Hell or Richmond

by Ralph Peters

  Of course, he yearned to make excuses, to blame others, to agree with Hancock, to delay his attack until he had a full division up on either flank to step off with his men. He feared that this attack would squander lives. But soldiers did not make excuses, nor did they fish for sympathy. Soldiers followed orders.

  “General Hancock,” Getty repeated, “my orders are to attack immediately. I can no longer delay.”

  Even Hancock’s horse appeared disgusted. The animal backed away, prancing and snorting.

  “Then be it on your head, you damned old fool,” Hancock told him. “You’re throwing away your division.”

  Getty saluted and turned away to see if his brigade commanders were ready.

  EIGHT

  Seven p.m.

  Tapp Farm

  “We’re holding them!” Powell Hill could not wait, but had to shout his tidings over the hoofbeats of his horse and the storm of gunfire. “By God, sir, my boys are holding them!”

  Lee passed over the use of the Lord’s name. Hill’s two scant divisions were, indeed, holding their lines. They had been driven back, but they refused to be driven farther. It made him proud unto sinfulness.

  He could not see the fighting, which had been veiled by smoke. Even with little artillery in play, the roar of ten thousand rifles and more made the fouled air quiver. Men howled and cheered in masses. Still, he heard Hill’s flinty voice as the corps commander reined up, panting and sweated through his blouse, deprived of his hat by war.

  “Hancock’s men … they just come on and we pile them up, just pile them up.”

  Lee sensed the butchery wrought within the smoke. It had been and still was a desperate day, but his soldiers had been magnificent, a wonder.

  Not all of them, of course. The wounded men who could walk streamed back and shirkers infiltrated the ranks of the brave. There always would be a few, Lee knew, men pleading, if challenged, that they were out of ammunition or seeking to locate their units. Other men wandered open-mouthed and open-eyed after something cracked inside them. But the cowards and weaklings were few today, as if all good men sensed the desperate hour.

  “My compliments, General Hill,” Lee said. “Your men have done splendidly.”

  “Any reinforcements coming from Ewell?” Hill asked.

  “I have asked him to spare us any strength he can.”

  “We could use help now, sir. They do keep coming. Hancock’s got at least one Sixth Corps division added in.”

  “I know.”

  “Longstreet?”

  Lee’s stomach churned unpleasantly. “There have been delays. The march is long.”

  “Sir, we need him. With two divisions, I can’t—” Hill broke off and stared at Lee. Hound-eyed and reproachful.

  “You must hold until dark, General. By morning, General Longstreet’s men will relieve you.”

  “Morning…”

  Hill’s proud spirits were plunging by the second. Lee did not want that. He knew what Hill longed to say, but dared not. Would they still be here in the morning, he and his men? What if Hancock gave them another hard push? The fighting had been savage, the men were exhausted. Many an ammunition pouch was empty. But they had to hold on. He could not let it be otherwise, would not think it. Grant could not be allowed an early triumph.

  “Your soldiers will not let you down,” Lee said. “And you will not let me down.”

  “No, sir. Of course not. But…”

  Hill would have to be satisfied with such praise as he had given him. Lee’s mind drove on.

  “I can’t understand it,” he said. “I cannot fathom it.”

  Hill’s fine stallion nickered, eyes straining, as uneasy as its master. As if it had only now discovered fear.

  “Sir?” Hill said. His lank hair clotted to his face, rendering Lee’s fellow Virginian as ill of aspect as he was in body. Earlier, Lee had feared that the effects of Hill’s youthful indiscretion would incapacitate him before a battle again—as illness had at Gettysburg—but this day had been a triumph for Powell Hill. Never had he performed more bravely or finely than in the face of Hancock’s onslaught. But there was still much to do before nightfall spared them.

  What had Wellington said? “Give me night or Blücher”? His Blücher, James Longstreet, still struggled along country roads. It would be night, or nothing.

  “I do not understand,” Lee said, “the piecemeal nature of General Hancock’s efforts. It isn’t his practice.” He looked at Hill. “General Grant, perhaps? Might he be impatient?”

  Hill considered the matter, but said nothing. Both men sensed that it was time for Hill to ride back down to his troops. It was remarkable how soldiers understood certain things between them.

