Hell or Richmond

by Ralph Peters

  Confederate guns replied, firing almost blind but compelled to respond.

  Miles and Brooke had already stepped off, emerging from the tree line into a field of tall, wet grass and barren patches where the earth looked diseased. Brooke rode out with his lead unit, the massive 7th New York Heavy Artillery, whose soldiers were now infantry in all but name.

  Barlow felt a rush of anger. He had told Brooke and Miles to go forward dismounted. He did not want to lose those men.

  Looking left, he didn’t see anyone on horseback near the first line of troops, only couriers pausing to their rear. Miles, at least, had listened.

  Roping in his temper, Barlow reasoned that Brooke felt a need to inspire the artillerymen, to show confidence. Still, he didn’t like being disobeyed.

  His lines surged westward in good order, barely annoyed by Confederate artillery. It didn’t trick him into confidence: It only meant that the Johnnies had positioned their guns for enfilading fire.

  As the blue lines reached the north–south road that cut the field in two, more guns opened, seconded by bright snakes of rifle volleys. Men fell, individually and in clusters. Barlow raised his field glasses, paused to calm his horse, and brought the glasses to his eyes. The road had been worn below the level of the field, creating a shallow trench. Briefly, jarringly, Barlow remembered Antietam, the brief glory and the long recovery from his wound. He snapped his attention back with brutal force.

  The 7th New York’s flag had threatened to fall more than once, but the green troops had advanced quickly to the road. Now, though, many men didn’t want to leave it. Natural enough, Barlow knew, it was the base instinct of the human animal to survive. This would be the test for the 7th’s officers. Barlow could see them dashing about, re-forming their men, readying them for a charge toward the salient.

  They advanced again. The pause had been brief, not enough to break their sense of momentum. As soldiers always did under fire, men began to crouch as they hastened forward, as if struggling through a gale. And it was a gale, but of lead. The Reb entrenchments on the high ground blazed, and cannon double-charged with canister cut swathes through the ranks as the men pressed on. The Heavies had advanced farther and faster than any other regiment on the field.

  Something unexpected happened. It made Barlow lower his field glasses, wipe his eyes to uncloud them, and raise the glasses again. Close to the Reb lines, within a few dozen yards, the artillerymen had begun to go to ground.

  He figured it out: It was trick terrain, its contours unclear from a distance. Up close to the salient, the sharp rise from the field created a safe harbor for attackers, just below the Reb lines. The Johnnies couldn’t see them, couldn’t depress their artillery sufficiently to target them, and even Reb infantry would have had to stand atop or emerge from their entrenchments to fire down into them.

  “Don’t stop,” Barlow said aloud. “Don’t stop now, damn you.”

  He saw movement again. Seconds later, he heard a distant hurrah. Before he could raise the glasses, the Heavies had swarmed up the slope to leap the parapet into the Rebel works. They went in with rifles blazing and bayonets. It was simply remarkable, far more than he had expected, under the circumstances.

  “Get them,” Barlow said, as if the men fighting hand to hand could hear him. “Don’t stop. Push deep. Get the bastards. Break it open.”

  Brooke was still on horseback, near the sunken road, directing men toward the breakthrough.

  Good.

  Barlow forced his attention to Miles on the left, where the going had been harder from the first. There was no safe ground, nor clear advantage to be seized, and most of the men remained stuck in the ditch the road offered them.

  A single regiment continued to advance, although it faced withering fire. Barlow tried to focus the glasses, to read the flag. The unit looked to be a good-sized regiment, by the diminished standards of the campaign. But the dead air wouldn’t unfurl the flag sufficiently for him to place the regiment.

  “Wave the damn thing,” Barlow muttered. He turned to his aide, John Black. “Any idea who those beggars are? To Miles’ front?”

  “I make it the Fifth New Hampshire. The numbers, the dark uniforms.”

  Barlow nodded. That made sense. Hapgood was out to prove that his regiment’s stint guarding prisoners after Gettysburg hadn’t dulled its spirit. And he was headed straight for the southern flank of the salient Brooke’s Heavies had just entered.

