The Damned of Petersburg

by Ralph Peters

To his surprise, the Yankees took an interest. Two of them edged the ambulance orderlies aside and, with help from a third, eased Oates down onto the blanket. The pain made him quiver like a man with malaria.

  Before they helped him lie all the way flat, a Yankee knelt down and offered his canteen.

  Expecting water, Oates was thrilled to find whiskey scorching his tongue and burning his throat. He took a serious draught. Best thing on the worst day of his life.

  “Little more,” he said, not impolitely. The Yankee held the canteen to his lips. Oates got down as much as he could. He nodded faintly, wanted to say, “Thank you,” but could not get out the words.

  They eased him down. Whiskey had many fine qualities, but Oates found that its usefulness against pain was overstated.

  They carried him in that blanket, six Yankees superintended by two orderlies, a queer little party amid the tumult of the rescued road to Richmond. Twice, they paused. And the best Yankee who’d ever drawn breath—in Oates’ opinion—gave him more whiskey.

  It seemed as though they carried him for miles. Bearing him through a wilderness of misery.

  At last, an ambulance came by. There was room on the floor for Oates.

  That trip was another agony, a pitchfork-prodded journey down to Hell. Other men, all officers, bled on him from their litters and the bed of the wagon trickled a red stream. A dead hand fell across him. He let it be.

  When the ambulance reached the field infirmary, clotted blood glued his hair to the planks beneath him.

  Three p.m.

  Headquarters, Barlow’s division

  Barlow couldn’t get up. He gathered his will and tried to clench his body, but he could barely lift his head from the cot. It was even too much to roll off the bunk for the slops bucket.

  He had meant to lie down for five minutes, to gather himself. Barely able to swallow, he’d left his staff and stumbled into his tent. Without a single word to an aide or orderly. Now he lay helpless, revoltingly soiled, unable to rise or think clearly.

  A few more minutes, he told himself. Just need rest. A couple of minutes.

  Belle was coming. She was going to wash his feet.

  Someone entered the tent without permission. Barlow was too weak to protest.

  “Good Lord, Barlow,” a man said.

  Charlie Morgan’s voice. Hancock’s chief of staff. Not Belle.

  For God’s sake: Belle was dead. How could he have forgotten? It made him want to cry.

  What did Hancock want?

  “Charlie,” Barlow muttered.

  “You need to be in a hospital, Frank. Dear God. You can’t command like this. We need to get you down to City Point.”

  Mustering all the strength his mind could drive into his limbs, Barlow levered himself to a sitting position, greased with his waste.

  “All right,” he said in a docile voice he hated bitterly. Then he added, “If you can … stand my stink … get me to my feet.” He closed his eyes briefly to help the world make sense. “I won’t be carried off. Help me get up.”

  Three thirty p.m.

  Headquarters, Union Second Corps

  “He looked like a dying man,” Morgan said, pawing sweat away.

  “They’ll fix him up,” Hancock said, with more confidence in his voice than in his heart. The tent fly under which they stood drew insects like a corpse. Not that there weren’t real corpses enough to feast on.

  “He insisted on riding to the river himself. Wouldn’t take an ambulance. Just rode off, with shit all over him and two terrified orderlies. I sent a rider ahead to ready a boat.”

  Hancock wondered if anything else could go wrong.

  “I’ve recalled Miles,” Morgan continued. “Sent a rider. I thought you would approve, sir.”

  Hancock smiled grimly. “If I had a choice, I’d bust you down to captain. But I don’t, and you’re safe. Oh, that’s fine. You did the right thing. The pony-boys were just pissing on each other, more wasted effort. Miles would have been better used here today.” He scratched a wicked bite behind his ear, a lump that felt big as a goiter. “Couldn’t make any progress on the Heights, Lee must’ve called up over half his army. And Birney’s breakthrough’s been falling apart.” Hancock sighed. “I sent him two brigades. Too little, too late.” He considered the scorched landscape. The effects of the rain had vanished, leaving the earth as thirsty as before. “I hate this place, Charlie, I hate it like clap in a corporal.”

  Three thirty p.m.

