The Bloody Ground

by Bernard Cornwell

  Dennison nodded. "You're firing too?" he asked, need-ing reassurance.

  "Head shot," Case said. "You go for the body," he patted the middle of Dennison's back to show where the nervous Captain should aim. "One of us will get the bastard. Now wait." Case had not been fooled by Starbuck's offer of leniency. He guessed that the Yankee bastard was scared of him and had tried to buy Case off by returning his stripes, but Robert Case was not a man to let a grudge be settled cheaply. Starbuck had humiliated him, and Case wanted his revenge. He also wanted the commission. In a month, he reckoned, he could be commander of the Yellowlegs and then, by God, he would whip the bastards into a disciplined unit. Maybe he could change their name, call them the Virginia Fusiliers, then have the bastards march into battle like they were on Aldershot's parade ground.

  The two men crouched low, both waiting for the odd silence on the battlefield to end.

  The first Yankee hammer blow had fallen, and under it the rebel line in the north of the battlefield had crumbled. The second blow now climbed steadily up from the middle part of the creek while the third, concealed in the hollows and trees beyond the Antietam, waited for the order that would launch them across the gently flowing stream to cut the rebels' retreat.

  On the far side of the Potomac, the marching Light Division heard the sudden lull in the gunfire. Sweating men looked nervously at each other and wondered if the silence meant that the battle was already lost. "Keep going!" the staff officers shouted, "keep going!"

  They had miles to march yet and a deep, wide river to cross, but they kept on toward the ominous silence and the pyre of smoke that dirtied a sky above a field of dead.

  "SEVENTY-NINE MEN, SIR," Starbuck reported to Swynyard.

  "The Legion's down to a hundred and four," Swynyard said bleakly. "Poor Haxall's men don't even make a company. The Sixty-fifth is a hundred and two." He folded the scrap of paper on which the totals had been penciled. "More men will come in," he said, "some are hiding, some are running." Swynyard's Brigade was shrunken small enough to be collected in a half-acre clearing of the West Woods. The Yankees holding the Dunker church were not more than two hundred paces away, but neither side had ammunition to spare and so each was treating the other gingerly. Now and then one of the rebel skirmishers who ringed the Pennsylvanians fired, but return fire was rare.

  "God knows how many have died," Starbuck said bitterly.

  "But your men stood and fought, Nate," Swynyard said, "which is more than the punishment battalion did at Manassas."

  "Some stood and fought, sir," Starbuck said, thinking of Dennison. He had not seen the Captain and did not care if he never saw him again. With any luck, Starbuck thought, Dennison was dead or captured, and so, he hoped, was Tumlin.

  "You did well," Swynyard insisted. He was watching an ammunition wagon stop on the track that led through the

  clearing. The wagon's rifle ammunition was for his brigade, a sign that their fighting was not done this day.

  "I did nothing, sir," Starbuck answered, "except chase after my men." The battle had been chaos almost from the first. Men had become detached from their companies, they had fought with whoever they found themselves, and few officers had kept control of their companies. The rebel defense had been made by men just standing and fighting, sometimes without orders, but always with vast pride and a huge determination that had finally been eroded by one heavy attack after another.

  "Charmed," Swynyard said sardonically.

  "Sir?’ Starbuck asked in puzzlement, then saw that Swynyard was staring at Lieutenant Colonel Maitland, who was strolling along the decimated ranks of the Legion. Maitland was grinning vacuously and spreading lavish compliments, but he was also having some trouble in keeping his footing. His men grinned, amused at the sight of their inebriated commander.

  "He's drunk, isn't he?" Swynyard asked.

  "He's soberer than he was," Starbuck said. "Much."

  Swynyard grimaced. "I watched him in the cornfield. He was strolling through fire like it was the garden of Eden and I thought he must be the bravest man I'd ever seen, but I suppose it wasn't bravery at all. He must have drunk all that liquor he confiscated." 1 guess.

  "He was telling me last night," Swynyard went on, "just how scared he was of not doing his duty. I liked him for that. Poor man. I didn't realize how scared he really was."

  "If Old Jack sees how scared he is now," Starbuck said dryly, "he'll be lucky to keep his rank." He nodded to the left where Jackson was riding toward Swynyard's Brigade along the reformed line.

  "Colonel Maitland!" Swynyard shouted in a voice worthy of a sergeant. "To attention, if you please! Now!"

