The Damned of Petersburg

by Ralph Peters

  The private was defiant beyond the outermost bounds of discipline. He needed a ride on a plank and a stretch of confinement.

  Gripped by revelation, unasked and unexpected, Heth’s heart changed. Pride overwhelmed him. Pride in a soldier so loyal to a torn cloth he’d defy a general, pride in an army so stubborn it would not give up.

  “You won’t give me your flag?”

  The private shook his head.

  Major General Henry Heth reached out and took the lad’s arm.

  “Come on, then. We’ll carry the colors together, you and I. Let’s wave your flag so every man can see.”

  In a moment, the two men, general and private, lofted the ragged red banner, flaunting it as a call to faith and a challenge to the faithless.

  With a Rebel yell to rattle Creation, the shabby gray lines stepped forward.

  Five twenty p.m.

  Reams Station

  The sound chilled Miles. The graybacks’ yowling rolled across the too-narrow fields, as if Lee’s entire army had arrived. Walking his line behind the Consolidated Brigade, he shifted quickly to wrath as he watched the first gray ranks burst from the trees.

  Withdrawing pickets leapt over the breastworks, the old routine. Artillery pieces positioned to face the wood didn’t wait for orders to open up. They fired case shot, then promptly switched to canister. At barked commands, the soldiers on the parapet opened fire—a crackle, then a roar.

  Rebs fell everywhere, some dropping dully like sacks of meal, others broken apart by artillery blasts, scorching the air with blood. But they kept coming. Double-quick, flags high, rifles at the trail. Keening that uncanny, ungodly screech. At last, they charged full out, defying their butchers.

  His men kept up their fire. Miles shouted encouragement. The first Rebs reached the abatis and bullied their way through the sharpened branches.

  “Shoot for their knees, shoot for their knees!” officers commanded.

  The slaughter seemed immense. But the Johnnies weren’t quitting this time.

  Miles hastened to the right, to the 4th New York Heavies, shouting at them to concentrate on the graybacks slowed by the abatis, to fire obliquely.

  When next he looked, it seemed the Rebs had been staggered. He spotted a few turning tail. Their formations were broken, moblike.

  “Pour it into them!” he shouted. “Give it to them! Stand your ground and give it to them!”

  It had been a near thing, but he felt he had them, that the Johnnies were ready to break. The carnage in the abatis was horrendous.

  But when he looked left, the scene shocked him: His men were deserting the breastworks. Running.

  Screaming, triumphant, gray-clad soldiers topped the parapet, followed by red flags.

  Miles ran for the breakthrough, followed by aides and orderlies, with his horse-holder doing his best to follow along ten yards to the rear.

  The Rebs were shouting, “Tarheels! Tarheels!”

  Miles’ line was folding inward from the flanks, with men on the right running, too. The Consolidated Brigade was collapsing, regiment by regiment, poisoned by draftees and new recruits.

  Have to hold the shoulders. Hold the shoulders, close off the penetration.

  As Miles paused at the edge of a railroad cut to take stock, a Reb color-bearer vaulted over the wall, landing in the ditch within touching distance, so close that Miles could read “North Carolina” on the banner.

  Lane’s Brigade, had to be. Tough buggers.

  An orderly shot the Johnny. Miles called for his horse.

  Hold the shoulders, seal off the penetration.

  Rebs were everywhere.

  Five forty p.m.

  Harry Heth and Private Minton planted the flag of the 26th North Carolina atop the berm abandoned by the Yankees.

  Five forty p.m.

  Mounted, Miles could see that the Rebs who’d got through were disorganized. A shameful number of his men had panicked, but enough of his veterans still resisted to give the Johnnies pause. Confederate officers struggled to form up their companies and regiments, desperate to regain control and press the attack.

  There still weren’t that many of them in the works. They could be pushed out.

  He rode the short distance back to Rugg’s brigade, on loan from Gibbon and placed as a reserve. The men were still lying down from the bombardment. The one thing missing was Colonel Rugg himself.

  “On your feet, men,” Miles called, already hoarse. He pointed with his revolver. “That gap. Close that gap right there. Get up and give them a volley. Then charge.”

