Hell or Richmond

by Ralph Peters

  But Griffin knew no man was free of fear. They only feared different things.

  “Fucked for beans yourself,” Griffin told the horseman.

  Six p.m.

  Upon finishing a novel by Ann Radcliffe, of whom Gordon did not entirely approve, Fanny had asked him if he would like to be granted immortal life.

  “Only if it was shared with you, pet,” he had replied. His response had been immediate and, he thought, artful.

  Lovely in the lamplight, Fanny had drawn in her brows. “I don’t know, John. Really, it sounds grand at first, but when you think about it … isn’t it the brevity of our lives … the finite term … that gives them their poetry, their poignancy?” She smiled. “Would you really love me so much, or the same way, if you knew I’d be here forever?”

  He had not risked a second clever ploy. When his wife was of a serious mind, she expected earnest answers. And he had not found a good one in the course of an otherwise sweet and peaceful evening.

  Four years ago? It seemed at least a lifetime.

  He had an answer for her now, at least a part of one. There was no beauty, no “poignancy,” in lives cut short in grim ways once unthinkable. There was no poetry, either. Just this wanton slaughter, this enticing, seductive butchery, irresistible and revolting. He had, again, found himself caught up in the near delirium of a successful attack, experienced enough to keep his wits and give sharp orders, but intoxicated all the same. He had believed, for twenty minutes, almost for a half hour, that he finally had scored the victory he had hoped for since the fighting in the Wilderness. His men had brought in prisoners by the hundreds, had torn through the Yankees like wind through an arrangement of paper dolls. Only to find, once again, a new line behind the broken line, massed cannon, and a supply of human meat greater than the number of bullets his men could bring to bear. The attack had climaxed with the bravest men briefly piercing the new Yankee line, only to disappear, swallowed by a great, blue maw.

  Now his blown soldiers manned worthless rifle pits seized from their enemies. And those enemies were still there, merely pushed back some hundreds of yards at a cost of equal hundreds of precious lives.

  Had they reached a point, Gordon wondered, at which neither army could defeat the other decisively on a battlefield? A point at which they could only bleed each other white, a stage of the war where even idiocies—such as an unguarded flank—could soon be redeemed by men who had fought so long they would not panic, but simply do what had to be done to restore the equilibrium? If that was so, the South was lost. Because the South would run out of men long before the North felt more than a pinch.

  Unless they discovered a way to kill Yankees in masses.

  Clem Evans found him in the dark.

  “Miss the tall trees of home on a night like this,” he said. “Stay right dry under one of our Georgia pines.”

  “I don’t mind the rain,” Gordon told him. “Breaks the heat a touch.”

  “That’s a fact.”

  “You did good work today, Clem. Everybody did.”

  “Tried my damnedest. New men come as a surprise, that Twelfth Georgia. Went at those blue-bellies like bobcats loose in a sheep pen.”

  “I saw.”

  “Damn it, John … I just don’t know how we could’ve done any more.”

  “I know.”

  “Makes a man sick sometimes. I mean, how many damned Yankees do we have to kill?”

  “A lot.”

  “Well, it makes a man sick.”

  “The killing? Or the failing?”

  Face half-hidden by his rain-drenched hat, Evans told him, “Both, I reckon.”

  “Clem, we are damned beyond hope of redemption.”

  Gordon shocked himself when he heard his own words. They hung in the air between the two men. He had not meant to say them, had not known that he had even thought them. The words had just appeared. Like the automatic writing Fanny’s cousins practiced.

  He tried to make light of it, adding, “Just the doctrine of original sin, Clem. We’re all damned, but for the mercy of Jesus Christ.”

  But the words were out there.

  Eleven p.m.

  Grant’s headquarters

  “Meade’s heart isn’t in this attack,” Grant said.

  “Is yours?” Rawlins asked him.

  Grant shrugged. “Has to be.”

  “Why?” Rawlins glanced about, as if he might glimpse eavesdroppers through the canvas. He heard Bill puttering in the rain.

  “You read the letter from Washburne. One more reason.”

  “Washburne isn’t here. He doesn’t know.”

