Longstreet shook his head. “I know Sam Grant. He’s never been one to back away from a fight. He will come straight at us every day he leads the Army of the Potomac.”
“We shall see what we shall see,” Lee said. “If what the Rivington men say is to be believed, the enemy will begin their move on Wednesday, the fourth of May.”
“Four days from now,” Richard Ewell murmured to himself. “My men will be ready.”
“And mine,” A. P. Hill said. Longstreet simply nodded.
“I am confident we shall all meet the test,” Lee said. Again he saw the upcoming battle in his mind’s eye. So real, so convincing were the images he summoned up that his heart began to pound, as if he were truly in combat. And on the heels of that pounding came pain that squeezed his chest like a vise.
He set his jaw and did his best to ignore it. Then he remembered the medicine Andries Rhoodie had given him. He took the glass bottle from his pocket. He struggled with the lid before he got it open; he was not used to tops with screw threads. He removed a tuft of cotton wool, shook out one of the little pills, and slid it under his tongue as Rhoodie had told him to do.
The pill had no particular taste. That in itself separated it from the vast majority of the medicaments he knew; which displayed their virtue by being either sweet or aggressively vile.
Rhoodie had warned him the—he put on his glasses for a moment to read the name on the bottle again—nitroglycerine might bring on a headache. Sure enough, blood thundered in his temples. Still, he’d known far worse after a few goblets of red wine.
Blood also thundered in his chest. The grip of the vise eased. He took a deep breath. All at once, he seemed able to get plenty of air. He felt as if the weight of ten or twelve years had suddenly fallen from his shoulders.
He looked at the bottle of pills again. In its own way, it was as startling as the repeaters Rhoodie had furnished to his army. But then, a future without wonders would hardly be worth looking forward to. He returned the bottle to his pocket. “Four more days,” he said.
*V*
The drums beat on and on, not just in the 47th North Carolina but in all the III Corps’s winter quarters. The hoarse, monotonous sound warned of battle to come.
Nate Caudell heard the long roll without surprise. For the past couple of days, couriers had galloped back and forth between Lee’s headquarters and the encampment, a sure sign something was in the wind. Just the night before, Colonel Faribault had relayed the order that all men were to have three days, cooked rations at hand, which meant the army would move soon.
Caudell hurried to the cabin that had been his home for the past few months. A couple of his messmates were already there, frantically getting ready to move out. Dempsey Eure and Rufus. Daniel came in hard on his heels. “Gonna feel funny, never seein’ this place again,” Daniel said as he started loading his meager personal property into his blanket.
“Sure is,” Caudell said. “You want to pass me our frying pan there? I have room for it.” With it in his blanket went the latest letter from his mother, a pocket Testament, a couple of reading primers, a second pair of socks, and his toothbrush. He tied the ends of the blanket together, covered it with an oilcloth, and draped it from left shoulder to right hip.
His marching rations consisted of a big chunk of corn bread, a smaller piece of salt pork, and several of the packaged desiccated meals that had lately started showing up in their supply shipments. He thought highly of those—they were better than what the cooks turned out almost any day and did not weigh down his mess bag.
He clicked a banana clip into his AK-47, made sure the change lever was in the safe position. Three more full magazines went into his pockets. He looked around to see if he had anything’ else to take. He didn’t. He snaked through his comrades and went outside.
Only a few men had fallen in. More still ran here and there, shouting at each other, getting in one another’s way. Captain Lewis and a corporal were loudly trying to bring some order to the confusion. Caudell added his voice to theirs. Then his fellow sergeants came up. The soldiers were used to obeying them. Inside half an hour, the company was fully formed on the parade ground along with the rest of the regiment. The blue CASTALIA INVINCIBLES banner fluttered in the sweet spring breeze in front of the captain.
Atlas Denton, the regimental color-bearer, carried the 47th’s Southern Cross battle flag out in front of the assembled troops. Colonel Faribault followed the flag. “Company—attention!” Captain Lewis called. The other company commanders gave the same order. The whole regiment straightened in its ranks.
