The Damned of Petersburg

by Ralph Peters

  The regiment had withdrawn twice, once a short distance on order and the second, hurried time after the brigade’s Michiganders had come running back through the swamp on their left flank, scampering like kittens thrown in a dog pen.

  Now they were trying to hold a shrinking line, with more and more Johnnies gathering to their front.

  General Hartranft rode the line, bold as a rich man entering a bank.

  “Steady, men,” he called. “Steady on now.” As he passed Brown’s scruff of a company, he said, “That’s the way, boys, that’s the way you do it.”

  “Catch himself a bullet, that damned fool,” Levi Eckert said.

  But the Reb bullets seemed reluctant to strike Hartranft. They laid low many a humbler soldier, though.

  Sam Losch collared another runaway, beating and kicking him back into the line. The boy had thrown down his rifle. Losch picked it up and slammed it against the lad’s chest. The force of the blow knocked him down.

  “Get up and fight, or I’ll bayonet you myself,” the first sergeant told him.

  The brigade was fading away. Soldiers made sudden decisions, turned, and ran. For his part, Brown was just angry and bitter, vicious and cruel, a different man from the one he had been but a month ago.

  General Hartranft passed behind them again, calling, “Hold them a bit longer, boys. Let the corps reorganize. Every man who stands here is a hero.”

  “Like wet shit we are,” Levi said. His face seemed to have been sharpened on a whetstone. He aimed, fired, and added, “We’re just goddamned idiots, that’s all.”

  A boy’s head burst. Brown caught part of the splash. He bent to rub his eye clean.

  A Reb hollered, “All your friends done give up aw-ready, Yanks. Whyn’t y’all come over here and make us a complete set?”

  “Nigger’s home diddling your wife, Johnny,” Levi called back.

  Brown glanced left and right. With the brigade line broken to bits and the remnants withering, the Rebs were working their way around both flanks. The surviving core of the 50th was all but surrounded.

  Hartranft still rode the line, though, trailed by his colors and the few staff men who hadn’t been shot down.

  From nowhere, a rush of blue-coated fugitives appeared and plunged through the line, taking many a man along in their scramble. Brown could not for the life of him figure out how they’d gotten past the Rebs.

  But the skedaddlers had done the Rebs’ work for them. The 50th Pennsylvania all but collapsed.

  Brown sheathed his worthless sword, holstered his empty pistol, and picked up a rifle. He tore a cartridge box off a dead man’s body.

  “Company C! Stand with me! Hold your ground!”

  Worthless ground, worthless Virginia, a useless place to die.

  Feeling the weight and solidity of a rifle in his hands renewed Brown’s strength. He gave up on rallying runaways, leaving the job to Sam Losch, and banged away, feeling the hard, reassuring kick of the butt against his shoulder, better now than any woman’s caress. After one of his careful shots, a Reb officer clutched his belly and dropped to his knees.

  Smoke everywhere, writhing around a man’s legs and searing his lungs. Gunfire to bust ears. Screaming, cursing. Groans and pleas. Faces spattered with blood and smeared with powder.

  The regiment shrank until the colors had crowded next to the dozen men left of Company C. Captain Brumm spoke so close to Brown’s ear that Brown felt his breath, his spit.

  “Thought you were down, Brownie. Then I saw you playing soldier again.”

  “Get the colors out of here,” Brown told him. “You go. Save the colors.”

  “We’re all going to go.”

  “No,” Brown told him. Adamant. “Save the colors. We’ll hold them.”

  Brumm turned to Henry Hill, who stood beside Brown. As they had stood together in the Wilderness.

  “Henry, talk sense to Brownie, would you?”

  “Not so minded myself,” Hill told him.

  Casting aside the niceties of rank, Brown told the captain, “Georgie, get the hell out of here. You’re just making it harder.”

  Brumm wheeled about and ordered the bloodied color guard to the rear. He shielded their withdrawal with scraps of the regiment. Most men just ran.

