Hell or Richmond

by Ralph Peters

  Riding up to Hancock’s position between the crossroads and a poor-man’s tavern, Barlow stopped his horse, saluted carelessly—as if he were the superior—and patted the animal’s neck. The beast’s mouth foamed. Barlow was hard on every living creature, and Hancock wondered how the boy got on with his matronly wife. Stonehearted Frank Barlow, with his crooked teeth and prodding talk? Did Barlow, too, have a soul behind those close-set, wintry eyes?

  Before Barlow could speak, Hancock said, “Got your men turned around?”

  The brigadier nodded. “They have orders to move as soon as the road’s clear behind them. What’s this about, sir?”

  Hancock nodded toward the north, away from his interrupted line of march. Barely audible rifle fire rankled the afternoon. “Bobby Lee didn’t wait for our grand plan to come to fruition.”

  “I don’t hear any cannon,” Barlow said. “If it was serious, there’d be artillery.”

  Hancock shook his head. “Not artillery ground up there. No fields of fire, except along the roads. If George Meade’s going to fight in that damned jungle, he’s going to do it with infantry and little else.”

  “Sir … I’ve been given orders to bring up the rear of the corps.”

  Hancock beat down a smile before Barlow could see it. “You were in front, now you’re in the rear. I’m just turning this leviathan around as fast as I can. Before George Meade falls down dead with a heart attack.” Hancock stopped himself. “That was unfair. Meade’s doing the best he can. With Grant looking over his shoulder every minute. Christ, I’d hate that.”

  “Sir, if you held up Mott’s division and let mine pass, my men are better marchers.…” Barlow took off his cap, exposing sweat-plastered hair, and wiped a dirty sleeve across his forehead. Hancock wore a starched white shirt each day, his one indulgence. “I’d like to get into the fight,” Barlow continued. “Mott could bring up the rear.”

  Barlow was as predictable as the stink on an Indian. The instant he smelled a fight, he wanted to join it.

  “No. I want you to bring up the rear. Longstreet’s out there, think it through. If Lee’s trying to fix us in the Wilderness, what do you figure he’s up to? If I know Marse Robert, he’s going to try to swing Longstreet around our flank and pull off another Chancellorsville. And he’ll come at this flank, if he comes at all.”

  A passing regiment cheered at the sight of Hancock. The corps commander waved his hat in return.

  “Longstreet’s not in front of me,” Barlow said. “I had scouts out, my own men. Since the damned cavalry’s nowhere to be found.”

  “He may not be in front of you now, but he’ll show up all right.”

  “Mott could watch the flank as well as I could.”

  “No. You’ve got my largest division. I need you on the flank. If Longstreet tries to hit us, I want him to come up against something that’s going to hurt him back. Something that can stop him, until we sort things out. You hold the lucky number, Frank.”

  “The damned cavalry should be out there, doing their proper work.” Barlow swept an arm toward the countermarching troops. “None of these contortions would be necessary.”

  “Oh, they’re out there,” Hancock said. “Just not necessarily where we’d like ’em to be. I could hear a fuss off in the woods this morning. I figure our boys and Stuart’s bunch are playing tag with each other.”

  A passing band struck up “Camptown Races,” but their playing was ragged and weak: dry throats and parched lips on a hot day’s march.

  “Won’t win any prizes at the Academy of Music, that’s for damned sure,” Hancock said. “Well, now that we’re all pissing in the right direction, I’ve got to get up to the fight. Meade’s goddamned courier got here late and things sound a little unhinged. Just pull your men back and take up a blocking position along that rise. I don’t want to give up this crossroads until I know what the Hell else is going on.”

  As Hancock turned northward up the Brock Road, his color sergeants kicked their horses to life and fell in at his stirrup. His staff, in turn, joined the cavalcade behind the flags of the corps. It made him feel vividly alive to ride into battle, and he savored the sensation every time.

  Whether Longstreet appeared on the flank or not, Barlow would be exactly where Hancock wanted him. If a flank attack materialized, Barlow would fight his division to the last man. And if Longstreet showed up elsewhere, Barlow would be downright rabid to get into the fight by the time his division was needed, and God help any Rebels who got in his way.