Without preamble, Faribault said, “The Yankees have crossed the Rapidan. They’re moving south through the Wilderness. General Hill’s corps will march east by the Orange Plank Road. We have the honor of being lead regiment in the lead brigade of the lead division.”
Some of the men cheered. Caudell kept quiet, but a grin spread across his face. Being the lead regiment was privilege as well as honor—other soldiers would eat their dust, instead of their eating other men’s.
Faribault went on, “We are to camp near Verdiersville tonight. As the morning is already well along, we have some smart marching to do. God willing, tomorrow we shall start to drive the Yankees out of our country.”
The soldiers cheered again, this time with a baying eagerness in their voices. “By companies, form column of fours—and march!” Colonel Faribault called. With officers, sergeants, and corporals amplifying the simple command, the 47th North Carolina became a long gray serpent that wound its way out of the encampment, as if shedding a confining winter skin, and tramped north up the road toward Orange Court House.
The weather was fine and mild. A better day to march could hardly have been imagined. As Caudell had hoped, his new repeater seemed to weigh nothing. He looked back over his shoulder. That gray serpent seemed to have no end, as regiment after regiment followed the 47th North Carolina. But other, even longer, snakes, these clad in blue, surely lay ahead.
At Orange Court House, the 47th swung east onto the Orange Plank Road. Despite its name, the road was imperfectly corduroyed. Much of it was just dirt. When Caudell looked back again, dust partially obscured the rear of Henry Heth’s division and the lead brigades of that of Cadmus Wilcox, which took their place behind Heth’s men.
More clouds of dust rose into the eastern sky ahead; General Ewell’s corps was also on the move. Caudell looked south: sure enough, more dust still. Longstreet’s men were heading east on the Pamunkey Road. The first sergeant nodded in satisfaction, warmed by the thought that the whole Army of Northern Virginia was back together again. He could not imagine any force of Federals beating these lean, tough soldiers. He felt proud to be part of such an army.
Before long, more than pride warmed him. Sweat trickled down from under the brim of his hat, darkened his tunic at the armpits. His feet began to complain; they hadn’t worked so hard in months. The AK-47 on his shoulder did weigh something after all. What had been a pleasant outing turned into work.
The men had been singing since they set out. Some kept on; more, Caudell among them, began to find saving their breath the wiser course. After the fourth or fifth time, “The Battle Cry of Freedom,” even the Southern version, wore thin.
Because the 47th North Carolina was at the head of the long Confederate column, parties of high-ranking officers often rode nearby. Caudell was used to seeing General Kirkland, the brigade commander, and General Heth. When A. P. Hill came by in his red battle shirt, he pointed him out to Allison High. “I don’t know why you’re raisin’ such a fuss,” the dour sergeant said. “When we get shot, it’s on account o’ the likes of him.”
Not much later, the North Carolina regiment behind the 47th raised a cheer. Craning his neck to find out why, Caudell saw a gray-haired man aboard a gray horse with dark mane and tail; several younger soldiers rode with him. “It’s General Lee!” he exclaimed.
His words were drowned out by a perfect torrent of cheers. Lee smiled and nodde
d; for a brief instant, his eyes locked with Caudell’s. The first sergeant felt ten feet tall, able to conquer Washington City single-handed. When the cheers, would not stop, Lee took off his hat and waved it. Someone called, “We’ll whip ‘em for you, Marse Bob!”
“Of course you will,” Lee said. The soldier whooped with delight at having his beloved commander answer him. Caudell instantly felt jealous. He called to Lee too, but the commander of the Army of Northern Virginia chose that moment to swing Traveller’s head around and ride back down the column. His aides followed. Caudell’s shoulders slumped as he trudged along.
Everyone was dragging by the time twilight brought a halt to the day’s march. Caudell wanted to throw himself full length on the ground. Instead, he went over to Captain Lewis, who looked even more worn than Caudell felt. “Sir, where’s the nearest stream?”
Lewis pointed. “There’s a creek over that way, about a quarter of a mile.”
Caudell went back to the men of Company D, who were sprawled out as he wished he could be. “Fatigue detail,” he said. A chorus of groans greeted the announcement. “Corporal Lewis, Privates Batts, Bean, Beard, Biggs, and Floyd, fall in with canteens to fetch water.”