  “Express my gratitude to Generals Heth and Wilcox for their labors today,” Lee said. “Your corps never did this army finer service.” Anticipating Hill, he raised a salute and dropped it. His hand was heavy, the knuckles swollen.

  Hill spurred his mount and pounded back down into the battle’s miasma. His sweat-heavy hair broke free and streamed behind him, as if daring his aides to grasp a lock.

  How long? How long until those people ceased fighting this day? Two hours? Surely they could not fight in those hideous thickets in the darkness? An attack would dissolve into chaos.

  Jehovah had stayed the course of the sun for Joshua. Now Lee wished the Lord would speed it along. The thought was insolent, blasphemous. But it was there. He wanted the Lord’s attention, hope, a sign …

  Meade and Grant seemed taken by surprise, there was that much. All day, their moves had been awkward and incremental, meeting successive repulses. Ewell’s front, to the north, along the Turnpike, had been quiet for hours, the killing grown desultory. But Hancock was a bulldog.

  Lee’s own plan had gone to pieces. There could be no withdrawal to the Mine Run position now. Despite this day’s severity and loss. The hasty barricades and rifle pits his men had thrown up here, in this … this wilderness, indeed … were nothing as to the entrenchments to their rear. But such would have to do. The battle had been joined, against his will … perhaps against wills on both sides … but Lee knew that he had to fight here and now, that Grant could not be allowed a victory in their first encounter. He had to be taught a lesson, his expectations frustrated, his army bloodied and its commander shamed. Grant had to learn here, on this field, that there would be no easy victories anymore, that the army he now faced was not the hapless foe he had known in the West. No matter the cost, the Army of Northern Virginia had to hold its ground, to command it.

  Meade had to be beaten, but Grant had to be shamed.

  Walter Taylor cantered up. Lee waved the adjutant off. He needed a moment. And had the matter been vital, Taylor would have come on at a gallop. The members of his staff knew him by now, even the inflection of such a gesture: Not now … unless the business cannot wait.

  Ewell had won the day along the Turnpike, and Lee had heard that Gordon—an officer on whom he had long had his eye—had performed brilliantly at the decisive moment, carrying all before him. But here on the Plank Road the matter remained doubtful. Bravery, as he had learned so painfully at Gettysburg, went only so far.

  The firing beyond the hill, down in the gunsmoke, swelled again.

  All his life, Lee had scorned selfish prayers. But now he prayed:

  “Lord, let it be night.”

  Seven thirty p.m.

  Brock Road

  “Morgan!” Hancock barked to his chief of staff. “Ride down and get that Harvard sonofabitch. I need him now.”

  His chief of staff smiled and tipped a salute. Morgan liked a battle, the little bastard. West Point hadn’t spoiled that one. Told hilarious stories about riding herd on the Mormons with Sidney Johnston.

  “Wait a minute, Morgan,” Hancock bellowed. “Waste of goddamned time, I’ll—” He whipped about. “You there, soldier. You. Turn your ass around and get back in the fight, that’s no fucking wound.” And turning again to his chief of staff: “Tell Mot
t to get those twats of his back in the fight, they’re not here to spread their legs for Robert E. Lee. I’ll deal with Barlow myself. Walker, you come with me. And two couriers.” He pointed. “You two. The rest of you stay put, including flags.”

  He spurred his horse, and a streak of white-fire pain shot from thigh to brain. Damned wound had been a bother all day. Just had to ignore it. Gettysburg. Finest hour. Bullshit, all of it. Just more slaughter. Now this mess. Getty pigheaded as ever, with Frank Wheaton moaning that his men were exhausted. Sweet Christ, they were all exhausted. And poor, damned Hays, dead as bones. Meade pushing him to attack, attack, attack. Not Meade’s way, either. Hancock felt the heavy hand of Grant behind all that. Attack, attack! And he had attacked and attacked, first to keep goddamned Getty from annihilation, then, as more of his men arrived, drenched in sweat, painted with dust, and throats as dry as your grandmother’s tits, because he had just enough success to make it worth continuing. “In you go, boys.” And out they came. Bloody mess. Mott’s men falling back in droves. All of them, his boys under Mott as well as Getty’s mob, backed off by two raggle-taggle divisions under Hill, the walking skeleton, and Longstreet not even up. Where was that sonofabitch?

