The gunfire grew fiercer. Suddenly Mars was pitched onto the ground, his horse shot from under him. The animal screamed and kicked its legs, blood gushing from four separate bullet holes.
Mars shot the suffering animal through the skull, wincing as he did so, then quickly untangled his tack and moved to the rear, as the artillery fire was becoming more accurate from both Confederate and Union batteries.
He watched the infantry move inexorably forward, as if pulled by powerful invisible strings. Men would holler and then fall onto the flooded ground, many to drown.
A major rode up to him. “Colonel, do you need a horse?”
“I’ve got to get back, to Longstreet.” As Mars spoke, a ball came close. Both men icily refused to notice when it blew earth and water in a geyser not two feet from their heads.
“Come forward, Zimmer!” the major ordered. “Give this man your horse. He needs it more than you do.”
“Yes, sir.”
Mars leapt into Zimmer’s saddle, throwing his own tack on the animal’s withers. He handed the man all the money he had in his pocket. Zimmer hesitated. “Go on, man,” said Mars. “Otherwise you’ll wind up in Company Q, and that’s a fate worse than death.”
As if to mock Mars’s own words, a cannonball whistled and exploded into Zimmer. The poor youth was killed instantly, but the fact that his body had absorbed the force kept Mars and the infantry major alive.
“Good Christ!” Mars shouted, the animal rearing under him.
“Get going, Colonel. The next one might be for you.” The major touched his forefinger to his hat and rode into the withering fire.
Mars returned to Longstreet without further incident, but he paced uncontrollably. A light drizzle, which lasted until just before sunset, irritated him.
By nightfall, the Confederates had driven the Federals from their entrenchment positions two miles down the Williamsburg Road. General D.H. Hill ran out of ammunition and could proceed no further.
When the Federals retreated, they left behind six cannons which they did not spike. These guns were turned upon them with murderous result. However, the Federals had their moment when General Joseph C. Johnston, severely wounded, was carried off the field.
President Jefferson Davis appointed General Robert E. Lee to take over the fallen Johnston’s position as Commander of the Army of Northern Virginia.
JUNE 1, 1862
Lutie’s bel canto carried over the blast of cannon, seven miles from the city. “Behold at that time I will undo all that afflict thee: and I will save her that halteth, and gather her that was driven out; and I will get them fame and praise in every land where they have been put to shame.
“At that time I will bring you again, even in the time that I gather you: for I will make you a name and a praise among all people of the earth, when I turn back your captivity before your eyes, saith the Lord.”
“Amen.” The ladies from Albemarle County gathered on the sweeping back porch of the Vickerses’ house. Baron Schecter and Maud Windsor were there also.
“I never knew cannon could fire for such an extended period of time.” Hazel Whitmore squeezed a lace handkerchief in her hands.
“They can go for days, red-hot,” Kate replied. “But the firing is desultory. Listen to it.”
“I thought we won yesterday,” Rise said.
“Apparently we have to win today.” Miranda Lawrence wondered how men endured the shelling.
“And tomorrow and the day after that.” Lutie closed her Bible.
“I thought it would be over by now.” Jennifer rose.
“The battle or the war?” Kate asked her.
“Both, I suppose.”
“It’s getting dark. Surely they’ll stop.” Miranda walked the length of the well-built porch.
“I saw night cannonades when we lived in Europe,” Kate informed the others. “The balls have a luminous flight. If it’s a heavy dose of shot, the entire sky lights up—oddly terrifying and beautiful.”
“How does anyone stand it?” Hazel’s nerves were frayed.
“Our boys are made of grit and sand,” Lutie said.
There was a commotion at the front door. Henley, covered from head to toe with filth, walked onto the porch. “Good evening, ladies.”
“Henley!” Lutie embraced him and became muddy herself.
“Can you ladies be ready to receive wounded late this evening?”
“Of course we can.” Kate spoke for all of them.
“The hospitals can’t take them all, and we were able to evacuate precious few yesterday.” Henley looked tired.
“What are you saying?” Lutie’s voice was steady.
