The Damned of Petersburg

by Ralph Peters

  “Oh, there’s fucking Ivanhoe,” Charlie said.

  Hancock turned to see: Gregg was back. One hoped with better news.

  “Goddamn it, Charlie,” Hancock said, “I’ve warned you not to mock my fellow generals, not to my face. At least do it behind my back.”

  Putting a choirboy look on his pitted features, Morgan answered in a cherub’s voice, “I tries, sir. But I looks at them and can’t help myself, I can’t.”

  The three men burst out laughing.

  “You think I won’t court-martial you, Morgan? You think you can’t be replaced?” But Hancock couldn’t overcome his mirth.

  “What’s the joke?” David Gregg said, drawing off his riding gloves. The fellow was as sweat-soaked as any horse.

  “Morgan here was being an ass again.”

  Somber and stained, Gregg was in no mood for levity. Hancock had ripped into the cavalry general not an hour before, after Hampton’s men had almost severed the road to the Union rear.

  “Are we tolerably safe now?” Hancock asked, a ghost of anger, spawn of remembrance, returning to his voice.

  “Yes, sir,” Gregg answered stiffly. “I put two more of my Pennsylvania regiments back there.” He looked at Miles. “General Miles’ regiments have been released. I appreciate the loan, but the road’s secure now.”

  “Well then,” Hancock said, “let’s see if Powell Hill’s pisser is working today.” He, too, turned to Miles. “Close off the porte d’entrée on the Station Road, get a barricade up. I think the last of the cavalry’s back in.”

  Gregg did not demur.

  Miles offered a field salute. “Best get back to business, in any case.” A half mile off, on the skirmish line, the firing redoubled. “Does seem like the Johnnies mean to fight.”

  Just one more victory, Hancock thought. Just one more.

  One forty p.m.

  Field headquarters of Lieutenant General A. P. Hill, CSA

  Major General Cadmus Wilcox found his superior flat on a bed of moss, red shirt half-unbuttoned and trousers loosened. Bejeweled with sweat, face clenched, and eyes unsteady, A. P. Hill looked as though he were suffering the torments of an early Christian martyr, an image at odds with the source of Hill’s complaint. Everyone knew what ailed the man, although the word went unspoken. One unlucky night and lifelong penance. Wilcox imagined Hill’s insides rotting from the crotch upward.

  Forcing himself to acknowledge Wilcox, Hill said, “Heth isn’t up. Need to wait for Harry. Do this right.”

  “Sir … we’re late as it is. Hampton—”

  “Hampton can hold his own,” Hill gritted out.

  “Yes, sir. But Hancock’s all but trapped himself. It’s a terrible position. I rode out and had a look. It’s a big, broken horseshoe, but not big enough. Overshoot one of his flanks, you’ll hit the rear of the other one. Hard to believe that Hancock would let it stand—it’s a downright invitation to skin him alive.”

  “Harry will be up. He’ll be up soon.”

  “Yes, sir. But our chance is now. Before Hancock comes to his senses and pulls out. I’ve got four good brigades…”

  Hill’s features tightened in a spasm of pain. He’d been indisposed that first day at Gettysburg, too, and urgently needed decisions had been delayed. Every officer who’d been there remembered it well.

  “I don’t know … I need to get up…” Hill made no effort to rise.

  “General Hill, I beg you. Let me attack. Hit the northwest corner, I can take those works with the men I have on hand.”

  Hill didn’t answer for a time. Wrestling with pain or demons. Or both.

  At last, Hill said, “Go ahead, Cad. Bust Hancock.”

  Two fifteen p.m.

  Reams Station

  Miles rode to a spot where the parapet dipped, arriving just in time to see the last men from the picket line dash through the lanes in the abatis and fly over the rampart like drunken acrobats. Across the field, Reb skirmishers filtered out of the scrub pines, holding their rifles just below their shoulders.

  Yes, they’d come on now. In strength. The wait was over.

  He felt his muscles tighten, his pulse quicken. Nothing like it. Nothing like it on earth.

  Dismounting, he tossed the reins to an orderly, then made his way along the wall behind his Consolidated Brigade. As he passed the pitiful remnants of the Irish Brigade, still clinging to their flags, if lacking numbers, he called out, “I’m told the Irish are a peaceable people, meek and mild. With no liking for a donnybrook. Is that so?”

