by Ralph Peters
A courier, bleeding, arrived from Miles’ front. As soon as the man opened his mouth, Irish as petty theft, Barlow realized he belonged to Byrnes.
“General Bahrloo, sahr,” the man began, slapping gore from his cheek, “’tis Colonel Byrnes, he’s wounded and fit to be dying.”
Christ.
No, Barlow decided, he was not going to send in MacDougall. Enough was enough.
Five fifteen a.m.
Confederate center
The damned fools were coming again, their third attack, stupidity beyond measure. Brave was all well and good, but Oates saw nothing much to be said for stupid.
On they came, hallooing like damn, drunk fools, like wild boys off on a tear, and one more time his men and those on his flanks, as well as the powder-black artillerymen, just waited out the seconds, infernally cruel in their restraint, and joyful in a place words didn’t reach, sublime, and murderous. And the Yankees—Eighteenth Corps men, Oates knew that now—just came on charging like they hadn’t seen or even imagined what had happened minutes before to men just the same as them, or maybe not exactly the same, for men weren’t that, but same enough for getting killed fast in the dumbest, bravest damned charge Oates had ever witnessed.
“Fire!” he said.
The Yankees got it in front and from both flanks, canister and volleys, with Bryan’s Georgians still loading rifles for the Alabamans, men who had almost turned themselves into machines for killing. As Oates gazed through an aperture in the parapet, captivated by the spectacle before him, blue-bellies toppled every which way, some even flying into the air before landing again with a thud you couldn’t hear for the racket but felt somewhere down deep, in some even-now-unravaged sympathy-place. Men’s chests and shoulders and thighs puffed dust where multiple bullets hit them, and down they went.
Within two minutes of the first shot, the field before the Alabama line was covered with blue, some of that blue rustling and twitching, much of it still as midnight in a graveyard. Had he taken a mind to, Oates believed he could have danced right over that field, old-wound stiffness in hip and thigh no matter, and crossed from one end of the brigade front to the other without touching the earth.
“Cease firing…,” Oates said. “I said stop shooting, goddamn it.”
Their portion of the field fell quiet enough for a thousand moans to be heard. Men called for their mothers or shouted, in dying-now voices, women’s names. As the smoke lifted, the view grew only more frightful. Awesome, with that sense of awe preachers claimed to feel in the presence of the Holy Spirit, an essence in which Oates did not believe and, after this, never would believe, that was dog-certain.
Some of his men, more than a few, were standing, half-exposed, rifles ready to shoot any Yankee who moved a little too much.
Oates raised a paw: Wait now, y’all just wait.
“Any man out there … any of you Yankees … want to come in and surrender, you do that now. Ain’t going to shoot you, if you conduct yourself proper. Just leave your rifle lay and come on in, hear?”
In reply, a Yankee sent a bullet close to Oates’ head.
His men did not wait for permission to return fire.
Eventually, they got one leg-shot Yankee in, but the rest were afraid now, and they needed to be. Word had just come down the line that despite the negligible casualties in the brigade, General Law had been wounded in the head. The men were fond of Law. As was Oates.
The Yankees were done attacking, but not done dying. After a time, Oates sent a whittled-down company out through a ravine to bring in prisoners, and they herded together a hundred or so.
Returning from the carnage beyond the trench line, the men he had sent out came back with shakes worse than their captives.
Six a.m.
Sixth Corps lines, Union center
Upton was grateful. To the Lord, as always, but also, this time, to General Russell, bandaged but still on the field, and even to General Wright, a man he previously had doubted like Thomas himself. His men had not been forced to join the attack. Russell had seen reason, as had Wright. With the dead two days ripe in the narrow slot between his forward trench and that of the enemy, all could see that the Reb lines were impregnable to his front.
His men did fire into those lines, keeping the Johnnies occupied and preventing them from shifting troops to reinforce other points under attack. But that was all. He made no charge. His bloodied brigade had been excused from the folly, Lord be praised.
Still, it outraged him that anyone could be ordered to attack across open fields against entrenchments perfected for two days and more. Everyone in the army should have learned the lesson by now. Good men, needed men, went to their deaths because the senior generals couldn’t think, but relied on soldiers’ courage to achieve miracles.
God, not men, made miracles.
He had worked his brain into a heat, spending each spare moment trying to envision a way to break the endless stalemate. He had listened, avidly, to accounts of Sheridan’s horsemen on the field, wondering if it might not be possible to develop large-scale mounted forces that could move so swiftly they kept the enemy off balance, dismounting only to fight when at an advantage. How could the artillery problem be solved, the reliance on roads for rapid movement? And a force too large to live off the land would be slowed by its supply train: A contingent moved only as swiftly as its slowest element. A raid might be sustained, but how could you support a lengthy campaign that moved at three or four times the pace of the infantry? How could a force combine speed and firepower, unhinging the enemy’s efforts at defense?
Emory Upton could not find the answers. Not yet. But he knew with the firmness he brought to his faith in God that officers had to master the modern age.
