by Ralph Peters
Now this. Pushing through briars worse than a crown of thorns and thick as a woven basket. Wasn’t only his feet that were scourged, but the backs of his hands, those rifle-clutching hands, were streaked red as well. The scratches itched like a hundred bedbug bites. On his face, too.
He struggled to keep the thorns out of his eyes. Those cap-grabbing, deviling thorns.
Hushed by officers, they’d filed off the road, doing their best to keep silent but crashing through the brush like a herd of spooked cows. Surely if there were Yankees out there, they heard them coming. Wouldn’t be no surprise, or not much of one.
His canteen was empty.
Heart set to bound from his chest.
The terrible waiting.
They stretched out Indian file then stopped and faced to the right in a queer formation, as if they were darkies lined up to flush game.
Every man in the 5th Alabama knew there was trouble ahead.
Fears came sneaking. Scratching at a man’s courage the way those long thorns scratched his flesh. A man’s breath roared like a hurricane. Heart thundering. He quivered in secret.
Lieutenant Borden thrashed by, telling them all to lie down, rest, and be quiet.
When they did so, they heard Yankee voices.
Five p.m.
Right (western) flank of the Eleventh Corps
Standing in front of two of Dieckmann’s guns, Colonel Leopold von Gilsa heard Southern accents.
Five p.m.
Abandoned railroad line, south of Chancellorsville
This,” Francis Channing Barlow said, “is a grotesque absurdity. It’s a wild-goose chase missing the goose.”
Beside him, Major General Oliver Otis Howard didn’t reply. Barlow’s tone was insolent, but that was Barlow. Best family, right sort. Harvard, and top his class, if Devens could be trusted. Howard wondered how his own life might have been had he gone to Harvard rather than West Point.
“There’s not a Johnny anywhere in this godforsaken morass,” Barlow went on. “If there were any, they’re damned well gone.”
“Retreating,” Howard said. “Faster than we could advance.”
The ghost of his right arm haunted him for a few unsettling seconds. Would that never cease?
To the left and a bit to the rear, perhaps a half mile distant, fighting continued in front of Sickles’ corps, but not at a level to cause anyone alarm. The day’s little squabble was already winding down, and the flanking movement by Barlow’s brigade had barely seen a skirmisher.
“Lee must have gotten off,” Howard said. “We’ll be after him in the morning, though. Joe won’t waste time now.”
“My men will have to retrieve their knapsacks and bedrolls. Rather wish we hadn’t left them behind. No point lightening up for battle when there isn’t a battle.” Barlow smirked. “Much ado about nothing. Again. Cat-and-mouse without the mouse.”
“I’ll have Meysenburg see to the baggage. Bring it all up in commissary wagons, now they’ve been emptied.” He considered the situation again: Unlikely that Joe would have the Eleventh Corps lead a pursuit. “You may well be recalled in plenty of time.”
Barlow glanced about, all but ignoring his superior officer.
“Thought we’d have a fight,” he said. “Hoped we would. Wretched place though it is.” He snorted. “Wouldn’t give you a broken stick for a hundred acres of it.”
Howard agreed with the sentiment, but didn’t reply. Barlow could be a bit much, but he’d proven himself quite the soldier, the sort you wanted where the fighting was heaviest. Already wounded badly—twice—the brigadier general didn’t show a trace of damage; rather, he still resembled an undergraduate, quite a handsome fellow, in his superior, highbred way. Until he smiled and showed that crooked tooth.
His brigade was the pride of the corps, the backbone.
“All right, Frank,” Howard told him, “you’re on your own. I need to go back and see to things. Report to General Sickles in the meantime.”
“Not a gentleman, Sickles,” Barlow said.
Again, Howard agreed, but he decided he’d best not say it. Sickles could stroll into the President’s House anytime he liked, he had Mary Lincoln’s ear. Never did do to make powerful enemies.
“I’d best be off, then. It’s miles back to our bunch. And rough going.”
“Don’t get lost,” Barlow told him.
Howard couldn’t tell whether the younger man was casually wishing him well or insulting him.