“I’m saying we’ve lost one-third of our army; God knows how many they’ve lost.”
“My God!” Hazel couldn’t quite believe it.
“So far, we’ve counted sixty-one officers dead and two hundred and nine officers wounded. Richmond will be remembered as the slaughterhouse of heroes.”
“Henley, won’t you sit down and take refreshments? You need some sustenance.” Kate soothed him.
Just then Sin-Sin sailed into the room. She saw Henley and shrieked. He turned to her, smiling. “It’s all right, Sin-Sin. I’m dirty, but I’ve got daylight in me.”
“Have you seen my husband?” Maud Windsor’s eyes registered fear.
“Yes. He’s with Surgeon-in-Chief Cullen. They’ll probably get into the city tomorrow morning unless the Yankees put up another fight.”
“Did we win?” Lutie was still reeling from Henley’s assessment of dead and wounded.
“Yes, but at a dear price. I’ve been asked by General Cullen to beseech shop owners along Broad Street to receive wounded in whatever space they have available. Northrupp figured we should keep a large measure of supplies here should the Federals begin a siege. This will make it easier to care for the wounded once we get them here.”
“How bad is it? Out there, I mean.” Hazel’s chin trembled.
“Be glad you are here, Mrs. Whitmore. Even here, you’ll see enough horror.” His fierce eyes fell on the resplendent Schecter. “I thought, Baron, that your government sent you here to observe our military operations, not our ladies.”
Incensed, Schecter said in clipped tones, “His Imperial Majesty did not instruct me to go on the field of battle.”
“Perhaps he did not, sir, but I should think that honor would have compelled you forward.”
Schecter stepped up to him and slapped him across the face with his snow-white gloves. “I demand satisfaction, sir!”
Kate, livid, pushed between them. She turned her wrath on the handsome Schecter. “Baron, this is unforgivable! Consider the circumstances of Colonel Chatfield’s visit and his last two days. A displacement of decorum is not without understanding!”
Empurpled with rage, Schecter spit. “Decorum? This gentleman, madam, has taken it upon himself to belittle me at every possible opportunity.”
“Perhaps you deserved it!” Kate let him have it.
Alternating between rage and terror that he had precipitously fallen out of favor with Kate, he stammered, “Do you think I fear battle? I, who have the scars to prove otherwise?”
“I think, Baron, that our current war is rather different from those dressed-up affairs you participated in on your empire’s borders.”
A pin could drop, the assembled ladies were so still.
Schecter bowed low before Kate. “Then I shall join General Hill’s staff immediately. I may be many things, Mrs. Vickers, but I do not think a coward is one of them.” He spun on his heel to glare at Henley. “I will have satisfaction, sir, when time permits.”
“Indeed, you shall! Pistols or saber?” Henley couldn’t handle a saber to save his life.
“In view of your years, Colonel, pistol seems only fair.” Schecter bowed to him and stormed out.
Lutie grabbed Henley’s hand. “Honey, he’ll settle his tail feathers. You can approach him then.”
“Approach him?” Henley r
oared. “I’m going to give him the third eye of prophecy! Isn’t that what your mother used to call that dot she put between her eyes?”
Kate stood behind Lutie. “Baron Schecter’s vanity is offensive in the extreme, but in time I’m sure he will withdraw his outrageous request for a duel.”
“He might, but I won’t. Now, I must be getting on.”
Discreetly the other ladies withdrew from the porch.
Lutie asked, “Did you see Geneva?”
“No, but she’s safe. The cavalry couldn’t operate because the ground was an evil bog.” He sat, suddenly exhausted, on a painted wooden bench. “Lutie, after what I’ve seen yesterday and today, I know our son died a hero. Anyone who stands his ground in that hailstorm of killing fire is a hero. We spawned two warriors.” A weary smile played on his lips.
“Three.”
“What?”
“You, darling. You faced the test unafraid.”
“I faced the test, but I prayed. I was afraid, and I was relatively safe.”
“But you did your duty.” Lutie held his hand.
“I am a Chatfield.”
“And so am I.”
