by Ralph Peters
But Régis de Trobriand had married for love—a girl without title, no less, and an American, however wealthy—and here he was on this dreary battlefield, one that would never inspire a martial painting, with his father’s ghost at his shoulder, whispering, “But of course! You are my son! War’s in our blood!”
Surveying the puddled autumnal fields, the shambling-past men of other commands, and the disorder of wagons and guns massed off the Plank Road, de Trobriand would have done many things differently. But it was not his place—not yet—to make those decisions. All he could do was to shrug, see to his men, and fulfill his disappointing orders.
Nor would he let the errors he witnessed anger him. He had heard much said of the “Gallic temperament,” but his kind never indulged in public tantrums—it wasn’t done—while American generals blew up at any slight. On the whole, he found Americans far more given to fits than Europeans, even Italians. And as his father, who had served under both Napoleon and the Bourbons, had counseled him at the puttylike age of twelve, a man who could keep a cool head in bed and in battle held the advantage.
Certainly, that admonition had served in his pleasant little duels in Rouen and Paris. A gifted swordsman, he’d never lost and never shamed an opponent more than necessary. When he’d left France for New York on a club-room dare, he’d left behind not only scars, but foes made friends.
De Trobriand paused by a forlorn detail of soldiers, bedraggled men as cynical as French housewives. Choosing a sulking boy, he said, “Ah, but we are fortunate today! Is there any place a soldier would rather be?”
“I can think of a few,” a corporal put in.
De Trobriand smiled. “You say that now, cher Caporal. With insouciance I must admire. But I tell you, as years pass, you will remember this fondly…” He waved a wet hand. “This fraternité, this adventure…” He stepped between the two men, the broad-shouldered and the narrow, and patted each on the back. “You think, ‘This general, he is a fool, he knows nothing of my cares, my misery!’ But wait. Your war will be the glory of your lives! You will tell your children’s children tales that will swell and soar in majesty.…”
“If we live, sir.”
“Ah, yes,” de Trobriand concurred. “And the best way to live is to slay the enemy first. Don’t you agree?”
Three p.m.
Burgess Mill, north bank of Hatcher’s Run
Mahone listened.
“They’ve been forceful,” Harry Heth said, indicating the Federals deployed south of the run. “Not fast, but forceful. Methodical. Like they’ve got all the time in the world.”
“Maybe this is all they mean to do.” Mahone reached down to stroke his horse. “Might be they spooked themselves, getting this far.”
“And well they should be spooked. Leaving that flank open. Billy, you’ve got to hit them hard. You can rip right through that corps.”
“Just waiting for your order.”
“I know, I know. And I’m waiting for Hampton to tell me Rooney Lee’s up. No more piecemeal efforts. When you hit Hancock, I want him hit from all three other directions.”
Mahone looked up at the sky, though there wasn’t much sky to see. Just low clouds gray as smoke and a brightness weak in the west.
“You give me the order, it’s still going to take me time to get over that dam, it won’t pass more than two men abreast. Then I’ve got to get through that undergrowth, and it’s bad—I know that stretch.” He curled one side of his mouth. “No wonder the Yankees haven’t closed up that gap, it’s forbidding to man and beast.” He looked at Heth, no nonsense. “I need to hit them before dark, at least an hour before. And dark comes early. Time’s burning.”
His stomach was burning, too.
“I know that. Just wait, Billy. I’m as anxious as you are.”
Across the run, a fresh Union battery rolled up to replace guns with depleted caissons.
“Yankees have been outshooting us today,” Heth admitted. “Pains me to say it.”
“Too many good men dead. And bad ammunition.”
Heth looked across the sodden landscape, over a carpet of clotted leaves, and past half-hidden men in raw entrenchments, bare trees, and busy rifle pits.
“They’re going to come at the bridge. Any time now,” Heth said. “I’ll need Harris here, Dearing’s men are tired. But you’ll have MacRae’s Brigade, along with your own two. Those North Carolina boys will do good service.”
“I can do it with three brigades. But I have to move, Harry, I have to move soon. Dark comes early.”