He waved up his escort. It really was rough going. He’d be lucky as the devil to make it back to his headquarters in half an hour’s hard riding.
As Howard tugged his horse about, Barlow muttered:
“I must say I feel rather wasted.”
Five thirty p.m.
The Turnpike, at the Luckett house
With two divisions spread out in the woods—overlapping the Union flank by nearly a mile each way—Jackson decided his instincts had been right: He could not wait for Hill to complete a third line. Hill could continue deploying his men while the attack went forward, then he could follow.
The sun would set in just over an hour.
He sat in silence, horse stilled, beside Rodes. Waiting only for young Blackford to return and confirm that the skirmishers had been deployed. Alabama sharpshooters. Good, hard men.
Rodes didn’t speak. There was nothing left to say.
Around them, artillery batteries waited to roll forward the moment the road had been cleared. Scouts loitered, their work done. Beyond a few remarks made in low voices, beyond the mild chinking of gun chains, beyond the occasional snort or tap of a mount, the world had hushed. Miles away, guns sounded, where Lee was fighting off an untold number of Federal divisions. Here, Jackson heard birdsong: not the morning calls or the birds that sang at eventide, but day birds, their calls sharp and businesslike.
He loved birds, flowers, plants.
How dearly he longed for an end to this. War enticed him, succumbing was a sin. He fought well, by the Lord’s grace, but feared he was too fond of it.
Lee, too, was wary of that sin, he’d remarked on it back at Fredericksburg, during the slaughter.
After this war, after this terrible necessity, he would make his dream come true. Nothing would stop him, short of the hand of the Lord. He would have his farm in the Valley. His family would grow, with the Lord’s consent, and they would build their Eden, a blessed place and safe, a good and godly place.
At the sudden caw of a crow, he recalled how the big, black birds would gather on the roof of his uncle’s mill. And then he remembered the wondrous days, when he was still too young to know misery’s depths—in his memory, it was always summer—and he would have hours of freedom, lazy hours. Alone, or perhaps with a rare friend, he would wade across the river’s shallows to the sheltering grove then sprawl and drowse and dream with a child’s purity. He remembered lying on the moss, at peace, for hours. Resting, before he had this dreadful, grown-man’s need of rest.
He would like to rest again.
Perhaps, he thought, those were the best days of all. Before he knew sin. Before he knew this world. Before he had lifted his hand against another.
Once he had met a copperhead snake there and killed it. His uncle said every paradise had its serpents.
And there were frogs. And raspberries at the end of June.
He reminded himself how blessed he had been in his later life. His wives, the child. Yet the memory of that fragrant glade across the river remained a comfort.
His paradise.
Major Blackford returned.
“The skirmish line’s posted, sir. Four hundred yards to the front. Give or take.”
Jackson cocked back his head and peered at the eager young man. A smile touched his lips and he said:
“Today, Major, we shall take, but not give.”
He turned. “Are you ready, General Rodes?”
The last near silence. That memory of flowing water, of the glade.
“Y
es, sir,” Rodes told him.
“You may go forward then.”
SIX
Five fifty p.m.
Eleventh Corps’ right flank
All God’s greenery gripped, grabbed, tugged, scraped, and just plain tried to trip up Sam Pickens, but on he went, busting his way through the undergrowth. Ahead, the skirmishers were having it out with the Yanks and the stump-a-fellow strangeness was that a blue-belly band just kept on playing, “The Girl I Left Behind Me.” Couldn’t yet smell gunpowder, but the perfume of Yank beef and frying bacon reached into the woods to lure on hungry men, to torment them body and soul.
“Keep moving, keep going,” Captain Williams shouted, barely heard above the thrashing and crashing of who knew how many thousand men going forward. All of the officers were hollering.
Pickens burst through a veil of blackflies, spitting them out and freeing a hand from his rifle to wipe his eyes.
More firing now, forward and to the right. A pair of cannon opened up.
The band’s music withered to a last few honks.
Somebody yelled, “Yankees!”
