Against All Odds

by Drew McGunn

  Startled awake by a nudge, Jesse noticed the artillery sounded even louder. Sergeant Major Andrade leaned in, “The dance is about to start.”

  Jesse joined the sergeant at the edge of the pit. Pink and orange tinged the eastern sky. Andrade added, “Down on the river.”

  The light from the east had yet to pierce the darkness of the river, but tiny flashes of light, like a hundred fireflies punctuated the gloom. Despite the booming artillery, Jesse could hear the high-pitched sound of gunfire.

  The rising noise of rifle fire came from the Rangers’ left flank. Whoever was crossing the river were doing so upstream. Jesse noticed his telegraph operator had returned while he had been asleep. “Send a message, the enemy are attacking. Looks like they’re hitting the Ninth’s position.”

  From below, Vandergrift said, “The Twentieth says the line to brigade headquarters is down.”

  Jesse swore as he waited for the sun to rise.

  ***

  “Wake up!” The voice penetrated Charlie’s sleep. His eyes fluttered open. A sliver of soft light slipped through the tent’s door panels. Sam Williams stood at the head of the cot, slipping an arm into his jacket. “The enemy are across the river. General Johnston’s ordered the balloon corps into the sky.”

  Blinking until the cobwebs cleared, Charlie swung out of bed and grabbed a clean shirt from an open trunk. The fog of sleep slipped away, “Is our crew filling the bag yet?”

  Sam drew back the door. Away from the unit’s camp, in an open field, Charlie saw one of the balloons half full of hydrogen. A steam-powered generator rattled and clanked as a hose carried the hydrogen into the balloon.

  Charlie frowned. It would take at least another thirty minutes to prepare the balloon. “Sam, go over and make sure the telegraph line is working. Once that’s done, send a message to Lieutenant Jackson. I want eyes in the sky on the army’s northern flank. We’re most vulnerable there.”

  After Sam sketched a salute, Charlie finished dressing and headed over to wait for the balloon to fill.

  By the time the balloon ascended into the sky, tied to the rope tethers, the sun was several degrees above the eastern horizon. Sounds of battle wafted over Charlie as he waited for the wicker basket to rise above the heavily forested area. They were a few hundred feet in the air when he was finally able to glimpse the river. He swore as he scanned the carnage. Cables ran from the east bank to the west in dozens of places along a narrow section of the front. Dozens of barges were using the cables to traverse the Sabine River. Each barge was packed with gray-jacketed soldiers.

  For every barge transporting men, Charlie found another burning on the shoreline or capsized in the water. He focused his binoculars on a barge nearing the eastern shore. The men onboard were pulling on the cable as fast as they could, forcing the craft through the water. A shell burst over the boat, raining shrapnel down on the unprotected men. The barge lurched to one side as it became separated from its cable. It crashed into another vessel and tipped over, dumping into the water its entire complement of soldiers.

  Several other barges slammed into the shoreline and their gray jacketed cargo spilled onto the riverbank. As the soldiers raced off the watercraft, they made no effort to reform their units but instead made a mad dash for the Texian line.

  Sam said, “Message coming in. Enemy troops have breached the river line near Madison. What do you see?”

  Boats were burning in the water, set afire by exploding shells, and men were struggling to get ashore. Despite the chaos, barges still traversed the river. “Sam, more than forty barges are crossing the river still. Artillery has knocked out quite a few others.”

  He raised his glasses, looking at the foreign shore. Flashes of light showed where the Allies’ entrenched guns supported the assault. The earthen embankment in front of the guns had been torn apart, where Texian counterbattery fire had attempted to silence the guns. Further to the south, Charlie spied at least a battery of guns set up in a field. Every few seconds a gun fired, throwing shot or shell toward the Texian line, on either flank of where the attack was centered.

  A map of the area was tacked to the wicker basket, and he looked down and found the corresponding quadrant. “Target acquired in quadrant F-twenty-four. About two hundred paces north of the railroad track and seventy-five paces east of the orchard.”

