by Mike Blakely
More cheers arose from the men clustered around Taylor and Wool.
Then a volley of canister from the Saint Patrick’s Battalion fell nearby, wounding horses, dragoons, and foot soldiers.
“Lieutenant Rucker!” Taylor roared at the dragoon officer. The old fighter drew his saber and pointed it southwestward, toward the Saint Pats. “Take that damned battery!”
Colonel
JEFFERSON DAVIS
Buena Vista
February 23, 1847
“Fire advancing!” he yelled. The Mississippi Rifles, having reloaded their weapons after their first volley, marched toward an enemy force that outnumbered them ten to one. In spite of the odds, he felt pleased to see that his men did not hesitate.
Now a spray of musket and escopeta bullets tore through his ranks from three angles. As he marched in the middle of the skirmish line with Company K, he saw Private Garrot go down, then Private Donovent and Corporal Butler.
In the next instant, something yanked his right foot out from under him, throwing him to the ground. Colonel Jefferson Davis felt a searing heat tear through his heel. Rifle shots and the screams of his men drowned out his involuntary cry of pain. He sat up and looked at his foot. A big musket ball from a Brown Bess had clipped the top of his spur, torn through flesh, and shattered the bone of his heel.
Get up!
He stood and tried to take a step, but the grinding of bone on nerves racked his whole leg with excruciating pain.
“Sergeant Hagomy!” he yelled. “I need my horse. Go back to the ravine where I tied my horse and bring him here!”
“Yes, sir!” Hagomy said.
Davis looked ahead at his men, still marching steadily into a fire even hotter than he had experienced at La Teneria. They dropped by ones and twos all along the line. But the survivors kept marching. Even wounded men continued to reload and shoot from the places where they had fallen on the open ground.
Sergeant Hagomy brought Davis his horse and helped him mount. Just slipping his right foot into the stirrup racked him with a pain that made him dizzy and nauseated. He could feel his own hot blood rising inside his boot.
He saw Sergeant Hagomy running to catch up to his unit—Company F—pausing only to take an ammunition pouch off of a dead comrade.
“Advance!” Davis said to himself.
Spurring the horse hurt like hell. He squeezed his knees together and used his reins to urge the mount into the fray. A shell burst overhead. Another musket volley flew from the enemy ranks. More of his riflemen fell. And still the red shirts continued to march into the face of the enemy.
Now is the time! If we fail to turn this enemy advance, the day is lost, the Army of Occupation flanked, surrounded and vanquished!
He drew his saber and dashed behind his advancing line of battle-hardened volunteers. “March on, riflemen! To the glory Old Mississippi!”
Balls buzzed past his head like swarms of bumblebees, and another shell burst over his regiment. More men fell, but the rest kept advancing, reloading, firing. He looked through the smoke and saw a shell from Bragg’s battery explode into the Mexican infantry, now just fifty yards away. He saw the center of their line wither. The sure aim of his Mississippi Rifles dropped enemy fighters at a rate of one per second. Another shell burst over the Mexicans and they began to reel back.
“Halt!” Davis ordered. “Select your targets and aim as sharpshooters! Fire at will.”
Rifles cracked. The steel nerves of the red shirts and the accuracy of the Whitney rifles forced the enemy to retreat into the reserves behind them.
Victory! But only for now.
He looked behind him for support and saw the Third Indiana approaching, but still too far away to help. He knew he had to fall back, help the wounded, rally his men, prepare for the next wave of Santa Anna’s thousands, and hope for the quick arrival of the Hoosiers.
“Retire firing! Rally on me to the rear! Steady, men! Withdraw firing!”
He prayed to God and General Taylor to send him some support.
By God, we stopped them! We may have saved the battle. If only we can hold them back one more time.
Colonel Davis turned back to the rear to lead his men in the controlled retrograde movement. On the plateau between the two ravines, he now saw the bodies of his soldiers scattered haphazardly. He guessed three dozen men dead, an equal or higher number wounded. He rode past one bloodied corpse and recognized the lifeless face of Sergeant Hagomy, who only a few minutes ago had fetched his horse for him.
