Bright Starry Banner

by Alden R. Carter

  “No time!” Marks snaps. “Here comes our work.”

  Wounded troopers are coming into the yard, the belly- and chest-shot bent double over their saddles, barely holding on, but still managing a compact grace, while the arm- and leg-shot men dangle their appendages, ride awkwardly as if barely jointed. There is something pathetically comical about these latter that reminds Marks of Ichabodian scarecrows “eloped from a field” and riding negligently toward a meeting with Irving’s headless horseman. He bites his lip, thinks: And I may be an even darker horseman for many of these boys.

  Orderlies rush to help the wounded troopers down, laying them in a lengthening row on the veranda. Marks performs triage while his heart quails at playing God. I am a man of science, he tells himself. There is a taxonomy here, an order from highest to lowest of who can live and who will likely die. I must practice my science and pray that my soul will be forgiven for my errors.

  The heavy, low-velocity minié balls have inflicted terrible damage, shattering bones and tattering flesh. Many of these men will lose arms, feet, hands, and legs, but these wounds are at least treatable. Most of the wounds to the torso, abdomen, neck, and head are not, though Marks and his surgeons will try to save all but the most hopeless cases as long as there is time. Later the surgeons will have to concentrate on those they know they can save while the orderlies put more and more men down at the end of the porch and out beyond in the rain, a long recumbent line of boys waiting to die.

  There is a thunder, the gray cavalry coming hard after the blue, sweeping past, yipping and yelling. A half dozen wounded men split off, come into the yard, a doctor leading them. He gazes down at Marks, reads his rank of lieutenant colonel. “Are you chief surgeon here?” he asks in a deep Georgia accent.

  “Yes. My name’s Marks.” Marks thinks of extending a hand, but the Confederate surgeon’s eyes are cold, hostile.

  “Trulen, Second Georgia Cavalry. Will you treat these men?”

  “Of course.”

  “Then I will ride on with my brigade. I think you may assume that this hospital now lies within the lines of the Army of Tennessee.”

  Marks evaluates the Georgia boys’ wounds, assigns them a place to wait their turns. Out in the wide field to the southeast he can see the wounded coming: limping, staggering, shuffling, crawling, moving in a widening seepage of humanity toward his hospital while beyond in the cedars the noise and the smoke of battle rise up. God, make me cold, he prays, make my skill glitter hard and sharp as a knife that I may help these men without screaming at the sight of every wound.

  Captain Gates Thruston, McCook’s chief ordnance officer, has the right wing’s ammunition train marshaled in the yard of the Gresham house which, like the Smith plantation, has become a hospital. Altogether, he has eighty wagons containing some two million cartridges and seven thousand artillery rounds. And for the moment he has nothing to do. An hour ago, all hell had broken loose on Kirk’s and Willich’s line a mile to the south. Half an hour ago, he’d watched Baldwin’s brigade march into the cedars to reinforce the line. But from the sound of things, Baldwin is now heavily engaged far short of that goal.

  Thruston and his orderly ride down Gresham Lane, breasting a stream of stragglers and wounded men. Around a corner, he has his first clear look to the south. Perhaps a thousand yards ahead, a brigade is hotly engaged, its line nearly hidden in the rolling powder smoke. “Captain?” He looks down, sees a soldier barely more than a boy supporting another wounded private even younger. “Can you tell us where the doctors set up? Charlie here is in a bad way and I ain’t much better.”

  “Keep going up the road. You’ll see a white house to your right. It’s not far.”

  “Thanks, Captain.”

  “Certainly. What brigade is that up ahead? Kirk’s?”

  The private snorts. “Kirk is long gone. So’s Willich. That’s Post’s brigade. We’re from the 59th Illinois and part of it. Best goddamn brigade in the army. But, Captain, there’s a hell of a lot of Rebs up there.”

  Thruston turns to his orderly. “Tom, get back and tell Sergeant Barnes to send two wagons of cartridges and one of artillery rounds forward at the double to Colonel Post. We may be able to do some good.”