  Maitland, astonished by the peremptory order, snapped to attention. He was facing his men so only they could see the surprised look on his face. Jackson and his aides rode their horses behind the drunken Colonel and so noticed nothing. The General reined in close to Swynyard. "Well?" he asked curtly.

  "They can fight, sir," Swynyard said, guessing what the curt question meant. He turned and pointed at the bullet? pocked wall of the Dunker church that was just visible through the leaves. "Yankees there, sir."

  "Not for long," Jackson said. His left hand rose slowly into the air as he turned to gaze at Swynyard's ranks. "A brigade?" he asked, "or a battalion?"

  "Brigade, sir."

  Jackson nodded, then rode on down the line of exhausted men who he knew must soon fight again.

  "Three cheers for Old Jack!" Maitland suddenly erupted and the Legion gave three rousing cheers that Jackson pointedly ignored as he spurred on toward the next brigade.

  "What do you do with Maitland, sir?" Starbuck asked.

  "Do?" Swynyard seemed surprised by the question. "Nothing, of course. He's doing his duty, Nate. He ain't running away. When this fight's done I'll have a word with him and suggest he might be better employed back in the War Department. But at least he'll be able to say he fought the good fight at Sharpsburg. His pride will be intact."

  "And if he doesn't go?"

  "Oh, he'll go," Swynyard said grimly, "believe me, Nate, he'll go. And once he's gone I'll put your boys into the Legion and give the whole lot to you."

  "Thank you, sir."

  Swynyard looked over Starbuck's shoulder and jerked his beard to suggest that there was someone needing Starbuck's attention. Starbuck turned and, to his astonishment, saw it was Captain Dennison who, very formally, was reporting for duty.

  "Where the hell were you?" Starbuck snapped.

  Dennison glanced at Swynyard, then shrugged. "Where I was told to be, sir. In the graveyard."

  "Skulking?" Starbuck snarled.

  "Sir!" Dennison protested. "Captain Tumlin ordered us there, sir. Said the Yankees had skirmishers attacking our wounded. So we went there, sir. Fought them, sir." He patted the black-muzzled rifle that now hung from his shoulder. "Killed a few, sir."

  "Tumlin ordered you there?" Starbuck asked.

  "Yes, sir."

  "Son of a bitch," Starbuck said. "Where the hell is Tumlin?"

  "Don't know, sir. Shall we fall in, sir?" Dennison asked innocently. A dozen men of A Company were with Dennison and none of them looked as tired, strained, or scared as the other survivors from the Yellowlegs.

  "Fall in," Starbuck said. "And Captain?" "Sir?"

  "I gave Case his stripes back." "He told me, sir."

  Starbuck watched Dennison go to join the remnant of his company. Sergeant Case was there, the buck's tail still pinned to his gray hat, and, for a second, Starbuck wondered about that bullet in Caton Rothwell’s back. Then he dismissed the suspicion. There had been enough stray Yankees in the woods to account for that miserable death. If it was anyone's fault, Starbuck thought, it was his for not leaving two men to watch from the wood's edge.

  "What was all that about?" Swynyard asked when Dennison had fallen in.

  "God knows, sir. Either he's lying, or Tumlin disobeyed me. But that bastard," Starbuck jerked his head toward Dennison, "ain't never been civil to me in the pas
t, so the hell knows why he's starting now."

  "Battle, Nate," Swynyard said. "It changes men."

  A bugle sounded to the east. Starbuck turned and stared through the trees toward the horrid ground where so many had died. Till now he had been fighting an enemy who had come from the north, but the collapse of the rebel line in the cornfield meant that from now on they would be facing east. Another bugle called. "Bastards are coming again," Starbuck said.

  "Then let us make ready," Swynyard said very formally.

  Because the battle was still not lost, nor won, and the Yankees were coming again.

  The first division of Union reinforcements came up from the creek in fine style, but when they reached the plateau there was no messenger to guide them to where they were needed. One Northern general was dead, another had gone back wounded, and so there was no one to tell the newly arrived troops where to attack. Their own general saw where the lingering gunsmoke hung thickest and pointed with his sword. "Keep going! That way! March!" A second Yankee division was climbing from the creek, but the general did not wait for it to join him. Instead he formed his men into three long lines of battle, one behind the other, and sent them through the East Woods. Once through the trees they reformed their lines and advanced across the cornfield where the wounded cried out to stop men treading on them.