  He desperately wanted to repair the damage done by Frank and his accusations.

  One Irishman called, “And pure enough for the choirs of Heaven, too, and fresh as roses, that we be.”

  Another blasphemed and responded, “Tell me who said it, Genr’l, and I’ll thrash the deceiver meself.”

  The men laughed, ever a good thing with bullets probing, and a third voice called, “Don’t worry, Genr’l, me boyo, for we’ll hand ’em a crock of turds at the end of this rainbow.”

  Colonel Levin Crandell, commanding the Consolidated Brigade, had been running the picket line for hours. Soggy as a man caught by a thunderstorm, he came up gasping, saluting and not waiting for a return.

  “Developed them as best we could, sir. Three brigades, maybe four. Wilcox’s Division, took a few prisoners.”

  “Prisoners have anything else to say?”

  “Don’t know much, it seems. Marched hard yesterday and marched hard again today.”

  “No sign of Heth? Or Mahone? Anybody else?”

  Crandell shook his head. “Not yet.”

  Men on the rampart and down in the rifle pits dueled with the skirmishers, who hadn’t chosen to prowl far beyond the trees.

  “Doesn’t make sense,” Miles said. “Feels like an attack. But I can’t see them attacking with one division.”

  The colonel pointed southward. “They’ve got Hampton’s cavalry, too. And he’s a sonofabitch.”

  Miles wasn’t convinced. If it was only one division out there … and under Wilcox, at that … hard to believe that Hill would like the odds. He considered the possibility that the Confederates were sweeping around a flank with the rest of their force, but Gregg’s horsemen had both flanks picketed strongly, there’d be a warning …

  “Here they come!” a soldier shouted.

  * * *

  Private Henry Roback couldn’t see a single Reb. The 152nd New York and the rest of the brigade had been ordered by General Gibbon himself to march up and form a close reserve behind the left of the First Division—which now seemed to be led by General Miles, the young one with rusty hair. They’d covered the few hundred yards at the double-quick, only to halt near a rickety church and stand staring at the backs of their fellow Yankees, the earthworks and muzzle smoke hiding all beyond.

  Plenty of racket, though: those tormented-animal shrieks of the Rebel yell, coming closer and closer, and the deep whup of cannon, accompanied by flash, recoil, and billow. Within the defenses, officers plunged about, shouting, the half of them getting in everybody’s way. Up at the wall, the veterans were easy to spot, firing and calmly loading again, their actions aped with less steadiness by the new levies. Men shouted abruptly, letting off the terrible buildup inside them, and the artillery horses stamped but didn’t stampede—veterans themselves.

  General Miles rode the line, as calm as if the air wasn’t peppered with bullets.

  “Another fool general out to get himself killed,” Elias McCammon said.

  Roback just wanted to see. That was by far the worst part of waiting to go into a fight, the raw unknowing, the uncertainty about what the next minute would bring.

  As he sometimes did, when the waiting dragged on, he began to repent of his sins and transgressions, which suddenly loomed larger. Just that morning, he’d peeked at a little deck of picture cards a photographer had made of a shameless woman. The other men had hooted and whistled, speculating on vile possibilities, but he’d turned away after glimp
sing a few poses, astonished and sickened that a woman would show herself like that … worrying that maybe all women were secretly that way, Jezebels, Delilahs. Temptress Eve. He’d been disgusted, too, by the way his flesh responded to the pictures.

  Roback was far from the most religious fellow in the regiment, but as he stood waiting for war to take him in, listening to those Rebel howls, blue-mouthed curses, and soldiers firing as fast as they could reload, he asked of the Lord forgiveness.

  * * *

  Miles felt taller, stronger, lit ablaze. A few of the Rebs had gotten close, only to pay with blood or the need to choose between surrender and death. Now the rest of them hurried back across the strip of field, seeking the grove from which they’d come, leaving comrades on the ground to twitch, flail an arm, or lie still.

  One thing baffled him, though: It looked like the Rebs had advanced just two brigades, not a full division. That had been plain folly, a waste of brave men.