“Four warriors then.” Henley put his arm around his wife, who was now half as muddy as himself.
Kate returned to the porch, the light fading. “Everything is prepared for you, Colonel.” Lutie and Kate walked Henley to his horse.
“That’s not my horse.” Henley was surprised.
“I asked my stable boy to give you one of our horses. We’ll take care of yours. I don’t think the poor animal could have taken another step.” Behind him, clattering over the cobblestones were wagons, carriages, and buckboards.
“Where everybody goin’?” Sin-Sin watched the procession.
“Mr. Henley!” Di-Peachy raced out of the house.
“How are you, my girl?” Henley embraced her, covering her with filth.
“I didn’t know you were here. I was in the back winding bandages. Otherwise I would have come immediately. Are you all right? Should we go out to the battlefield to retrieve the wounded?” One question spilled into another, Di-Peachy was speaking so fast.
“No, don’t. Ambulances are overturning in the mud. The roads are a mess once you get out of the city. You’ll do more good for more people if you stay at your post and let the wounded come to you. Colonel Windsor knows you are here, and he may have already sent back wounded to you. You might get some Yankees, too.”
“Can’t they take their own wounded?” Lutie asked.
“Not all of them. The ones most seriously injured stay with us. I believe Lee will work out an exchange of prisoners over this. I hope so anyway. Thank you again, Mrs. Vickers. Good-bye, Lutie.” He moved off through the din and confusion.
Despite darkness, Geneva, Nash, Banjo, and seventeen men from the regiment picked their way through the fields riding in an arc from Williamsburg Road to Charles City Road. Mars knew the back roads and footpaths. The Federals stopped, moving neither forward nor backward. A series of landings on the James River provided them with a way out if they decided to leave. No one knew what would happen next. If McClellan dumped his army in the lap of the navy, sailing them back to Washington, D.C., it would be the end of his career and the end of the war in this part of the country for at least a year. Even with horrendous losses, McClellan still fielded more men than the Confederacy.
The horses slipped on the soggy ground. The meadows, woods, and swamps choked with the dead. Men carrying torches looked like huge fireflies as they walked over the ground, trying to recover the wounded.
Geneva shuddered at the cries of the suffering. Battle she could take, but it was torture to hear those screams. Every now and then the horror would be punctuated by a single shot. She didn’t know if the search officer compassionately put a hopeless sufferer out of his misery or if he shot a thief. Molesters of the dead scurried among the bodies, vultures of the battlefield. Catholic sisters also walked among the fallen, sometimes bending to give succor, other times making the sign of the cross. Private citizens from Richmond, the fearless ones, also helped the wounded, giving them food and water. The human vultures, upon seeing a sister or a ministering citizen, would crouch and slink away.
Some of the wounded lost their minds. “A ring-tailed ferret, a ring-tailed ferret!” one insane man shouted over and over. Other times Geneva could make out a part of the Lord’s Prayer whispered through cracked and bloody lips.
What frightened her, too, was the sorting system the surgeons used for determining who to help. Those who were certain to survive despite current pain were laid to one side to wait; those who were likely to die no matter what was done were laid aside to be helped last. But the men whose lives hung in the balance were slapped on the operating tables first. She wondered if she were badly hit would she have the presence of mind to know what group she’d fall into. She could still feel the surgeon’s needle digging in her cheek as he sewed up her face in April. That seemed like a year ago although the bright scar testified that only weeks had passed.
Her horse snorted and danced sideways. He hated stepping on dead humans.
Geneva looked down. “Can’t tell if that’s one of theirs or ours, he’s so caked with mud.”
“I hate the way they stare at you with their eyes wide open. My hair stands up on the back of my neck. I think those glassy eyes reproach me for living,” Nash quietly said.
“Poor devil, whoever he is. He got his quietus.” Banjo placed his hand on his horse’s hindquarters and twisted around to see Nash.
The jingle of sabers and spurs was interrupted only by the pop, pop of pistol fire at disjointed intervals.
“Jesus, save me!” a voice called far from the road.