  “He knows. He knows what matters. Lincoln. Baltimore. The convention.”

  “It’s five days off. You could bluff that long.”

  “Lincoln needs a victory. Clear one.”

  “And what are the chances of that, Sam? Even Hancock doesn’t want to attack. Not here. His division commanders are against it. And I wouldn’t class Barlow and Gibbon as tender flowers.”

  Grant smiled, but not much. “They’ll do all right. You’re beginning to sound like George Meade.”

  Rawlins smiled, too. And not much, either. Then he coughed. Between coughs, he said, “You always wanted me to tell you what I think, Sam.”

  “You need to look after yourself. Get some sleep. Maybe go back to Washington for a few weeks.”

  “No.”

  “I think I can behave myself. If that’s your worry.”

  “No. No, it just wouldn’t look right.”

  Grant took out a fresh cigar, then returned it to his pocket. Out of concern, Rawlins knew, for his lungs. He didn’t want to be pitied.

  “Go ahead, Sam. You think better with a cigar.”

  “Don’t care to. Like to be the death of me, anyway.”

  “Lee’s had plenty of time to entrench. Every report says his line appears formidable.”

  Grant’s voice sharpened. “Broke his line at Spotsylvania. Twice. Almost broke him in the Wilderness. He’s weaker now. Wouldn’t have the push to plug the hole.” He reached for the cigar again, but stopped his hand short. “Must’ve lost half his men. And all the deserters coming over. That army’s ready to break, feel it in my bones. And Lee. You heard Sharpe. Lee’s been sick as a sheep taken with the blight.”

  “We’ve had losses, too.”

  Grant nodded. “All the more reason to finish this here and now. The attack goes in at four thirty.” He leaned closer. The lamplight showed deepening lines around his eyes, fair skin ravaged. “What can I do, John? Move south again and try to cross the James? With Lee set to pounce when he’s got me halfway over? And go where? Petersburg? Just leave here without a fight, when we’re nearly in sight of Richmond? What would the newspapers say?”

  “You never cared about newspapers before.”

  “And wouldn’t it boost Confederate morale? If we tried to slink off?”

  “What about this army’s morale? An attack across the whole front, everybody committed … what if it fails, Sam? What if Meade and Humphreys and Hancock are right? Good Lord, I’m told that soldiers down in the Sixth Corps are sewing their names to the backs of their jackets, so their bodies can be identified. I’ve never seen Meade so dejected, he’s like a sleepwalker.”

  “Meade’ll be all right.” Grant breathed deep. Rawlins knew that sound. Somewhere between a sigh and exasperation. “Failed at Vicksburg. More than once. Whipped ’em in the end, though. Do the same here.” Grant looked down at his outstretched fingers. The gesture was pensive, almost delicate. “Stakes are high, John. Couldn’t be higher. Break Lee tomorrow, the war ends. On Richmond’s doorstep. Save more lives in the long run than any attack could cost.”

  “I understand that, I see it. But … Sam … I have to ask you something. As a friend. Has all this come down to a personal feud? Between you and Lee? Just two scrapping boys who won’t back down while the other boys are watching?”

  Grant took out the cigar.

  “That’s what war i
s,” he said.

  Midnight

  Confederate center

  Tell it. Just tell it to me, Oates thought. You tell me just how it is that we keep whipping those blue-belly bastards, just cutting them down like hay in a fat field, and here we are with our rumps up against Richmond. Just tell me how that happens.

  General Law resettled his tattered waterproof and said, “I’ll get a gun up there.”

  Oates felt the man calculating, but on the slow side. Tired. Old-dog weary. Every one of them. His soldiers up on the new line had it the worst, sleepless and sour and just plain burnt, but determined to live through the coming day and working with the spades and picks brought up, digging down through an inch of mud and five feet of worthless dirt a poor-white wouldn’t farm, not even a set-free coon, a stretch of earth not worth the pissing on, but now worth dying for.

  Law asked: “Rather have two pieces up there? Fairly sure I could rustle up a section.”

