The Damned of Petersburg

by Ralph Peters

  Poison ivy, too. Just everywhere.

  Movement. A fleeting form. Roback stopped. Cocked. Remembered to feel for the cap.

  Too late. The phantom was gone.

  Cheering from the right. Union huzzahs. They faded quickly.

  “Push forward! Push on through! Don’t dawdle, men.…”

  He hated the unknown officer behind that voice. But he was too dry and drained to shout that he was doing the best he could, that all of them were. Stung by nettles and bloodied by thorns, he felt like he’d kicked a wasp’s nest.

  Comrades dropped into the creekbed ahead of him. There was still some feel of order to the business, if not much. More swamp than stream, the bottom tried to stop their advance. Men plodded through sucking mud, as worried for their shoes as for their lives. The Rebs had missed an opportunity, leaving the far bank’s thickets undefended.

  Keep going. Get through the mire. Just get to the far bank.

  “New York! Forward!” some ninny called.

  Roback wanted to tell that fool to shut up, to just shut up. But that would have taken more will than he had left.

  He didn’t want to pass out. Not here, in Rebel country. He didn’t fancy seeing a Reb prison. Nor dying hereabouts, mad and untended.

  The mud craved his shoes, triggering a sudden, delirious panic. But he fought back, mastering himself to stagger forward.

  Shells burst in the treetops above the stream. Cutting branches. Splashing shrapnel. One man folded over like a clasp knife.

  Roback made the far bank at last and joined a little band. Mostly New Yorkers, but with Maine boys mixed in. A sergeant took charge and led them up the hill. There was firing ahead, much more of it. Vines grabbed ankles.

  The going grew steep, the brush thicker. They heard curses and blows. A man paused and fired at something. A stranger’s voice demanded, “Lieutenant? Where are you?”

  A Johnny cackled, unseen.

  They reached a rifle pit that others had already passed, leaving two dead Rebs and a fellow Yankee with his face smashed in.

  “Come on, come on!” another voice encouraged them. “The Reb line’s just ahead.”

  Thunderstorm of musketry. Either they’d found the Reb line, or the Johnnies had found them.

  “Wait,” the sergeant cried. “Halt.”

  Roback knelt low. Nearby thrashing and crashing. More rifle fire just above. Mocking voices. And nothing but brush and drifting smoke to be seen amid the trees.

  “Every man,” the sergeant said, “see that you’re loaded and capped. Get ready, get ready…”

  Clang of ramrods, fumbling fingers.

  “Load and stay low. Don’t fire until I say so.”

  What did the sergeant know? Roback couldn’t read the sounds at all, couldn’t see anything. It was all too confused, and his thoughts wouldn’t come clear. Bullets ripped the air from every direction. Heat cramped his guts.

  Crashing through the brush above them. Coming on fast. Toward them.

  “Just wait,” the sergeant whispered. “Wait now.”

  It sounded like a herd of cows in a cornfield.

  “Wait.”

  Footfalls. Cries.

  “On your feet!” the sergeant bellowed.

  They rose, raggedly. Leveling their muskets.

  “Don’t shoot! Don’t shoot!”

  Blessedly, no one fired. It was men from their own brigade, from the 7th Michigan.

  “It’s over,” a man told them. “Too many Rebs. We got away. The rest are pinned down.”

  Two more soldiers joined them, breathless, and the Michiganders resumed their retreat. Roback waited. Looking to the sergeant. Waiting on an order, an excuse.

  An officer stumbled into them. Bleeding heavily from the remains of an ear.

  “Withdraw,” he said in the too-loud caw of a deaf man.

  Six thirty p.m.

  Bailey’s Creek

  Barlow watched the litter go by, bearing George Macy rearward. Unconscious, the colonel struggled for breath. A pair of staff men brought up the rear. Slinking off.

  Arms folded over his chest, Barlow nodded in Macy’s direction.

  At least Macy hadn’t funked it half as badly as the others. The man had behaved like a soldier. But hadn’t he anyone left who could do the job? The division he’d led in May had been irresistible. Now it was worthless, useless.…

  Of a sudden, Barlow wanted to curl up and weep. It had nothing to do with Macy. Or with any man touched by the day. It was an overwhelming sense of not being commensurate with the universe, incapable of willing his way through. A sense of failure immeasurably profound.

