Darkness at Chancellorsville

by Ralph Peters

  Indeed, Pendleton thought. Already hard to make sense of the pieces. But the vital thing was that they were moving forward, and rapidly. Disarmed Yankees streamed toward the rear. Most were hushed and high-nerved, but some abused each other in English and German. As if soldiers in gray weren’t even present.

  But present they were. Raleigh Colston’s line had just passed forward, headed into the fray. The division commander rode over when he saw Jackson. Pendleton eased his horse aside to make way.

  A double punch of cannon sounded ahead.

  Jackson called to a soldier headed the wrong way: “You turn around and do your duty. Where’s your rifle?” His voice was of iron and scorn.

  Confused, the soldier, a young one, held up a tied-off stump where a forearm had been. Flies circled the clotting blood.

  Jackson made no apology but rode on.

  “Look at this,” Colston said as he came abreast.

  Around them, the wreckage of Union camps displayed the wealth of Babylon—a Babylon now broken in the dust. Smoke wreathed the trees and the landscape stank of powder, shit, and bacon.

  The air was alive with the means of death. Spent bullets pelted the earth like a storm’s first raindrops. On the ground, the wounded quivered beside the dead. But the stilled bodies in gray were few, vastly fewer than the number of Federal prisoners. It had all gone too fast for much killing to be done.

  Just ahead, Colston’s lines were already threatened with disorder, ruptured by the landscape before they’d fired a shot.

  “See to your men, General,” Jackson said. “By the grace of God, they must carry us to the end. See to their order.”

  “Just moving so quick, all of it,” Colston said. He braved a smile. “It’s a triumph, General.”

  Another Rebel yell rose.

  “Not yet,” Jackson told him.

  * * *

  A runaway ambulance nearly felled both Howard and his horse. Turning into the brush, he lost his hat and a sharp branch scratched his face.

  The Turnpike was a doomsday pageant of ditched wagons and overturned caissons. Artillery sections attempted to set up in the roadway, the only spot that promised fields of fire, only to find crowds of fleeing soldiers blocking their discharges. Then the Rebs flowed over them.

  Major General Oliver Otis Howard, followed by a fraction of his staff, rode in among the soldiers who had gone quits.

  “Don’t shame me, men! Don’t embarrass me!” Then he added, “Don’t shame yourselves, boys!”

  A few men heeded him. Others paused then went on. Those infected with panic just ran gaping.

  “I’ll have you all shot!” Howard shouted, but his voice had frayed. In quieter tones, he said, “I’m ruined, I’m ruined.…”

  Devens’ division was all but gone. Exchanges of volleys, unseen, promised that lone regiments resisted, but those who attempted to form on the road were rapidly swept away.

  Howard had barely returned from Barlow’s brigade when the world exploded. He’d ridden, promptly, toward the sound of the guns, leaving Schurz to change his front in haste.

  The thought of the know-it-all Germans having been right was too much to bear.

  Would Washington and the newspapers blame him? Yes, those reeking Germans had warned him of an attack, but Hooker was the one truly at fault. It was Hooker who had insisted that Lee was retreating. Wasn’t it? The view had been forced upon him. He was only responding to higher headquarters, a martyr to the errors of other men.…

  Howard tried to recall if he had put any dismissive remarks in writing. He didn’t think so.

  Could he trust Meysenburg to destroy anything embarrassing? Or would the man stick with his Germans? Better to ask Assmussen, who knew what was good for him.

  All this was their fault, actually. The Germans. Yes, they’d warned him. But had they done anything? They could have acted on their own. But the Germans hadn’t lifted a finger, had they? And Joe Hooker, robbing him of Barlow’s brigade, his reserve …

  How could he be blamed for any of this?

  Would Greeley stand by him?

  A regiment broke apart before his eyes. While some men stood, bitter and fierce, most ran. The Rebs surged almost to touching distance.

  Howard seized the national colors from a fleeing bearer. He heaved the pole across his saddle and tucked it under the stump of his missing arm.

  “Stop, boys!” he cried. “Rally on me! Rally!”

  His horse reared and hurled him to the ground.

  Orderlies dismounted and rushed to his aid. One of them fell with a cry, shot through the knee.

  This was war. The fellow didn’t matter.

  “Help me up,” Howard demanded. “Help me.”

  * * *

  Pickens almost shot the Yank in the belly. The fool had leapt out of the brush right in front of him, throwing down his rifle. Startled, Pickens came within a shaved second of pulling the trigger.

  Instead, he commanded, “Give me that canteen, Yank. Hurry up.”

  Slinging the canteen over his neck—it had the good weight of water in it—Pickens ignored the blue-belly and trotted on, catching up with the raggedy, broke-back pretense of a line. He continued to stick close to Lieutenant Colonel Hobson, and the colors rejoined them. Ed Hutchinson and Doc Cowin came up, too. Moving forward, they crested a mild slope and poured down the other side amid a gray torrent. There were ever longer intervals between the pauses required to drive off Yankees.