  The men rose, most of them. Instead of advancing, they turned and made for the rear. Not one fired a shot.

  Five fifty p.m.

  Things just felt plain wrong to Henry Roback. It wasn’t the confusion, the smoke and noise. Not even the soldiers running for their lives. Something else just felt wrong.

  They’d been detached from their brigade, and an unfamiliar officer was screaming at them to change front and follow after him. Obedient, if doubtful, Roback and the rest of the 152nd New York scrambled over the berm of the northern return, with officers snapping at them to form back up and do it fast. At first, Roback couldn’t understand what was being asked of them—they seemed to be leaving the fight, abandoning the defenses, rather than rushing to staunch the Rebel breakthrough.

  Alarm gripped weary men, Roback felt it like a change in temperature.

  As the officers hastily moved them forward again, at a left oblique, Roback grasped their purpose. They were being positioned to swing about and strike the Johnnies’ flank, maybe their rear. And, sure enough, they soon were halted again and re-formed to enfilade the captured rifle pits, where Reb flags waved as graybacks muddled forward.

  Before the regiment could fire a single volley, someone shouted, “They’re behind us, the Rebs are behind us!”

  And they were. A mass of them.

  The 152nd New York broke ranks and fled. As he ran beside Roback, Elias McCammon’s face exploded in a cloud of blood, launching bits of bone and an intact eyeball.

  Roback ran faster.

  Five fifty p.m.

  Captain G. O. Holland, 28th North Carolina, Lane’s Brigade, found himself at a social disadvantage. Waving his sword, he’d leapt atop the berm, only to discover that no one had followed. He looked down on a score of antagonized Yankees.

  Mustering a confident look he hoped might appear genuine, Holland pointed his sword at his regiment’s rear and announced, “Yanks, if y’all know what’s best for you, you’d better make a blue streak towards sunset.” When the Federals hesitated, he added, “Throw down your rifles and raise those hands, and I promise you won’t be harmed.”

  To his relief and delight, the Yankees obeyed him, crawling over their parapet into captivity.

  Five fifty p.m.

  Miles rode for his Fourth Brigade, heedless of the danger. Broady’s men still held their stretch of entrenchments, firing into the Rebs as fast as they could.

  “Broady!” Miles hollered, gagging on the smoke. The colonel was occupied, back turned, deep in the fight.

  Miles didn’t want to dismount, there wasn’t time. He reached out toward a soldier with an arm wound, halting him.

  “First, you go and tell Colonel Broady I want him. Then you can go to the rear.”

  Bleeding like an opened-up hog, the soldier did as bidden.

  Broady came up, smoke-blackened.

  “Shift to the right.” Miles pointed toward a line of abandoned rifle pits. “Hold there. Channel the Rebs. I’m going to counterattack.”

  And he meant to do just that. If he could find the men.

  Broady looked hard-used, but he led a good brigade, if only a small one. The colonel said nothing, just nodded and turned back to his embattled soldiers, waving up his adjutant on his way back to the firing line.

  Before Miles could ride off, the tenor of the commotion around him changed. Rebs flew over Broady’s berm, landing amidst the 148th Pennsylvania. In second
s, a struggle of volleys became a chaos of man-on-man matches, with clubbed muskets, bayonets, fists, and even teeth the weapons of choice.

  The Pennsylvanians, at least, were determined to hold.

  Only a matter of time, Miles realized.

  He shot a Reb with his revolver, then spurred his horse past the ambulatory wounded and other soldiers just sitting on the ground, as if having eggs on Sunday, past officers calling out the numbers of regiments that had dissolved and thieves looting discarded knapsacks. He rode toward Dauchy’s battery, the 12th New York.

  Dauchy had been hitting the Rebs still outside the parapet with canister, reloading as quickly as his cannoneers could.

  Nearly riding down the lieutenant, Miles leaned over and shouted, “Forget the Rebs out there. Turn your guns. I need you to stop the Rebs who’ve gotten inside.” He pointed through the smoke. “Shoot into that gap.”

  “Sir, our own men might—”

  “Fire into that gap. My order, my responsibility.”

  A surviving orderly interrupted. “Sir, look over there. Off to the right.”