  “Walker,” he called behind him as he rode, “if you can’t keep up, I’ll get a damned aide who can.”

  Goddamned Barlow. He’d have that cocksure look on his schoolboy face. But he was the man for this now, the little piss-cutter. Hancock wondered if the stories were true about Barlow’s mother whoring her way through New England society to keep her brood fed and clothed, with the father Bedlam mad and off to the races. If the rumors were true, Sir Frank wasn’t quite so fine as he let on.

  Might explain his delight in killing, though. Shame had never made any bugger kinder. No matter how well concealed the shame might be. Was that the case with Powell Hill, with his plugged-up cock and his gal lost to Georgie McClellan, of all people?

  Soldiers, some wounded, others not, leapt out of his way. Stripped to the waist and working like navvies, enlisted men shoveled up earthworks along the road and chopped down trees to open fields of fire. Still others meandered, shocked by battle or dumbstruck with the heat. Hard enough for a man to breathe in the smoke, and damned near impossible to hear. The battle raging to his right reminded him of ocean storms pounding on the California rocks. So long ago it seemed. California. Worthless place, and keep the gold for your troubles. But once you’d taken it over from the greasers, you damned well couldn’t return it and say, “Sorry.”

  Hancock’s fury preceded him. A battery struggling up the road hurriedly drew to the side to let him pass. That only angered him more. He didn’t need more guns, he had no place for them. He needed infantry, damn it. To replace the infantry sacrificed in the utter absence of a sensible plan. Terrible damned place to fight. Favored the defender in every way.

  But Grant wanted a fight, that much was clear.

  And now he had one.

  The trees fell away on the left. Hancock spotted Barlow up on a hillock, in front of his guns, high on a white horse, his damned high horse, as cool as if he’d never had to shit.

  As always, Barlow’s men looked ordered and ready.

  When Barlow saw Hancock, he cantered down to meet him. He didn’t gallop. Just cantered.

  But there was an expectation on Barlow’s face.

  “Barlow! Ready to go in, damn you?”

  The white-faced—pasty-faced—boy pulled up, the two of them horse’s nose to horse’s ass.

  “Of course, sir.”

  “Then go in, damn it. Mott’s made a Mexican whorehouse mess of his attack. I need you on the left. Just up the road.”

  “I know where Mott went in, sir.”

  “Just follow the goddamned bodies. Christ, Barlow … we were breaking them! And I don’t know what happened. Oh, I do and I don’t. The bastards dig in so fast. And you can’t see a thing until you’re right on top of the sonsofbitches. Despite all the fucking interference from headquarters, we were pushing them like the devil’s broom in Hell. Then they dug in their heels, and now we’re shit for the birds.” Hancock stroked his agonized thigh. “Just shore up Mott on the left. Turn them, if you can. Do what you can before dark.” Hancock looked to the sky, its light already fading. “Can’t let the day end with those bastards thinking they’ve screwed us. Don’t want Deacon Lee feeling all holy about today’s sermon.” Before Barlow could speak, Hancock added, “Leave one brigade here. In case something does turn up along the road.”

  “I’ll leave Paul Frank. His men just closed from the tavern. Miles and Brooke are the men I want now, anyway.” He looked straight into Hancock’s eyes, unblinking as a snake. Not much subordinate feeling in Frank Barlow. As if he were God Almighty and Commodore Vanderbilt wrapped into one. “What about Smyth, the Irish?”

  “You’ll get Smyth back later,” Hancock told him. “We’ll have to wait until after dark to untangle things up there. Well, what are you waiting for? Teacher to ring the bell?”

  Barlow smiled, then grinned. He had an ugly grin, all crooked teeth. The expression transformed the schoolboy into a murderer.

  Turning to his own aide, Barlow called, “Black! Tell Brooke and Miles they’re to form their brigades for battle. Immediately.”

  Eight fifteen p.m.