A courier arrived: Hampton’s eldest son.
Breathless and proud, the major saluted and said, “General Hampton’s compliments, gentlemen. I’m to tell you everybody’s in position.”
Heth turned to Mahone. “Go in, Billy. Go in quick as you can.”
Four p.m.
Burgess farm, south bank of Hatcher’s Run
Brigadier General Tom Egan had his men ready for the final thrust. He’d swept the Rebs across the farm, artfully and with few casualties, and pushed them from the south bank of the run. But Hancock had been slow to give the final order to take the bridge. As soon as the belated permission arrived, though, Egan had deployed his brigades, as full of fight as he’d ever been in a life spent with his fists up, whether battling rascals throwing rocks at the “Irish brat” or Johnnies hurling bullets at a general.
And then the great flag-flying, star-addled, colonel-ridden, lavishly festooned party had appeared, led by Grant himself.
And Grant said, “Hold up. I want to see how this lies before you go in.”
Didn’t take a minute for the Reb artillery to celebrate the gift of a matchless target. Explosive rounds burst near enough to wound a pair of riders and kill a man. Reading the north bank through a pair of field glasses, Grant seemed unaware of any danger.
Finally, Grant muttered, “Can’t see a thing. Not what I need to see.” He looked at Egan. “You stay here.” Raising his voice slightly, he added, “Everybody just sit still, I don’t need company.” He concluded by telling a staff man, “Babcock, come with me.”
And Grant, atop a splendid mount, took off along the Plank Road toward the bridge, heading straight toward the Johnnies and riding as smoothly as a tout at a horse show.
Two hundred yards on, Grant stopped. Awkwardly. At a point that made no sense. As Egan watched, the aide wheeled his horse about to close up to Grant.
“The glasses,” Egan called to his own aide. He trained his binoculars on the senior officer in the Union.
“Oh, Christ,” he said.
Nor was he the only man peering through wet lenses. More than one groan preceded a burst of profanity.
Grant’s horse was tangled in telegraph wires that had just been cut.
“We’ve got to go down there,” a voice declared.
“Stay put,” Egan ordered. “Damn it, man, if we all ride down there, we’re just telling the Rebs the target’s important. Any man moves, I’ll take my revolver to him.”
He raised the lenses again. Grant sat placidly on his horse, as if he’d just had a mind to pause for a stretch, while his dismounted aide worked to disentangle hooves without getting kicked.
To Egan, it seemed as though the world had stopped. One well-aimed Rebel shell …
But the artillerymen across the run remained more concerned with the men gathered on the ridge, making it hot for Grant’s courtier colonels and hangers-on. Bedazzled by the ball and missing the belle.
“Nobody moves,” Egan snapped.
At last, Grant’s horse stepped high and free. Still the general waited for his aide to remount before he turned for the rear.
When Grant came up, he looked as though he’d been mildly disappointed by his dinner.
“Saw what I needed to see,” he told Egan. “Cancel the attack. Not worth the lives it would cost. Not going that way, anyhow. Just hold the ground you have and wait for orders.”
And Grant turned his mount southward, back toward Hanco
ck and the rest of the army.
Four thirty p.m.
Second Corps headquarters, Boydton Plank Road
“Goddamn him,” Hancock said. “Goddamn him.”
FIFTEEN
Four thirty p.m.
Burgess farm, eastern woods
The going was skunk-ugly, them running across a dam lip like bad boys defying their ma. Then came a splash and a nettle-swat through a low stretch not proud enough to be called a swamp, yet more than enough to make wet feet much wetter, cold water clotting worn-through, worn-double stockings. Briars leaping lively at cheek and eye—Look out, Yanks!—every man tempered mean as a water snake now, silent past believing. Why? Little Billy said it must be so. There would be no foolery, no brave-me-up chatter, even for the officers: You all just be quiet. Lordie-gawd, a man wouldn’t put his hounds through this infernal habitat of nothing, not even a drunk man would do it, not in this heathen thicketing upon God’s earth, the worst tangles known since the Wilderness, that awful time. October nearing its death couldn’t strip this dark green, gray-lit hell of wicked things out to harry and hurt a man.