  Through earthbound clouds, Miles just made out another echelon of Rebel infantry. Heading for the extreme right of the line, an obvious attempt to roll him up. His flank pickets fled before them.

  Christ. “Dauchy, you’ll have to split your battery. And expose your guns, no choice. Work that gap. And the road up there.”

  All but sentenced to death, the lieutenant saluted.

  Miles rode rearward again, hoping that, by some unholy magic, he’d find enough men to stage a counterattack.

  Shells burst in the depths of the position, increasing the havoc. The Rebs had advanced their batteries.

  But a miracle did happen. Where every other regiment seemed to have turned tail, Miles glimpsed the 61st New York changing front to meet the Rebel advance, pivoting off the earthworks, determined to hold their ground.

  In the brimming chaos, the sight stopped him. The 61st was Barlow’s old regiment and his own, its veterans men who once had bucked and kicked against Frank’s discipline, only to proudly label themselves “Barlow’s Regulars” after Frank led their charges on the Peninsula.

  The New Yorkers were stalwart, refusing to give up an inch. But he needed more.

  Damning the bullets that sought him, Miles called to small bands of soldiers and stray men who still had their rifles, “Look at the New Yorkers! Come on, men! Rally on the Sixty-first, we’re going to win this fight!”

  Some of the men upon whom he called just ran. Others stared, dazed. Some dozens followed him, though.

  His division color-bearers found him again.

  “Jaysus, General,” a color sergeant exclaimed, “we thought you was dead twicet over.”

  More men rallied.

  Taking personal command, he shifted the 61st across the northern berm—a low, halfhearted construction—and formed the shreds of other regiments on the New Yorkers’ flanks. He judged his strength to be two hundred men.

  The thing to do was attack.

  Still mounted, with his division’s banners following, Miles led his soldiers into the madness.

  Six twenty p.m.

  Pain forgotten, Hancock led another patchwork contingent forward to Miles, up where the brawling had spilled beyond the entrenchments and into the fields. He’d ordered Gibbon, who had two intact brigades, to organize a proper counterattack from the southern return, to try again to stem the flood of Johnnies. Meanwhile, Miles was all that stood in the way of a frightful defeat.

  His men, his men, had never run like this before. He’d all but shamed himself, crying out, “Men! Will you leave your general? Men, will you leave me?”

  They had to hold. The Second Corps had never been driven from a defensive position, not once in the war. If they could hang on for another hour, maybe a few minutes more, it might be all right. The sky was darkening prematurely, not only from the clinging smoke, but under gunmetal clouds that promised a downpour.

  What had Wellington said? “Give me night, or give me Blücher”?

  He caught up with Miles by three of Dauchy’s guns. They’d been lost and, thanks to Miles, retaken.

  “You shouldn’t be this far forward, sir,” Miles told him. Almost irritated. Bullets ripped the air.

  “Then where the devil should I be?” Hancock turned his own wrath on Lieutenant Dauchy, who stood dumbly by a fieldpiece. “Well, Dauchy? Why aren’t these guns in action? We took them back for you.”

  The lieutenant looked stricken. Unfair, Hancock told himself, you’re being monstrously unfair. The artillerymen, all of them, were the bravest men on the field, standing to their guns until overrun.

  “No lanyards,” Miles spoke for Dauchy, shouting against the din.

  “Fuck me bloody,” Hancock said. Furious at the world, he turned on Dauchy again. “Well, get some buggering lanyards.”

  For the first time, he noticed the artillery sergeant sitting behind Dauchy, short jacket and breeches splayed open. Propped against the wheel of a gun, the fellow was holding up his own intestines, a string of bloody gray sausages, for inspection. The sergeant’s face showed amazement, not the least suffering.

  Hancock knew he owed Dauchy an apolgy. But apologies had to wait. Before releasing Miles back to his battle, the corps commander said, “Gibbon’s arranging a counterattack. Any time now. Provost marshal and one of Gregg’s regiments put up a screen in the rear, they’ll bring back any runaways they can.”

  “Reinforcements?”

