by Ralph Peters
Of course, he knew he wouldn’t, couldn’t, relieve them. Gibbon and Barlow were the best fighters he had. For what that was worth. And he lacked the power to take away their ranks. But those two bastards had almost cost him the battle this fine day.
“Morgan!” he called to his chief of staff. “Ride down and fetch Barlow. Don’t send Walker or Miller. Go yourself and escort the bugger. I’ll be with Gibbon, we’re going to have a prayer meeting. Bring Barlow.”
Morgan dug steel into his horse’s belly, making the weary beast leap onto the road.
Saving his fury until he had things reorganized, Hancock had restricted himself to sending Gibbon terse orders to get things done. Now it was time for a reckoning. He rode the short distance through the splintered woodland, between troops gilded with sweat and useless batteries. At a hastily got-up field surgery, the wounded lay packed together like tinned fish. The usual pile of limbs lay near enough to warn men what to expect.
He wondered if he should have let them take off his leg and have done with it. Had he been one of these poor bastards with no rank, the butchers would have hacked it off at once. But generals rated above common humanity. Other men died while a general’s limb was saved by surgeons who dropped everything else. But the ghosts had their revenge: The pain from his thigh approached an unbearable level.
Spotting Gibbon astride his horse, Hancock turned to his flag-bearers and staff. “This is generals’ talk, stay back. Walker, find out why I haven’t heard fuck-all from Stevenson.”
Hancock nudged his horse forward. Gibbon rode a few dainty steps toward him and saluted. As if condescending to do so.
Be fair, Hancock warned himself. But he just couldn’t do it. He needed to unload some canister on the men who had let him down.
“You fucking bastard,” he said by way of opening the conversation.
Gibbon paled. His mouth opened. No words came out.
“You know you almost cost this army the battle, you sonofabitch? I want an answer, damn you. Why didn’t you send Barlow’s division forward when I ordered it? Was it you who decided to send me just one brigade? Or was that pissant Barlow making decisions for all of us today? I put you in charge of my left wing, not him. Why didn’t you send me his goddamned division when I asked for it?”
“Gen-General Hancock…,” Gibbon stuttered, something Hancock had never known him to do, “I … I never received such an order. You called for one of Barlow’s brigades, not his division.”
“That’s a goddamned lie!”
Gibbon blanched. But Hancock saw fire rising in the other man’s eyes, too. Gibbon was a fighter, both of them wounded within a stone’s throw of each other on that ridge at Gettysburg.
“General Hancock, your messenger asked for one brigade. At which point I ordered Barlow to dispatch a brigade immediately.”
“I ordered you to send me his division. Between you and Barlow and Burnside, we might as well just surrender to goddamned Lee.”
Barlow galloped toward them, big saber clanking. He wore no hat or uniform blouse, just his usual checkered shirt and a bow tie askew. Morgan rode at his side.
The brigadier reined in, saluting.
Hancock turned first to Morgan. “Charlie, take yourself off.”
Morgan eyed the three generals, saluted sharply, and left them.
“You piss-cutting bastard,” Hancock said to Barlow. “What have you got to say for yourself? Did you, or did you not, receive an order to advance your division?”
Barlow was startled. “When was the order given, sir?”
“You goddamned well know when it was given. This morning, damn you.”
Bewildered, Barlow told him, “I received no such order.” He looked at Gibbon, then back to Hancock. “I was directed to advance one brigade to support the attack’s left wing.”
Weren’t they both just too smug? Society boys. Hancock yearned to take them down a peg. “And who do you send, at that? Goddamned Frank, a drunken sauerkraut gobbler. Do you know he ran away? Left his men and ran?”
“I’ve already relieved Colonel Frank, sir.” Again, he looked to Gibbon. “With General Gibbon’s approval.” Left unsaid was that Hancock had prevented Barlow from replacing Frank in April.
“General,” Gibbon said, “you can’t blame Barlow for the confusion. He obeyed the order I sent him, which relayed the only order I had from you on the subject.”