He walked among his Heavies. He had rotated the regiment back to build a reserve and grant the men a rest. That morning, the former artillerymen had been skittish as horses new to a battlefield, knowing what war meant now and worried that they, too, would be ordered forward into the maelstrom. They had settled down, but still eyed him and every other officer with distrust. The men understood war better than the generals.
Elsewhere along the corps line, the ruckus of battle had already diminished. Cannon still growled, and many a rifle cracked, but all the hurrahing was done. Other Sixth Corps men had been ordered forward—Wright had stated sourly that “someone has to make this damned attack.” Now the staff officers riding to and fro looked as glum as mourners.
Once, not long before, he would have wished to join the battle, any battle, no matter the cost. And he did not believe he had lost his fighting spirit. But squandering lives—and good soldiers—in hopeless attacks seemed criminal.
War? He had acquired a new image of it just the day before, through his field glasses, and he feared it would haunt him forever. Kneeling in an advanced position to scout the narrow strip of ground between his forward line and the enemy parapet, he had seen, magnified, dead men twisted as if consigned to the eternal pit, their bellies swollen to bursting with gas and their upturned faces blackened, the eyes pecked out. He had forced himself to look on, telling himself that the sight was salutary, instructive of the ultimate wages of sin and the inevitable corruption of the flesh.
A particularly jarring sight fixed his attention in midsurvey, making him gag even as he could not stop staring: Black beetles covered a dead man’s face, a living mask of them.
As Upton watched, the corpse moved an arm, then settled again.
Six thirty-five a.m.
The Kelly house
Meade handed another message to the telegrapher, to Hancock this time:
Major General Hancock:
Your dispatch received. You will make the attack and support it well, so that in the event of being successful, the advantage gained can be held. If unsuccessful report at once.
Geo. G. Meade,
Major-General.
He could not believe that Hancock, of all people, was giving up so easily. One repulse—after an easy pe
netration of Lee’s works—and then done? Even Wright claimed to be pressing on, if fitfully. Next, he’d hear that Hancock’s men were quitting the positions they’d already taken. The lack of resolve was infamous.
Yet, all the while, Meade plagued himself with regrets that he had not engaged more vigorously in preparing the assault. He had not wanted to make this attack. Ordered to execute it, he had sulked, leaving too much to the discretion of his corps commanders, who needed a firm hand and detailed orders. As a result, matters had gone awry from the very start. As near as one could tell, Warren and Burnside had not even begun their attacks, two hours after the time fixed to step off. Elsewhere, the assault threatened to dissolve. All of it was verging on a shambles.
And Grant, of course, was nowhere to be seen.
He sat down and scribbled the clearest report he could offer of the situation for Grant’s review, ending with:
I should be glad to have your views as to the continuance of these attacks, if unsuccessful.
Still, the prospect of defeat, of failure, grated on him. Especially after that scurrilous article Crapsey wrote for the Philadelphia Inquirer—a paper his wife and family must see. The scribbler had all but accused him of cowardice, while heaping praise on Grant. As if it all had been fed to the newspaperman by some personal enemy. The claims trumpeted by Crapsey were utterly false, and Grant had already approved the man’s public removal from the army … although Rawlins had seemed oddly troubled by it all. Meade intended to turn the man’s expulsion into a spectacle. A newspaper fellow making an error was one thing, but lying outright endangered the Republic. Such creatures had to be stopped.
But the charge stung deep, and Meade did not want to open himself to the accusation that he had called off this grand assault prematurely. It was Grant’s attack, let Grant declare its end. Grant, who was given credit for wonders not one man in the army seemed to have witnessed.
Grant, Grant, Grant, the newspapers were always full of Grant! As if no one else existed. Except, perhaps, Sheridan. Who did they think commanded in the field? Grant and his louts stayed farther to the rear with every battle. Where was Grant now?
The telegraph clattered again. In moments, the operator handed a message directly to Meade:
Major-General Meade,
Commanding the Army of the Potomac:
The moment it becomes certain that an assault cannot succeed, suspend the offensive, but when one does succeed push it vigorously, and if necessary pile in troops at the successful point from wherever they can be taken. I shall go to where you are in the course of an hour.
U. S. Grant
Lieutenant-General
Drivel! Grant had managed to say nothing at all, beyond the most elementary lessons taught new cadets. And, Meade realized, Grant had artfully thrust the decision to continue the attack or halt it back onto his shoulders.
One more try, then. The army had to try.
He wondered how he would put a good face on it all in his next letter to his wife.
Seven a.m.
Second Corps, Union left
Barlow sat his horse facing Hancock, who had come forward at last to see the carnage.
“This is idiocy,” the younger man said. “I won’t order it.”
Hancock, who looked a decade older than he had a month before, nodded and said, “Just make a show of it, Frank. Make some noise. Pretend.”
Seven a.m.
Confederate left
Gordon watched them come on in the needling rain. He barely felt excited by the spectacle. Nor was he moved by the prospect of taking revenge on the men who had turned back his attack the evening before. He let their shells whistle overhead and sat on his black stallion as calmly as if surveying field hands working their way down a row.
When he judged the attackers to have reached the proper distance, he waved a hand, the gesture perfunctory. His batteries and regiments opened fire.
