The interruptions of railroad service caused by Union cavalry raids launched from Bermuda Hundred by August Kautz could not keep the lines closed between Petersburg and Richmond for long against determined resistance and relentless repair gangs. In spite of the damage, regiments, brigades and whole divisions moved steadily northward on the rails and roads into assembly areas.
The jaws of the nutcracker steadily grew teeth. One force gathered at Petersburg, another came together astride the roads south of Richmond near the great river defense fortifications at Drewry's Bluff.
Ransom, Hoke, and Colquitt brought their divisions there in preparation for an assault from the north. Another force was prepared for a strike from the south, from the vicinity of Petersburg.11
------------------------------------------------------------As a part of Pickett’s Division, Corse's Brigade assembled two miles south of the railhead at which the 17th had unloaded. The five infantry regiments had been separated for a week. The 30th and 17th had been busy with Kautz along the Richmond and Danville. The others had come straight north from Weldon and Petersburg to help keep these Yankees out of the capital. Now they were coming together again, massing for the fight.
-------------------------------------------------------------As the night neared its end, the long snake of 17th Virginia riflemen strode forward in near silence. So many men, marching in route step, could not help but make some noise. The music of harness, shoe leather, and whispers filled the space around them. Nevertheless, they were remarkably quiet. They had soldiered so long now that the habit of discipline kept them still, and the damp earth of the forest track muffled the sound of their feet.
The head of the column reached a crossroads. Beneath an ancient sign General Corse waited for them. The regiment halted for a moment.
11 13,500 Confederate infantrymen would face 19,000 Union men in this action. The leading "fours" of "A Company" listened attentively to the words of welcome and commendation given to Herbert for the Flat Creek affair.
Men farther back in the formation knew only that they had stopped and then unexpectedly moved onward. At the crossroad, Montgomery Corse stood by the side of the road, his round hat in hand. As each company in the column passed he leaned forward to murmur greetings.
It was an open secret in the brigade that the Alexandria Regiment was his favorite. As a major of militia, he had commanded them in the last year before the death of the old Union.
Guides led them on in a cavernous darkness filled with ominous shapes and the sound of confused forest beasts. Twigs broke underfoot. Muffled expressions of frustration occasionally disturbed the stillness as soldiers tripped over roots in the dark.
The night had just begun to pale into day as the regiment changed formation from column to line while moving forward in the piney wood.
Colonel Herbert stalked forward through the dead leaves, his arms held out straight to either side.
The color sergeant followed him closely, the stiff, red flag erect by his side.
The captain of each company doubled forward to establish the reference point upon which his company would form to left or right of the colors. The gloom of the false dawn and the swirling, tattered ground fog enfolded the movement. The widely spaced line of officers kept moving onward.
In front of them the flanks of the 30th and 29th Virginia could now be seen where they waited in the woods. A hundred yard gap between them beckoned.
The veterans fanned out, each unslinging his rifle as he went. They fell in on the guides with hardly a glance to left or right. The long brown line advanced, its two ranks were perfectly straight and centered on the color bearer.
The soldiers of the waiting regiments watched them approach. A captain at the right of the 29th's line lifted his hat in silent welcome as they grew nearer.
The flank companies came even with the brigade's line of battle. They halted. The men knelt, continuing to peer ahead for a minute, then relaxing in the expectation that they would not go forward yet. Knowing that they must, they dropped their horseshoe bedrolls by their feet. Some sat on the ground. Some lay flat in the utter repose so natural to old combat men. On the flanks, a few were lucky enough to spy friends or relatives in other regiments.
The light grew. The length of the line into which they had inserted themselves could now be dimly seen. The brigade's five, square, battle flags were there and beyond them the lines stretched on in the mist. The forest had little underbrush in the area immediately around them. If you looked hard enough you could see several thousand men on either side.
Behind the 17th's line, Major Robert Simpson stretched his arms and back, crossing his arms across his chest without bending the elbows. He retrieved his watch from a vest pocket. It was 4:30. He closed the cover and rubbed the old silver with his thumb.
Birds were stirring in the trees. Along the back of the line, officers and staff sergeants were gathered in small groups to whisper.
Simpson listened closely to be sure no one spoke aloud. He buttoned his jacket against the pre-dawn chill.
It was very quiet in the wood.
Simpson knew that the enemy picket line was less than a quarter mile ahead. He glanced at Herbert who stood behind the other end of the formation with the sergeant major. With some pleasure, he saw that his friend was smiling at him.
4:30, fifteen minutes to wait...
Simpson drew his sword slowly from the scabbard. The dull grey blade emerged quietly, coming into the world as though reborn. There was a small spot of discoloration alongside the blood runlet. He rubbed the metal on his brown sleeve, watching it run back and forth on the faded braid of the Austrian knot that showed him to be a field officer. He stuck the point in the earth to stand the weapon on end, and drew his revolver to check the loads and caps. The sword drew his attention back to itself. It was quite old-fashioned, his great uncle's sword from the Revolution. The old man had carried it at Saratoga in Morgan's Virginia Riflemen. Thinking of the original owner, he remembered the day he had received it. His cousin had given him her father’s sword, saying that he must use it well...