Hancock refused to be placated. He lashed out at Barlow again. “And why send Frank? The worst brigade commander…”
“His troops were fresh. They weren’t in the fight last night. And I wanted to keep my best brigades together, sir. I expected you to order me to attack.”
“Then why didn’t you?” Hancock knew he was being completely unreasonable. Even making an ass of himself.
“Because I was never ordered to do so, sir.”
Barlow’s tone was unafraid, almost cocky now. And that wouldn’t do. He had meant to put the fear of God and W. S. Hancock into the little piss-cutter, and here was Barlow turning the tables on him.
“Sir…,” Gibbon tried again. “Win, please … Barlow did precisely what I ordered him to do. If there’s a fault, it’s with me.”
“Damned right it is.”
“But I swear to you that I never received an order to advance Barlow’s division.”
“Well, that’s the order I sent. And I’ll damned well prove it, we’ll see what I wrote.…” But Hancock’s guns were running out of powder: He wasn’t at all certain he could prove anything; he was blustering and he knew it. It had been a terrible day, made worse by its spectacular beginning.
“General Hancock, I received a verbal order,” Gibbon said. “To forward one brigade.”
“Well, I damned well didn’t have time to write you a formal invitation. I was trying to hold this goddamned corps together. With that bastard Longstreet up my ass.”
How he regretted his early morning euphoria, when his attack had overwhelmed Hill’s shocked men, driving them more than a mile down the Plank Road. He had told Lyman, Meade’s little spy, “Tell General Meade we’re driving them handsomely.” Hardly an hour later, Longstreet’s men had been doing all the driving, herding Hancock’s men toward calamity.
Barlow cocked an eyebrow. “We might ask the messenger, sir. Maybe he confused things. Who was it, why don’t you send for him?”
Hancock felt himself heating up again. With the pain in his thigh a torment. “He’s dead. It was damned Roberts. He was killed riding out after Wadsworth.”
Barlow curled his lips. “‘Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are dead,’” he muttered.
Hancock turned on him again. “Goddamn you! I don’t know what the devil you’re talking about, Barlow. I never do. But I know insolence when I see it.”
“My apologies, General. The remark wasn’t so intended.”
They were so smooth, so sleek, the two of them. White-glove boys.
Suddenly, all of the air went out of Hancock. He wanted to lie down, to put all this behind him and rub his thigh with alcohol. But any rest was a long way off, and it was time to get back to business. He felt completely drained, but the Confederates would be coming at least one more time and he had to meet them. The day was still too young for Lee to quit.
“Barlow, goddamn it, just go back to your men. We’ll sort this out later. Get your men ready to fight. Bobby Lee and Pete Longstreet won’t let us off so easily.”
“My men are ready, sir.” Barlow saluted and pulled hard on the reins. Too hard. Hancock sensed, belatedly, how much of a struggle it had been for Frank Barlow to keep his temper. Christ. Of course, Barlow would have wanted to get into the fight. What had he been thinking?
Yet … Hancock was certain he had called for Barlow’s division to come up. Gibbon must have misheard. Or the messenger had misspoken.…
In a voice almost penitent, Hancock said to Gibbon, “All right, John. Tell me about the men over here. Are they up for a fight?”
“Some of them. Som
e of them are angry as hornets. Others…”
“Others?”
“Others are just plain broken. They won’t be worth a damn until they’ve slept. Maybe not until we get out of these woods.”
Hancock nodded and stared down past his stirrups. “We came so close. We had him. Lee. Hill’s corps was broken, utterly broken.” He met Gibbon’s eyes. “Then they had us. The Second Corps never folded like that before. It was shameful to watch.”
“Well, their boiler ran out of steam. And just in time.” Gibbon tried to bandage things up between them, adding, “Don’t worry, Win. If they come again, we’ll hold them.”
Hancock nodded. Thinking about the victory he had almost won that morning.
A courier rode up. Colonel Morgan intercepted the man, who drew a paper from his dispatch bag. The horseman looked agitated, anxious.
Not more bad news, Hancock thought. Good Lord.
Morgan rode forward. Slowly. Testing his welcome.
Hancock waved him on. One storm, at least, was over.