  Darbytown Road

  “Stand, men, stand!” Lieutenant Colonel Armstrong commanded, emulating his father’s pulpit voice. It was uncanny to hear himself amid the chaos of battle: He really seemed to be his father’s son. “Show them you’re the bravest men on the field.”

  “’Cept nobody here to see it,” a soldier teased.

  The men ranked nearby tittered. Samuel Chapman Armstrong didn’t mind. If the men could laugh, they weren’t about to break.

  “They’ll know, Private Washington,” Armstrong said. “Those who matter will know.”

  “You keep a watch eye on Washington, Cunnel,” another soldier kidded. “He run like a rabbit, give him the chance.”

  “They’re coming again.”

  Armstrong wheeled about. He didn’t feel terribly brave himself. But he put his trust in Christ and did his duty. By these good men and their cause.

  “Volley by company. At fifty yards,” he shouted.

  The Rebs came howling and yipping through the brush, invisible at first, noisy ghosts. Then movement nudged the smoke. In an instant, dozens more forms plunged downward through the undergrowth and trees. Dozens, then hundreds.

  “Steady … steady…”

  Sweat and blown powder, excitement and fear. His breath quickened. Every sensation Armstrong felt seemed impossibly strong, as rich as the fruits of the tropics. Even the killing heat seemed to fill him with life.

  How soft the breezes of childhood had been … but the storms, when they came, were ferocious.

  “Fire.”

  Mock his Negroes as men might, none could deny that he’d taught them to shoot well. Rebs tumbled, some throwing wide their arms as if crucified. A missionary’s son, come from the Kingdom of Hawaii by way of Williams College, Armstrong had set himself the goal of turning the 9th U.S. Colored Troops into the finest regiment in the army.

  The Rebel host was legion, but his soldiers repulsed them again, holding their exposed position even as nearby regiments collapsed.

  “Good work, men. Now fill up the first rank. Sergeants, you know what to do.”

  He’d taught them to shoot, and he’d taught them to read. As his father, armed with the Word of God, had brought the miracle of alphabets and books to benighted islanders. The man who could read could feel his soul expand.

  Now he needed these men to hold a bit longer. With the Johnnies screeching that tribal chant of theirs, that warbling terror.

  How could the Rebels fight so bravely to keep millions in bondage? How could they be so far from God—and yet invoke the Good Book for their cause? Armstrong cared little for the Union itself. He even felt the United States would have been best served by releasing the Southern states, with their pagan cruelty and their Judas-like betrayal of Jesus Christ. But slavery must not endure, and that made this war a crusade worth Christian blood.

  The Lord’s work lay in leading these men beside him. To help them free themselves. That was a cause worth a man’s small mortal life.

  As more of the Union line collapsed, the Johnnies pushed past on the left. Approaching Armstrong, Captain Meyers said in a back-of-church whisper, “Sir … hadn’t we ought to pull back? To maintain contact?”

  “We have no such orders, Captain. The Ninth will stand.” He turned his attention to the ranks again. “Sergeant Devero, see that Private Tolly straightens his cap. He’s not posing for the ladies.”

  These men, his men. Who wept to realize they could spell out the stenciling on a crate. Who read the Gospels aloud with a fervo
r lost by their race of abusers.

  The Rebs soon tried another approach, working around his right, as well, and using the foliage to sneak up on them and snipe. Men fell, but their lines did not waver.

  There was no balm in Gilead, and no protection on their right flank, either. The 9th was the end regiment, right flank of the brigade and of the division.

  A color-bearer crumpled. Another man took up the flag while comrades bore the fellow struck down to the back of the second line. Instead of skulking off, the fellows who had carried him off rejoined the lines.

  He wanted them all, every one of the generals and the colonels on this field, to see that his men were the equal of any white regiment.

  “Steady, men.”

  Always “men.” Never “boys.”

  The Rebs came screaming down a hundred yards to the regiment’s left, widening their breakthrough, and the last formation beyond the 9th collapsed. White men ran in dread, as if chased by Satan himself. Even those who kept to their colors retreated in a hurry.

  “Captain Curran! Companies D and F will refuse the flank.”