Men stopped, lifted their rifles, and fired into the brush. Then more of them fired. Peering forward, Pickens did believe that—maybe—he saw a blue line ahead.
He planted his feet and fired, shoulder bucking.
“Stop firing, cease firing! There’s nothing out there. Cease firing! Reload, men, reload at a walk!”
They went forward again, thrusting their carcasses through the dense, green nothingness into which they’d aimed their volleys.
There were no Yankees. Not yet.
Gobble some of that bacon, oh, Lord Jesus. Smelled like Christmas twice over.
The smell was everywhere but the bacon nowhere.
A deer shot from a hide. Pickens crouched, startled.
Infernal place. A man couldn’t see at all.
“Double-quick, march!” Lieutenant Colonel Hobson’s voice. Junior officers repeated the command.
Pickens didn’t see how they could go any faster through that Hell-sprouted undergrowth, but they did. They started screaming and howling.
Fright the Yankees and wake the dead.
No true line of battle left, just a scatter of souls by the dozens, hundreds, thousands.
In the thrill, he forgot the misery of his feet.
They broke through a wall of briars and found madness. In an open patch, men in gray and blue ran every which way, some just scooting off, others clinging to ranks and leveling volleys, the hardiest swinging rifles at each other, butts and barrels, smashing skulls. Men cursed and threatened or grunted ugly nothings. Pickens heard heavy speech he reckoned was German.
He swore he wouldn’t fire again without a plain target. Stepping over a blood-puling Yank who clutched a shiny horn, he just kept moving. The Yank had terrified, otherworldly eyes and graying hair.
Another Yank, confused or crazy, marched toward them at carry arms, as if on parade. Someone shot him. He twirled and fell. Then he got up, laid his rifle against a bloodied shoulder, and came forward again and got shot again.
Some fellows did get carried away, killing blue-bellies trying to surrender. Lieutenant Colonel Hobson saved one Yank himself and sent him rearward.
Smoke spread at shoulder level.
Yanks off to the right got up a match, but nothing much stood in the way of the 5th Alabama. Just bad ground and fools.
Everybody wanted somebody to fight, but they just weren’t there. They’d spilled so far around the Federal flank, it seemed, that they had all but free going.
Bullets zipped past, a flurry of them. Coming from behind.
Shot in the back, astonished, a man toppled.
In a rage, Hobson wheeled about, screaming and waving his sword.
“You’re shooting your own men! Cease fire, cease fire!”
Pickens realized that he’d outrun every last man he knew except the lieutenant colonel. He decided to stick with Hobson.
Where did everyone go? Plenty of yelling, gone-crazy soldiers crowded around, but not a one he recognized.
A second line overtook them, mingling.
“Forward! Forward!” unknown officers shouted.
A Yankee sergeant sat against an overturned wagon that had tried to run through the brush. The Yank just shook his head, staring down at the crimson-streaked slop of guts he held in his hands.
“Oh, my,” he said. “Oh, my…”
A line of blue-bellies tried to make a stand, maybe two companies. A longer line of Rebs formed, triple their number, to answer the challenge. They traded volleys, cutting the Yankee enterprise by half.
A wounded Union officer tried to pull his men back in fighting order, but Rebs swarmed all around them.
A Yank gun section let loose. Canister. Those who were not struck threw themselves to the ground.
By the time Pickens dared to raise his head, the guns had been captured, the horses of their limbers and caissons shot down.
He stopped a mad-eyed boy from firing into the melee, knocking the barrel of his rifle skyward.
“Don’t you shoot till you got something clear to shoot at, hear?”
The boy looked at him as though he understood nothing.
He briefly lost sight of Hobson amid the wild gray mass. So he just went on, yelling when everyone else yelled.
At the base of a tree, a beauty of a Newfoundland dog, shot through its belly, stared up at him.
* * *
His wound from Cross Keys had picked this day of all days to revisit him, but Colonel Leopold von Gilsa ignored the pain.
Riding along his crumbling lines, bellowing commands and trailed by a dwindling retinue, he cursed Heaven and earth, Devens and Howard. They had been warned, again and again.