  Trotting forward beside a brigade column, Hancock called out to his game, dust-sucking infantry, “Come on, boys, come on, step out now! There’s more Johnnies up ahead than bugs in a whorehouse shitter on Sunday morning. Step along, let’s go!”

  Two p.m.

  Saunders Field

  It was every bit as bloody a damned mess as Griffin had feared. But his boys were in it now, and fine they were. He had never seen them braver.

  Ignoring stray rounds, he galloped across the high field to Rome Ayres, his West Point classmate and the commander of the brigade engaged north of the Turnpike.

  Shouting above the roar of the battle, Griffin asked, “Rome, can you hold that flank?”

  Ayres turned a grimed and sweating face toward him. “Did you see them, Charlie? Did you see my men go in?”

  Griffin realized that the sweat on Ayres’ face mingled with tears.

  “I saw ’em. Goddamn thing of beauty. Can you hold that flank, Rome?”

  Ayres nodded. “Do my best. Hell with them, the sonsofbitches. Damned if they’ll get through, I’ve got the Regulars over there.” He shook his head. “You should’ve seen the Forty-fourth New York go in. And the Hundred and Fortieth.”

  “I saw ’em.”

  “Now just look,” Ayres said.

  The two brigadiers stared out across the field. Gauzed with smoke, their lines of sight came and went, but the first results of the charge were clear. Speckled with the dead, the low ground crawled with the wounded, some in plain blue uniforms, others in the flared pantaloons of Zouaves. Here and there, fires gnawed the brush, nipping at the fallen. Down in the swale that broke the field in two, soldiers who could not or would not go forward gripped the earth, hoping to make themselves small. To the left, a section of guns blazed away, but Griffin, an old artilleryman, doubted they could identify useful targets. The Rebs were deep in the trees, deep in a wild undergrowth that had swallowed hundreds of men. Somewhere in there, north of the road, the survivors of Ayres’ brigade were fighting hard, by the sound of things. Had they not been, the Confederates would have counterattacked by now. Still, the situation on the division’s flank was growing perilous.

  Sedgwick? Wright? And their promised supporting attack? Shit for the birds. It was just as he’d predicted. The Rebs overlapped his right, and now, with not a man of the Sixth Corps in sight, the crisis was no more than a matter of time.

  “You just hold that flank, Rome,” Griffin said. “Bartlett’s got a lodgment on the other side of the road and his boys are punching through them.”

  “We’ll hold,” Ayres said. His voice was firm again. “My boys will hold. Charlie, I need to get back on that flank myself, see what can be done.”

  For a pained few minutes, Griffin had been worried about Ayres, afraid he would need to relieve him after the shock of the slaughter his old classmate had just witnessed. But Ayres was an old gunner, too. He had snapped right back.

  “Just give ’em the devil,” Griffin said. “I’ve got to find goddamned Warren. If he has the brains and the balls to send in Robinson behind Bartlett, this shit of a day might not turn out so badly.”

  A great wool-headed, brush-bearded man, Ayres saluted and pulled his horse around. His adjutant, Swan, a man loyal to the death, mimicked the brigade commander’s action. Griffin didn’t believe the flank could be held indefinitely, but he thought it likely to hold for thirty minutes. Rome Ayres would buy him that much time. And it just might be enough.

 
Where the Hell was Sedgwick, though? All those promises of support had been no more than a pimp’s oaths to a whore.

  He had last seen Warren amid the long line of ambulances backed up along the Turnpike. Warren had known how bad it was going to be. At least he had the decency to care about the wounded.

  As Griffin, one aide, and his color sergeants rode parallel to the rear of the attack, the party had to weave between wounded men walking rearward and those helped along by healthy soldiers glad of an excuse to leave the battle.

  The best men were the soldiers out there now, dying by the hundreds in the most slovenly excuse for a proper battle that Griffin had ever witnessed. If any good was done this day, it would be thanks to those boys, not to any general.

  Two cannon blasted away into clouds of smoke. Warren had ordered them forward to a position no artilleryman would have chosen, exposed and useless. It had infuriated Griffin, who knew how to employ guns, but he had cautioned himself that even the possible loss of a few fieldpieces was trivial compared to the greater matters at hand. He needed the corps commander to think about greater things. And to act.

