by Ralph Peters
Gregg rose in his stirrups, roaring out his commands. “Brigade … attention. Y’all listen here. The eyes of General Lee himself are on you now. Texans! Forward!”
Wet-eyed, Lee tore off his hat and waved it. “Texans have never let me down,” he shouted. “Texans always move them.”
The brigade howled as it advanced, a thousand coyotes bred with a thousand wildcats.
“We’ll skin ’em alive, General Lee,” a soldier called.
Lee rode forward with them. Willing, almost wanting, to die, rather than be vanquished. Even now the issue remained in doubt. He did not know if these first brigades would be sufficient to halt the blue hordes until their comrades could join them. When a defeat began, it was difficult to stem. And he would not live on, if it meant being humbled.
They had reached the center of the field, with bullets scouring the air and Texans falling, when the men about him realized that he meant to join their charge.
The soldiers nearest Lee wavered, then stopped. The colors paused, disordering the advance.
“Go back, go back!” the soldiers cried. “General Lee, go back!”
Lee felt the sun upon his hair, his scalp. His vision blurred.
“We ain’t a-goin’ on, less’n you go back,” a soldier told him.
“Go back!” a sergeant seconded.
Men reached for his bridle, but Traveller reared his head.
The brigadier—yes, it was Gregg, that was the man’s name—rode up and snapped at him, “Go back, sir. You’re delaying my advance.”
Coming up from the rear, his aide, Venable, called out, “General Longstreet’s yonder. He’s waiting on you, sir.”
Lee still felt dazed. But the words had penetrated.
“Yes,” he said. “Yes, I will go back.”
As he turned his horse, the Texans howled and charged.
* * *
Longstreet. The man’s face shone with sweat. Lee did not remonstrate with him. There was no point: Done was done. And he was here now, evidently full of fight. Suddenly, Lee felt the weight of his exhaustion. But he did not relax his spine.
“No time for fancy work,” Longstreet told him, with the battle’s renewed pandemonium a few hundred yards away. “Gregg’s boys are in, and Rock Benning’s. Perry’s coming up, I’ll put him on the left. Just need to hold ’em off until I can form up for a proper counterattack. Down that road looks about right.”
Lee nodded. His thoughts were a muddle, veering between the accusatory and feelings of relief, of gratitude. He did not quite trust himself to speak, unsure if his voice would obey him or yield to his spleen.
“I’ll take care of this, sir,” Longstreet said, with a glance toward Venable. As if the two had conspired in some matter. “Give me a free hand, and I’ll restore the line. And more, God willing.” His Old War Horse grinned, yellow teeth strong in a mighty beard. “But I do think we’d best leave this spot. It’s not quite comfortable.”
“Yes,” Lee said. At first, he allowed Venable to nudge him rearward. Then he took command of himself, gripping the reins and touching Traveller’s belly with his spurs.
More and more of Longstreet’s men were coming up. Where there had been a drought, there was a flood. The Lord was merciful, after all.
Even at a distance, he heard Longstreet shouting commands, his voice as powerful as his will.
Back on the knoll by the line of guns, Lee met a litter carrying off General Benning, badly wounded. The man had gone in only minutes before. Much hard labor remained, more blood in tribute to sway the fortunes of war. But there was hope now.
Lee felt a burst of elation so unreasonable it alarmed him.
He watched the developing battle from the ridge. Soon, he began to issue clear orders again.
Another brigade was forming up to wrest back the field’s northern edge. Lee rode over to them and asked, “What troops are these?”
“Law’s Alabama Brigade,” a soldier hollered. “Law’s men,” yelled another. “Alabamans,” came a rash of shouts.
Their commander looked taken aback. Then Lee remembered. “Law’s Brigade.” But it marched under Colonel Perry. Longstreet had arrested Law. It had not been a popular move. Perry was a good officer, and he would do his duty. As would these men. But Lee decided to speak to Longstreet about Law after the battle. The army could not afford to demean its best officers.