Now the groans came from the soldiers he had named. Mollie Bean took off a shoe and sock to display blisters the size of half-dollars. Ruffin Biggs pleaded that he had twisted an ankle. John Floyd alleged his Gettysburg wound was acting up.
Caudell would hear none of it.” Everyone else is as frazzled as you are, but it’s your turn for the duty. We especially need the water for the desiccated suppers a lot of us are toting.”
Authority and logic were both on his side. Grumbling and letting out martyred sighs, the members of the fatigue detail slowly and sadly got to their feet. Their luckier comrades passed them canteens until each of them was carrying six or eight. Caudell aimed them toward the creek. They shambled away, complaining still.
Caudell told off another detail to gather wood for cook fires. Some men did not wait for hot food, but chewed on corn bread or wheatcakes. Others went without; a good many soldiers preferred eating their three days’ rations at the start of a march to carrying them.
A frying pan was not the ideal instrument for boiling water, but it was what Caudell had, and he managed. Then he opened one of the metallic ration packs and poured the water over it. A couple of minutes later, he was spooning up noodles and ground meat in tomato sauce. He’d had that supper before, and liked it. After a day on the march, he was hungry enough to lick the inside of the pack clean.
A few men carried shelter halves—spoil from the Federals. The ones who did joined together to put up their little tents and sleep inside them. More, Caudell among them, lay down on their oilcloths, spread their blankets over themselves, and slept under the stars, with hats for pillows.
Crickets chirped. Little frogs peeped; bigger frogs croaked. The suddenly glowing periods that were fireflies punctuated the night. Caudell loved fireflies. When he was a boy, he’d snuck out of bed to press his nose against the window to watch them. He watched them now, but not for long. The snores from the men alongside fazed him not in the least. His own soon added to the chorus that threatened to drown out bugs and frogs alike.
When the drums woke him the next morning, he was convinced he could not march a step. His legs were one vast ache, his feet two sharper pains. The whole regiment moved like so many old men with rheumatism.
“Sign me up for the Invalid Corps,” Dempsey Eure groaned. That corps took its members from men too badly wounded to stay in the regular army but still able to hold down a prison guard slot or other duty that required little in the way of activity.
“I can’t move fast enough to get into the Invalid Corps,” Edwin Powell said, neatly topping his fellow sergeant.
For all their complaints, the men moved out while the dew was still wet on the grass and the sun just coming up to shine in their faces. Caudell’s feet still hurt, but before long he warmed up and limbered up and no longer felt elderly, just worn. When, Lieutenant Winborne started singing “Maryland, My Maryland,” he even joined in.
The 47th North Carolina led General Hill’s corps past Verdiersville and New Verdiersville just south and east of it. About an hour after the soldiers passed New Verdiersville, they came to the massive earthworks Lee and Meade had dug by Mine Run the November before, each hoping the other would attack him. They were both disappointed, and the campaign had been a fizzle.
As he came up to the works, Caudell wondered if the army would be ordered into them. He could think of nowhere better to stand on the defensive. But Colonel Faribault rode up to the head of the column and shouted, “Forward!” They marched on, into the Wilderness.
“We’re going to have ourselves a big fight today,” Caudell said.
Nobody argued with him. Mollie Bean said, “Wonder where the Yankees are in there.”
Caudell peered down the Orange Plank Road. Grant’s whole army could have been within a quarter mile. As long as they kept quiet, the Confederates would never know until they stumbled over them. Trees and underbrush grew right up to the edge of the road, their branches interlacing overhead. The Wilderness was second-growth country, gullied and full of scrubby chinkapin and blackjack oaks, scraggy pines, hazel, and every kind of thorn- and bramble-bearing bush known to man. Get off the road and you were lost, maybe for good.
The occasional clearing seemed like a lamp going on in a gloomy room. Caudell blinked in the sudden strong sunlight as he marched past New Hope Church on the south side of the road. “Place like this, ‘No Hope Church’ would be a better name for it,” Dempsey Eure remarked.