  Once the telegraph’s clattering ended, a few minutes passed before the first explosion detonated short of the exposed enemy battery. Charlie corrected his earlier directions, “Adjust another hundred feet to the east.”

  Minutes passed before the next ranging shot plowed into the ground just to the right of the battery before sending up a geyser of dirt that landed on the gunners. Close enough, Charlie thought. “On target.”

  Another shell-burst knocked half a gun-crew down. Within a few minutes, more of the enemy battery’s men raced forward with teams of horses. They’d had enough. “Sam, they’re running. More explosive shells.”

  Before the enemy battery could escape, two of the guns were abandoned; their animals destroyed along with their gun crews.

  Charlie scanned the panorama below. For the moment, the army’s secondary trench line was holding. He gave Sam the next set of coordinates.

  ***

  From the platform above and behind the grand battery, General Davis looked at the tranquility of the plantation house a few hundred paces away. The two-story building stood tall, with Corinthian columns rising above the wide portico. The planter and his family had heeded an earlier warning from William Hardee and fled to New Orleans. The slave cabins, beyond the house, sat empty, too. The slaves had been conscripted, serving the needs of the army, until they also were sent east, away from the coming maelstrom.

  The plantation’s bucolic appearance stood in stark contrast to the river, only a few hundred yards away. Bodies floated in the water, thrown from their barges when they were struck by explosive shells. While the Texian artillery had been ineffectual at wrecking Davis’ grand battery, hidden behind strong earthen ramparts, the soft targets of Blanchard’s division stood little chance when the Texians’ murderous shells fell among the ferry-craft.

  Still though, far more men made it to the other side of the Sabine than fell in its blood-tinged water. From behind, a voice reminded him he wasn’t alone on the platform. “We’re down to less than fifty of the barges still operational, sir.”

  He turned and looked at William Hardee. Soot streaked his cheek, running down to a blackened goatee. The ornate braiding on his uniform coat was torn where threads were pulled apart. Red stained the edges of the rip.

  Davis felt his eyes raise involuntarily, “Are you alright, Bill?”

  Hardee held up his hand, “Just a gash, Jeff.” Alone, the two officers dropped the pretense of rank. He leaned against a railing, “We’ve captured more than half a mile of trenches along the river. The problem is that our efforts to capture the fallback line have been unsuccessful, so far.”

  Davis raised his binoculars and saw the blue flag with its single star flying near the river. Between the trench and the river, hospital orderlies worked their grisly trade, triaging the men who could be shipped back across the river for care and those who awaited burial. “Did the training work? You and I agreed that we needed to borrow Travis’ tactics.”

  Hardee wiped at his face with a white handkerchief, turning it a grimy gray. “It’s going to take more time to really change things, Jeff.”

  Davis scowled at the corps commander. Hardee took notice and added, “Some of the units managed to use the skirmish line tactics effectively. Especially our orphaned brigade from Texas. The first regiment into the enemy trenches was the Seventh Texas. The fighting was some of the fiercest of the day. Men were killing each other with knives, bayonets, and sometimes even with their hands.”

  “How many men have we lost?”

  Hardee’s shoulders sagged, “I don’t know, Jeff. Blanchard’s four brigades included nearly sixteen thousand men. We managed to get n
early all one hundred barges across at first. The second wave suffered the heaviest casualties. More than a thousand killed or wounded, just there. Getting into the trench line along the river didn’t come cheap. The saving grace was the breechloaders of the Texas brigade let us focus overwhelming fire on a single enemy battalion. But we’ve tried extending our lines, but we’ve run into those damnable Gatling guns on our right flank. Our left flank has managed to push a few hundred yards north, but we’re losing three or four men to every Texan.”

  Realizing the commander of I Corps was rambling, Davis cut in, “How many, Bill?”

  Eyes brimming with tears, Hardee said, “At least three thousand, maybe more.”

  ***

  “I wish to God they’d make up their mind,” Sergeant-Major Andrade said, “One minute, it’s solid shot plowing up the ground. The next, it’s explosive shells.”

  Jesse found himself agreeing with him. The grand battery, on the opposite bank of the Sabine, made the lives of his men hell on earth. He couldn’t help thinking, If that were all we had to deal with, that would be bad enough, but the Allied infantry only makes things worse.