Lee put a good face on it all. “God bless the Alabamans!” he called to the men. “All I ask is that you keep up with the Texans. Surely, Alabamans can do that.…”
“More!” men cried. “We’ll go right on to Washington,” a stick of a man hollered. Lee felt the old adulation again, the gorgeous warmth of it. He nodded at Perry, who raised his sword in salute. It caught the sun and flashed lightning.
“Alabama,” Perry bellowed, “at the double-quick … forward!”
As the brigade advanced, a black-eyed, black-haired, black-bearded lieutenant colonel on foot caught Lee’s eye, a man with a look as menacing as a devil. The officer threw off a quick salute, as if even Lee didn’t matter one bit now, as if all that mattered were getting on with the killing.
“Oates,” Lee remembered.
* * *
William C. Oates couldn’t say whether he’d ever seen a sight grander than Lee on his fine gray horse, surrounded by his staff on that little hill, nodding as the 15th Alabama passed. “Like a god of war,” Oates told himself, instinctively repeating the phrase he’d heard used to describe Lee, “just like an old god of war.” For an instant and no more, he believed he had caught the army commander’s eyes.
Then it was all business, all done in a hurry, with Yankees somewhere down in the trees a few hundred yards along, at the rough field’s border. Colonel Perry hollered orders, doing just fine for all the deep bad feelings, and Oates bellowed to be heard above the cannon, riflery, and titanic howl of men bent on doing harm. Marching backward, ass turned to the enemy, Oates pointed with his saber wherever he wanted his men to straighten the line, but they were all right, his boys, all right, just marching forward angry as wild country sonsofbitches cheated at cards in town.
Already hot. And the smoke stink, the burn in a man’s lungs. Entrails and death for a welcome. All the tiredness of the long night’s march, with its dead-end paths and inexcusable blundering, blew away like dandelion fluff. Nothing perked a fellow up like the prospect of killing others and being lauded for it.
The field sloped down, gently, the only gentle thing left in the world. Heel gripped by a varmint’s hole, Oates almost stumbled. Cursing hard, he turned to face the enemy lurking ahead. He had no intention of marching behind his men, or in between the ranks. He was in a going-forward mood.
The 15th advanced on the left flank of the brigade. Looking down the long lines, with battle flags pawed at by whore-lazy smoke and bayonets bright as gold teeth in a pimp’s mouth, Oates just felt an itch to do, to flail at the earth and sky in untempered wrath, to leave death and awe in his wake. There was nothing grander than this, not one thing finer. Not even a high-yellow woman after a creek bath.
The Yankees were down there all right. Firing now. Bullets slopping up the air, trying to slow things down. Oates couldn’t see his enemies for the sun’s glare, like jagged glass in the eye. Allied with the Yankees, thick smoke gripped the low ground, hiding death, while his men advanced over open land in raw light.
Be there soon enough, he told himself. Then we’ll see who’s king of the hill today.
“Steady, Alabama, steady!” Oates barked. “Major Lowther, address the second line.”
Lowther was back, in time for whatever glory he could steal. Oates didn’t trust the man, never had, but Lowther had friends in high places.
The 47th Alabama, off to the right, hit the trees first and paused to shoot, with their officers yapping at them.
“Nobody stops, nobody shoots,” Oates shouted, throat already smoke-bit.
Yankees shooting plenty, but not aiming worth a damn.
&nb
sp; By echelon from the right, the brigade’s regiments dropped into the trees. The way they went in, it was clear the gentle slope turned sheer in the undergrowth. Made sense. Fields ended where a man couldn’t plow any farther. Should’ve figured that out back a ways, Oates told himself.
Before the 15th hit the trees, a courier from Colonel Perry reached him. The young man, Cadwallader, did not fancy riding in front of the advancing ranks.
Saluting, the boy said, “Colonel Oates! There’s Yankees up on a rump of hill yonder, up ahead on your left. They’re shooting down into us, we’re caught in a swamp down there.” The lieutenant gestured into the morbid greenery.
“Acknowledged,” Oates said. And the boy rode off.
He halted the regiment, ordered a left face, and ran to the head of what was now a column of twos. Sword flashing, he called, “Forward. Follow me!”