  Below the intersection of the Plank Road and Brock Road

  “Forward!” Barlow shouted. He lowered his saber, pointing it at the enemy. Out there in the brush and smoke.

  If any of his subordinates had failed to hear the command amid the din, they saw the saber drop. His colonels aped the gesture. Bayonets fixed, the blue lines moved into the undergrowth, with Miles’ brigade forward on the right, four of five regiments on line, and Brooke trailing slightly on the left, refusing the flank just enough to address surprises.

  There was no cheering. His men had seen enough from the battle’s edge to realize this was a bitter sort of fight, close and grinding, with men fed between the millstones. Nor was there any parade-ground nonsense, with weapons held at right-shoulder-shift to the last. His men went in with their rifles leveled at their sides, ready to charge.

  Ahead: Ragged rifle volleys, shrieks, and curses unintelligible but distinguished by their tone. His skirmishers were out, alert, in their groups of four, trained specially for their task over the past month. He listened as majors and sergeants, captains and gaping lieutenants, chastised soldiers who fell one step behind. The lines would not remain unbroken, the terrain, the green and smoldering rottenness of it, would not allow it. But Barlow wanted them held together as long as possible. Each step counted. His orders were that no man was to fire until they were atop or among the enemy. He had had enough gentlemanly idiocy à la Fontenoy. There were to be no pauses, no premature volleys that did little more than immobilize his men as targets. And when the lines inevitably came apart, his soldiers had some training now in open-order fighting.

  This would be a test. Of course, every battle was a test. And it bewildered Frank Barlow that any man was ever willing to fail.

  But plenty were. Along with the wounded, stumbling, gruesome, or glad of a crimson excuse to make for the rear, other men just trod rearward, most still with their rifles, quitting, as if they had merely reached the end of their shift at the foundry.

  Had it been up to him, every one of them would have been shot.

  He took the flat of his own sword to the back of a limping sergeant, one of his own men, who had not quite kept up with his charges. Applying the saber soundly to the man’s back, Barlow snapped, “Get moving, or I’ll tear off those stripes myself.”

  The man stepped out at the double, catching up to his men in a scatter of seconds. He still limped, but not as slowly.

  The first corpses materialized, dark forms in the fading light. And the immobile or crawling wounded became an annoyance, pleading to be carried off or succored by men who had other tasks before them. His own ranks began to buckle, encountering stands of scrub pines and impenetrable br
iars. His officers did all they could to enforce alignments.

  Other swathes of undergrowth had been trampled or broken off in the previous fighting and he was able to ride a jagged course behind the ranks of Miles’ leftmost regiments. In hardly a minute, he reached the brigade commander.

  “Nellie, just don’t stop. Don’t let your men stop. They won’t be expecting us this late.” He glanced instinctively toward the sky, as Hancock had done. “Make the bad light a friend.”

  “Rebs must be tired,” Miles said. “They’ve stuck, though, say that for them.”

  What did he, Francis Channing Barlow, have to say for the Confederates? Nothing for their cause, which he believed odious. But wounded—mortally, they all thought—and taken prisoner at Gettysburg, he had liked their officers better than his own comrades. Their courtesy was as good as a cold drink on that July day, the manners of the officers courtly to quaintness. Even their ragamuffin rank and file had shown a respect toward superior officers that simply did not exist in the Union’s armies. All of them had been unexpectedly kind, and all things being equal—which they were not—he would have preferred to serve beside such men.

  But the nation’s soil had to be rid of their “peculiar institution,” and the Union had to be saved. Both matters were givens. So Barlow would kill the men he liked with undiminished enthusiasm.

  Battle was better by far than any sport. And the prizes were worth immeasurably more.

  “If they’re tired, they can be panicked,” he told Miles. “If they panic, don’t let your front ranks stop to take prisoners. Don’t give their reserves a moment to react. If a soldier stops to loot, I want you to shoot him.”

  Miles laughed. “Looting won’t be a problem. The Rebs have nothing worth stealing.”

  But they did. Tobacco. An officer’s watch. Some of the men the North recruited now were inveterate thieves. And worse. Barlow wanted those men to go forward, to take the bullets in chest and loins, sparing his precious veterans.