  “No, sir. Just one. Don’t have no more room than that. But tell them to bring all the canister they can scare up. They’ll be able to fire front or, Lord a-pity those blue-belly sonsofbitches, put out enfilading fire to sweep right down the whole front of my regiment. Nary man nor beast going to live through that.” Oates swept rain from his beard, feeling the waterlogged weight of it, like a playful woman tugging slow and steady. “Any hope of food, General? Men been marching, working. Don’t want ’em giving out.”

  But he knew they would not give out. When the Yankees came, they would rise to the work, maybe even fight on a time after they were dead, killing bluecoat bastards from pure habituation, the way a man’s arms and legs kept moving after his head got blown off.

  “Commissary wagons aren’t up.”

  And even if they were, Oates suspected, they’d be empty by the time they reached Law’s Brigade and the 15th Alabama. The great sow of this army didn’t have a tit to spare for the men who actually got down to the fighting. And the Yankees over there stuffing themselves full of side meat, no doubt. While his boys would’ve looked upon a quarter plate of half-cooked beans as the equal to a beef roast bright with gravy. His own belly didn’t just pester him, it hurt.

  “Roads are being kept free for troops and ammunition,” Law added, Methuselah-voiced, aged beyond the biblical span by this turned-blunt-and-senseless war that had become all dumb muscle and no brain, just I-fight-you-and-you-fight-me because nobody could think of anything smarter and, Christ almighty, the newspapers still told of glorious victories and heroic struggles that Oates surely couldn’t recognize, all of them dressing up an old whore as a princess.

  “Anything else?” Law asked. Law was a good man, given back the liberty of command until that black fool Longstreet returned some not-yet day to renew his call for a court-martial because Old Pete couldn’t shoulder the blame himself for the mess at Knoxville. What kind of army was it in which the generals cared more about court-martialing each other than thinking out some way to win and just make all this stop?

  Exhausted, famished, and fatal of mind, he still felt Old Ned stirring in his loins. Had a comely woman been present, or even a hag, he feared he would have rammed her right there, in the rain and mud, while anybody watched who took a mind to.

  He understood less and less about life each day. He just knew that he wanted to keep on living it, and that he’d do all the killing that would take.

  “No, sir,” he told his general. “I believe that’s all. And thank you.”

  “For what?” Law asked.

  “Earlier. Standing up and saying it made no sense to charge out and take back those rifle pits.”

  “I find,” Law said, “that the ambition of an order rises in direct proportion to the distance of the issuer from the front.” He jiggled his rain cape again, as if doing so might hide its rents from reconnoitering raindrops. “Don’t forget to send those skirmishers out.”

  “No, sir. Fine job for Major Lowther.”

  “He’s back?”

  “Been back. I reckon he thought the fighting was about over.”

  Oates couldn’t exactly see for the darkness, but sensed Law shaking his head, deliberately, like a judge plagued by his conscience.

  “Man’s got powerful friends,” Law said. “You watch out for him, William. I need you.”

  “I can handle Lowther.”

  “You watch out for him.” Although he was the senior officer, Law offered the first salute, a blur in the darkness as good as a pat on the shoulder.

  Rain was softening. Half of what was coming down now was drippings from the trees.

  Oates had lost his own rain cape sometime back, when he gave it up to fashion a makeshift litter. Didn’t mind, really. Getting soaked through at least moved the dirt around on a man’s skin. And kept him awake, more or less.

  The two men parted, Oates stumbling back through the darkness and slime to his laboring men, heading toward the clanging of shovels and curses almost too tired to come out of a mouth. Yankees were going to come in the morning, sure as the help spit in a hard man’s soup. Yankees were coming, at first light, no doubt, and they’d kill a right passel of them.

  And then what?

  After some doing, he found Lowther. Tucked under a tree.

  “Get on up.”

  “What is it?”

  “General Law wants skirmishers out early. I’m sending Feagin with Company B. You’ll go along, in overall command.”

  After a few seconds, Lowther found his voice. “I’m sick. I need to be excused.”

  “You have a surgeon’s certificate? If you don’t, you get up right now and follow my orders, Major. You head out there with Feagin. And you make sure that skirmish line is the finest in the Army of Northern Virginia. Now get up.”