  The attacking division would have made a fine sight if it had been maneuvering on a parade ground, but on a battlefield the serried mass of men was an invitation to the tired rebel gunners waiting beyond the turnpike. The cannons opened fire. Case shot cracked gray above the attackers' heads while solid shot whipped through rank after rank of men, one shot sufficient to kill or wound a dozen men. The Yankees pushed on, closing their ranks after each bloody strike and leaving behind them a new trail of dead and injured men.

  The Pennsylvanians around the Dunker church heard the guns and prayed that someone was coming to their support. Their attack had driven a deep wedge into the center of the rebel army, but their ammunition was now desperately low. Their colonel had sent for help, but none was coming. Skirmishers probed the woods around the church, looking for other Northern troops who might have found shelter in the trees, but there were no allies within reach and one by one the Pennsylvania skirmishers were killed or wounded by rebel sharpshooters. The Northern colonel looked behind him for help while his pickets reported the noise of troops gathering in the surrounding trees.

  The troops were rebels. They were fresh and unblooded this day. In the dawn they had been guarding the bridges and fords across the lower part of the creek, but no Yankee attack had materialized and so, in desperation, Lee had stripped his southern defenses of every man that could be spared. Those men had marched through Sharpsburg and up the hill to where Jackson now hurled them at the Dunker church.

  The rebel yell echoed in the woods. Volleys clattered against the church walls, thumped into trees, and ricocheted off stone. For a time the Pennsylvanians resisted the tightening ring, but they were isolated and outnumbered and finally they broke. They ran, abandoning their wounded, crossing the turnpike, and not stopping until they were out of range of the rebel rifles.

  The rebels did not pursue. Jackson had freed himself of the Pennsylvanians and now he turned his men north to where the great parade ground attack had pushed across the cornfield and into the northern part of the West Woods. The attacking division had suffered horribly from the rebel guns, but enough men survived to reach the trees and sweep the rebel gunners out of their path. A handful of Confederate skirmishers fled, and suddenly the Stars and Stripes were being carried into the West Woods. "Keep going!" officers shouted, knowing their men would be tempted to stay in the shelter of the bullet-flecked trunks. "Keep going!" The three battle lines marched on westward as if they planned to push clean on down to the Potomac, but the guns Lee had placed behind the wood greeted their appearance at the tree line. Another cornfield lay beyond the wood and it was filled with rebel sharpshooters who, concealed by the standing corn, poured rifle fire into the blue ranks. The Yankees paused to reform lines that had been tangled by their advance through the trees.

  The three impressive battle lines were jumbled together now, but still they faced westward, as though their general believed his object was to reach the distant Potomac. In truth the enemy lay to the south, where Jackson had collected every man he could find and was leading them through the trees against the unprotected Yankee flank. Guns hid the noise of the advancing troops. There were rebel guns firing from the western hill and Northern guns firing from higher up the Hagerstown Pike, but then, drowning even the thunder of the artillery, an almighty crash of rifle fire splintered across the sky with a sound like the very veils of heaven being ripped apart.

  The second division of Yankee reinforcements had climbed from the creek. They were supposed to follow the first division, which was now isolated in the West Woods, but the second division had lagged behind and now, reaching the plateau, they could see no sign of the men they were supposed to reinforce. For a few moments they waited, their general officers seeking directions amid the chaos, but then, lacking any orders, they marched southeast toward the beckoning landmark of a white spire of a Sharpsburg church that could just be glimpsed above the trees. For a few moments the Yankees advanced across the open farmland unobserved and unhindered, but in their path was a farm lane and the lane was an attacker's nightmare. For years heavy farm wagons had broken the lane's dirt surface and, because the track ran gently downhill toward open ground, the rains had washed the debris away so that year after year, generation by generation, the lane had sunk ever deeper beneath the farmland's surface so that by now a man on foot could not see over the lane's sloping banks. The Yankees did not know it, but they were placidly advancing over sunlit pastureland toward a natural firestep that was crammed with rebels. These Confederate troops guarded the center of Lee's line and they had not fired a shot all morning, but now, at last, they pushed their rifle barrels through the long grass that grew beneath the rail fence at the bank's lip and aimed at the unsuspecting Yankees. They let those Yankees come real close, then pulled their triggers.

