The Civil War Trilogy: Gods and Generals / the Killer Angels / the Last Full Measure

by Michael Shaara

  He reached the tent, and the wind slowed, the flaps calmed, and he opened the tent, stared into the black space, moved slowly inside. He peeled the coat off his shoulders, tried to feel for the small chair, would lay it across the back, and now he heard a sound. It was a man crying. “Hello … who is there …?”

  The voice started low, and the man cleared his throat. It was Taylor. “Sir, forgive me … I had to wait for you. I wasn’t sure where you were.”

  Lee began to see, caught the motion, Taylor standing up. Now Taylor flicked a match, a small glow filled the tent, and Taylor lit the oil lamp. Lee watched him, saw Taylor’s hand shaking, said, “What is it, Colonel? What has happened?”

  Taylor looked at him, then glanced down, put his hand on a piece of paper. “Message, sir … from Richmond.” He slid the paper toward Lee, and Lee waited, knew Taylor would tell him more. “General Stuart has died, sir.”

  Lee stared at the paper, let it lie. Taylor’s words were enough. He nodded, felt suddenly very heavy, his legs weak, weighed down by the wetness in his clothes. Taylor backed away from the chair, and Lee moved forward, sat slowly, his hands on the table. There was a silent moment, the whisper of rain on the tent, and Lee felt something filling him, dark and cold, felt frozen, motionless. He forced a breath, glanced up at Taylor.

  The young man moved toward the opening in the tent, stopped, composed himself, pulled at his coat and said, “He will be terribly missed, sir.”

  Lee looked at the young man, searched for words, something to say. He thought of the stream of messages, Stuart wearing out the horses of his staff so that he would never again make the mistake he had made at Gettysburg. Even the mistakes, he thought, even when Stuart had one eye on the headlines, on his reputation, he was still the eyes of the army.

  Taylor began to move, reached to push the tent flaps open, paused, said quietly, “Are you all right, sir? May I bring you something?”

  Lee wanted to speak, felt the wave rising in him, fought it, pushed it away, wrapped himself hard around the emotion, said, “He … never brought me a piece of false information.”

  Taylor shook his head, and Lee saw him weaken again. The words did not help, there was no comfort. “No, sir.” Taylor backed out of the tent, still watching Lee. “I am … terribly sorry, sir.”

  Lee nodded, turned, was losing the control now, the weariness taking over. The flaps closed and he was alone, stared into the dull yellow of the oil lamp. I must say something, he thought, write it down, a message to the army. They will look to me for comfort. His mind stumbled through the words, the speeches, all the letters, but there was no sense, nothing came to him. He thought of his children, the relief of seeing Rooney come back, the loss of Annie. He would always feel the guilt for not being there, not watching them grow up.

  From the beginning of the war, the first time the troops looked to him as a leader, he had eased the guilt by embracing all of them, had quietly realized that he loved them all, they were all like his own children. It had come from Jackson first, the strange urgency behind the bright blue eyes, the anxious need to please, the frantic devotion to duty. Stuart had been the charmer, the boy everyone would love, who always knew the eyes were on him. Longstreet was older, serious, perhaps too serious since the fever had taken his own children away. And Longstreet had little use for Stuart’s theatrics, the grand show of the uniform, the red-lined cape, the gaudy plume in the hat. But Lee knew it was all of it, all that Stuart was, the show, the spectacle, the headlines. And the cavalryman.

  He still stared into the light, thought, The army. That is the important thing … we do not have the luxury of personal loss, of missing our comrades. There are too many, and I do not have the right … to grieve for anyone. I must plan … find some way to replace him. There is no time.…

  He could not fight it. The strength slipped further away, his head began to drop down, and he put his arms on the table, rested, still looking at the light. The army, he thought, we must have eyes, we must know where Grant is going.…

  He heard a horse outside, voices, and knew it would wait, Taylor would not disturb him now. The rain slowed, and the sounds of the battle were fading. He forced himself to think of the duty, pushed the words through his mind: I must replace him. He thought of his nephew, Fitz Lee, and Hampton, the big man from South Carolina, but his mind would not work, the names slipped away, the faces blank, unreal. He was suddenly anxious, his heart waking in his chest. He stared down at the piece of paper, the message he had still not read. He cannot be replaced. None of them …

  He laid his head down on his arms, turned his face down, closed his eyes, and he could not keep it away any longer, the control was gone, and he began to cry.