Now they were all in the shit.
“Du Feigling, kehr um!” he told a fleeing man.
He slapped the fellow with the flat of his sword, but it did no good. The fellow ducked and cursed and called, “I ain’t none of your goddamned Dutchmen.”
There was pride, though, too. Good men stood their ground or gave it up grudgingly. The 153rd Pennsylvania stood like heroes.
But too many men grasped the odds they faced. Lines buckled and broke.
And the damned wagons. Those that had teams at hand clogged up the road, preventing the effective movement of troops. Dieckmann’s gun section on the Turnpike had been shot down or captured, unable to escape. The damned Rebels were everywhere, swarming, their lines extending as far as a man could see.
He’d had to watch from a hopeless distance as the Johnnies took Charlie Glanz, the colonel commanding the 153rd, prisoner in a fistfight. But Major Rice managed to re-form the regiment—what remained of it—a hundred yards to the rear.
The 54th New York was all but surrounded.
It galled him, but the only choice was to withdraw or lose his entire brigade.
He rode through his shattered regiments, unable to give the order. Until he heard another wave of triumphant Rebel yells.
He’d be blamed, of course. The “Germans,” the “Dutchmen,” would be faulted for this debacle. But he could live with shame. After the revolution had failed, the renegade Prussian officer had survived in exile by playing the piano and singing in Bowery bars. Yes, he could endure shame, even humiliation. But he could not kill brave men when there was no hope, when no good would come of it.
The 153rd Pennsylvania was the most exposed, their position had become a salient.
The Johnnies screamed that unearthly howl of theirs.
Von Gilsa turned to one of his two remaining aides.
“Captain Blau, trag mal mein Befehl an Major Rice. Er soll—nein, er muss—schnell retirieren.”
Order Major Rice to withdraw his men. He should—no, he must—do it quickly.
“Zu Befehl, Herr Oberst.” The young man spurred his horse.
The captain dropped from the saddle, hands clutched to his breast, before he had gone fifty yards.
; Von Gilsa looked to his remaining aide, Ludwig Bisky.
Bisky nodded: Verstanden. I understand.
Spurring his mount into the smoke, the captain launched himself forward. In seconds, his head splashed blood and brains and bone.
“Scheisskerl.”
Feeling the weight of his years and wounds, von Gilsa thrust his saber into its scabbard and drew out his pistols.
Guiding his horse with his knees à la Russe, he charged into the maelstrom, cursing and firing to left and right. Not caring a damn whether his flag or any man followed.
Amazed, he reached the shrunken Pennsylvanian line, where Rice was manhandling any soldier who tried to run away.
“Gottverdammt, was willst Du, Rice? To send these boys to Hell? Withdraw now, save your regiment. Form on the next line.”
Blood splashed from von Gilsa’s neck.
He saw the horrified look on Rice’s face before he felt the pain.
Von Gilsa calmly holstered one pistol and probed the wound with his fingers. He wiped the blood on his trousers.
“Ist doch nichts. It is nothing. Withdraw your regiment, Herr Major.”
Rice began shouting orders. Faces blackened by powder, the Pennsylvanians inched back, struggling to keep their order. One man shouted:
“Let them other sonsofbitches run, we don’t skedaddle.”
Still capable of booming a response, von Gilsa wiped away more blood and told him:
“You obey orders, ja?”
As he turned to ride to another threatened spot, his horse reared, spurting blood from an artery, shrieking and writhing.
It fell on top of him.
The shock was enormous, stunning.
Rice and a handful of soldiers wrestled the quaking horse off the colonel, drenching themselves in gore.
Covered in blood himself, von Gilsa stood up. Astonishing his rescuers.
“Don’t just stand there,” the old Prussian told them. “Catch me another damned horse.”
* * *
“General, don’t you think you’re too close?” Sandie Pendleton—not without trepidation—asked of Jackson. Stray rounds fizzed past, teasing a man’s ear.
“I can’t see,” Jackson snapped. “I can’t see what’s happening.” He kept on riding forward.