  Good.

  One of Brooke’s aides galloped over the field, heading for Barlow and his retinue. At least, Brooke seemed to have obeyed the order to report promptly.

  Brooke’s other units, his veterans, had stopped along their own axes of advance, though.

  Resting his field glasses against his saddle, Barlow waited for the man to rein in and shout his report.

  “Colonel Brooke’s compliments, sir. He’s broken into their line.”

  “I can see that, Lieutenant.”

  “We’ve taken colors. And guns.”

  “But?”

  “He can’t advance the rest of his line, at present. But he intends to do so, if practicable.”

  “Tell him to concentrate on the salient. Develop it. Reinforce it.” Brooke knew that much, Barlow realized. But he had to say it, to make his intentions absolutely clear. “If the Rebs have any depth at all, they’re going to counterattack.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “And Colonel Brooke is to let me know immediately, if and when the breakthrough can accommodate MacDougall. But I don’t want that salient turned into a can of sardines like Spotsylvania, understand? He must keep control, keep his units from intermingling. Do you understand, Lieutenant?”

  The boy nodded.

  “Well, what are you waiting for? Doomsday?” Barlow snapped.

  The lieutenant saluted and pulled his horse around.

  On the left, Miles was still bogged down. But … if the penetration could be managed, deepened, widened … just perhaps …

  “Black,” Barlow said, “ride to Hancock. Tell him we’ve entered the enemy’s works and taken colors and guns. Don’t embellish it. It’s hardly a victory yet. Just tell him exactly what I said.”

  Behind his studied calm, Barlow felt a thrill.

  Four thirty a.m.

  Confederate center

  A multitude of Yankee guns thundered into action, sending their rounds over Oates’ raw entrenchments, firing so deep it seemed they were trying to hit Richmond. Wasteful and useless, those fires were, except to wake a man sharply, if he hadn’t already been up through the night, walking back and forth to stay awake, telling men already digging to dig a damned sight faster, and finally taking up one of the axes himself, wielding it as much to stay awake as to fell the last trees that needed cutting to clear their fields of fire, ignoring the bite in his bad hip and just swinging that railroad-hammer-heavy ax in the darker-than-darkness night, gripping that rain-slick handle and telling the disembodied whispers all around him, “Stand on back,” and then the bone-shaking thunk shimmering up the wood, right up to his hands and arms and on through a man’s shoulders and into his neck, walloping him like a corn whiskey hangover, even if he wasn’t a drinking man and didn’t mean to become one, even now.

  The first paleness was the gray of their uniforms back when they had been new, so long, long, long ago, a Confederate-gray morning, damp as a woman soured in the sheets, and not even chicory for coffee and nothing to eat. Men like specters, long-eyed ghosts, every one of them that thin, and those Yankee artillery shells flying overhead still—had it been three minutes? five?—and doing no man harm in Oates’ small world, just thumping mud somewheres to the rear, the Yankees so blithely ambitious, even now, that they were as like to be trying to hit Montgomery as Richmond.

  There came Lowther.

  Running up a little hollow, holding on to his cap.

  He wasn’t alone.

  Oates stepped up to the ditch, which was still barely waist-high where it was new made, and
he nearly got knocked over by one of his skirmishers vaulting over the mud slop that passed for a parapet, one skirmisher of the many running like Hell, with Captain Feagin among the last, half of the men yelling, “Here they come! Oh, Lordy!”

  Yelling wasn’t required. Plain was plain. Jesus Christ and the Lord himself, coming on they were, an enormous pack of them rushing through the last gauze of mist. In an instant Oates counted nine deep ranks formed by battalion, their blue so thick it was almost black, and them hurrahing like they’d already won the war.

  “Fix bayonets!” Oates shouted, for those blue-bellies were coming on fast, too fast. “Officers, take up those axes!”

  And Billy Strickland, baffled, asked him, “Colonel, aren’t you going to order the men to load?”

  And, Jesus Christ twice over, yes, he’d been so tired and forgetful-stupid that at no time had he told his men to load their rifles, Jesus Christ three times, and only seconds left.