A stabbing pain roared up his leg from his wound, making his head swim. Blood had risen above his ankle in his boot.
“Colonel!”
He turned to see his adjutant, Captain Richard Griffith, running toward him.
“What is it, Captain?”
“Sir, the lancers have gone down into the ravine to the southwest. They intend to flank us and charge us from the rear!”
“I will find them, Captain. Lead the men in a steady withdrawal. Dispatch two men from each company to help the wounded to the rear.”
Davis trotted to the edge of the ravine and peered into it as he rode. The banks looked too steep and choked with brush to facilitate a cavalry charge, even for the legendary Mexican riders. Half a furlong on, he came to a gentler slope with less vegetation. Below, he heard branches snapping, horses snorting. He reined to a halt and looked. There! Tunics of blue, green, and red. Lance tips glinting in the sun. The lancers were forming up for an assault.
He turned and galloped to his troops. “To the ravine, this way! Double-quick, men! We must ambush their cavalry!”
The men near enough to hear him came careering to his call as he led them to the place where he had seen the lancers gathering in the gully.
“Form a line on the bank of the ravine,” he said, riding among his men. He took care not to shout too loudly, so as not to alert the enemy to his presence. “Do not fire until I give the order.”
Now he saw the advantage of the ground he held. Here the barranca bulged into the plateau, creating a curve where his men could wrap around the coming attack and pour an enfilading fire down upon the enemy. More Mississippi Rifles took up positions on the brink of the bank as the lancers approached from below.
A Mexican bugle signaled an advance down in the ravine, and the enemy horsemen began to ascend toward the plateau. On they came, weaving among tall yuccas, scrubby oaks, and stunted pines. They seemed unaware that they were being watched closely over the iron sights of a hundred rifled barrels. At the head rode an officer with a red plume on his tall shako campaign hat. This officer picked the ground ahead of him, his gaze gradually angling upward. At twenty yards he looked up and saw Davis mounted at the rim of the ravine. The officer reined in and drew a breath—a gasp—as his eyes met those of Colonel Davis.
“Fire!” Davis shouted.
The officer was the first to die. Scores of others fell dead and wounded from the sheet of bullets fired from the Whitney rifles. The survivors wheeled back into the barranca and disappeared the way they had come.
“Los Diablos!” they shouted. “Camisas Colorados!”
“Reload!” Davis ordered.
The victory over the lancers made the pain in his heel lessen for a moment. He looked back toward his own army and saw a single piece of light artillery rolling his way. Good. The gun would add to Braxton Bragg’s battery. His spirits soared. Beyond the fieldpiece, he saw the gray uniforms of the long-awaited Third Indiana, also known as the Indiana Grays, finally arriving within range of the enemy.
He ordered his regiment to retire to the place where their first charge had begun. Here, his survivors formed a line across the finger of the plateau, from the ravine on the left to the ravine on the right. The dead and severely wounded were carried down into the relative safety of the ravine on the left. Like Davis, many of his men were wounded but still able and willing to fight. He rode back to meet the artillery, which was bouncing to the battlefront at a canter. A lieutenant ordered hi
s gunners to halt as he approached Davis.
“Lieutenant Kilburn reporting, sir!”
“What are your orders, Lieutenant?” Davis winced through the throbbing in his foot.
“I have none, sir. I saw you needed support and came forward on my own accord.”
“Very well, Lieutenant. I am glad that you did. Take up a position in the center of my line and commence firing at the enemy.”
“It is an honor, sir!”
Davis watched the artillerymen roll into place, unlimber, and prepare to fire. By this time, he knew he had been formed up in one place long enough for the enemy artillery to train their guns on him. A shell screamed toward him and burst in the ravine to his left. He knew it was only a matter of time until the Mexican artillerists corrected their aim.