  He recognized a member of Warren’s staff galloping along. The man was too damned careless of the wounded in his path. Nor did he appear much interested in Griffin.

  The division commander flagged the rider down. Reluctantly, the officer reined in his mount.

  “Where are you going, Roebling?”

  “Message for General Sedgwick, sir. It’s urgent.”

  “Well, you won’t find him out that way. Ride past General Ayres’ brigade, and you’ll be off to Libby Prison. If you live.”

  Roebling looked befuddled. He had been some sort of civilian engineer, a man who expected logic to rule the world. “Then how do I get to General Sedgwick? Or his lead division, sir?”

  “Christ if I know,” Griffin said. “I’d like to find him myself. Where’s General Warren, back at that house?”

  “No, sir, he’s forward. Just beyond those trees.”

  Griffin decided to do the young officer a kindness. “Roebling, if I were you, I’d ride back past that line of butcher’s carts. Meade has his headquarters just off the road back there, you must know where it is. Ask around the royal court if anybody knows where Sedgwick is taking the waters. But stay out of—”

  The staff man’s horse reared, neighing madly. Roebling fought to stay in the saddle. Blood from the animal’s rump sprayed Griffin’s trousers.

  He had no more time for the messenger’s dilemmas. Spurring his horse, he launched himself and his party across the shot-swept road. Toward the corps commander’s supposed location. He, too, grew careless and almost rode down a boy with a blood-covered face. The lad had been blinded and wandered the field, veering away from noises and stumbling along.

  To his right, across the murderous ground and beyond the tree line, the smoke rose at a notably greater distance. Against the odds and at terrible expense, Bartlett’s brigade had broken through the Rebels. Bartlett had damned fine regiments, if much-reduced ones, the 83rd Pennsylvania, the 20th Maine, and their like. Men who were out to get their own back from the Johnnies any way they could. Ayres’ men were every bit as good as Bartlett’s, but they had drawn the worse terrain in the war’s hard lottery. The next time, Bartlett’s boys might be dealt the death card. Luck played as great a role in battle as skill.

  When Griffin found Warren—surrounded by enough staff men to form a cavalry troop—the corps commander looked glum. When he first met Griffin’s eyes, there was something close to apathy in evidence. Griffin figured that Meade had been hammering Warren hard. As Meade, no doubt, was getting pounded by Grant.

  “General Griffin,” Warren said, voice faint in the din, “I find matters unclear.”

  Disciplining his language, Griffin answered, “Bloody mess on the right, sir. Rebs are on Ayres’ flank, just like he warned us. But he’s holding, and his New York boys made it into the far woods. Look at Bartlett’s front, though. Look how far the smoke’s moved. Wadsworth must be into them, too. Damn me if we don’t have a chance to break Ewell’s corps.”

  “Yes,” Warren said dully. “Bartlett.”

  “Sir, he needs to be reinforced. Now. For God’s sake, send in everything you can. Bartlett’s punctured their line, this is our chance.”

  Warren shook his head. As if even that were an effort. He did not meet Griffin’s eyes.

  “Damn it, sir! You’ve got a division sitting on its ass. Send in Robinson. Right behind Bartlett. We could break them.”

  “I can’t,” Warren said.

  “Sir, you have to. You have to do it.”

  “I can’t.”

  “Why? Don’t throw this chance away.”

  It was Warren’s turn to lose his temper. Eyes flashing, he turned his raptor’s face on his subordinate.

  “Goddamn it, Charlie, I can’t. I told you. Robinson’s being held as the army reserve. Until Sedgwick comes up.”

  “Sir … for the love of God … order Robinson up. Break Ewell’s corps, and they’ll forgive you anything.”

  “I can’t. Robinson’s the army’s reserve. Meade would never release him.”

  A shell screamed overhead. The Confederates still had artillery somewhere along their line. The explosion sounded just to their rear, followed by the shrieks of wounded horses. The ambulance train had been hit.

  “Sir…,” Griffin tried, “what’s a reserve for? You have to move now. Before the chance slips away.”

  Warren’s look veered toward doubt. “What if the right flank collapses? We’d need Robinson then.”