Forward they went, despite all, just how Little Billy liked things done: that borrowed North Carolina Brigade on the right and Weisiger’s Virginians on the left, the 12th Virginia not on the brigade’s right—its place of honor—but march-and-countermarch-scrambled on the left now. That felt queer, but a man just did as told and went on forward, one foot, then the other, skin prickly and rashed by foreknowledge, senses all high to skittering. The Yankees were out there, no one knew just where or just how many, but close now close close close—
Stop.
Snaking off through brambles and weed pines, the mighty gray line halted. Silent.
How had Little Billy done it? A thing of wonder. No talk amongst the skirmishers ahead, just hand signals barely seen. And two brigades at the fore stopped cold—wet and cold, for that matter—and surely the Mississippi brigade trailing unseen stopped, too. Why didn’t the Yankees cotton to it? The way Old Porte just did the same thing to them every time, two brigades up and one back, slamming into an unwatched, unwatchful flank, the Yankees as inattentive as sluts to their stink.
Mahone rode up to the 12th Virginia, hooves tapping dumf-dumf. How that man got his horse through that wicked mire would not be explained in mortal convocations or known to human covenants, another of Little Billy’s miracles, though calling it such was irreverent. The general’s hat drooped wet.
And Mahone said, softly but within the hearing of Sergeant Johnny Sale, “Colonel, send out your left company as flankers. I’m not in the mood for surprises, unless I cause ’em.” Mahone looked down from on high, little-man-big-horse, and added, “Fix bayonets, y’all do it quiet.”
And out the flankers went as the lines advanced again, with Sale prowling alongside men he knew and trusted and maybe loved a little, marking off a careful distance from that great gray wave, but ever keeping the 12th’s colors in sight, a difficult business here, in this Gehenna.
In mere yards, thickets gave way to an oak grove less tormented by undergrowth. The pace quickened. First shots pocked. Sale imagined the startled faces of skirmishers, Yanks shooting once and running.
This damp day of queer miracles: The flankers had not gone a hundred more feet when a fine-horsed Yankee officer rode right up to them, hailing them, and they let him come on in the spirit of wartime’s honest dishonesty, letting him think what he thought, that they were his own men, his advanced pickets, and then all delighting in the look of bewilderment on that ill-starred colonel’s face as men in gray greeted him with leveled muskets and invited him to dismount.
Sale relieved the fellow of a pretty sword belt with holster and pistol, but spared the man his fine hat and gold watch. No doubt some rearward fellows would pick the officer clean, but Johnny Sale was a soldier, not a thief, and there were things fair to be taken and things not. Did loop the fellow’s haversack over his shoulders, though, that seemed meet and right.
More firing. Cries of alarm. Things happened faster than any men could go.
Keeping to the flank, sharp of eye, blood-quickened if wet and weary, Sale and his comrades popped from the oaks with wet leaves gripping their calves and found themselves before a fence that marked off a broken-stocked cornfield—rotting remains of harvest—just in time to see the Virginia Brigade smash through an addled Yankee picket line, leap that fence, and rush at a raw confusion of Yankee regiments caught facing the wrong way.
Little Billy up on that big horse, waving his hat and hollering. As far as Sale could see in the weakling light, gray thousands advanced irresistibly. A Rebel yell spread from one flank to the other, enormous and thrilling.
Sale had to restrain his men, to remind them of their purpose on the flank. Everybody wanted to go at the Yankees. But duty was duty. So they kept their assigned place, pausing when necessary to see off lingering blue-bellies with a volley or to make a short dash to shoo a bedazzled cluster, leaving more than one Yankee wide-eyed and belly-shot, rump in the mud, astonished, while his too-slow brethren tramped into captivity.
Just to the right, the rest of the 12th dueled briefly with a regiment-size mob of Yankees, then charged into their midst and around their flanks, announcing themselves with bayonets and swinging rifles as clubs. Sale made out First Sergeant Richardson wrestling a Yankee for the Northerner’s colors. Richardson won.