Splitting away from the brigade, he plunged down the bank through tangled brush, pushing forward regardless of the clawing thorns. Before he poked a boot into the pig marsh at the bottom of the bank, he spotted the blue-bellies. Up on a spur where the trees were thinner, thick ranks of men in dark coats, lined up almost too perfectly, sent volleys down into the wet ground where the 15th’s sister regiments had gotten their cracker behinds stuck, with more Yankees ahead of them and these sonsofbitches firing down from the flank.
The brush and trees thinned between the narrow marsh and the enemy, as if the soil couldn’t nourish anything more. That would expose his men, but it also revealed the Yankees.
He splashed and slopped his way ahead, confident the long gray snake of men behind him would follow. Let them get their feet wet, too. Just make angry men angrier.
He noted a gap between the Yankees gone head-to-head with the brigade and their comrades up on the spur. No time to charge through it and turn their lines, but the gap meant the bluecoats up on that high ground wouldn’t get much support. And they were about to need a passel of help.
With the enemy shooting down at him and missing—men shooting downhill shot high, more often than not—and hollering insults and curses in his direction, Oates leapt up on a speck of dry ground, halted the regiment, and immediately ordered, “Left face! Forward! Right wheel!”
It was a thing of beauty. Morass or not, the regiment pivoted as crisply as if on parade in Montgomery.
Pointing his sword at the enemy up on the spur, Oates shouted, “Charge! Fire on the move!” He drew out his revolver as he ran forward, cocking the hammer with his thumb.
The 15th Alabama went up the hill like a pack of hounds after a three-legged fox. Some of the Yankees didn’t even pause to fire again, but thinned their own line by running. The remainder gave off a doubtful feel.
“Give ’em the bayonet!” Oates hollered. But his men were screaming to wake the dead and he doubted he was heard. Mostly for the benefit of the Yankees, he added, “Kill any bastard who doesn’t drop his rifle.”
Even with time slowed down the way it did when men started killing each other, it still seemed but seconds before his men were in among the Yankees, shooting them belly-wise with leveled weapons, smashing in heads, and, here and there, using bayonets. In a brace of minutes, there were more Yankees with their hands in the air than cottonmouths in Pike County.
Oates came face-to-face with a lieutenant begging his men to rally. He shot him in the center of the chest. The soldiers the boy had gathered up dropped their rifles and raised their paws.
The Yankees were got up fine, with uniforms unravaged by campaigning, the color of their blouses still darkest blue.
Coming up on his major, who didn’t seem to be doing much other than tagging along, Oates said, “Lowther, you pull the boys back, get ’em organized again. Most quick. Hear me?”
“I’m shot,” Lowther said, calm as a fellow reporting indigestion. “In the foot. I have to go to the rear.” And he strutted off.
Oates didn’t mind seeing the bastard go.
A string of disarmed Yankees came by, with Sergeant Ball shoving them along. Oates grabbed one by the arm, a boy hardly of shaving age, and yanked him out of the gang of bewildered bluecoats.
“Talk to me, boy. What’s this here unit of yours?”
Terrified at the sight of Oates, at the death grip of his hand, the boy stammered, “F-Fifteenth New York Heavy Artillery, sir. Fifteenth New York Heavy—”
Oates released him. What the Hell? Were the Yankees so desperate they were plugging artillerymen into their battle line? Explained the worthlessness, though.
His hip reminded him of last year’s wound. It just made him feel meaner.
The 15th New York Heavy Artillery? Christ almighty. Probably couldn’t tell a rifle’s muzzle from a pig’s ass. Took a lot of the polish off the business. He would have preferred to whip a veteran regiment.
Re-forming his men as quickly as he could, Oates spotted Cadwallader, Perry’s aide, splashing through the marsh toward him. The lieutenant was on foot and speckled with mud.
Pride comes before a fall, Oates thought with a smile.
“Colonel Oates! Colonel Perry needs you to rejoin the brigade quick as you can, sir.”
“Tell Colonel Perry we’re about to hit those Yankees of his in the flank.”
The lieutenant looked doubtful. “The colonel hasn’t authorized that movement, sir.”
“He will when it’s done,” Oates told him. “You go along now.”