  Starbuck heard that first slaughtering volley fired from the sunken lane. The sound told him that the battle was widening as more Yankees crossed the creek, but his fight was still in the northern part of the field where five thou-sand Yankees were readying themselves to continue their westward attack, unaware that Jackson was coming from their unguarded southern flank.

  Swynyard's brigade advanced on the right, emerging from the trees where the woods narrowed to cross a small pasture. The Hagerstown Pike was immediately to Starbuck's right, and beyond that lay the pastureland where the rebels had resisted attack after attack from the cornfield. The pasture was filled with bodies heaped in rows like tidelines showing where the fight had ebbed and flowed. More bodies were folded over the fences, where men had been killed as they clambered over the rails to escape the Northern advance. Starbuck's men walked past the horror in silence. They were weary and numbed, too tired to even look at the place where they had fought so long. A Yankee artillery battery stood well out of rifle range at the pasture's far side. The battery's guns were firing south, and every shot propelled a jet of flame-filled smoke that spat fifty yards from the gun's muzzle before billowing into a vaporous mist that hung in the still air. The gunners appeared not to have noticed the rebel soldiers across the turnpike, or else they had more inviting targets to the south. Starbuck watched the gunners leap aside as their huge weapons leaped back with each shot. It was, he thought, as if those gunners were fighting a quite separate battle.

  The gunners were the only living Yankees in sight and it struck Starbuck as strange that so many men could be swallowed so comprehensively into so small a patch of countryside. The noise of the battle was awesome, yet here, where in a few hours thousands had died, the living seemed to have vanished.

  Then, just as Starbuck was marveling at the emptiness of the landscape, a Yankee officer rode from the tree
s just fifty yards ahead of the brigade. He was a young man, full-bearded and straight-backed, who carried a long, shining sword blade. He curbed his horse to stare at the distant gunners, then some instinct made him look to his right and his jaw fell open as he saw the approaching rebels. He twisted in the saddle to shout a warning toward the trees, then, before calling the alarm, turned back again to make sure the Confederates were not figments of a fear-racked imagination. "Would someone please shoot that man?" Swynyard called plaintively.

  The Yankee realized his danger and raked back his spurs as he hauled on the reins. His horse twisted round and leaped back toward the trees before a single rebel had time to draw a bead on the inviting target. Starbuck heard the astonished Yankee shouting a warning, then the shout was swamped by the rebel yell that, in turn, was drowned by a shattering volley of rifle fire and an eruption of screams.

  "Bayonets!" Swynyard shouted, "quick, boys!"

  The brigade dragged the long blades from their holsters and slotted them onto fire-blackened muzzles. The pace quickened. Colonel Swynyard was in the front now, a sword in his hand, and Starbuck felt the tiredness slough away to be replaced by a sudden and unexpected exhilaration.

  "Fire!" Swynyard shouted. The Yankees had appeared. Scores of men had tumbled in disarray from the trees, only to be flanked by Swynyard's attack. "Fire!" the Colonel shouted again. Rifles flamed, then the bayonets drove forward. "Don't let them stand!" Swynyard roared. "Get them moving, boys, get them moving!"

  The Yankees stood no chance. They had been attacked on their open flank and the three battle lines crumpled. The Yankees nearest to the point of attack had no room to turn and face the rebels; the unlucky were driven down by vengeful Confederates while the fortunate fled to tangle with the battalions behind who were struggling to turn their companies through ninety degrees. The cumbersome maneuver was confused by the trees and by the rebel shells that tore through the high branches to explode shrapnel and leaves down into the confusion. The Yankees in the northernmost part of the wood stood the best chance, and some battalions there managed to turn their lines, but most of the regiments collided as they wheeled, officers shouted contradictory orders, fugitives jostled the nervous ranks, and always, everywhere, there sounded the vicious yelping of the rebel war cry. Panic prompted some Northern units to open fire on fellow Yankees. Shouted orders were lost in the din, and all the while the rebel attack swept on like a flood seeking the weakest parts of a crumbling dike. Some Northern units put up a fight, but one by one the defenders were outflanked and were forced to join the retreat. For a time some battalions in the northern part of the woods resisted the attack, but at last they too were outflanked and the whole division tumbled in panic from the trees to flee into the shelter of the North Woods.