  21. CHAMBERLAIN

  MAY 14, 1864

  HE HAD COME BY WAY OF FREDERICKSBURG, MOVING SLOWLY south, kept off the road by the wagons moving north. He had often been forced to wait, could not move the horse at all, the road narrowing, only room for the endless line of wagons, winding through dense woods or crossing a stream. When he stopped and waited, he heard the sounds, the voices of the wounded. He had tried to see them at first, easing the horse up close, looking into some of the ambulances, and the sights were always the same, the sounds and the smells began to overwhelm him, and so, as he worked his way closer to the army, he kept the horse to the side, let the wagons pass.

  The malaria had come back, worse this time, and he’d been too sick to even make the trip back to Maine. He was confined to a hospital in Washington, surrounded by the screaming of the wounded, and the horror and the loneliness had been unbearable. Through the fever he sent word to Fannie, and this time she came to him, made the rail trip southward. It was Fannie’s healing hand that finally brought the strength back to him. If weeks in a bed began to drive him insane, what followed was worse. Washington was swirling with official business, the paperwork of war. The need for discipline, for policing the huge army, had created a massive backlog of court-martial cases. Chamberlain’s presence was too convenient to be overlooked, and so for nearly two months he had endured a new confinement: court-martial duty.

  Finally, after a vigorous stream of letters to the War Department, he was allowed to return to the Fifth Corps.

  He reached the camp above the bloody field at midday, and the rain still came down, the roads flowing with thick mud. He had reported to Griffin, saw something in the man’s face he had not seen before, something dark and angry, and they did not talk, just the formality, reporting for duty.

  Lee had pulled back, straightened his lines farther south. In front of the Fifth, the rebel line still included the strength of Laurel Hill, and no one in the corps believed there would be another attack here. If the army would try Lee again, it would surely be somewhere else.

  His brigade, the entire army, had endured a solid week of bloody action, and Chamberlain could not just parade into the camp, announce his return as though nothing had happened, as though these men were not different now, changed by what they’d been through. It had been clear that Griffin was not the same man, and Chamberlain was curious about that, what it was, what was new. It was more than just another battle, more guns, more blood. It was something Chamberlain had missed, and the frustration of that ate at him, the selfish luxury of being sick when your own men were dying at the hand of the enemy. He walked through the camp, looked at the men, saw them one at a time, unusual. This is not like Gettysburg, he thought, or even the disaster at Fredericksburg. The men were not talking, even the music was subdued. He walked past a group of men from Pennsylvania, one man writing a letter, one reading a Bible. The faces were empty, blank, the others staring into some faraway place. He heard a low conversation, the words again, “the angle,” thought, This is something I have missed, something I have to learn.

  He rode toward the lines of the Twentieth Maine, felt a sudden urgency, unexpected, a small cold panic rising from all the talk of how many were gone, how bad the fight had been. Once he left Griffin, he had only one th
ought: Find Tom.

  The regiment was assigned to a position along a deep trench, facing a long rise, a wide hill where the enemy’s guns watched their every move. Griffin had told him about Laurel Hill, that they’d tried it, driven forward four times in all, each time leaving more men behind, spread across the terrible open ground. The last time was not as bad, the attack having not really gotten close. Warren had resisted moving out at all, but the word was that Grant had ordered them forward, to support Hancock’s great burst at the salient. Warren still hesitated, had nearly been relieved of command, and the men believed it was because of them, that he would not order his men to march into certain slaughter.