The lieutenant saluted and plodded off. Oates was never fond of messenger boys. In his experience, they found you too late and delivered instructions that no longer made sense.
He ordered every man to reload, then led them off along a saddle on the Yankee side of the marsh. He had that gap in mind. Indeed, nobody had come to the aid of the pressed artillerymen. The other Yankees hadn’t even been aware of what was transpiring.
“Sergeant Morgan,” he called. There was no time for the chain of command to relay orders.
Face still showing the beating he’d taken two days before, the Welshman rushed up and saluted, open-palmed, the way the English did.
“Take a few men yonder, along the ridge there. Stop when you see the Yankees and before they see you. Let me know how the ground lies. We’ll be coming right along.”
“Yes, sir.”
“Well, move, man!”
Morgan had a way of prowling that came naturally to some men, while others could never learn it, hard as they tried. Oates believed in attacking fiercely when you weren’t sure what you were facing, but he didn’t mind knowing.
It had not been a half hour since they had marched by Robert E. Lee.
As the column advanced through the brush, Oates turned and snapped, “Y’all hush. Officers, keep your men quiet.”
Ahead, a battle raged, but the regiment moved along in a pocket of silence. Oates wondered if those Yankee artillerymen had just been forgotten by their army. Devil of a business, war. Like dice, but with worse odds.
At one point, Oates could peer down the trough of the marsh. The brigade was still mired. A few thousand men on either side fired at each other, unable to see much of anything, just loading and shooting and hoping. That kind of fighting didn’t appeal to Oates. He believed that fighting was about doing, not just waiting for something to be done to you.
Movement in the trees: one of his men returning from Sergeant Morgan.
Fleet as a deer, the private stopped just a breath from Oates and pivoted to march beside him. The boy talked hot: “Sergeant Morgan says they got no idea we’re here, they’re all just having themselves a time shooting at the brigade. He said to lead you over to where he is.”
“You go ahead, son. And don’t run.”
The hip, the leg. His body’s untimely recalcitrance enraged him.
The distance remaining was nothing. In less than five minutes, he had the regiment ranked and ready behind the crest of another low ridge that overlooked the Yankees. They had neglected to outpost the rise, figuring those defrocked artillerymen had their flank wel
l covered. They were going to pay for it.
Oates glanced down the silent ranks of his regiment, allowing himself a few seconds to savor the beauty. The world crackled with death. Smoke sneaked around like a no-good woman’s fingers.
He kept his voice low: “Regiment! Forward!”
At the tenth step, he called, “Halt.”
On their twelfth step, the men stood ready. Overlooking a maddened nest of men in blue, thick as ants on cornmeal, every last damned one concentrated on killing the men in gray trapped to their front.
Not twenty yards away, and they hadn’t heard a thing.
A blond-bearded Yankee looked their way at last. The man’s mouth opened.
Oates opened his mouth, too: “Aim, fire! Fire at will!”
Some of his men got off second shots before the Yankees cottoned to their predicament. Then the blue-bellies howled. Like one big, wounded creature. And men began to flee.
“Colors to me!” Oates cried. “Charge!”
With a screeching, biting, terrifying yell, his men leapt forward, the old veterans able to trot along and reload as they went down the slope. Other men raced forward to grab a Yankee or a flag. Moments later, another great Rebel yell arose, the Alabama version, and the rest of the brigade joined the charge, splashing forward, banners high and catching in branches.
After that, it was nothing but hounds and hares.
* * *
“Ride with you, Micah?” Longstreet asked Brigadier General Jenkins. Longstreet maintained a steady aspect for the world, but inside he was glowing. That morning, he had redeemed his reputation.
“The South Carolina Brigade would be honored, sir,” Jenkins told him. “As I am myself.”
Longstreet rode close. “You know, it would not be taken amiss if you—”
The highborn son of the Low Country cut him off. “I’m fine, sir. Just fine.”
But Jenkins wasn’t fine. The dashing young man looked twice his age this morning. Longstreet knew that the brigadier had been carried to the battlefield in an ambulance, flat on his back, and had managed to mount his horse only at nearby Parker’s Store.
“And you understand what you’re to do?” Longstreet said.