  “Too late. Wouldn’t get up before dark.” His fault, his pride. He should have demanded that Mott’s men as well as that Ninth Corps division come up the moment the Rebs were spotted in force. But he had wanted his corps’ reputation restored.…

  Pride.

  Tugging his horse about, he told Miles, “You’ve got to hold them, Nel.”

  “To hell with ‘hold,’” Miles said. “I’ll whip these bastards.”

  The young brigadier looked as though he might do it, too. Ablaze and splendid. Urging his horse rearward, Hancock recalled the days when he’d been like that.

  A round struck his mount in the neck and the beast toppled. Hancock barely rolled free. He struck the ground hard.

  When he got to his feet, shocked and aching, an orderly informed him that his adjutant Frank Walker had just been captured.

  Six twenty p.m.

  “Retake those works,” John Gibbon told Tom Smyth, his favorite brigade commander. “Murphy can support you. Restore the line, Tom.”

  Smyth’s mouth opened, but no words came out.

  “Easier said than done, I know,” Gibbon allowed. “But you can do it. You have to.” He looked around. “Better than lying here taking it.”

  “Yes, sir. But Jesus…” He turned to pass on the order to his subordinates. Next to Gibbon, a color-bearer slapped his chest and fell bleeding onto his horse’s neck, dropping the flag.

  The men of Smyth’s brigade had sparred with Hampton for much of the day. Then, exhausted, they’d found themselves being shelled from their rear as the Rebs attacked Miles’ lines. Stray bullets had struck good men in the back. Things had gotten so bad that Smyth had ordered them to climb over their works and shelter on the outside. Compared to the artillery fire and the chaos within the entrenchments, Hampton’s actions were little more than harassment.

  Nerves were stretched, though. The men were aware—the veterans were—of how poorly things were going.

  With his regimental commanders gathered hastily, Smyth explained what each man needed to do. As the group broke up again, he received word that he’d be supported by four more regiments, including two of Rugg’s that had been pieced back together.

  Smyth’s confidence grew. He’d have a significant force under his command.

  His attack dissolved within the first hundred yards.

  Six fifty p.m.

  Harry Heth was angry. He’d beaten the Yankees, fair and square, wrecking one brigade after another. And now his men had st
umbled to a halt.

  He stood just outside the entrenchments, receiving reports, issuing orders, and trying not to let his temper rule.

  The Yankees couldn’t push them back, but they couldn’t push the Yankees any farther. And some damned bluecoat general was riding about as if on dress parade, a supernatural creature immune to lead. Bravest damned thing Heth had seen in a good age. He almost hoped a bullet wouldn’t find the man.

  The Yankees had rallied a desperate defense. Thanks to the general Heth couldn’t quite recognize.

  He’d done it, though. Shamed Win Hancock. The parade of prisoners heading rearward was set to rival the numbers taken from Warren at Globe Tavern. They were good men, too—the ones who’d stood and fought, not just skulkers and runaways.

  Above the roar, a thunderclap boomed in the west, so powerful it shamed the human clamor.

  He needed to finish this. Weisiger’s Virginians, Mahone’s bunch, had reached the field. They needed to go in and end the misery.

  Turning to call for another courier, he was startled to see Powell Hill riding toward him, followed by his full retinue, flags lofting.

  Hill certainly had a peculiar sense of timing. Heth would as soon have had him rest his innards a trifle longer.

  “Thought they were whipped,” Hill said.

  Heth nodded. “They were. They are.”

  “Still making a ruckus.”

  “They’re whipped. They just won’t admit it.”

  Hill looked skyward: a breathing cadaver’s face turned up to heaven. “Well, it’s time they did.” He spit. “Looks like we already took half of them prisoner.”

  “We’ll take the other half, too. Or run them off. Sir, I’m told the Virginians have come up.”

  “Alabamians, too. Tired, but willing.”

  “I’d like to send them in. Close this thing down.” Heth, too, glanced toward the lowering clouds. “Before the rain, before dark. Just make an end of it.”

  Hill nodded. “They’re on their way.”

  Seven p.m.

  Wade Hampton believed in the gentlemanly virtue of patience, when patience was asked for. But one of his black, keep-your-distance moods had settled on him as he watched and listened to the infantry get so far and then no farther.