Bill Fowle walked over from his company to wish him luck. It was a ritual they found themselves engaged in each time they went into action.
Simpson extricated his fingers from his beard to grasp the other's hand.
The captain looked down at the antique saber. "The knights are dust," he whispered.
"Their good swords rust," the major returned.
"Their souls are with the saints we trust."
Simpson grinned. "Old Millner would be proud," he said. "But then, he said you were his favorite cadet, ever." He felt, rather than saw, the regiment rise. All at once, the men were on their feet loading rifles, and fixing bayonets. Herbert pointed at the brushy wood line in front.
A part of each company moved forward as skirmishers. They stopped just short of the jungle. Some looked back; others peered into the vines and brambles.
It was now light enough to recognize individuals, but the fog still rose from the damp earth.
He looked at his watch again. "4:45.”
Time to go.
"Bri-gaade! Att-ten-shun! Caar-ry! Arms! Skirmishers for-waard, March! 29th the battalion of direction! Bat-talions for-waard! Guide center! March!"
The brigade's line of battle lurched into motion. The center moved first, responding to Corse's word of command. As the advance spread toward the wings like a wave, the somewhat bow shaped line glided toward the enemy.
The skirmish line vanished into the unknown.
Five hundred yards to the front, a private soldier named Baxter lay behind the meager shelter of a rail fence.
The fence ran around the kitchen garden of a farmhouse. Beyond the fence was the crest of a ridge and a meadow that sloped down to a wooded creek bed.
The night had been long, damp and unnerving. Only half awake, Baxter thought for a time that he heard a voice far away, but stillness rested so solidly in the air that he decided he must have d
reamt, and returned to an inner contemplation of the memory of his last furlough. He rolled back and forth, wrapping the rubber ground sheet more snugly around his legs.
Sixty yards behind him, his company commander sat at the farmhouse kitchen table thinking about the injustice of his position. He was as sure as he was about anything that this damned farm was too far forward to be a good outpost. He had tried to tell his superiors that, but as usual, no one listened to him.
Three of his men were busy brewing coffee for the company on the big, wood burning range.
The captain moved his legs so that one of them could get by with an arm full of sticks for the firebox. The fire made a very satisfactory place of the kitchen. It burned hot enough to keep the damp wood blazing with a pleasing sound of crackling and hissing.
After a while, Private Baxter began to doze, secure in the belief that his sergeant would be along shortly to rouse him. In the warmth of his bedroll, the sound of feet in the long meadow grass did not reach him. His head lay on the ground, protected from the wet by nothing but the crown of his crushed blue forage cap. Over a period of twenty or thirty seconds the level of reverberation in his skull slowly grew louder.
"Jesus!" someone yelled. "The Johnnies!"
Baxter snapped his head around to peer under the bottom rail.
The ground fog was lifting. The bottom of it was a foot off the ground in the meadow. Pairs of brogans were visible beneath the cloud. Ten feet apart, they were halfway across the field and coming fast.
Trapped in his wrappings, Baxter flailed wildly, seeking escape from the grip of his bedclothes.
Around him, his comrades opened fire in a ragged volley. The clank of ramrods sounded with a particular frenzy he had not heard before.
He shook off nearly all his bonds, and rose to his feet one hand on a fencepost. His feet were nearly loose. One more kick... The thought of escape back across the farmyard was firmly in his head. He could see it so clearly in his mind that it stayed with him for an instant after the point of the bayonet hit him in the back.
It went in hard with the full weight of an "H" Company "Gypsy" behind it. The tip glanced off a vertebra, tearing cartilage as it wrenched two ribs apart. The rigid sharpness of it drove on through a lung and ended its travel embedded in the left side of his heart.
He fell to his knees, and then on his face with a great, searing agony in his chest.
George Latham, shoemaker by trade, put one foot on the fallen enemy's back alongside his blade and pulled it out with a twist of his wrists.
Firing was general around the house.
Rebel riflemen converged on it from three directions.
The door flew open. Four blue uniformed figures hurtled from the house, headed for the rear. A ripple of firing dropped two. Fifteen or twenty more soldiers from the outpost could be seen in flight across the open ground behind the farmhouse. The rest stood with their hands in the air, or lay where they would stay.
Latham stepped over the Yankee and strode across the yard, passing by the open door of the brick house.
Motion in the house turned him that way, ready to fire. A woman in gingham stood in the kitchen door, a child peeking from behind her.
"You stay in the house ma'am!" Latham called. "Get in the cellar!"
She said something unintelligible, waved and went back into the kitchen.
The skirmisher saw that he was dropping behind. He trotted away from the house to fill his place in the moving line.
The brigade's line of battle came out of the creek bed at the foot of the meadow, and started uphill. General Corse stepped through the ranks and walked out in front of his line. He turned to face them and strode backward up the hill. His sword swung parallel to the ground in his right fist. In his face shone the pride in them which suffused his being.
"Bread! Bread!" chanted the men. Laughter rippled along the front. This had started in the Peninsula two years before when they had gone into the assault at Frazier's Farm without rations. They served that up to Corse on every possible occasion.