A torchbearer moved closer to the line. “Hear that one?”
Banjo pointed toward bramble. “There, I think. Night plays tricks on the ears.”
“Thanks, Lieutenant.” The torchbearer, his face shining in the light, walked into the field. Two other men carrying a blanket to use as a stretcher followed him.
As they approached Charles City Road with no sign of the enemy, Captain Sam Wells halted the squadron.
“What in God’s name is that?” Nash exclaimed.
They sat silently and listened to wheels creaking, animals straining to negotiate the terrible roads, and voices, far enough off to be a low stream of sound. Dots of light stretched down the road as far as they could see.
Banjo was the first to figure it out. “It’s the people.”
“Can’t be. Nobody in their right mind would come out in this quagmire.” Nash shook his head.
Sam rode forward. Within fifteen minutes he returned. “Nine Mile Road, Williamsburg Road, and this one, too, are full of people with whatever vehicles they have, coming to claim the wounded and bring them to safety. Fellow I spoke to said that even the gambling parlors, gin mills, and whorehouses are closed down in Screamersville. They’re out here, too.” He paused for the weight of his words to have their effect. “Let’s go, boys.”
Banjo said in a low voice, “Bless them.”
Nash found himself profoundly affected. “Any nation that can produce such people is worth dying for.”
“Or living for,” Geneva quickly added. She hated it when he spoke of dying. He wasn’t going to die. No one was going to die. When she found her own thoughts becoming morbid, she’d say to herself, Try not to think about it. God took Sumner. That’s sacrifice enough.
JUNE 2, 1862
At four-thirty in the morning twenty wounded men, most of them from the Twelfth Alabama, arrived at Kate Vickers’s house. The eight women, including Sin-Sin and Di-Peachy, began washing the mud out of their hair and beards, then stripped them and washed their bodies as well. A few weakly protested, but given the circumstances, no one could afford to be modest. Evangelista Settle Egypt refused to touch the “filthy things” as she called them, but she braced herself for duty in the kitchen, a vile step downward.
A few of the men
were in terrible pain, and the women had no morphine. Kate quickly dispatched her stable boy to Phoebe Yates Pember at Hospital No. 2 of the Chimborazo Hospital for morphine. The Chimborazo was equipped for forty-six hundred patients, but within hours that number was doubled, and the hospital was running out of all supplies. Lutie, encountering shortages before, told Kate to give brandy to the ones in pain. It would have to do.
One poor devil had part of his face shot away. His right eye was exposed, much of the cheek was gone revealing a smashed cheekbone, and his nose was ripped off his face. His lips were torn and part of his teeth were smashed. He had no other wounds. If they could keep his facial injuries from festering, he might have a chance. The sight of him was so repulsive that Lutie, after cleaning him, covered his lower face with a large handkerchief.
He motioned for a pen and paper, then wrote: Brittle Smith, Twelfth Alabama. Next of kin is Margarite Hawsley Smith, Mobile. I know I look hideous. Thank you for taking care of me.
Lutie kissed his good cheek, which made him cry, and she forced him to lie down. She lifted the handkerchief, already bloodied, and poured a shot of brandy down his throat, chasing it with cool water. He thanked her by sign, and she moved to the man next to him. He was dead. Without calling attention to it, she motioned for Big Muler to carry the body outside. Several days ago Lutie had taken Muler to the outskirts of Richmond, given him money and papers, and told him to go. He had reappeared at the Vickerses’ that same night. He wouldn’t leave Di-Peachy. Furious as Lutie had been then, she was glad to have him now.
By six-thirty in the morning, every man was clean and as comfortable as possible. Another wagon pulled up in front of the house. Kate walked outside hoping Colonel Windsor would be there. Instead she found another wagonload of wounded. “Sir, we have our share,” she said to the fatigued driver.
“Everyone’s doubling up, ma’am. We got tobacco warehouses full of men.”
“Of course. We’ll make do,” she said. The driver and his assistant, wobbly with exhaustion, began to carry in the wounded.
“Big Muler! Hurry and help these men,” Lutie called.
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