Colonel Faribault rode up again. He had his sword out, which meant he thought action was near. No sooner had the thought run through Caudell’s mind than the colonel said, “Skirmishers forward! We may come upon them any time now.”
The picked men trotted east, their repeaters at the ready. Some hurried down the road; others crashed through the tangled undergrowth and headed into the woods. Caudell could trace their progress for a while by the way they swore when thorns and stickers gouged their flesh. But the skirmishers soon fell silent. Today, the Wilderness held more dangerous things than thorn bushes.
It was still midmorning when a brisk crackle of rifle fire started up, ahead of the main body of the regiment. The men looked at one another. Caudell saw pale, tense faces all around. He suspected his own was no ruddier, no calmer. However little they spoke of it, few men went into battle without fear. But the best way to overcome it, to avoid deserving comrades’ scorn, was to pretend it did not exist. Without being ordered, the soldiers stepped up their pace.
A skirmisher, his tunic ripped, came pelting back. He gasped, “Bluebellies up ahead, cavalry fightin’ on foot”‘
“Company, load your rifles!” Captain Lewis ordered.
Caudell unslung his repeater, pulled back the charging handle. “Two clicks on your change levers, mind,” he called. “Don’t go shooting off all your rounds without good targets.”
“Two clicks,” the other sergeants echoed.
The regiment drew closer to the firing. Another skirmisher came back, this one staggering and cursing and dripping blood from his left forearm. “Where’s Fowler?” he said. Several men pointed the way to the assistant surgeon’s wagon. Still cursing, the wounded man went on toward the rear. Caudell’s gut knotted. How many more would face chloroform and the knife—or the bone saw—before this day’s work was through? And would he be one of them?
Then two more skirmishers appeared. They weren’t hurt; they were grinning from ear to ear and prodding along a glum-looking Yankee whose buff chevrons said he was a cavalry corporal. Colonel Faribault came up to him, on foot now. “What’s your unit?” he asked.
“Fifth New York Cavalry,” the prisoner answered, readily enough. His voice held more than a bit of a brogue. He looked from his captors to the rest of the 47th North Carolina. “Faith, do the lot of yez have these funny-looking guns? I though
t it was half a brigade we’d run into, not a wee skirmish line.”
The Carolina men howled like wolves to hear that. “Take him back to General Heth for more questions,” Faribault told the men who had captured the New Yorker. They led him away. The colonel went on, “Company I, forward to support the skirmishers. Other companies, form line of battle.”
Behind their banner, the men of Company I hurried down the Orange Plank Road toward the fighting. Company by company, the rest of the regiment moved off the road into the Wilderness. The Castalia Invincibles were close to the center of the line, and so still close to the roadway. All the same, Caudell discovered at once that this was no place for fancy parade-ground maneuvering. Even keeping the line straight was next to impossible. “Forward!” he called to the handful of men he could see.
Forward meant vines wrapping around his ankles like snakes and branches hitting him in the face and pulling at his arms. He fell three times before he’d made a hundred yards, Then a bullet cracked past his head and slapped against a tree trunk not five feet away. He threw himself flat and crawled through the bushes on his belly.
Another shot rang out, and another. Bullets probed the underbrush, looking for him. The Federal cavalrymen had repeaters of their own. They might not have been AK-47s, but they were bad enough. Caudell peered through a screen of leaves, tried to spy the Yankee who was trying to kill him.
He saw no trace of uniform—the fellow was hidden as well as a red Indian. But he could not hide the black-powder smoke that rose every time he fired. It drifted up from behind a clump of blackberry bushes. Carefully, so as not to give away his own position, Caudell brought the rifle to his shoulder, squeezed off two rounds, one after the other.
He’d flushed his bird. The blackberry bushes stirred as the Federal trooper scrambled toward what he hoped was better cover. Just for a second, Caudell caught a glimpse of blue. He fired. The Yankee screamed. Caudell fired again. The scream stopped, as abruptly as if it had been cut off by a knife. Caudell dashed forward, past the bushes where the dead Yankee had been hiding.
The Guns of the South Page 14