  “Load! For God’s sake, load, boys!”

  Some men had already begun, thrusting ramrods down barrels as though not just their lives but their immortal souls were in question, if such a thing any man had, and the devil pinching them from behind, breathing hot on their dirty necks.

  Devils, he knew, existed. They were everywhere now.

  Remembering that cannon, so close he could have spit and hit a wheel, he plunged toward it, hollering, “You there! Sergeant! Give ’em double canister! Fire, men, fire!”

  Every ready man assumed the command was meant for him, so some early shots popped from his line, not even nibbling at the growling, howling Yankee Leviathan coming their way, not a short cornrow off now.

  The artillery crew had been alert, if Oates had not, and fire they did, the canister pre-loaded and ready, and, despite the darkness past, that sergeant had guessed just right how to lay his gun, maybe paced it out while Oates was swinging an ax, and the canister tore into the front Yankee rank and back through the second, blasting bodies and parts of men into one another and into the sky, a great red wash applied to walls of smoke, like a fighting-drunk devil got hold of a paintbrush.

  “Fire!” Oates shouted, and his men let go an organized volley at last. With the mad-dog, determined, crazy-minded, through-the-canister Yankees thirty paces from the trench.

  And down they went, the blue-belly sonsofbitches. It put Oates in mind of the way a fool losing at cards might lose his temper, too, and sweep the table clean before a bullet or knife admonished him.

  The Yankees were just gone. No. Men and parts thereof lay on the ground. And yes, damn fools, the Union had bodies to spare and on they came, the second rank, maybe the third already.

  Oates’ men were packed shoulder to shoulder, so tight they could barely load. On top of that, a passel of Bryan’s Georgians came up, boys spying on the hoors in a gypsy camp, wanting to know. And Oates told them: “Ain’t got no room, dear Jesus, but you can load and pass those rifles up.” And they did.

  That cannon. The only men who truly understood its language learned it just for that last sliver of an instant before it removed them forever from the discussion. The gun crew leapt about like monkeys in a traveling show, doing that killing dance that culminated twice a minute with a red-gush explanation of eternity.

  The foremost Yankees were all down, dead, wounded, or quitting, with the rear ranks running madly back where they’d come from. Five minutes’ worth of killing, if that. Oates had never seen such startling destruction.

  Fool men stood tall to see, wondering at what they had wrought, until Yankee bullets took down a brace of them.

  Blood steamed out of that field, sweet Jesus Christ.

  Five ten a.m.

  The Kelly house

  Meade handed the dispatch to the telegrapher:

  Lieutenant General Grant:

  General Barlow reports that he has enemy’s works with colors and guns. I am at General Wright’s headquarters.

  Geo. G. Meade

  Major-General

  The key began to tap immediately.

  Perhaps, just perhaps, Meade thought, there was hope.

  Five ten a.m.

  Second Corps, Union left

  Headed toward the rear, a flock of Rebel prisoners had just passed him by when Barlow saw Union troops trickling back out of the Confederate salient. As he watched through his glasses, the trickle became a rush.

  What the devil was going on? Why hadn’t Brooke reinforced them? Had the penetration been so shallow, so frail? He wished he could see beyond the crest of that hill, to be there and here at once.

  The 5th New Hampshire had broken into the works from the southern flank. But no one from Miles’ brigade had followed after them, the others remaining pinned down in the road and taking severe casualties even there. He had sent in Byrnes with the Irish Brigade to add force to Miles’ attack, but, thus far, nothing had come of it. The field in front of Miles could not be crossed.

  What was the matter with Brooke, though? He hadn’t sent back a courier in ten minutes.

  More and more men in blue were fleeing the salient.

  For God’s sake, would it all be for nothing again?

  He had ordered MacDougall into the field, holding him short of the road but ready to expand the penetration. It was only a matter of time before the Confederate artillery turned their attention to his ranks, too.

  And Gibbon’s division, on his right, seemed to have come to a standstill.

  Damn it all.