  Trees swallowed the last Rebs. The soldiers behind the parapet hurrahed.

  This was the thrill of it. The fighting, yes, that was splendid. But this quick spasm of victory, the sudden release of a torrent of emotion, of submerged fears, bloodlust, desire, rage … this was the crowning glory of a battle, the brief, brilliant recognition that your flesh had conquered their flesh … a sensation too soon dissolved by the need to take stock, give orders, and wake the soldiers serving under you from their own spells.

  “All right,” Miles called. “Ammunition up! Litter bearers! Officers, restore your lines! I want a count!”

  He was acting like a regimental adjutant and he promptly corrected himself, turning silent as he surveyed the slight carnage and inevitable confusion within the earthworks. He commanded a division now and had to act accordingly. Subordinates needed to see to the cartridges boxes and the maimed.

  God, it was magnificent, though. He feared the end of the war, that it might come before he’d proved himself so thoroughly that, as the armies in blue were dismantled, he might be offered a place in the Regular Army. He dreaded a return to the crockery shop. Or a place in any other civilian profession.

  He’d learned long since that the Army was his love, perhaps his only one. He enjoyed the camaraderie, the company of bold men, the order of camp life, and the thrill of gunfire. Nelson Miles had found his home, his brotherhood.

  Three p.m.

  Jerusalem Plank Road

  Army of the Potomac rear

  “Lot more marching than thinking going on, it seems to me,” Levi Eckert said.

  “Always been true in your case,” Lieutenant Brown told him. Putting one foot in front of the other, as hot and worn as any of them. The chafing along his inner thighs was maddening. When he went for a squat, the skin looked like bloody raw beef.

  It was just a contrary, hard-to-get-through day, a shade worse than most. Not just from the heat and the strain of the march, it was more than that. The men—even good men—were tired in a way they had not been before. Soldiers fell by the wayside earlier and more readily, giving in to whims of incapability or just plain pretending. The thing was that they didn’t want to fight, they’d had enough, at least for the present.

  But it was Brown’s job to make them fight. Without a first sergeant, too. Sam Losch had been left behind, sick with the bloody squirts. Losch and a dozen others. And the soldiers of Company C still fit to march were as filthy as any Johnnies you could collar, lousy, itching, and grimly in need of a chance to bathe and boil every item of clothing they possessed.

  Brown was glad that Frances couldn’t see him. Or smell him.

  “Don’t see how it’s our place to rush off to help out Second Corps,” Levi added. “I don’t remember those high-steppers helping us.”

  “Just see to your men, Sergeant,” Brown told his fellow veteran. “This company isn’t going to go to pieces. Because you’re not going to let it.”

  Other companies in the 50th Pennsylvania already had their share of shirkers, though. And Brown knew he’d lose a few of his own charges. Maybe more than a few. Hundreds of men already had fallen out from the shrunken division. Marching toward a battle still so far off that Brown could barely hear it, like listening to a thunderstorm on the other side of First Mountain back on the canal. They certainly weren’t taking the most direct route.

  The men muttered, shifted their packs, and trudged on.

  “You! Schwab! Get back in your place.” The voice rose from deep in Sergeant Henry Hill. It was not open to dispute.

  Private Schwab caught up to the marching rank from which he’d drifted.

  It was a hard thing to understand, the way men were. They’d been proud to roaring about their deeds at Globe Tavern, a week before. Now they were sour, unwilling, with one great, unspoken question hovering over them: When is all this going to end?

  Brown found himself hoping what the others hoped, that the hot march would prove a mistake on the part of some general, that they wouldn’t be needed, after all.

  To the west, the growl of battle dropped to a murmur.

  Three p.m.

  Reams Station, Confederate lines

  Wilcox gathered in his brigade commanders. Scales, Lane, Anderson, McGowan. Proud, rancorous men. Anderson and Scales stood there disheveled, displeased, tempers coiled, the failed attack not half an hour behind them. Lane and McGowan waited for Wilcox to speak, Lane was hot but steady, McGowan impatient.

  Bad start. Got close, though.

  “Going to do it right this time,” Wilcox said. “More force. Hit that western rampart hard, make sure to overlap them on our left. That northwest corner, that’s the place to break through.”