  It seemed like they’d gotten well behind them. Unless all the Yanks had run off. No, that couldn’t be so. Organized volleys still tossed the pepper back and forth on the right, down toward that road.

  Didn’t hear no Yankee cheering, though. They’d feel this whupping for a goodly time.

  The light softened a touch. Excitement wrestled exhaustion.

  “Fifth Alabama!” Hobson called. “To your colors, Fifth!”

  Dutifully, Williams waved the battle flag. But other flags encroached, with other voices. Splintered off among strangers, Pickens’ chaw of the regiment seemed barely the size of a ration detail.

  Beside him, a stranger clutched his thigh and fell headlong. The Yankees were still out there, after all.

  Untended but handsomely saddled, a fine horse grazed amid pines.

  “Get that horse!” the colonel cried. “Grab on to that-there horse!”

  He scooted off toward it, yelling he had first claim.

  Distracted, Pickens tripped over a played-out Yank, dropping across the man’s legs to slam the ground. His rifle didn’t go off, but it smashed his knuckles.

  The blue-belly groaned. Then he whispered, “Help me, Johnny. Give me a swig, some water.” In the shadows, Pickens read a lieutenant’s rank. Barefaced but for small mustaches and young, the Yank was in a bad way, lung-shot and bubbling blood.

  “Don’t know as it’s wise,” Pickens told him.

  “Water. Please.”

  From whence my succor cometh, Pickens thought. He took to his knees and helped the Yank to drink. The Yank tried to swallow, choked, and gasped. Blood foamed pink from his torn uniform. But the boy insisted on drinking again. His eyes gathered fading light.

  When he could speak again, the lieutenant asked:

  “What’s your name and regiment, Johnny? I’ll be ever mindful of you.”

  “Sam Pickens, Fifth Alabama.”

  “Can you help me? I need a surgeon. I’m bad.”

  “Ain’t none here. Can’t even help my own kind.”

  Sam Pickens decided he’d tarried long enough. The helplessness of it, his own and the Yank’s, unsettled him. He left his enemy and—feet still forgotten—ran puffing to rejoin his brethren.

  There was a fight ahead.

  * * *

  “It’s our turn next,” Schurz told the Polish colonel. “Alex is doing the best he can on the road, but you … your regiments are all this army has for a flank now, Kriz. We’ve got to buy time for von Steinwehr, let him realign his division.”

  Krz
yzanowski remained imperturbable. Schurz could imagine the man in full Husaria armor, facing down the Turks before Vienna. The odds weren’t much better here.

  In a calm voice, the Pole responded, “I understand.”

  The Rebel yells sounded closer.

  * * *

  Lee felt a vast relief. The nagging probes of his overstretched lines had ceased, those people had other worries.

  The sounds of battle from the west were music.

  Jackson’s music.

  * * *

  As defeated soldiers streamed across the Chancellor house clearing, Joseph Hooker asked, “What happened?”

  * * *

  Amid his enemy’s devastation, Jackson found Robert Rodes attempting to impose order on his division.

  Rodes had done well. But the critical hour lay ahead, the twilight hour, when they must turn a Federal calamity into a catastrophe, when they must inflict the Lord’s fulminous wrath upon heathen transgressors.

  If Rodes expected congratulations, he was to be disappointed.

  “The attack is slowing. It cannot be permitted to slow down,” Jackson told him.

  “Sir … the regiments, the brigades … they’re intermingled. Even the divisions, it’s beyond description. And the men…”

  Jackson understood that Rodes—an excellent officer—was trying. But he needed to try harder.

  “Excuses don’t win battles. We must press them, General Rodes. You must press them.”

  The Federals would be struggling to build a defense. It must not be permitted.

  “Drive them,” Jackson ordered. “Shoot any man who runs. We must finish them now.”

  “Yes, sir. I’ll see to it.”

  “Show them no mercy,” Jackson ordered.

  The Lord’s will raged within him.

  * * *

  What the devil was going on? Frank Barlow wondered. For over an hour he’d heard the sounds of battle from the northwest, about where he judged the Eleventh Corps to be. Yet he’d heard nothing from Howard, and his last notice from Sickles, sent hours before, had been to remain where he was and await orders.

  Actually, he wasn’t sure quite where he was. He’d been given no map, and contact with Sickles’ corps did seem a bit tenuous. He’d begun to feel rather isolated.

  A proper racket back there. It sounded like a rough match, with guns in play. He would have liked to get into it.

  Of course, if he were needed, they would have recalled him.