But Sale also could see through the wafts of smoke that the brigade was splitting in two, half clinging to the flank of those North Carolinians as they rushed forward, the other half veering leftward, as if coming over to visit Sale and see what the flankers were up to, and a man could only hope that the split-up was a thing Little Billy intended.
A passel of Yankees blocking his view dispersed. And Sergeant Johnny Sale beheld a sight that lifted his heart.
A few hundred yards ahead and to the left, out by a wishbone of roads, dozens upon dozens of Yankee wagons, ambulances, caissons, spare guns, and even headquarters tents waited to be mustered into Confederate service.
“It’s Christmas in October, boys!” a soldier cried.
Five p.m.
Yard of the Bevill house
“Those sonsofbitches are not going to whip us again,” Hancock declared. Turning to General Mott, he said, “Get de Trobriand’s brigade across that road, put him behind that fence. He’s to hold, no matter the cost, and cover the trains.” Exasperated with the world and himself, Hancock added, “Go, man, what are you waiting for?”
Turning to Charlie Morgan, who looked malarial, he ordered, “Go find Gregg. I need a brigade of his jockeys across White Oak Road, whoever’s closest. I have to pull off most of the infantry and the Rebs will hit us there, too. Not sure why they haven’t come on already.”
Sick but willing, Morgan lashed his horse.
“And you,” Hancock told his last aide, Major Will Mitchell, “get up to Egan. Tell him to reverse his line, as much of it as he can risk, and hit the Rebs in their own flank. I want all of Bob McAllister’s Jersey bastards in the attack, but Egan retains control. Understand?”
“Yes, sir.”
“And don’t get captured before you’ve delivered the message.”
“Will you be here, sir? If I need to find you?”
“I’ll be wherever things are in the shit house. My damned job. Right now, I mean to gently ask fucking Pierce if he’d care to rally at least a few of his runaways.”
Hancock pointed his horse at the tip of the Reb advance, where the bastards had almost reached the Plank Road, threatening to cut his corps in two.
Following the departure of Grant’s cavalcade, the last order Hancock had received had been to hold his ground overnight and retire in the morning—as if Lee and his paladins would just lean back and let him go unmolested. And goddamned Crawford had never showed up, had not even come close, last located too far south to be useful.
He’d been all but abandoned. Crawford, Warren, Meade, Grant, damn the lot of them.
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Well, if he had to fight Lee’s entire army with his fists, he’d damned well do it. This would not be a repeat of Reams Station.
Five ten p.m.
The Wishbone
Obedient to orders, Régis de Trobriand’s brigade still faced to the west. De Trobriand knew those orders would soon change. The fight was to the east, behind their backs, and he was ready. His brigade just didn’t look ready.
Mott galloped up, followed by a staff already dwindling. A handsome fellow, the general looked as unsettled as a duke who’d discovered his wife in a hussar’s arms.
“Good God, man,” Mott shouted, “face your brigade about, what are you waiting for?”
“Your orders, sir.”
Mott pointed at the melee a quarter mile off. Pierce’s men were running. “Hold the junction of Dabney Mill Road and the Plank Road. Take position behind the fence on the far side. You’ve got to hold, Reggie. Hold to the end. Hancock’s orders.”
“Avec plaisir, mon Général.”
With aplomb, de Trobriand turned and snapped out a series of orders in perfect English, taking leave of Mott and trooping his line with inherited posture.
His fellow brigade commanders thought it terribly French and vain that he drilled his brigade in complex evolutions, joking that the “Gaul” loved a parade. Now Mott would see the point of it.
The brigade executed a crisp countermarch by regiment, reversing front with as much precision as speed. De Trobriand extended the line and placed himself in front of his ready soldiers.
Looking back at Mott, he teased his horse to a prance and raised the kepi he favored. After waving the cap a single time, he slapped it back on his head at a dashing cant and drew his sword—the blade so polished it shone on the dankest day. He twirled the splendid weapon to make it shimmer and ordered his brigade forward.
His soldiers cheered.
Five fifteen p.m.
Burgess farm