  Wilcox understood what they were thinking: Why not wait? Until Heth comes up? Heth, at least, if not the brigades loaned out by Billy Mahone? Why not hold off until they could overwhelm them?

  Cadmus Wilcox did not intend to wait. This was his opportunity, the chance to emerge from Harry Heth’s long shadow. And from the lengthening shadow of Billy Mahone, made a major general. He intended to break Hancock, to seize his flags and batteries. He’d already put his sharpshooters to work killing the horses harnessed to limbers and caissons. He wouldn’t let Hancock save a single fieldpiece, if he could help it.

  “When the guns stop, that’s the signal to go forward,” Wilcox told them.

  Four fifteen p.m.

  Reams Station

  Hancock felt rejuvenated. His men had repelled not just one, but two Confederate assaults and had done so handsomely. Oh, it wasn’t a grand victory to be feted down the ages. But it was a win and a clean one.

  And if they came at him again, he’d be prepared. But he sensed the fighting was over for the day, with storm clouds gathering on the western horizon. The Rebs had been brave enough—bodies lay as close as fifteen feet from the earthworks. But it no longer paid to send men out to charge fortifications, even poor ones. The Rebs had played their hand and lost. The sharpshooting that continued was just spite.

  He turned to Charlie Morgan and Frank Walker. “Telegraphic message to Humphreys at headquarters. And to Meade, wherever he is.”

  The adjutant clutched his pencil.

  “Two attacks repelled. No reinforcement required at present. Will call on reserve if needed. Intend to withdraw after dark, in accordance with commanding general’s guidance. Too risky to abandon the works during daylight. Confederates remain present but inactive.”

  He slapped his growing belly. “That should do it. I miss anything, Charlie?”

  “No, sir. I’ll ask that the Ninth Corps division hold the road open. In case Hampton gets playful.”

  “All right, then. Frank, you get my message off. Before the telegraph line gets snapped again. Charlie, if Mitchell returns from his sybaritic sojourn at City Point, send him to me immediately. Could’ve used a proper aide today. And make sure somebody’s bringing up replacement horses for the artillery teams. The Rebs seem intent on butchering horseflesh today.”

  Morgan summoned a cold-blooded f
ace, far from the one he wore to tell whorehouse jokes. “Makes me wonder if they’re really done. Shooting up the horses, that suggests to me they want the guns.”

  “Pure spite. Hill failed in those last attacks on Warren, failed badly. Now he’s fizzled again. It’s just him being spiteful, the horses are all his sharpshooters can hit.”

  Morgan looked doubtful, but Hancock found himself smiling. However small a triumph, the day counted as his first unblemished victory in months. His Second Corps, his corps, had regained its luster.

  Even his bad leg seemed less of a bother.

  ELEVEN

  Five fifteen p.m., August 25

  Reams Station, Confederate lines

  “Give me the flag, son,” Harry Heth said.

  “General, I cain’t do that,” the private told him.

  The cannonade Heth had ordered had fallen silent. Regiment after regiment, brigade upon brigade, the little army he led awaited his signal to advance through the pines, charge, and crush Win Hancock before the storm blew in.

  With Hill flat on his back, Cad Wilcox had made a mess. Heth intended to fix it.

  “Boy, you give me that flag.”

  “No, sir.”

  There they stood. In front of the men in their thousands. His division and Wilcox’s, with two brigades of Mahone’s bringing up the rear. While one private held up everything.

  Tasked to send out a color-bearer, Lieutenant Waddell had chosen a goddamned mule. Heth almost tore into the boy—a soldier likely not twenty years old, but with lines cut in his face by blades of hardship.

  The general checked himself.

  “What’s your name, Private?”

  “Tom Minton, sir.”

  “Private Minton, I need to borrow your flag. To lead these men.” Grandly, Heth swept an arm toward the regiments in plain view and those masked by greenery, adding, “It’s the flag of the Twenty-sixth North Carolina, I can see that. Heroes of Gettysburg. I mean to honor it, son, carry it myself. Now let me have it.”

  “Cain’t do that, General, sir. It’s been trusted to me. You tell me where you want this flag to go, though, and I’ll take it there, all right. But I won’t surrender my colors.”