  Men shifted almost gracefully, nimble, quick, and proud. Once, a soldier on the drill field had called Armstrong a “slave-driver.” The other fellows had shushed the man, but the epithet had pierced him like a nail. Now they understood the point of his firmness.

  Sharpshooters dropped more men. Men who trusted him.

  Hadn’t anyone the decency to order them back with the others? Did some still find satisfaction in leaving U.S. Colored Troops to perish? He’d heard the horrid tales told of the mine pit.

  The refused companies fired at any Rebs who strayed too close to the regiment’s left. But the right was being bloodied, without the chance to respond. The men stood their ground stoically, but soon the losses would become unbearable.

  The smoke across the field faded to gossamer. Armstrong saw that they truly were alone now. A single regiment left behind to stand against a slavemongering army.

  It was folly to push his demonstration too far. He did not wish to slay these men for vanity. But every minute they stood their ground commanded more respect.

  He could hear Reb officers giving commands in the brush, in hidden ravines and ditches. Assembling their men to finish off his regiment.

  Enough.

  Armstrong strode along his line, calling, “Officers … prepare to withdraw … at a walk … prepare to withdraw … on my order…”

  There was no laughter now, no teasing to ease the nerves. Faces were bloodless and set, as if men feared to twitch a muscle or blink.

  “Regiment … from the right … by company … at five-pace intervals … withdraw…”

  The command wasn’t strictly by the book. But only one Book mattered. The important thing was that they understood, all of them, what needed to be done.

  Fearing their prize might escape, the Johnnies catcalled and their firing increased. But Armstrong’s men withdrew handsomely, stepping over broken ground and fallen trees and stumps, through rifle pits and ditches, keeping their order remarkably well and stopping crisply when he wanted a volley.

  “Cunnel, you git back here, too,” a man called.

  “Hush up,” a sergeant corrected him. “That man know what he doing.”

  But Armstrong didn’t know, that was the thing. And he didn’t much like the bullets tearing past. But if he pretended to care nothing for danger, the men would bear up, too.

  And they did.

  A party of Rebs exploded from a swale, coming at his left companies with bayonets. A sharp brawl send the Johnnies reeling back.

  Confederate artillery sought their range. Thirsty for Negro blood. Unwilling to let them escape.

  “Let my people go,” they’d sing in the twilight, by their fires, “let my people go…” In voices so rich with suffering, voices of such yearning, that even freedom would not meet their needs. Only the blood of Christ would quench that thirst.

  Armstrong wondered if the blood of others he’d shed in battle, no matter the justice and virtue of the cause, could be forgiven. The Sermon on the Mount denied the sword.

  Well, even damnation was a price he’d pay to free these men.

  He got the regiment into the cover of a shot-up grove. The Rebel pestering, their persecution, fell off.

  As his soldiers approached the safety of the bristling Tenth Corps lines, he made the regiment re-form and march the last yards properly, colors high. And a miracle happened.

  White men in blue uniforms cheered the niggers.

  Four thirty p.m.

  Clarke house, Tenth Corps headquarters

  Letting his subordinates rest their troops, Miles reported to Major General Birney. There was still a bit of firing, but not much.

  “You look ready to bite,” Birney said.

  “Bad day. Again. The cavalry don’t fight, they flirt with each other.”

  “Saith the noble officer of infantry!” Birney fingered his beard. “Well, no one’s had a good day, as far as I can tell. Except maybe Bobby Lee. We did break through. For all it turned out to be worth.”

  “I heard.”

  “Hancock just … Oh, let it go. We funked it, that’s the thing. Another waste.” An eyebrow rose. “You’ve heard about Barlow, of course?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Off to City Point. Clean sheets and broth. You’ve got the division, Win confirmed it.” Birney’s mouth curled. “Really, Miles, at this rate you’ll be taking over the entire Second Corps.”

  “Maybe not.”

  “Well, I’ve got your other brigades loafing to my rear. Hancock sent them over, but too late. Consider them released back to your division.” Abruptly, his tone went from cynical to broken. “Miles, we had a chance, we had such a chance … Terry ripped a grand hole in their line.…”

  Birney rambled on for a time about lost opportunities, but Miles couldn’t think beyond Frank Barlow.