  He wishes the wounded privates luck and then sits for another minute watching the fight ahead. He has a queasy feeling that he is already too late. He turns his mare, takes to the field beside the road. Baldwin, he thinks, I should send him some wagons, too.

  The three ammunition wagons for Post are just clearing the yard when he rides in. “Barnes,” he shouts to his first sergeant. “I’m taking a couple of wagons to Colonel Baldwin.”

  “I’ll do it, sir.”

  “No, you stay here. Keep the men in line.” He casts a baleful look at the civilian teamsters and his company of infantry. The infantry isn’t bad, mostly men on light duty recovering from illness or slight wounds, but there is hardly a man among the civilians—white or black—he would trust with a wagon load of flour. Well, Barnes can handle them for the time it will take to get the ammunition to Baldwin.

  He selects two wagons with their teamsters and a four-man guard. The teamsters start to object, but a lanky corporal spins on them. “You shut your holes! I’m sick and fucking tired of all your croaking! You’re paid to drive where the captain says. And you’ll do it or I’ll bloody well shoot you myself.”

  Thruston raises his eyebrows at the English accent, unusual even in this polyglot army. “His name’s Andrews, sir,” Barnes says. “Was a British soldier. Has a way with words, don’t he?”

  “Enviable,” Thruston says.

  With Thruston leading the way on his mare, the two wagons bump across a cornfield and turn south along one of the narrow, muddy alleys hacked through the cedars the day before by the Pioneer Brigade. Thruston knows by the time they are a hundred yards into the cedars that he has made a mistake. The alley is clogged with walking wounded and the woods to either side crawl with skulkers. He urges his mare into a trot, rides forward as fast as he can. Ahead, the sounds of battle rise toward a crescendo. He hears shouts. “Make way, make way! General Johnson coming through. Make way!” He pulls to the side, stops. The general and his staff come galloping up the alley, scattering mud and wounded men. Thruston waves an arm, expects one of the staff to stop. Perhaps the general himself, who should, after all, care about the resupply of ammunition to his men. But they go by him in a rush, not even acknowledging his presence. My God, we’re truly beaten if the generals are running out, Thruston thinks. For a moment he almost turns back, but he must see for himself. He sets spurs to the mare.

  He comes out of the forest as McNair’s brigade smashes through Baldwin’s first line. One blue regiment is falling back in good order, but Thruston can see that the second line is far too skimpy to hold for long. He makes a hasty survey of the fields to the west, can see a mass of gray infantry advancing along the fringe of trees marking the course of Overall Creek. If there is Reb infantry that far on our right, then there is cavalry well to our rear, he thinks. And though Thruston is not a topographical engineer, he has a good feel for land and contour, knows immediately that he has left his ammunition train at the worst possible time. He spins his horse, kicks her, screams at the men on the road to clear the way, knowing that many will think him the worst sort of coward, but knowing that minutes may cost the wing its reserve ammunition.

  Andrews sees his captain coming, tells the teamster to pull up. Thruston reins in hard. “We’re too late. Things have gone to hell up ahead and I’ve got to get the train off. Get the wagons back if you can. If you can’t, burn them. Nothing falls to the Rebs!”

  Brigadier General John Wharton has seen routs before but nothing like this. His twenty-five hundred gray cavalry have to ride two and a half miles to find the rear of the splintered right wing of the Union army. The brigade punches through a chaos of fleeing infantry, cavalry, teamsters, Negro work gangs, mules, horses, cattle, ambulances, batteries, and a dozen different sorts of wago
ns. Except for the cannons, which Wharton dispatches to the rear, he ignores all of it. Once he hits the Wilkinson Pike, he’ll set up a line and start gathering prisoners and matérial. Until then, he will keep his brigade together and going hard.

  Almost as amazing as the foot speed of the fleeing Yankee infantry is the lack of Yankee cavalry protecting the flank of the right wing. Wharton had expected a fight, but he has seen nothing of the Yankee cavalry except for a single small regiment easily broken up. God, he wishes Joe Wheeler were here. Together they would have five thousand horse, enough to smash in the entire Yankee rear, maybe even force a wholesale surrender.