  No room for talk like that. Instead, Jesse said, “We’ll hold them as long as it takes to break them.”

  The telegraph operator, Vandergrift, winced as he tapped out a message. His arm was bandaged. A piece of shrapnel had come through the rifle slit and injured him earlier. He swore as he leaned back, “The line’s down between us and the Twentieth – again.”

  Jesse bit back a sigh of exasperation. He’d send a runner if he had to, but he liked the immediacy of the telegraph. He squeezed by Vandergrift and his bulky equipment and looked back toward the reserve line. Rifle pits had been hastily thrown up perpendicularly between his line and the reserve position, using excess rail ties, lumber, and fallen trees to shelter his Rangers. Otherwise, the enemy might have succeeded in turning his flank and forcing his half of the battalion back.

  Satisfied his deployment would hold, for now, Jesse sat down on an ammunition crate and pulled out a meat biscuit wrapped in wax paper and a tin of condensed milk. He used his knife to cut a hole in the tin and poured the thick, syrupy liquid into his cup. He dunked the biscuit into the milk before biting into it. The tasteless biscuit was dry and flavorless. But the sweet taste of the condensed milk turned what was an unpalatable meal into something he enjoyed.

  Through a mouthful of food, Jesse wondered aloud, “Mr. Borden must be eating high on the hog what with all his contracts with the army. Both the meat biscuit and milk are his creations.”

  Andrade sipped his condensed milk from the tin, “Rich as Midas, I reckon. I can almost forgive him for those damned meat biscuits. I’ve heard tales you could trade a single tin of milk for a pound of tobacco with those Southern boys. They’ve taken a hankering to it, too.”

  Feeling the sugar rush, Jesse said, “Not that you’d know anything about illicit trading with the enemy, right?”

  Andrade laughed, “No, never. Just rumors, you understand.” His voice belied his words.

  Gunfire, which never entirely stopped, rose in volume and a voice a few rifle pits over yelled, “They’re coming again!”

  Jesse and Andrade grabbed their rifles and looked through the rifle slit. The ground between them and the shoreline was empty save for a few bodies. But to their left, they heard men screaming as they rushed forward. Jesse raced to the back of the rifle pit, where the earthen lip was low. He looked around the corner and saw gray-jacketed soldiers running forward.

  They made no effort to maintain their flanking firing line but instead seemed to run pell-mell at his makeshift rifle pits place perpendicularly between his line and the reserve line. He realized, as he watched, the enemy soldiers were working in small teams to cross the open terrain. Gone was the effort to use mass-volley fire. Granted, it was wasted against a heavily fortified position. As he watched the advance, the analytical part of Jesse’s mind considered the challenges the army would face if, as it appeared, the enemy were trying to use their tactics against them.

  A Gatling gun situated in the reserve trench opened fire when the enemy soldiers were within hundred paces of the makeshift rifle pits protecting the Ranger’s flank.

  Like toy soldiers being knocked aside, the advancing enemy soldiers toppled over when the machine-gun opened up on them. Another Gatling gun added its fire to its neighbor and the charge came to an abrupt halt, as the gunfire crisscrossed the enemy advance. Flashes of light and puffs of smoke confirmed the survivors hadn’t retreated. They had gone to ground and opened fire.

  Jesse pulled his head back inside the covered rifle pit. “It looks like we’ve stopped them, for now.”

  ***

  Andy Berry cocked his ears, he could swear he heard the rumble of artillery. Despite its reputation for showers, the last few days of April offered clear skies. A casual glance at the blue sky overhead convinced him whatever he heard wasn’t thunder. More than sixty miles separated Trinity Park from the Sabine Front. It seemed unlikely the noise he heard was from the front lines. As he entered the grounds of Trinity College, he decided he’d ask Gail. If anyone would know, Andy reasoned, Gail would.