  But Barlow did not cry. Nor did he allow the dizziness to unman him. And if his rump was raw, he’d been through worse. Only his horrid feet would not be mastered.

  He wished he possessed a Roman commander’s authority to decimate units proven cowardly. Macy’s first line had done its part, but the second line had stalled after his injury. It was more than an embarrassment. The brigade’s performance was a humiliation.

  Barlow found himself on the ground. Unsure of how he’d gotten there. Whirlwind dizzy. Sweat bursting from him.

  When his eyes regained focus, he saw his staff clustered around him, afraid to touch him. As soon as he could, he willed himself to his feet.

  “I tripped,” he said. “All of you, back to your duties.”

  Slowly, they obeyed.

  Refusing any assistance, Barlow made his way to the tent put up for him and chased off the lurking orderly. He drank nearly a full canteen of water, gulping until his throat hurt. Then he splashed a bit over his head. He felt emptier than he’d thought a man could feel.

  “Belle,” he said.

  Ten p.m.

  Deep Bottom

  The heavy darkness gripped the men in their thousands, insisting that they fight for every breath. For the first time in weeks, thunder grumbled and lightning cut. Then the rain came, heavy as molasses, replacing one curse with another, the soldier’s lot.

  SEVEN

  Seven a.m., August 16

  Fisher’s Run, Charles City Road

  “Handsomely done, Gregg!” Nelson Miles told the cavalry colonel.

  The two officers watched as horsemen charged along the road in a column of fours. Already flanked by Miles’ infantrymen and dismounted cavalry, the last belt of Reb skirmishers collapsed. Small encounter though it was, the effort was the first perfectly executed maneuver Miles had seen since Barlow broke into the Mule Shoe at Spotsylvania. It let him hope that this day might go well.

  “Rooney Lee’s pack,” Irvin Gregg said. “Him we can handle. But if Hampton’s on the field, we’ll feel some knuckles.” He looked skyward. “Heat was bad enough, but this humidity…”

  Miles rearranged his kerchief to shield his sunburned neck. He’d had enough and more of Virginia’s summers.

  Instead of launching a grand assault, Hancock had squandered the previous day in minor attacks and probes, every effort marred by delays and drawn out by countermarches. A deluge had drenched the ebbing afternoon, deepening the mire left on the roads by a night of rain, slowing all human efforts, and Miles had grown frustrated with the world. Barlow had held himself together, bodily, at least, but Miles had started to worry about Hancock, who had ordered the Tenth Corps to shift to the right, playing hopscotch with the Second Corps, still seeking the Reb flank.

  No doubt it looked like a splendid plan on paper, but Birney’s Tenners had taken their turn at battling the heat on the march as they shifted northward, with men falling out in even greater numbers than the losses the Second Corps suffered the day before. The heat had grown so grim that men died resting under trees. With orders vague and routes confused, the Tenth Corps had passed behind the Second only at midnight.

  Hancock had been in a constant grump, riding about to quibble with subordinates, a changed man and for the worse. Disappointed by Barlow—but still defending him—Hancock had reassumed direct command of his corps, as well as of the ove
rall operation, with Barlow returned to division command and Miles to his brigade. It hadn’t helped.

  “First a muddle, now mud,” a wag had commented.

  Then, with Miles’ soldiers resting at last, Hancock had reached past Barlow to order the brigade to support a cavalry movement, with Brigadier General David McMurtrie Gregg commanding and Miles paired off with Colonel Irvin Gregg, the general’s cousin and junior member of one more family dynasty in blue. Despite the hurried night march required for his brigade to be in place by dawn, Miles had been so glad to leave Frank Barlow that he’d welcomed the orders detaching him.

  Now he and Gregg the Lesser had pulled off their little trick, getting off to a fair start on their push down the road toward Richmond.

  Let the Tenth Corps make its grand attack. Let others have the glory of the day, if that was their destiny. Supporting the cavalry’s tussle with the Rebs, Miles felt like a prisoner newly freed.

  A pair of troopers shepherded three unhorsed prisoners eastward. The Confederates looked a bit seedy, though not so unkempt as their infantry.