He could have closed his eyes and still seen what was happening. His fires would mow them down like wheat ripe for the harvest. They would continue marching forward for another minute, perhaps two, and make a rush, only to falter well short of his works. Then they would withdraw, perhaps to try again and fail again.
And they came on. And fell. One side cheered, then the other. Men died on the spot or dropped to wriggle in pain. Gordon felt as he imagined a stage actor must feel when forced to perform a play that had grown tiresome.
The Yankees bled and withdrew. Those who could walk.
He was more convinced than ever that his epiphany of the night before was the truth: The armies had reached a point at which neither side could decisively defeat the other on a battlefield. One side or the other might lose on a given day, but could not be vanquished.
Gordon saw that the war was far from over. It would be a long time before he slept, in peace, at Fanny’s side again.
Seven a.m.
Ninth Corps, Union right
Brown had begun to hope that the 50th would not have to go forward, that the attack on their wing might be canceled. The sky threatened rain again—some looked to be falling already, just to the south—but the only thunder was that of the artillery on the distant flank, and that was much diminished. For an hour or so early on, the sounds of battle had been so intense that it seemed the war’s final struggle must be under way. But their brigade had not even been summoned to form up until the worst of the death-storm had passed.
Rain teased, but did no more. He stood in front of the remnants of Company C, twenty-three men, holding his rifle instead of the sword customary to those commanding companies. He wasn’t an officer yet, and might never be one, and anyway, a rifle was a great deal more useful in a fight than a fancied-up kitchen knife.
He felt sweat run down his back.
How had they come to this? With him standing where a captain should be, in front of a fraction of the men who had marched beside him when they crossed the Rapidan? He veered between confidence and doubt, between the belief that he could do this work as well as any man, and a sense that he was a corporal pretending to be more, and would be found out and shamed.
“First Sergeant?” a soldier called. He had told the men to continue calling him that, because he didn’t know what else they might call him and not be mistaken.
He turned his head, his shoulders.
“What is it, Guertler?”
“I got to take me a leak.”
“Do it where you’re standing. And hurry up.”
“He don’t want nobody to see his tiny thing,” George Heebner announced.
“Shut up, Heebner,” Isaac Eckert ordered. Isaac had been promoted to corporal. Just hadn’t been much horseflesh left to choose from.
And they stood, the minutes impossibly long. Surely, some enterprising Reb pickets had spotted the formed-up brigade by now. Whoever waited over there, tucked into that far tree line, would be ready. And, Brown figured, the “whoever” would be the Johnnies they had trounced the night before, in a short, desperate encounter. Their turn now.
“If I had me a big Dutch apple cake, I’d split it with every last one of you, I swear,” a soldier said.
No one replied. But Brown saw that apple cake, almost tasted it, and knew every man in his short lines saw it, too.
Frances could make a fine Dutch apple cake. White cake, too, or pink with sugar frosting.
Captain Schwenk walked the regimental line. It didn’t take long. He nodded at Brown. Brown nodded back. All of them were just waiting.
To the south, the noise had definitely faded. Both sides were hardly annoying each other. Maybe, just maybe, they’d be spared for one more day.
Brown didn’t know whether or not he was afraid. It was surprisingly hard to tell anymore. But he knew he was unhappy. Things that had once made at least a nick of sense just didn’t now. What was the word? “Futile.” An officer’s word. But the right one, as he understood it.
Tired though he had been, though he remained, he wished now that he had written
Frances a last letter the night before.
“I swear, they must’ve forgot us,” Heebner said. “Not that I’m complaining.”
“Shut up, George,” Corporal Eckert told him.
A courier galloped up to the cluster of horsemen in front of the brigade. That was rarely a good sign, Brown knew. But maybe this time it would be a message calling off the attack.
The rider cantered away again. The officers huddled. Then some rode to the rear. Those who remained behind dismounted and passed their horses off to orderlies.
“Guess they didn’t forget us, after all,” Heebner said.
This time, nobody told him to shut up.
Swords rose skyward. Clouds spit back. Drums began to beat. The line advanced. Behind them, out of sight, a band struck up.
Sure, that’s grand, Brown thought. Just tell them we’re coming as loud as you can. But stepping through the high, wet grass, he nodded, slightly and briefly, in time with the music. One of the high-up officers liked that song, which an outraged Irishman had told Brown was “The British Grenadiers.”
Frances had laughed at his poor ear for music. She played the piano.
At their backs, artillery opened, firing in high arcs, the booming reports interrupting the music, then overwhelming it. Only the drums still carried.
Flag-bearers had no breeze to help them. Now and then, they waved their banners, heavy with the night’s rain.
Couldn’t see the Rebs, not even their piled-up dirt. They’d placed themselves a few steps back in the trees.
Or what if they weren’t there? What if they were gone?
They’d be there.
Brown stepped over a lone body, a grayback. Flies burst into the air.
He looked about. His men were still with him. It seemed they’d follow him, too. Maybe men just followed along by their nature.
Serious fighting erupted off to the left, down toward the end of the corps line, or maybe past it. He couldn’t see a thing and couldn’t tell.
What mattered was here, right here.