"You'll have all the bread you can eat soon!" he yelled back.
The formation swept over the hilltop and around the farmhouse, "H" Company of the 17th passed through the yard between the house and the barn. The brigade line started down the reverse slope headed for the distant wood line.
In the house, Caroline Middleton stood at a window and watched them go.
The skirmishers had dwindled to tiny figures. Puffs of smoke drifted across the trees at the edge of the forest.
She could just hear sounds which she knew must be shots. Uncomprehendingly, she watched the Confederate skirmishers maneuver forward in groups of four, two soldiers firing at a time to help the others move ahead.
A brown figure threw up its arms and fell, its back arched and reaching for the sky.
She cried out, holding one hand over her mouth as though someone might hear. Falling to her knees, she prayed for her unknown protectors.
The three quarters of a mile from the crest to the wood was divided into two well-defined bands. There was a quarter mile of slash, stumps and felled logs in what looked like a recently cleared field. Beyond that, the ground sloped gently down to the Yankee breastworks.
The regiments marched steadily forward, picking their way through the maze of treetops and deadfall. The formation opened and closed like a concertina as men climbed over and through obstacles. At last the fallen trees were passed, and they emerged into the silver light of a sun glowing low on the horizon as an indistinct and pale disk.
Corse led them down the slope. He and the colonels, lieutenant-colonels and majors had come forward from their usual posts behind the line. The veteran infantrymen knew what that meant. The attack would be pressed home with the bayonet. A murmur of anticipation swept the ranks. Emotion swelled across the field.
Out in front the skirmish line had gone to ground, keeping up a steady fire against the enemy entrenchments.
Incoming rifle bullets droned around the battle flag of the 17th. One cut the cloth itself.
300 yards to go. From his place at the right of the front rank of his company, Fowle could now see the abatis in front of the trench.
Major Simpson began to distinguish white faces through the tangled branches.
In the midst of the color party, Sergeant-Major Hart spun in his tracks, shot through the mouth.
"Close ranks!" bellowed the regimental quartermaster sergeant.
The color party pressed together, filling the empty place.
They reached and passed their skirmishers. The men fell in on the rear rank.
The enemy’s face could be seen through the obstacles.
Suddenly, a private in "B" Company ran forward, beyond the colonel, raised his rifle in one hand and gave voice to the shrieking, trembling, melody of the Rebel Yell.
Another did the same in the 29th.
Up and down the brigade line, the raw emotion of feral, blinding rage raced from man to man. White hot murder filled up their souls leaving room for nothing but the vision of the trench line before them.
The pace picked up.
Montgomery Corse looked at them, then at the colonels. "Wade in, my bullies, wade in!" he shouted.
The riflemen filled their lungs. "Whup! Whup! Whup! swelled the sound, a hunting call summoning the dogs to the kill. "EeeeeeeHaah!" it continued, transformed by tribal fury into something very like the sound that rang in the ears of Caesar's legions.
The men broke into a trot. Their war cry ripped through the air, filling their heads, and filling their enemies' heads.
Across the ranks bullets took their victims, pitching them backward in the spasm of nervous tension which meant an ending, or just dropping them in a sodden heap of misery.
A .58 caliber Minie ball hit Bill Fowle just below the knee. As is common with serious wounds, it did not hurt at all. The leg collapsed under him, and he fell to the ground.
The soldier behind stepped over him and kept going.
<
br /> Fowle lay in the dirt clutching his calf. Blood flowed into his boot. "Ah, Sweet Jesus, Emily!" he muttered through clenched teeth.
Bayonets shone beneath a newly risen sun. The howling charge rushed onward.
In the Federal position the conviction of impending, senseless doom grew suddenly, and became a force that could not be denied.
The brigade raced in through the abatis behind their leaders.
Smoking musket barrels protruded in the embrasures made by the small spaces between head logs and revetments.
The front rank ran up the earthen glacis, leaping the obstacle of the head logs to land in the ditch behind. They sought their enemy.
Only a few Union infantrymen were there. The rest had vacated the trench at the last moment and were now 50 yards away headed at a run for the rear. Scattered fights swirled around those Northern soldiers who had not left with their comrades. Gun butts and bayonets decided the outcome. More and more hands stretched into the air.
Arthur Herbert looked about for his officers; sure that Corse would quickly order continuation of the attack. "Simpson! Major Simpson!" he bellowed. Men looked left and right in search of the familiar, stooped form.
"Back here! He's here!" a voice cried.
A thousand faces turned to the rear, seeking the speaker.
On the glacis, among the fallen treetops and piled brush two soldiers knelt beside a bloody mass of clothing and boots that only slowly resolved itself into the form of the major of the regiment.
Herbert climbed back out of the ditch to reach his side. "My God, Robert... What has happened to you?" His voice shook as he looked down.
Simpson grinned at him with eyes that betrayed his agony. "Itripped on this goddamned wire, and they shot the devil out of me...”
His left leg bent at a right angle above the knee. White bone ends stuck out of the torn remains of his trouser leg.
Death Piled Hard: A Tale of the Confederate Secret Services Page 33