The chief of staff held out the unread paper, but said, “Confederate prisoners say Longstreet’s been badly wounded. Maybe dying.”
“Well,” Gibbon commented, “now we know why they stopped.”
ELEVEN
May 6, three p.m.
The Wilderness, northeast of Tapp Field
Oates thought: Well, we do have us an abundance of high-flown officers name of Perry.
He said: “General Perry, sir … Colonel Perry … I’ve been out there myself. There’s more Yankees in those woods than maggots on a dog been two days dead.”
“Indeed, Colonel Oates, indeed,” General Perry responded. “Those are Wadsworth’s men. Their general is dead, they’ve been sorely tried. I doubt they’ll trouble us.” He offered Oates a smile that felt well practiced. “Trepidation must not be our downfall.”
Oates thought: A man can either talk fine, or he can talk sense.
He said: “My men go forward the way you say, we’re going to pass a lump of high ground on our left. When we do, we’re going to catch it. And—all respect, sir—your Florida boys are going to get it, too. Those Yankees aren’t beat.”
“An advance has been ordered,” General Perry said. “And we shall advance.” He let his bearded jaw play back and forth, swishing his next words around before he spoke them. “We must not let General Longstreet’s misfortune deny us victory.”
Oates knew that the Massachusetts-born Floridian was a brave man. And he knew that Edward Perry was an educated man. He even knew that this particular Perry had read the law in Alabama, as Oates had himself, before becoming a Florida man by choice. But he wasn’t convinced the transplanted Yankee was a wise man. Oates just couldn’t take to the fine-looking fellow’s nasal twang, a sorry concoction of up-north flint and studied-up, high-flown drawl. It was as if some coon-hugging New England preacher tried playing a Southern gentleman on the stage.
As for Longstreet, Oates didn’t revel in the man’s wounding, much as he disliked him. He even hoped the man might live to enjoy a long convalescence away from the army. Fair was fair, and a man who went down in a fight deserved good wishes.
The worst part had been the leaderless muddle that came in Longstreet’s wake, a do-nothing waste of hour after hour while the rest of the generals stuck their hands down each other’s pants to see whose stick was bigger. High chances were squandered, openings bought with good men’s blood that morning.
Now this: an attack in the wrong damned direction. With Yankees piling up just to their north, the two understrength brigades under General Perry were set to attack due east. Might as well poke your bare ass at a rattlesnake.
Oates read the look that Colonel Perry shot him: Quiet down and let me handle this.
Simmering, Oates backed off half a step and pawed sweat from his beard. Truth be told, Colonel Perry had done fine so far. The man was no Evander Law, but he’d fought to win. Oates kept his mouth shut. For the moment.
“General Perry,” Colonel Perry began, “the Alabama Brigade and I take pride in serving under your command, sir. Florida and Alabama, united, must be formidable.…”
Bill Perry, too, had studied for the bar—sometimes it seemed to Oates that he served in an army of lawyers—but the elder Perry had then pursued a career in education, rising high.
“So if I may hazard a thought … let my brigade advance at an oblique from right to left, with Colonel Oates prepared to defend our flank. I’ve given him the Forty-eighth Alabama, in addition to his Fifteenth, and propose that—”
“That will be fine,” the general said, impatient to start his attack. “Your brigade may advance in echelon of battalions, at forty-pace intervals. Will that do?” Without waiting for an answer, he turned to Oates. Their eyes met without fellowship. “I’m sure Colonel Oates won’t allow the foe to embarrass us.”
Oates let an eyebrow climb and said: “Heaps of them out there, sir.” He just couldn’t help himself, had to give this peacock a last warning.
“Indeed,” the general told him. “Heaps of their dead. We shall add to them, Colonel Oates, I expect we shall add to them.”
* * *
General Perry began the attack before Oates got back to his men. He had to run like a damned fool, shot hip feeling like it might crack in two. Wounds to the body, wounds to his vanity, he’d had a surfeit of both.
“Form your men!” he shouted as he passed the 48th. “Commanders to me!” Reaching the 15th, he repeated the order and planted himself where the regiments brushed one another. “Captain Shaaf, get up here. Now!”