  Five thirty p.m.

  Field infirmary, Darbytown Road

  Oates groaned as the orderlies laid him on the table. Three surgeons he knew—Hudson, Burton, and Watkins—gathered around him.

  “Sorry to see this day,” Burton said.

  “Reckon I’m a mite sorrier,” Oates told him. What little effect the canteen of whiskey had had on him had worn off, chased by the pain.

  “Colonel Oates…,” Hudson said, voice cautious, as if Oates might rise from the table and knock him down, “we’ll want to administer chloroform…”

  “The thing is,” Burton jumped back in, “we need to look inside the wound. While you’re under and holding still. I won’t say the outlook’s good, but we won’t really know until … The point is, would you like us to bring you back from under the chloroform? To decide what we should do? Before we proceed?”

  Oates realized he was occupying three surgeons. While the wounded covered an acre outside the farmhouse.

  “Just do what you deem best, gentlemen. I have every confidence in you.”

  Now give me the damned chloroform, Oates thought. He’d never had the drug, had bitten a leather strap and suffered through surgery in the past. But he welcomed it now, the prospect of pain subdued, all thoughts of manly suffering abandoned.

  Nothing had ever hurt this bad. It was an authentically new experience and one Oates would have been downright pleased to miss.

  “Do what you have to do,” Oates said. “Just get on with it.”

  Hudson waved to an orderly, who approached with a brown bottle and a handkerchief.

  * * *

  Oates awoke at sunset, propped under a tree. He’d just climbed out of a nightmare. There had been no pain, yet he’d been aware of them sawing off his arm, had heard the scrape of the blade and sensed a dulled wrenching.

  Old Jimmy Morris sat beside him now, hale and whole and weeping. Old Jimmy and he went back to their first company. Oates had moved on, Jimmy hadn’t.

  “What’re … you…”

  “You’re awake! Oh, praise the Lord!�
��

  “Had to wake sometime.” His head still had a swirl to it, though. “Jimmy, you’re bawling like a gal left at the altar.”

  “Didn’t know if’n you—” He stopped himself.

  “If I’d die? I’m a sight harder to kill.” His arm hurt dully, but the pain behind his forehead grew knife-sharp. He figured the pains would swap places when they were ready.

  “Colonel…”

  “Might as well start calling me ‘William’ again. I do suspect my colonel-ing days may be over.”

  Around them, men moaned, dream-spoke, gargled death.

  “Anything I can do, sir…”

  Why was it that his head felt near to exploding and his arm—the place where his arm had been, where pain had held such unchallenged dominion—just felt like someone had given him a beating, no more than that?

  “There is something. Go on in to Doc Hudson. Catch him between his cutting, don’t interrupt him. Tell him I’d like a big, fine glass of whiskey, if he can spare it. Settle this head of mine.”

  Relieved to be in action, Jimmy went off. Oates closed his eyes, then opened them again. A little afraid. Something about that chloroform … he suspected death might not be too dissimilar, an endless, cloudy nightmare.

  He didn’t bother to shoo off the fly that teased him. Couldn’t be bothered. He did feel properly whipped, heat-burdened and much reduced. Literally reduced, by the volume and weight of one arm. Yet … the twilight had a beauty to it that would not be denied, a sky the color of mackerel, crowned with purple.

  Going to find out what it was to be a one-armed man. Bitter thought. Better than dying, but hard to say how much.

  Ugly thing for a woman to see, a man’s stump. Maybe have to keep his shirt on, hide it.

  Jimmy returned with a disappointingly stingy dose of whiskey. Oates reached for it with the ghost of a hand. It was queer, unsettling. He’d thought he’d reached out, even though the arm was gone.

  “Give it here,” he said, accepting the glass in his left hand. “Doc Hudson does pour meager.”

  He drank gratefully.

  After relishing the glorious burn, he said, “Jimmy? There’s something else. I recall you write a fair hand. Set down a letter for me? To my mother and father. Fool things happen.…”