  Lowther rustled and rose. “What time is it? Yankees aren’t going to come in this. Not in the dark.”

  “Well,” Oates said, “you just get on out there and let me know when they do come.”

  TWENTY-FIVE

  June 3, four fifteen a.m.

  Cold Harbor

  The men knew.

  In the first hint of light, Barlow looked over the waiting lines of soldiers. Their uniforms, and perhaps their spirits, had been dampened by a light rain. He certainly didn’t sense ardor in the ranks. Or in himself. The silence was ominous, scratched only by minor skirmishing to the front and slack artillery exchanges. Now and then, a last ramrod clinked home, or a provost guard shouted, “You there, halt!” as cowards attempted to slip away from their duty. The mood had the weight of a sodden overcoat.

  Out in the killing space, mist gripped the low ground. Beyond, the only sign of life was the occasional twinkle of a rifle muzzle, or the brief hellfire of an artillery piece. The rounds struck randomly, doing little damage but making men flinch. No one had slept enough.

  Barlow had sacrificed a second hour of sleep to bathe his feet. The water delivered by his orderly had been coffee brown swill, but the relief he felt had been sweet. He had scrubbed off the peeling skin that topped his ankles now, relishing the queer mix of pleasure and pain as he swirled the raw flesh in the bucket, one foot at a time. He hoped to gain some peace from his feet, the better to make war.

  He had eaten nothing, taking only coffee. Acid gnawed his stomach as thoughts chewed at his mind. He did not want to make this attack, but had prepared his men as best he could. The brigades of Miles and Brooke, his most experienced commanders, formed his assault line, Miles on the left, Brooke on the right, and both reinforced with the green but abundant personnel of heavy artillery regiments. Byrnes, who now had the Irish Brigade, was positioned to follow Miles. MacDougall, of whom Barlow remained uncertain, would follow Brooke, if ordered to go forward. Miles had the best grasp of the ground, after yesterday’s skirmishing, and Brooke was set to strike a minor salient, the one place along the Confederate line they all agreed might prove vulnerable. Given the order for a frontal assault, the dispositions were the best Barlow could do.

  He took out his pocket wa
tch. The hands tried to hide in the smoky light and he brought the watch close to his eyes. Four twenty-five. The attack would begin at four thirty. A signal gun would sound, and Hancock—nowhere to be seen—had ordered a bugler forward to blow the charge.

  Clarion-beckoned or not, Miles and Brooke would go forward at four thirty. They had their orders, and Barlow had made them synchronize their watches again that morning. He was not going to chance misunderstandings or signals that went unheard.

  The problem of a frontal assault across open ground defied him. Harvard was no help in devising tactics, and a solution eluded him as surely as it did the drunkards and illiterates. All he could do on this unpromising morning was to maintain better control than at Spotsylvania, where success had dissolved into mayhem and thence to butchery. He was not going to be swallowed by the excitement of the moment, but would remain near his lines, surrounded by a multitude of couriers, where he could best observe the thing entire. Brooke and Nellie Miles had a surfeit of couriers with them as well: He had ordered them to report each development promptly. He meant to control this fight, to the extent that any fight let itself be controlled. It seemed to him that confusion had become as much of an enemy as the Confederates. Confusion was the beast that had to be tamed. The challenge of command was to stay informed.

  The Union guns had been silenced so the whole front could hear the signal shot. Apart from last pricks of skirmishing, the only sounds were of nervous horses and the Latin drone of a priest blessing New York soldiers in the first line of attack. Caps off for a moment, men dipped their heads as the bearded priest marched past. The most devout went briefly to one knee.

  Every passing second enriched the light. Barlow watched a New York officer close his eyes and move his lips. The man’s neck muscles quivered.

  He did not want to make this attack, no more than that poor bugger did. But if it had to be made, and if there was one chance in thirteen Hells to succeed, Francis Channing Barlow meant to do it.

  “What are they waiting for?” a courier muttered.

  The signal cannon sounded.

  All along the Union front, artillery batteries opened, firing over the waiting troops. Even on horseback, Barlow sensed the ground trembling. The air shook.