that the wounded man was a lieutenant and that he had been hit in the face.
The soldier mumbled something through the confusion that had been his lower jaw. Bloody bone ends and broken teeth prevented him from speaking.
Still swept up in the fight, Devereux hardly looked at him. What he wanted was the wounded man’s sidearm. Holding it in his hand he saw that it was a Navy Colt and that it had four unfired cylinders. He looked at the man on the ground.
The infantry officer stared back at him and then began to scream through his injury. Bloody foam was blown out of his ruined mouth. It speckled Devereux’s blue tunic.
Ignoring the ruined face, he rose to his feet and looked around at the 17th Maine. Many of them were looking at him, waiting to be told what to do,
My men are waiting…
He remembered the order given by General Hays. The objective of the attack came to the front of his mind. “Let’s go,” he yelled. “We have to find General Warren’s left flank! Keep moving! Keep going!” He walked toward the regiment’s right flank intent on being on the scene when Warren’s men were found. As he pushed his way through the jungle and bitter smoke, he found that he had to walk around fires burning in more and more places. He found several men cowering behind trees. These he dragged to their feet and shoved toward the line that was steadily if slowly moving to the west.
Unexpectedly, the forest ended to his left and he walked out into a big clearing with the moving line all around him.
The sun was shining in the field. The sky was blue with a few fluffy white clouds high up. It was meadow land. Several cows stood looking at them stupefied by this apparition come from the forest as if from another world. In the experience of the cows, men came from the forest to bring them home for milking. The cows looked hopeful.
Devereux yelled at the nearest officers to get their men back into line. He was thinking that a company should be sent to the right to find Warren’s flank.
In the vacuum created by his killing of Hays, he had seized effective control of the brigade. It was the role that he was born for. By nature he would lead men in battle if he had the chance, and by nature they would obey him.
He turned to the left to find an officer in one of the other brigade regiments to yell at, and saw about ten men standing or sitting around a tree on the left side of the field. The men sitting were all in grey. Those who stood by the horses wore brown. While he watched, the seated men rose to their feet and one of them walked rapidly away from the Union soldiers.
Even at seventy yards, Devereux recognized the straight back, short legs and white haired head of Robert Lee
Lee’s staff was transfixed by the sight of hundreds of federal infantry close enough to hit with a thrown stone. They seemed paralyzed. None moved.
Devereux knew that a volley from Hays’ brigade would kill or wound everyone standing by the tree. The horses would go down as though harvested by a giant scythe. Lee would die.
The world came back into focus for Devereux. He waved an arm toward the woods behind the line and walked away from the cows and General Lee. The blue soldiers already accustomed to the idea of obeying him turned and followed him back into the forest. Fifty yards inside the wood, he stopped and the line stopped with him. A lieutenant colonel from Hays’ staff arrived from farther down the line to ask what he thought the brigade should do.
“Well, I think you should find whoever is now in command and persuade him to send a force to carry out General Hancock’s instruction to tie the flank to Warren. I am going to sit down somewhere…”
The staff man saluted. He looked uncertain. “Colonel, who do you think those Johnnies were… out there in the meadow?”
Devereux had found a comfortable tree to sit by. He was settling his back against the tree and looking around at the nearest fires. He glanced up. “I have no idea. They must have been some cavalry scouts… There were a lot of horses…”
“We’re really grateful, sir at the way you took charge when General Hays was killed.” The officer did look grateful. “God knows what would have happened if you hadn’t been there to get us moving again. The division commander will hear of this I am sure. We thank you.”
Devereux laughed, thinking about how far astray he had gone in leading this advance. Then he remembered his manners. “Kind of you. I am going to stay here for a while and then
make my way back to Meade’s Headquarters. Don’t you worry about me…”
The staff man nodded. He was one of the people that Devereux had shared a couple of meals with at Hays’ field headquarters.
“Sorry about Hays. You all liked him. I saw that.”
The man blinked back tears, saluted again and walked away to find the new brigade commander.
Devereux smiled to himself and tried to settle his bad leg in a more comfortable position. The day’s walking had created a great aching ball of flame in his right knee.
I need Hope or Amy here to massage that. Actually… Combat generally made him want a woman and this experience was no different.
The firing line was halted where he had let them stop. He closed his eyes, determined to rest until nightfall.
He dreamt of Hope seated in the parlor window seat of his parents’ home on Duke Street. The dog, Maude, sat at her feet with its chin on her knee. His wife was beautiful in the amber light of late afternoon. Her golden hair framed her perfect oval face. The dog turned its head to look at someone else in the room. He realized now that Hope was talking to Amy Biddle. She was seated across the room in his favorite chair. They were talking about him. They were discussing his faults. His grandfather came into the room...
He awoke unhappy. His grandfather was often in his dreams. He always came to defend Claude, but rarely was given the chance. Claude’s father was there at times as well. He had not spoken in a dream for a long time. Perhaps it was better that way. Blinking his gummy eyes, Devereux remembered where he was. Night was coming on quickly in the late twilight. A small, leaf fire had burned its way to him and one of his boots was smoking. He beat the flames into extinction. The burned leather made an unpleasant smell in the surprising quiet and dimness. There was no one in sight. He could hear soldiers talking somewhere nearby but the voices were too faint to be understood as speech. He found the two pistols and re-loaded the fired cylinders in both. Luckily, they were both .36 caliber. Loading the cap and ball guns was difficult in the dark, but Claude had always been good at the skills of the soldier. Banking had been his father’s idea of a career for him. He had always wanted the uniform as something to lose himself in, something in which he might find shelter… He settled his own revolver in its beautiful, handmade holster and then put the other one under his leather belt in the small of the back. The memory of the day swept over him. He remembered the Southern soldier whom he had shot. The man must be lying somewhere nearby. He thought of looking for him. He thought of the men who had been in the clearing. He thought of Lee.
Death Piled Hard: A Tale of the Confederate Secret Services Page 23