  Miles called, “What’s your regiment?”

  A hard-eyed Reb with greasy ringlets answered, “Thirteenth Virginia, sonny. Kiss my ass.”

  Nine a.m.

  New Market Heights

  Oates was vexed. For two days, the Yankees hadn’t done anything much, first parading around in the sun, then parading around in the rain, and now content to sit still while his soldiers baked for nothing. What action there was this morning banged away well to the left, up by the Darbytown Road somewhere, another fellow’s problem. It did appear that the 48th Alabama would just swelter and suck eggs again, alongside his old 15th and that strutting scum-yellow peacock, Colonel Lowther, a man Oates still had a good mind to beat with his fists, even if it cost him his command.

  Whip the Yankees first, he cautioned himself. You don’t know what’s coming, you just think you do.

  The blue-bellies down in the lowlands did look fewer and listless, though.

  “Get over here, Hardwick,” he called to the nearest lieutenant. “You pass the word that I’m coming around to inspect the rifles myself. Don’t want to see one speck of dust.”

  The lieutenant saluted and fled.

  Hard to keep the boys in proper trim. Oh, their rifles would be fine. But they needed to keep occupied and not just squat in a ditch, thinking of Lorna or Joan and rubbing their piss pipes.

  Damn, though, he needed to get into a fight, any fight. Show up that swine Lowther. Show how a true man did what needed doing.

  The battle sounds in the distance ebbed, though a battery remained obstinate.

  Another worthless day of nothing much.

  Nine a.m.

  Charles City Road

  “What do you make of that, Miles? Think it’s a ruse?”

  Miles considered the captured map spread across his saddle. “I doubt General Chambliss got himself killed to play us a trick.”

  “Classmate of mine at the Point, you know,” David McMurtrie Gregg told his borrowed subordinate. “Always liked him. Decent man. Wish he’d had a better end. And a better cause.”

  Brigadier General John Chambliss, CSA, had galloped blindly into a Federal volley while searching for his own cavalrymen. The Johnnies were having a difficult morning, with Gregg’s horsemen and Miles’ infantry pushing up the road toward White’s Tavern, threatening Richmond.

  “I hope Irv keeps that hand,” Gregg said of his cousin. Irvin Gregg, who had begun the day at Miles’ side, had been struck by a ball just below the wrist, forcing him to the rear. “Well, best get on. I’ll send the map to Hancock, see what he makes of it. Probably just pass it on to Sharpe and let him riddle over it.”

  The map taken from Chambliss’ pocket laid out the Richmond defenses in detail. It did seem too good to be true.

  Miles touched two fingers to his cap. “I’m going forward again. Heavies need watching.”

  “Join you shortly,” Gregg told him. “Just want to see John’s body handled properly. The devils had cut off his buttons and cleaned out his pockets before I got to him.” He paused, then repeated, “Decent man. Courtly, in that easy way they have.”

  Miles was a bit surprised to find David Gregg so wistful. Gregg was a man who chewed iron.

  Rifle fire broke out ahead and Miles spurred his horse forward. The breeze created by the canter was welcome, a respite, however slight. If Chambliss was dead, so was the air on this swollen corpse of a day.

  The cavalry advanced so swiftly that Miles’ men had to struggle to keep up. And the undergrowth flanking the road had claws and teeth. Miles’ horse bled from his forays into the brush and his riding boots showed gouges. But he needed to stay close, since he didn’t trust the 2nd New York Heavies. Not after their wretched showing two days before. If Gregg’s troopers could work through those brambles dismounted, his men would do no less, the cost be damned.

  Riding toward the spat and spit of rifles, he encouraged lagging soldiers to keep up and tore at any officers who failed to keep them in line.

  The Rebs pulled back again before Miles could reach the latest encounter. They were buying time, not really fighting. Waiting for reinforcements. The attack had gained almost a mile from the spot where Chambliss fell, and Miles felt a growing concern that they might outdistance all support, only to see the fortunes of war turn against them. Birney’s attack, the day’s main affair, had gotten under way, he could hear the racket, and that would draw off most of the Rebs’ reserves. Still, Miles would have preferred to be tied in with Tenth Corps, at least through flankers. In a crisis, Gregg’s horsemen could withdraw a great deal faster than the infantry, leaving them stranded. And Miles knew all too well the back-and-forth gamesmanship of cavalry duels along roads.