  “Ayres will hold. Long enough. Ewell won’t be thinking about our flank, if we’re crushing his balls. Sir, this is what Meade wanted, what Grant wants.” Desperate, he said, “At least send in one of Robinson’s brigades. Just give me one brigade. Even that might do it.”

  “General Griffin,” Warren said coldly, distantly, a man of kaleidoscopic moods, “I cannot act without General Meade’s authorization. Robinson is the army reserve. It is not my decision to make. You should understand my situation.”

  “Goddamn it, sir. It’s your decision. You’re the man on the spot. I beg you.…”

  Warren stared into the distance, toward the unseen slaughter in the woods. “It would take too long to bring Robinson up through that forest, anyway. Bartlett will have to do the best he can.”

  Tempted for the first time in his career to strike a senior officer, Griffin said, “Then damn you to Hell.”

  He pulled his horse around and spurred it forward. Back toward the slaughter of his men.

  Two p.m.

  Orange Turnpike

  The trickles of wounded men and skedaddlers turned into a stream. Wise to the folly of confronting soldiers from another man’s command, Gordon left it to his staff to admonish the shirkers. Riding at the front of his brigade, he kept his face straight to the front, eyes on the smoke rising from the treetops a mile ahead and ears alert to the shifting sounds of battle. The noise of rifle volleys and distant shouts seemed to leap toward him.

  The day was hot, the march had been hard, and the little news he had gotten had not been good. Now a rider approached him at a gallop. For the second time in one day, Gordon did not have to hear the words a courier would speak. It would be an order to come on at the double-quick, to quell a crisis. Or, perhaps, more crises than one.

  As he limped rearward, a black-bearded soldier with a torn cheek called a warning to Gordon’s men: “Y’all goin’ to ketch it now, boys. Yankees coming on thick as flies on shit.”

  “You could pass for shit yourself,” one of Gordon’s men responded. “This here’s the Georgia Brigade.”

  “I can smell that much,” the limping soldier hooted. “You’ll see who’s shit soon enough, Peach-head.”

  Gordon pulled his horse to the side so the courier wouldn’t break the march’s rhythm. It was Major Daniel, Early’s aide. He kicked up enough dust to choke a company.

  Breathless, the aide ca
lled, “General Gordon, sir! You’re to bring up your brigade as fast as you can. Yankees put a hole in the line. Genr’l Early’s compliments, and he says he needs you right now.”

  Belatedly, the excited young man remembered to salute. Daniel was normally well composed. It had to be the devil’s own mess up there, Gordon realized.

  “Major Daniel, do me a favor. You ride back and give the word to my regimental commanders to come on at the double-quick. I’ll ride ahead for a look.”

  “Yes, sir. You’ll see Genr’l Ewell’s flag smack in the road. He means to make a stand.”

  Good Lord, Gordon thought. A dozen questions leapt to mind, but there was no time for chatter. Without another word, he spurred his horse, leading his staff and his colors toward the battle.

  Even above the pounding of dozens of hooves, he soon heard cheering, all of the wrong kind. It was baritone Yankee huzzahing, with none of the yip and howl that marked his side’s triumphs.

  The stream of wounded men and quitters became a river. At least a brigade, perhaps more than one, had broken.

  There would be no time for eloquent speeches now.

  In minutes, he spied a familiar group of horsemen. Someone had, indeed, planted a battle flag in the middle of the roadway. A motley collection of soldiers guarded the generals, who were milling about and shouting curses at runaways.

  General Early trotted back to meet him. “Gordon, for God’s sake! How far back are your men?”

  “Ten minutes away, sir.”

  Early glanced over his shoulder and his hair threw sweat. “I don’t know if we have ten minutes. Jones is dead, his brigade’s collapsed. Battle’s brigade pulled back without orders and they’re a goddamned shambles.” Dancing his horse about, Early pointed into the thickets south of the Turnpike. “Can’t even say what’s holding up the Yankees. Unless the bastards have squirreled themselves around in there. Worst damned fighting terrain I’ve ever come across. You get your men in there as fast as they can go, just plunge on in at, say, a twenty-degree angle from the road here. Then you give those goddamned Yankees a fucking.”