  Ahead he hears a crackle of carbine fire from the cedars along the near side of the Wilkinson Pike. Yankee cavalry. He can tell by the sharp crack of their light, short-barreled carbines. His lead regiment splits with practiced ease, two squadrons going to the right, two to the left, the fifth hanging back in reserve. The men dismount, advance as a skirmish line, the horsehandlers bringing the mounts to the rear. The Yankee fire stiffens: a small force, no more than a regiment.

  The skirmish line falls back, having probed the strength of the Yankee position. White’s Tennessee Battery has unlimbered to the right. Wharton gives the nod and the guns open, hurling shell and solid shot into the cedars. The Yankee fire dies away. Through his field glasses, Wharton can make out blue horsemen galloping away.

  He moves the brigade through the cedars to the Wilkinson Pike. He will send a regiment down the road to the east and another west to see what pickings they can find. The rest he will put in line to gather up prisoners, wagons, guns, and supplies. Then he will send a courier to Hardee for instructions, beg him to send infantry to strike the Yankee rear.

  Corporal Jeremy Andrews, late of the Queen’s 19th Regiment of Foot, supposes he should have found another profession by this time in life. He is forty-two, too old for the rigors of an infantryman’s life. But it is all he knows. For twenty-three years, he served his sovereign in Afghanistan, China, India, Burma, the Crimea, South Africa, and India again. And altogether, except for the Crimea, it was an agreeable life. Oh, hard marches certainly, the occasional scrap-up with the natives. But always beer and tobacco and dark girls at the end of the difficult times. Above all else, the regiment, the knowing in every fight of having good men to left and right, men who knew their trade and would stand with him, as he with them, to the last. But then the regiment was ordered to Ireland, and he could not bear the gray skies, the cold rain. The girls were not the same either: made demands, expected more of a tired man than he could give. So he’d fallen prey to dreams, to the nonsense of those who sold passages to America.

  A year later he was flat on his back with an attack of malaria in a rough St. Louis rooming house, penniless and desperate. But then there was war and he’d gone soldiering again. It is not the same, of course. There are some good men in this army, men he likes and trusts, but not even the few regular battalions can come close to matching the Queen’s 19th Regiment of Foot. But it is soldiering, and Jeremy Andrews knows the trade.

  He gets the ammunition wagons turned around and headed back for the train, the trail wagon now leading. In the process, he has to cuff the teamster repeatedly. The man is hysterical, begs to be let go to join the refugees streaming past them. Andrews holds the man by the belt, strikes him again. In the wagon ahead, one of the privates rides with a firm hand on the neck of the other teamster. The mules strain as the wheels bump over tree roots and rocks, slew through ruts. Behind there is a sudden uproar: men shouting, swearing, diving off the road as a battery of guns comes hell for leather down the alley. “Get to the side, get to the side, you fucking clot!” Andrews yells. The teamster hauls on the reins but it is too late. The left wheel of the lead gun carriage catches the right rear wheel of the wagon, rides up and over the axle, all fourteen hundred pounds of gun and carriage becoming airborne, smashing down on the young private in the box behind Andrews, shattering his skull, neck, spine, and rib cage, then missing the teamster and Andrews by inches, and landing on the right rear mule, killing it as certainly though less spectacularly than the private, before skidding back onto the muddy road behind its limber and team.

  The teamster is screaming, the mules pitching against the weight of their dead companion and the tilting wagon. The limber on the second gun strikes the right lead mule a glancing blow and the team reels left, goes down in a frenzy of kicking, braying muledom. The wagon tips and Andrews leaps. He lands in soft needles and moss, rolls to get clear, and looks back. The wagon has come to rest on its side, the shells and cartridges spilling in a mound of smashed boxes. Thrown clear, the teamster bounds away down the road.

  Andrews climbs to his feet, briefly amazed that he has come through uninjured. The other wagon has paused. He waves it on and goes to deal with the mules. His Springfield is somewhere in the wreckage but there are plenty more around. He picks one up and dispatches the mules with cool efficiency. “Cartridges, lads! Fill your boxes and pockets!” he yells. Many of the men are already pausing to scoop up handfuls. Andrews is impressed: These men are not as badly cobbed as I thought.