  Christ, he thought, you’re winning for once, be glad of it. Don’t go to bits like Barlow.

  He caught up with his Michigan and New Hampshire regiments.

  “Good work, good work,” he called. “Stay after them, boys.”

  “And would there be any water, sir? I’m dry as Granny’s gash.”

  “Take it from the Rebs,” Miles told the man.

  Barlow. The question of loyalty nagged Miles. He’d been unspeakably angry with Frank, vicious in private thoughts. Yet he owed Frank much, he knew it well. And he liked Frank, for all his quirks. Could it be resentment? Over all Frank had done for him? That common form of ingratitude? Or was it just temper strained by the monstrous heat?

  What was true loyalty? Where did its limits lie? It sounded splendid in novels, with clansmen rallied around some Highland chieftain, fighting to the last. But what about the chieftain’s debt to his clansmen? Did he owe his foremost loyalty to Barlow, like some feudal knight? If so, what did Barlow owe him? What code, what bonds of fealty, trumped all others? The modern age was hardly the age of chivalry, and yet …

  Did he owe his first loyalty to the men he commanded? To duty itself? To the army? Or to a general cause? Had he betrayed Barlow in thought, if not in deed?

  What did that say of him as a man, a friend, a subordinate? On the other hand, what did it help, if he excused Frank’s incapacity and more men died for naught? The business wasn’t as clean as in those books.…

  Colonel Kerwin, who’d taken over Irvin Gregg’s brigade, greeted Miles on a crest.

  “How far back are your men, sir?”

  “Not five minutes,” Miles said. “The lead regiments.”

  “If they’d relieve my boys, I’d like to mount them again.”

  “A further advance?”

  Kerwin shook his head. “I’ve orders to stop here. Until General Gregg comes up for a look.”

  “Well, my men will be glad enough to stop. Problem may be getting them going again.”

  The colonel grimaced. “Don’t think I’ve ever been hotter in my life.” He patted his horse. “I’m losing horses.”

  “I’m losing men,” Miles told him. “Found any water?”

  “None.
”

  Eleven a.m.

  Darbytown Road

  “Give it to them, pour it on!” Girardey shouted. Few men could hear for the uproar, but he couldn’t help shouting encouragement.

  The Yankees had turned back, but Brigadier General Victor Jean Baptiste Girardey, who’d been a captain thirteen days before, had something to prove. No other Confederate officer had ever made such a leap, but his actions at the mine made him the exception. And he intended to show Billy Mahone, A. P. Hill, and Robert E. Lee that their judgment had been sound.

  “Aim right, boys! Clear away those blue hogs troubling Sanders!”

  He was still in a bit of a daze about it all, proud and delighted. He had neither sought nor expected such a thing. But the country to which he had been brought as a child, this land he had come to love so, this American Southland, had honored him handsomely. His twenty-seven years had been good years, with only a few remembered glimpses of France and many treasured memories of Georgia, of dear Augusta, and of New Orleans, which had given him a wife who wouldn’t mind promenading on a general’s arm. Her delectable Creole vanity would glow.

  The last Yankees slipped out of range. Those that could be seen. It was ugly country, brambles, pines, and incised earth, murderous to an attacker, but confusing enough for those tasked to defend it.

  The firing petered out.

  “Officers,” he called. “Tally your ammunition. Report by regiment.”

  His Georgia Brigade. His brigade.

  They’d been able to ride the railcars north from Petersburg, sparing them much of the march. But the last miles in the rain and the blind-a-man darkness had been a trial, and water was scarcer than virgins in a fancy house. Thus far, he’d lost more men to the heat than to bullets.

  The Yankees had made two assaults and both had failed, their efforts addled by the broken terrain and well-timed volleys. His Georgians had not been tested yet, not really. The hardest blows had gone in against Sanders’ Alabama Brigade, with Sanders commanding a slapped-together division.

  Sanders. Brave man, good man. But Girardey had not missed the glints of jealousy. And not merely from Sanders. Many a man was piqued by his elevation.