  Company C remained. Brown loaded and fired. With Henry Hill beside him. And Levi next to Hill—Levi, who’d come so far as a man and soldier. And big Sam Losch, a Dutchman so dumb he didn’t know when to run high-tail. Five others stood with them. Firing into a gray mass. Buying not minutes, but seconds. Fighting not for the Union or for any high-flown notions, but because they would not leave the men beside them.

  At last, an exasperated Reb called over, “Why don’t you crazy sumbitches just git?”

  “That there’s a fine idea,” Levi agreed.

  The seven men remaining of Company C, 50th Pennsylvania Veteran Volunteer Infantry, withdrew at a walk, their faces to the enemy.

  Six fifteen p.m.

  Pegram farm

  Major Wade Hampton IV found his younger brother. In the depths of the battle.

  “Pres, you get out of here now. You’re supposed to be in the rear.”

  “You’re here.”

  “I’m under orders. You’re gallivanting.”

  “Just riding to the hounds, Wadey. Like back home.”

  “We’re not hunting foxes, Lieutenant.” Bullets zip-zipped past. “And you’re not at your place of duty.” The major wore a look of annoyance and pride. “If Father knew you were disobeying orders, he’d put you over his knee and spank you in front of the entire Cavalry Corps. Rip that rank off your collar, send you home.”

  “It’s not your place to protect me, you know.”

  “You’ll address me as ‘sir,’ Lieutenant. And I am ordering you to go to the rear. Report to your place of duty. Hear?”

  Lips trembling, Preston Hampton pulled his horse about. He gave his brother an exaggerated salute and dug in a spur.

  Watching his little brother ride off, the major muttered, “Fool’s going to get himself killed.”

  Six thirty p.m.

  Church Road, Pegram farm

  “Too slow,” Charlie Griffin shouted at Ellis Spear. “Double-quick, forward, now. Get on that crest and hold it.”

  On both sides of the farm road, Ninth Corps men fled shamelessly. Griffin followed the rolling snaps of rifle fire as the Rebs pursued the vanquished. Galloping back and cursing the runaways, he directed his next brigade to take a position on Spear’s right, as quickly as the worn men could come up. Just to the side of the road, Battery H of the 1st New York Lights awaited orders, limbered up and ready to move. Captain Mink, a one-armed terror, sat on his horse impassively, forcing the fleeing multitude to part to pass around him.

  Griffin didn’t yet know where he’d need Mink’s battery. Everywhere, most likely. He let the captain wait.

  Trailed by a skeletal color party, General Warren rode out of the wood line. The corps commander waved to Griffin: Wait.

  “How is it, Charlie?” Warren asked, breathless.

  “Damned mess. But we’ll hold. How’s the left?”

  “Nearly as bad. Hartranft saved them from a complete catastrophe.”

  “Good man.” He looked at Warren, that sallow, high-nerved face. Many a time he’d been out of temper with G. K. Warren, but he always came around. There were worse corps commanders. And if Warren could be slow, he was also methodical. The Johnnies might whip the Ninth Corps out of hand, but they weren’t about to shove the Fifth Corps back. Warren already had engineers surveying a new line.

  If Warren didn’t always move when Meade wanted him to move, he didn’t move for Robert E. Lee, either.

  “Hold them, Charlie. Parke needs time to reassemble his ruffians. Hold them till dark.”

  Not a man given to brag, Griffin was in a rough-cut, angry mood.

  “Had enough of Harry Heth’s shenanigans,” he told Warren. “About time for his comeuppance. We’ll hold them, all right.
” Watching the endless rearward flow of quitters, he added, “I’d best get back and see how young Spear’s doing. Lot of weight on his shoulders, first day running a brigade. Men might get the jumps.”

  “Sorry about your losses, Charlie.”

  Griffin shrugged. “War.”

  He kicked his horse back to life, riding hard beside the road as his troops double-quicked into battle. As for the Ninth Corps quitters, it was up to them to get out of his way.

  As he reached the crest Spear’s brigade had to hold, the men had finished deploying. The rise stood barely a hundred yards south of a wood line that still spit blue-coated runaways.

  Light fading early. Air growing moist. Rain lurking.

  Movement in those trees.