  The dead private is lying like a crushed doll atop a heap of cartridges. It’s a gaudy funeral for you, lad, Andrews thinks. He rolls a couple hundred cartridges and three fixed-charge twelve-pounder shells in the wagon canvas, draping it like a lumpy, gray snake over the heap. The last of the retreating blue infantry is almost past. Andrews soaks the rolled canvas with the contents of the wagon’s kerosene lantern. Down the road, he can make out butternut figures against the gray light through the cedars. Time to be off. He strikes a lucifer, lights a corner of the canvas, and runs. He supposes a hero might have waited until the Rebs were nearly atop the wagon, sacrificing his own life to send a few dozen of the blighters to Glory and winning the Victoria Cross in the bargain—or whatever it is they give in this benighted country. But Andrews is no hero, is satisfied to be a good soldier. He senses that he has run out of time, ducks into the trees and drops behind a boulder as the first popping confirms his judgment. He covers his head, for what is about to go up must come down.

  Captain Thruston and the infantry guarding the train are fighting a score of Rebel cavalrymen when the grove of cedars to the southwest plumes with exploding artillery shells and the burning-grease rattle of ten or fifteen thousand .58-caliber musket cartridges. For a moment everyone stops shooting and stares in amazement. Thruston recovers first. “Come on, boys,” he shouts, and dashes for the half dozen wagons captured by the Rebels. The gray cavalrymen don’t wait to fight it out hand to hand. They run for their mounts and gallop off west, following a Rebel squadron that is busily wheeling away McCook’s supply train.

  Thruston wastes no time. He still has his guards and most of his teamsters, though a few have slipped away during the fight. He will take the train overland, cutting through the cedars and fields toward army headquarters. He gives orders rapidly. Whips crack and the mules lean into their harnesses with the usual protests and ill grace of their kind. Thruston looks back toward the grove where the smoke from the eruption still drifts in the treetops. In the foreground, one of his wagons is bouncing over the cornfield. At least they’d saved one. Seventy-six to get away.

  An hour later, as the train is laboring along another of the alleys cut by the Pioneers through the cedars, Corporal Andrews rejoins the guard. “We lost one man and one wagon, Captain,” he tells Thruston. “Didn’t get much good of the loss of either, I’m afraid.”

  Thruston claps him on the shoulder, is surprised when the man flinches at the familiarity. “Never mind. You did what you could. Go give Barnes a hand clearing the way.”

  Brigadier General Edward Kirk of Richard Johnson’s division has bitten nearly through the collar of his wool blouse to keep from crying out with every jounce of the ambulance. When it finally halts, he lets his head fall back, breathing hard. God, he hurts. He feels the blood warm on his thigh, cold where it has puddled underneath him. I shouldn’t have ridden out i
n front of my old regiment, he thinks. Pointless bravado. Now I will pay with a leg certainly, perhaps with my life.

  He can hear the two soldiers on the seat whispering. “What’s going on?” he asks the private squatted beside him.

  “Reb cavalry, General. Lots of it. They’ve got a line along the pike, taking prisoners.”

  “Have they seen us?”

  “Probably, sir. It’d be pretty hard not to.”

  “Then you boys better get going. You don’t want to end up in a prison camp.”

  The man hesitates. “Yes, sir. I reckon maybe we will. Sorry, General. I wish we could stick with you.”

  “Thank you for bringing me this far. Now go on before it’s too late.”

  When they are gone, it is very lonely in the wagon. Kirk blinks back tears. God, he hurts. But it’s not so much the pain or the loneliness but the mistakes that hurt. All of them, all his life, but particularly today.

  Brigadier General John Wharton sees the three soldiers scramble down from the ambulance and run for the cedars to the east. Curious, he rides over, half a dozen troopers and Surgeon Trulen with him. He pulls back the flap at the rear of the ambulance, sees a Union general with a mangled thigh lying in a pool of blood. “Are you awake, General?” he asks.

  The man opens his eyes. “Yes. Whom do I have the honor of addressing?”