  He eased the horse through the boggy ground, ducked under dripping trees. He saw the flag now, the men rising, watching him, voices coming toward him. “Colonel! Colonel Chamberlain!”

  He waved, felt embarrassed, did not ride into the lines of the Twentieth Maine to be applauded.

  He accepted the kindness, the greetings, searched the faces, then saw the young man emerging from a large muddy hole. Tom stared at him for a moment, not believing, then ran forward, the dignity of the young officer erased by the pure glee of seeing his older brother. Chamberlain stayed on the horse, was still embarrassed, felt he was not a part of them now, as though they had moved on, left him with something still to prove.

  Tom reached up to him, said, “Lawrence, you’re back! I wondered if we’d ever see you again!”

  Chamberlain leaned over, could not hide a smile, took his brother’s hand, said, “They can’t keep me away. I have better uses to this army than court-martial duty.”

  More men were moving closer, happy greetings, and he waved to them, still smiled. He looked at his brother, the beaming smile, and said, “Can you ride with me? Is it all right?”

  Tom looked back toward the trees, and now Chamberlain heard a familiar voice. It was Ellis Spear.

  “By all means, Colonel. Welcome back to Virginia. Lieutenant Chamberlain, please return by dark. We may have to move.”

  Tom saluted Spear, and Chamberlain smiled again, “Thank you, Colonel Spear. I’ll have him home in time for supper.”

  There was laughter, and Chamberlain glanced at Tom’s horror and was instantly sorry. The boy, red-faced now, moved toward the horses. Chamberlain thought, He will never forgive me. They will remind him to be home for supper … forever.

  THE VAST PILES OF LOGS AND DIRT WERE STILL IN PLACE, A FEW gaping holes, fat logs smashed into pieces, the places where Hancock’s big guns had rolled up close, throwing solid shot right into the line, blowing holes in the rebel defense. All across the field there were burial parties, grim men with shovels, men with stretchers. Some were carving names, initials, into anything they could find, stabbing them into the ground beside the small mounds of fresh earth.

  Tom followed him up to the wall itself. The rain had slowed to a heavy mist, the only sound the shovels of the workers. Chamberlain reined his horse, climbed up on the wall, sat high on a piece of wood, a short log, saw it had been shot to pieces, small holes all along what was left. Behind the wall there was one fat tree, lying on its side, the branches ripped away, and he looked at the base of the tree, where it had been cut down. The tree, nearly two feet thick, had been sliced through by the hail of musket balls. He stared at the white wood, could see small black spots, the lead balls that had not passed through, thought, My God … no one … how many could survive this?

  Tom said nothing, stayed on the horse, stared at the grisly scene. Farther behind the wall they saw patches of dirty white, the wet shirts of coatless men who did not notice the rain, more burial parties, many more stretchers. Some carried stretchers toward the gaps in the wall, and Chamberlain saw movement on the stretchers, men in black bloody rags who had survived, pulled out alive from under mounds of corpses, men who had been thrown into the muddy bottom of trenches, stepped on and fallen on, but somehow stayed alive.

  He saw a line of men alongside a deep trench, and one blue coat, an officer. The man said something, a quiet order, and the shovels began to throw dirt into the trench. Chamberlain looked down where the dirt fell, felt his stomach turn, looked away, felt himself grab at the air, a sharp breath. He had seen too much of what they were burying, a thick mass of what once were men, a mass grave of the enemy, or of friends no one could identify.

  There were small pops of musket fire, to the south. Lee was still down there, skirmishers still playing the game, patiently waiting for some glimpse, picking off the careless, the men behind another strong line. The workers paid no attention, went about their gruesome business with slow deliberate steps.

  On the north side of the wall, where Hancock’s men had made the assault, the field was mostly empty now, the graves filled, and he saw horses, a staff, moving under a flag.

  He glanced at Tom, said, “I had better get back, find out what is happening, what might happen next. General Griffin probably needs me.”