There wasn’t much get-ready needed: Calloused inside and out by years of fighting, the men arranged themselves for battle under the eyes of their sergeants. As Shaaf trotted up, Oates told him, “Don’t even stop. Turn around and take your company out as skirmishers. Wheel right and advance.”
But Shaaf did stop, bewildered at the order. The rest of the gathering officers were startled, too.
“Shaaf, just do what you’re told, goddamn it. You know what’s out there, and I know what’s out there. Just go.”
The captain was so taken aback that he forgot to salute. But he turned to his task.
Oates looked over the other officers, some of them bloodied up in the morning ruckus but unwilling to leave their men while they could stand. Young Billy Strickland had a rag tied around his head.
“All right,” Oates said, “there’s no time for pissing on each other’s legs, just do how I tell you. Forty-eighth, right wheel and advance by battalion at the left oblique, forty paces off the Forty-fourth. Fifteenth follows on the left, advancing the same way.”
“That’s mad-dog crazy,” a captain said.
“Well, bite yourself some Yankees,” Oates told him.
When the officers had returned to their positions, Oates allowed himself one deep breath, then ordered the 48th forward. He counted the regiment’s paces like a schoolboy doing his sums with corn kernels. Sharply at their thirty-second step, he barked, “Fifteenth Alabama … forward … march.”
As the 48th Alabama’s front rank landed its fortieth step, the 15th stepped off. Oates figured it for the last orderly action of the afternoon.
No sooner had they pressed into the undergrowth than shots splashed to their front. Shaaf and his boys were in it already.
“Jesus Christ,” Oates muttered. “Jesus damn Christ.”
His front rank passed the mound from which he’d spied swarms of Federals half an hour earlier. Doubtless, the Yankees had skirmishers up there now, men too savvy to open fire too soon. They’d wait until his men reached the low ground where Shaaf was fussing around and the blue-bellies could bring massed fires to bear.
The only hope was to surprise the Yankees in turn, to wheel left and attack straight into their snouts, to shock them with crazy daring and gain some time.
Oates pushed ahead of his men. He had to see things for himself.
Just as he passed through his first rank, hundreds o
f rifles roared on the left.
Men fell around him.
The Yankees were so thick that the brush couldn’t hide the half of them. Seemed to be twice as many, at least, as he’d seen on his earlier prowl. Momentarily stunned by the mass of Federals, Oates expected a charge that would swamp his regiment.
But the Yankees didn’t charge, contenting themselves with a turkey shoot. Shouting orders to change front, he looked about for anything that resembled defensible ground. There wasn’t much.
His vision of a charge of his own evaporated. The numbers out there were just too overwhelming.
Shaaf’s skirmishers stood their ground, buying time with lives. Oates sent a runner to the 48th to halt and change front, too, tying in with the right of the 15th. All they could do now was hold as long as possible.
Under fire, Oates organized his line, anchoring it on bumps of earth that hardly counted as “high ground.” It was worthless dirt by any sane account, but all he had.
His men scrambled to throw together barricades of fallen trees and branches, hacking off scraps of shrubbery that gave a man no protection but let him feel better kneeling down behind them. Tough as bear hide, Shaaf and his boys refused to quit their scuffle out in the killing ground. The captain knew what was at stake: He understood fighting the way a good hound took to hunting.
To the right and back a throw, an uproar of volleys and shouts worsened their prospects. Peering through the brush, Oates sensed as much as saw a dark blur as Union troops surged forward on his flank. They were going after the rest of the Alabama Brigade and General Perry’s Floridians. The Yankees had been handed a gift that was sweeter than a kiss from a rich man’s wife.
His men dug madly with bayonets and spoons, with rifle butts and bare hands, waiting for the hurrah that would signal a Yankee attack against them, too.
“Folger,” Oates said to one of his runners, “go on over and see how Colonel Perry’s fixed. You tell him I can’t advance, but I have a mind to hold, if that suits him. Tell him I just don’t want to be cut off, hear?”