  He was about to send a trusty man out to locate Brooke, if not break his own new rule and ride forward himself, when an officer on foot and hatless came running toward him.

  So much for efficient couriers on horseback, Barlow told himself.

  “General Barlow,” the man puffed, “Colonel Brooke’s been wounded.”

  Damn it all.

  “Who’s in command?”

  “Colonel Beaver, sir. He’s organizing his men to push into the works.”

  “A bit late,” Barlow said, voice at once cold and scorching. “Can you tell me what’s going on, Captain?”

  The man looked befuddled. “It’s not entirely clear, sir. The Heavies are in the Reb lines, though.”

  “No, they’re not. They’re coming back.”

  Thoroughly confused, the captain turned and looked toward the hill. And Barlow realized that the captain had been occupied first with Brooke’s wounding, then by his dash to the rear. While Barlow watched the collapse of the penetration, the captain’s back had been turned to the crucial event.

  And all of it had unfolded in just minutes.

  Before raising his glasses to judge the situation again, he asked the captain, “How bad is Brooke?”

  The captain shrugged. “He was unconscious. Then he came to. Then he went out again. He’s not bleeding much, sir, it seems to be concussion.”

  Barlow waved him away. No matter what pains you took, war cheated. In fact, it was nothing but one cheat after another. Brooke knocked unconscious precisely when he was needed. It was worse than ill luck. What was the line from beastly old Shakespeare? “As flies to wanton boys, are we to the gods. They kill us for their sport.” Something of that ilk.

  Black had barely returned from his ride to Hancock’s headquarters—where the poor old bugger seemed unable or unwilling to stir himself—but Barlow trusted no one else to deliver the next set of tidings dispassionately. The last thing they needed now was exaggerated intimations of disaster. It was just another bloody mess, no more, no less. And if he found a chance to redeem it still, he damned well would.

  “Black, go back to Hancock. Tell him we could not hold the works reported taken. We’ve retired a short distance, but Brooke’s brigade is about to renew the assault.”

  “Shall I tell him about Colonel Brooke, sir?”

  “Tell him … no, not now. Concentrate on the essentials. Hold on a moment.” He raised his glasses and saw Jim Beaver’s Pennsylvanians giving it another try, rushing back up toward the compromised Rebel lines, flags
flying. “Tell him we have colors advancing and near the works.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Just make sure he understands that we no longer hold the works reported taken. At least, not right now. Exaggeration and absurd expectations have nearly destroyed this army more than once. That’s all. Whip that nag of yours.”

  Black snapped a salute and gee-yawed his horse like a westerner, like one of Grant’s bellowing brigands.

  He raised his glasses again, sweeping the field. Miles’ brigade and the lead regiments belonging to Byrnes hadn’t done a damn thing but strew the field with bodies. Along the sunken road and a bit beyond it, men were entrenching, digging deeper where the road gave them a head start.

  On the right, though, Beaver’s mob had fought its way back to the parapet of the Confederate line. The details were hard to read, but it looked like quite a brawl.

  Not a breakthrough, though. And more men flowed rearward, while thousands of their comrades were nailed to the earth by increasingly accurate Rebel fires.

  Damn it all, though. Brooke. The worst possible timing. And Beaver in charge of the brigade, but still acting like a regimental commander, if a brave one, charging with his men and leaving the rest of his command huddled in that roadbed.

  Siding with the enemy, his feet began to itch.

  He hated to come so close and fail again. Briefly, he considered sending in MacDougall to charge over Brooke’s men and try one more time to carry the compromised works. But the speed of the Confederate response, the ease with which they’d restored their line, told him that they had reinforcements in plenty, ready and waiting. The Confederates learned quickly. They didn’t intend to have another Bloody Angle, either.

  When were the glorious professional soldiers going to figure out that frontal attacks against prepared defenses were absolute folly? How many times had Grant and his minions tried the tactic now? If it even deserved to be categorized as a tactic.

  It was a bad day already, and he dreaded to see it made worse. Better to do what he could himself than wait for inane orders from on high. He’d keep on trying. To a point.