  Soldiers emerged from the woods in broken order. Hard to see for the gloom and smoke, but they seemed to be wearing blue uniforms. Rebs had been picking over the dead, of course. Hard to know who was who at times.

  Along the line, officers ordered their soldiers to hold their fire.

  The Rebs didn’t hold theirs.

  As soon as the Johnnies opened up, Griffin’s veterans took action on their own, blasting back at them, quicker than any officer ever born.

  Griffin didn’t like the brigade’s position, but it was vital: Hold the high ground, hold the road. His men were exposed on a naked crest, a perfect target, while the Rebs ghosted through the murk down in the trees, elusive and deadly. But he couldn’t fall back and he couldn’t risk moving forward, away from the rest of his corps.

  The low ridge was trouble for the Fifth Corps artillery, too. The batteries positioned to the rear were overshooting both his men and the Johnnies, accomplishing nothing.

  Reb guns had it better, thanks to the lay of the land, and his losses were getting ugly. Griffin rode the line, telling his men, “Pour it into those sonsofbitches … this is what soldiering is, boys, this is what it’s about … show those pissants what a real division can do…”

  A shell burst above the 20th Maine, knocking down a dozen men and leaving a patch of earth as red as a slaughterhouse.

  Waving up his adjutant, Griffin shouted, “Ride back to Captain Mink. Tell him to bring his popguns up here now.”

  “Sir, you shouldn’t be this far forward.”

  “I’m not forward. Damned Rebs are. Fetch Mink.”

  Time for some primitive gunnery. Not the prettily calculated sort he’d taught during his single reprieve from the Frontier, when he’d instructed West Point cadets on artillery tactics. This was going to be more like sweeping the causeways at Mexico City—he recalled crazy Jackson commanding a single fieldpiece, clutching his Bible to his breast, and shouting to trim the fuses.

  He rode up to Ellis Spear. It was always a matter of balance, of weighing how much of a presence to be with a given subordinate. Spear was doing all right. But even for the finest veteran officer, a midbattle leap from leading a shrunken regiment to commanding a brigade was a hell of a challenge.

  Before Griffin could speak, a shell burst gutted a color-bearer’s horse and tore off the man’s leg.

  “Pick up those colors!” Griffin snapped.

  The firing had grown so hot that soldiers scoured the dead for cartridges.

  “Keep it up, Ellis,” Griffin said. “Keep ’em in line. All you have to do is hold this crest.”

  As if it were that easy.…

  “Reinforcements would help, sir.”

  “You don’t need them.” And there weren’t any.

  Spear opened his mouth but swallowed the words.

  Glimpsed through the smoke, Mink’s battery bounced and jingled over a stubble field, unwilling to wait for the last troops to clear the road.

  “Just hold,” Griffin called as he pulled his horse around. The racket had grown infernal, the casualties worrisome. “I’ll see to the guns.”

  Intercepting Mink, a hellion who rode with his reins in his teeth to free his remaining arm, Griffin pointed to a lowering of the ridge, where the 118th Pennsylvania barely held on.

  “Mink, I want one section of your guns ten yards past that firing line. The infantry can step aside. Aim at the tree line and give ’em double canister.”

  A man valiant almost to madness, Mink nonetheless looked shocked.

  “I might as well put artillery on the skirmish line.…”

  “Time to earn our pay, Captain. Get those fucking guns of yours into battery.”

  Mink recovered, took the reins between his teeth again, and waved his first section forward.

  As he rode back along Spear’s line, cursing and calling lieutenants and sergeants by name, Griffin kept an eye on the artillery. Mink was sound. In no time, he had the 118th refusing its line while his limbers swung about, the cannoneers jumping down from their seats while the wheels were still cutting dirt and manhandling their fieldpieces to point them toward the wood, the gunners already twisting the elevation screws. Better than any cadets had performed the drill, if not as primly.

  In moments, the guns began blasting the grove, making a living hell of the gloom and shadows.

  They’d hold, by God. They’d hold and more, they’d drive the Johnnies right out of that wood, make ’em squeal like a survey man caught by Navajos.