Lieutenant Kilburn’s six-pounder hurled its first shell into the Mexican reserves, provoking a cheer from the Mississippi Rifles. Smiling through his pain, Colonel Jefferson Davis now beheld a sight that wiped the grin right off his face. Around a bend in the ravine, ahead, came a huge column of Mexican cavalry, perhaps a thousand riders strong. Their lance tips, waving skyward, looked like the undulating hairs of an enormous stinging caterpillar of many bright colors, crawling menacingly toward him.
Looking back, he saw the winded Third Indiana Volunteers trotting to the front.
Kilburn’s field gun fired.
A Mexican artillery shell fell in front of the red shirts and exploded, killing or wounding three men with shrapnel.
“Colonel Davis!” Adjutant Griffith shouted. “Here come the lancers!”
Davis heard the ground rumbling as he watched the great caterpillar charge, four hundred yards away and coming fast.
The Indiana Grays neared, under Colonel James Lane, four hundred men strong.
Davis’s mind whirred. His West Point training told him that a hollow square was the recognized formation to combat a cavalry charge, with bayonets bristling outward from all four sides. But these volunteers had not been drilled in the complicated marching maneuvers required to create the square, and the Mississippians’ Whitney rifles did not come equipped with bayonets.
Colonel Lane was almost upon him with his regiment and would expect orders.
He reined his horse to the front and looked at the ground ahead. His riflemen still held their line across the plateau, from ravine to ravine. He saw that if he ordered the Hoosiers to form a line in advance of his regiment’s right, along the edge of the ravine, they would create a giant V formation that opened up toward the approaching Mexican riders.
“Colonel Lane!” he shouted, before Lane could report. “Follow me with your regiment!”
He angled to the right to lead the Hoosiers to their leg of the V formation.
We will be the V in Buena Vista. Let them charge into our cross fire!
With the Third Indiana in place along the edge of the ravine, he now turned back and saw about twenty gray uniforms milling around behind his red-shirted Mississippi Rifles on the left leg of the V. He galloped his way to investigate. Colonel William Bowles of the Second Indiana approached him on a gray horse. Davis was stunned to see Bowles almost in tears.
“Colonel Davis, my regiment has run away! This is all I have left!” He gestured toward the handful of volunteers who had stuck with him. “I wish permission to fight with your regiment.”
Davis nodded. “Granted. Order your men to fill in where my riflemen have fallen.”
“Colonel Davis!” Adjutant Griffith shouted. “Here come the lancers at a gallop!”
He felt the plateau tremble under him. Another shell burst overhead, wounding too many men to count. He saw a few of his red shirts easing backwards. Before he could say anything, he heard Captain William Haddon exhort the men, “Hold your ground, riflemen! The lines are the safest place to stand!”
“Well said!” Davis added, “The place of duty is the place of safety!”
Davis now charged behind his line of red shirts forming the left leg of the V. He saw the Indiana Grays in a perfectly straight file that formed the right leg.
“Hold your fire, men, until they get close! And then give it to them!”
He rode behind his entire line, repeating the order.
“Do not fire until I order it! Let them get close! Our cross fire will repel them!”
Now he arrived at the angle of the V. To his right, the untested Indianans maintained their leg admirably, perhaps because they sensed the cover of the ravine behind them, should they have to fall back. His Mississippians were exposed on the open plateau, but each man stood as motionless as a rock, as silent as death, as eager as a greyhound.
“They’re slowing down,” Griffith said, watching the approach of the lancers.
“Yes, I see,” Davis said. He had expected them to gallop headlong into his lines, but they had slowed to a trot. The strange V must have confused them.
“They’re slowing to a walk!” Griffith said. “Almost in range.”
Davis watched as the front rank of riders stalled, causing others behind them to swarm haphazardly around them at a trot. The lancers approached cautiously, their charge having slowed to a crawl.
“They are inside of one hundred yards,” Griffith said. “Now ninety … Eighty…”
Davis drew a breath with which to shout the order.
Somewhere down the Indiana line, a nervous volunteer fingered his trigger a little too hard and fired. A split second later, the entire V erupted in a rolling volley that mowed down enemy men and horses like a giant’s scythe. The Mexican cavalry rolled back on itself and fled, trampling infantrymen behind them, and disappearing into barrancas, around bends, and over ridges.