  He dropped down off the wall, climbed up on the horse, gazed over the long wall one more time, said, “I never believed this … I had thought Gettysburg was the last fight.”

  Tom looked down, said, “I heard that a lot, Lawrence. But this was … something different. I heard that these men here just wouldn’t stop. The officers lost control, couldn’t pull them away.”

  Chamberlain looked out over the field. “How could we do this again, after what we did at Gettysburg?” he asked. “How many times do we do this to each other before someone says, ‘All right, that’s enough’? Is there a greater meaning here, some will of God that we destroy ourselves, some divine punishment?”

  Tom shook his head. “Don’t know, Lawrence. Buster would say … it’s just war.”

  Chamberlain thought of Buster Kilrain, the old Irishman, so different from him, and so much his friend. Kilrain was buried now on that hill in Gettysburg, the place where Lincoln himself had made that speech. Kilrain was a crusty and cynical man who carried his own reasons for fighting the war, saw this as the struggle against the “gentlemen.” Chamberlain looked along the shattered timbers of the wall, the deep red stains, thought, What do gentlemen have to do with what happened here? This was not about causes or class struggle, this was about killing, about facing an enemy and tearing his heart out. Kilrain did not believe in the godliness of man, did not believe that inside of us we hold a piece of the angel. Chamberlain saw the gruff old face, could still hear the thick brogue, and said, “Yes, Buster, you would have understood this. So what happens now?”

  Tom shrugged, said, “We go on till it ends, I reckon.”

  Chamberlain shook his head. “No, there’s something more,” he said. “The men who survived this have learned something new, that slaughter is acceptable, that mass killing is now routine. What does that do to us? If God is watching us, what judgment does He make now?”

  He moved the horse in a slow walk, and Tom was beside him.

  Chamberlain said, “You remember when Mother would read to us from the Bible? That wonderful fireplace … She held our attention with every word. Maybe you don’t remember … you were pretty small.”

  Tom smiled, said, “No, I remember it, Lawrence. I still hear her sometimes. She loved to tell us the stories.”

  Chamberlain looked at Tom with surprise, said, “I wish I could … hear her.” He paused. “Things did not turn out as she had hoped.”

  They rode on, did not talk, did not share the private memories now.

  Chamberlain remembered her pure joy the first time he could recite the Ten Commandments, something even his father had enjoyed. Of course, he thought, there was something military about that. It was a list of rules. How important they were to her … how little meaning they had now. Thou shalt not kill. Yes, we shall kill. And before this is over, we shall kill again.

  He rarely prayed anymore, had let his mother’s devout hand slip away from him, had left it somewhere in his childhood. Now he closed his eyes, tried to think of some prayer, some question, some plea for divine
intervention. His mind worked, words tumbling in a mass of nonsense. He opened his eyes, stared up, thought, Maybe that is how it must be. There can be no prayers, not now, not while this goes on. We have not earned the right.

  He focused, told himself, All right, enough. Your brain causes you too much trouble. You are back, you are with the army again. Your brother is safe.

  There were more horsemen now, men moving off to the east, more flags. He said, “Something’s happening … too much brass moving around. I think it’s time to go.”

  They stopped the horses, and Tom suddenly reached over, touched him, held him by the shoulder. He looked at his brother then, saw a difference in Tom’s face, a sadness in his eyes.

  Tom said, “Lawrence, you be careful. It would kill Mama if you didn’t come home.”

  Chamberlain felt the emotion rising, tried to hold it away, looked down for a moment, thought, There is nothing to say. We will both do what we have to do. He could not look at Tom, no words of caution. We are different now, both of us. We are soldiers. He looked at the ground, at the dark mud, said, “Come on. It’s time to go.”

  They spurred the horses, moved along the wall, felt the rain coming again, black clouds rolling low over the far trees. The horses splashed through deep mud, and Chamberlain glanced up at the angry sky, heard low thunder, and behind him the steady sound of the shovels.