  Grim and proud, Charlie Griffin paraded behind the firing line, a happier being than he could bear to admit.

  As he passed, a smoke-blackened soldier called:

  “Din’t I tell ye, Genr’l dear, that the boys from Cork do handsome?”

  Eight p.m.

  Boisseau farm

  Hampton stood in the drizzle, contemptuous of the water soaking his shoulders. His temper blazed, but he lacked an object at which to aim his fists. His rigorous carriage barely contained the savage brawler within.

  Heth’s men had begun to withdraw, frustrated yet again by Yankee stubbornness and the grating, clumsy tenacity of their Fifth Corps, which Hampton had begun to view as the corps that couldn’t be pushed from a position, once it was given time to put down roots.

  His own men were still fighting out in the brush and the ravaged sorghum fields, in the swamps and groves. They’d taken prisoners aplenty again, but the day was ending, night crowding in, and the Yankee attack had been blunted but not driven back far enough.

  So they’d fight again tomorrow. And it would be harder. Warren would have entrenched. And Hampton would have to try to work the flanks more deeply still, while Harry Heth brought up a fresh brigade or two, robbing Peter to pay Paul, thinning the Petersburg lines beyond sensible risk.

  His men had whipped the Yankees, beaten them sorely, but they hadn’t won.

  What was it going to take?

  He noticed his younger son in a huddle of officers. He’d missed the boy earlier, afraid he’d gone off on another of his unauthorized larks. But no, there he was, oilskin draped on his shoulders, trying to light a pipe in the needling rain, a child playing at adulthood.

  As the last, ill-tempered shots of the day pricked the distance, Hampton realized that he was getting drenched.

  Ten p.m., October 4

  Chaffin farm, Army of Northern Virginia headquarters

  The meeting broke up around Lee, leaving behind no merriment and few traces of the genial tone once common. Here, north of the James in front of Richmond, those people had secured their grip on Fort Harrison, repulsing every effort to retake it, while they’d advanced their position on the Heights. West of Petersburg, Grant and Meade had extended their lines another three miles westward, their forward positions barely a mile from the Boydton Plank Road now and little farther from the South Side Rail Road. After three days of fighting and capturing another thousand prisoners, his soldiers had been unable to dislodge Warren.

  There were nights when he felt he was a man condemned.

  How he longed to strike back, to rout them as he’d done so often before, to maneuver and deliver a powerful blow and then another, appearing where those people didn’t expect him and driving them off befuddled, shattered, and shamed
. But those days were gone for now, perhaps forever. He lacked the men, he could barely defend these ever-expanding lines. Grant had trapped him. And his army’s single unalloyed triumph in months had been Hampton’s cattle rustling.

  Was that what they had come to? Reduced to cattle thieves? Forced to endure a terrible wasting away, a military version of consumption?

  The light rain stopped. Lee left the emptied staff tent. The air was fresh and lovely, yet it oppressed him. His heart fluttered again, leaving ghosts of pain. Camp noises rattled the night.

  He missed Beauregard more than he had anticipated. The Louisianan had proved a better deputy—indeed, a fine one—than Lee had expected, based on earlier brushes. And with Beauregard he had been able to speak a bit less guardedly, both of them sharing the terrible weight of rank. But the war in the West was in ruins, and Beauregard had been chosen to put things right.

  If things could ever be made right again.

  He needed McClellan to win, the Confederacy needed it, Virginia needed it. Scouts and agents reported flagrant electioneering—ever distasteful to Lee—in the Union camps, with soldiers pressed to vote in the election, a privilege long forbidden those in uniform. Now there were reports of entire regiments furloughed to vote in their home states, while other states allowed voting by men in the field. Lee did not trust the outcome, despite the reputed fondness of Union troops for George McClellan.

  And President Davis at times seemed all but mad, seized by fantastic schemes. Or else he joined in the spite of the Richmond papers, complaining sharply of Early’s defeats, as if the Army had no end of capable generals who might replace him. Lee had sent Kershaw’s Division and Rosser’s Brigade of cavalry to the Valley, to make good September’s losses, but still the odds were against his “bad old man.”