A mighty cheer arose along the V formation.
“Reload!” Davis shouted. The combination of his painful foot wound and the relief of his success almost made him faint, but he shook his head and sucked in a breath. Looking toward the rear, he was even more elated to see Captain Thomas Sherman unlimbering yet another fieldpiece to help drive the Mexican assault back farther.
“Look!” Griffith said, pointing beyond Sherman’s gun.
Davis saw Bragg’s artillery and a long column of cavalry, under Lieutenant Colonel Charles May, riding Black Tom, all coming to take the fight to the Mexicans.
“Tell the men to retire to the protection of the ravine,” the colonel ordered. “Recover our dead and take care of the wounded. We will retire and await further orders.”
“Yes, sir!” Griffith loped away to spread the order to the company commanders.
Now that the intense excitement had waned, Davis’s pain almost overwhelmed him. He found sorrow over his casualties and fears of amputation or gangrene mingling with pride in his regiment and the glory of his battlefield stand. He would retire for now. He had saved the day. But then he heard a shell whistle nearby as the battle raged louder to the right and he knew the day might well be in need of saving again. This was not over.
Private
SAMUEL CHAMBERLAIN
Buena Vista
February 23, 1847
As he trotted toward the Saint Patrick’s Battalion, his carbine forever pivoted on its saddle ring, slamming hard against his kneecap. Jolting along in the column of fours beside his messmate, Boss Hastings, Private Samuel Chamberlain heard a rousing shout up ahead. He saw grimy gunners cheering the dragoons as they passed in front of Sherman’s battery of flying artillery. The Irish deserters had pummeled Sherman all day long.
Down into the ravine he plunged, leaning back in the saddle and ducking thorny branches and the sharp points of Spanish daggers.
“Goddamn, there’s dead greasers everywhere,” Boss Hastings declared.
Soldan stumbled across corpses and wounded men. Chamberlain was sure some injured Mexicans were going to be trampled to death. That did not sit well with his conscience, but he reminded himself that he had seen many a helpless wounded American lanced or bayoneted to death on this day.
The stench in the gully turned his
stomach. It smelled worse than a hundred dance hall outhouses, as scores of dying wretches had released all manner of bodily substances from their battered vessels. Not to mention the carcasses and corpses ripped open by shot and shell.
“We’ll take that hill, sure ’nuff,” Hastings said. “The muzzles of them big twenty-four pounders are aimed high. We’ll slip in under them and chop us up some Irish turncoats.”
Chamberlain followed the riders ahead of him as his company of dragoons rounded a bend that led up another branch of the barranca. He saw men ahead of him in the column pointing upward at something. Peering through the branches, the dust, and the gunpowder smoke, he saw the huge emerald banner of the Saint Patrick’s Battalion lifted by restless breezes.
“Now’s the time, Sam.”
Up the right bank of the ravine he rode, raking Soldan’s flanks with his spurs as he reached for the hilt of his saber. He felt his heartbeat quicken as he charged with his comrades onto a spur of the plateau that lay before the hilltop battery of the deserters. He looked up at the muzzles of the heavy artillery of the Saint Pats.
Suddenly, the regimental bugler sounded “to the right,” and Chamberlain saw the men in front of him dashing desperately in that direction. Following the flow of the column, he saw that his company had almost plunged into a deep chasm with sheer banks that protected the hill like a castle moat. They were just beyond carbine range.
Lieutenant Rucker led the storming party along the chasm and around the hill to the right. Chamberlain could see that the only path up to the top of the hill led through Santa Anna’s reserve infantry, which must have numbered a thousand men. Brown Bess musket balls hissed past them as they plunged back into a protective barranca and continued west. Soon the Saltillo road came under the hooves of the dragoon horses as Lieutenant Rucker abandoned his assault and led his troops up toward Angostura Pass.
“Well, shit!” Boss Hastings said, “I was all het up to kill me some of them redheaded peckerwood Irish bastards.”