  The campus had an air of abandonment about it as Andy walked along the dirt path leading to Borden’s office. Most of the students were with the army, caught up in President Travis’ latest round of mobilizations. It seemed as if the only folks not caught up in the newest round of mobilizations were men working in the factories, churning out the tools of war, desperately needed by the army. However, as he passed by the medical school, the sound of voices coming from a classroom reminded him not every student had been mobilized. The army needed doctors even more than it needed cannons, ammunition, and rifles.

  The campus’s small hospital wing, usually used by the faculty and students for training, would soon overflow with the wounded from the ongoing battle. After his taste of combat the previous year, he was glad to put his efforts into supplying the army. He knew what a bullet could do to soft human tissue.

  The building housing Borden’s office and lab felt as empty as the rest of the campus as Andy heard his heels echo on the polished wooden floor as he walked by empty classrooms. He found Gail Borden in his private lab where the inventor waved him over.

  “Did you bring it?”

  Andy gently set the heavy bag on the worktable. “Five pounds of the stuff, as you requested.”

  He was glad to hand the nitrogenated processed cotton off to Borden. When he mentioned how happy he was to get rid of the NPC, Borden laughed, “Putting it into a paste form seems to have helped stabilize it a bit.”

  Looking at the table, Andy said, “What’s this contraption?”

  A round, tin canister sat atop the table. It spanned almost a foot in diameter. The top was removed, revealing a smaller can, the size of a condensed milk container placed in the middle. A box containing iron ball bearings sat on the floor next to the table.

  “A land torpedo. Dick Gatling and I were talking about weapons that previously were ahead of their time, but now might be possible. This was his idea. But he’s busy with other projects.”

  Pointing to the lid, Borden continued, “That’ll go on top of the torpedo. If you step on it, the top will depress and trigger this.” He held up a miniaturized trigger, not unlike those used on the revolvers he manufactured, only smaller.

  “The hammer will strike a percussion cap and detonate a small charge of NPC.”

  In Andy’s analytical mind, he could follow the steps, “And that will, in turn, blow up the tin can full of ball bearings.”

  Gail nodded. “Exactly. During the American Revolution sea mines were deployed against the British navy.”

  Andy blinked in surprise. “I hadn’t known.”

  Borden’s cheeks turned red, “They weren’t particularly successful. But NPC, while it isn’t as stable as I’d like, is far more resistant to moisture than gunpowder, and it will still explode when detonated, even if wet. taken with
the waterproof percussion caps, we’re better positioned to control things our grandfathers couldn’t.”

  Andy shook his head, “Have you tested it yet?”

  “Not yet. I needed the explosives. Why don’t you help me finish putting it together?”

  Later, they took the assembled device over to the practice range where the foundry tested artillery. Andy helped Borden to position the device, place the lid on it, and set the trigger. They put a wooden table next to the device and tied a 6-pound cannonball to a length of twine and placed it near the table’s edge.

  They sheltered behind an earthen berm, and Gail handed the twine to Andy, “Why don’t you do the honors?”

  Wiping his sweaty palms on his trousers, Andy gently tugged on the twine. Although he couldn’t see the solid shot roll off the table, he imagined the iron cannonball roll to the table’s edge, balance for a moment until the tension in twine pulled it off.

  Ka-boom! The ground shook beneath their feet, and Andy put his hand on the berm to steady himself. When he followed Borden back around the berm, the table was gone. The iron cannonball was nowhere to be found, and instead of the explosive device, Andy found a small crater.

  He turned to Borden, a look of wonder on his face, “Merciful God, Gail, what have you made?”

  ***

  Jason Lamont tugged at his mount’s reins as he followed behind the line of skirmishers moving through the dense forest. Not for the first time did he curse General Davis for ordering his brigade to accompany the army’s cavalry division on its flanking maneuver. Still, in a moment of charity, Lamont knew his South Carolinians were better suited to the densely wooded terrain than the men following behind his infantry, leading their mounts.

  Ferrying nearly four thousand infantry and nine-thousand cavalry troopers and their mounts had taken most of the morning even with twenty flat barges assembled for that purpose. Where the army crossed the Sabine, there were no roads on the Texas side of the river, and the men were forced to make their way through the old-growth forest.