  * * *

  Robert Rodes bullied bits and pieces of his division back into the semblance of a line. And he sent the men forward again, overtaking clots of soldiers splashed from a stew of regiments. Broken companies fought their own lesser battles in the brush, while more and more men, wearied, had gone to ground, waiting to be called to account by authority. Stray officers seemed to do more shouting than leading.

  It was grand, though, despite all. They’d smashed into the Yankees, overwhelming them. By Rodes’ calculation, they’d advanced over a mile from the first contact.

  And they would go farther. Jackson wanted it, he wanted it. It was essential to continue to overwhelm the Federals, to keep them off balance, to push beyond any resistance, to flood around their flanks, to complete the victory.

  But what did Jackson have in mind for tomorrow? Or even for the next hour? With twilight nigh, how much farther should they go? Judged by the prisoners taken, they’d only encountered a single Union corps. At some point, a reorganization would be essential, before night descended and they themselves became vulnerable to the Yankees, before the odds reversed themselves.

  Around him, officers and men shouted out the letters and numbers of companies and regiments, lost sheep all.

  In blue or gray or patchwork brown, wounded men staggered about.

  Cannon boomed close by, but he could not see their flashes.

  Obedient and ever inspired by battle, he drove his men forward. He just wished that Jackson weren’t so infernally closemouthed, that he’d share some expectation of what came next and outline a plan.

  Meanwhile, there was plenty of work to do.

  * * *

  He saw ghosts. Phantoms. Out there in the deep brush, deeper still than the tangles that clutched his uniform.

  Lieutenant Karl Doerflinger, of the 26th Wisconsin, waited for his first sight of the elephant: Were those Johnnies? Or did he just have the jumps?

  Commanding the center of the skirmish line, he hesitated to give the order to fire. He couldn’t tell if those darting forms—they seemed real now—were his own kind in flight or actual Rebs.

  He peered into the premature dusk of the woods.

  This was it, then. This was what it was like.

  Late in the afternoon, Colonel Krzyzanowski and Colonel Jacobs had gathered in the officers of the 26th Wisconsin and of the 58th New York, which stood on their flank. The brigade commander had explained that they, a mere two regiments, formed the deep right flank of the entire corps. If the Rebs attacked, they would have to hold the high ground by the farmhouse, the only open terrain their division had, or the Johnnies would sweep into the rear and cut off the corps from the army.

  For almost an hour, they’d heard the war, but they could not see it. The only physical evidence of combat came from fugitives, crazed men straying left and right, one crying that “a million” Rebs were upon them.

  Hadn’t seen one Reb.

  Until now. Perhaps. Those shadows.

  Men, all right.

  Rebs? Skedaddlers?

  “Should we fire, Lieutenant?”

  Doerflinger felt reluctant. He did not want to kill comrades.

  The isolated phantoms swelled into a thrashing line of battle. They began to wail, unnerving.

  “Aim and fire!” the lieutenant called. Hoping, even now, that he was right.

  One rifle, two, dozens fired into the woods.

  The advancing line halted. Voices foreign to Doerflinger’s ears barked orders.

  A terrible volley slashed through the vegetation.

  “Fire! Fire!” He could not remember another command.

  The Rebs rushed forward again, screaming that wild witches’ cry, their Hexengeschrei.

  “Gott im Himmel,” a soldier near him called out as he fell.

  But no man ran. They stood by him. Expecting him to do things correctly.

  A sergeant found him amid the brambles.

  “Captain Pizzala … dead … brains come right out of his head…”

  He was in command now. And the skirmish line’s fire seemed paltry, the Rebs a multitude.

  “Fall back!” he shouted. “Fall back on the forward companies. Fall back!” He ran along his line as fast as the brush allowed, striving to ensure that every man heard him.

  The Rebs were so close he could see their faces clearly, even in poor light. One man’s eyes met his. Hating eyes.

  The Johnny raised his rifle.

  Saber useless in his fist, Doerflinger dodged and followed his men.

  Dutifully, his soldiers aligned with two companies posted forward, at the wood’s edge. They reloaded with speed.

  All of that endless drilling had served a purpose.

  With the last skirmishers cleared—barely in time—the companies let go a volley. The Rebs wavered, but only for a moment. There were so many, so many.…

  The companies fired again. This time, the Rebs paused for a proper volley.

  Directly to Doerflinger’s front, a soldier’s tunic tore open, spraying blood at shoulder level.

  Others fell, too.

  Doerflinger and his handful of men realized they’d been left behind, their comrades had already fallen back on the regiment.

  The Rebs were nearly on top of them.

  “Run!” Doerflinger ordered. “Run for the regiment! Run!”

  He and his small flock of soldiers dashed across the open ground, cheered on by the blue line atop a slope. Doerflinger saw that he’d gotten mixed up in the woods: He was in front of the 58th N
ew York, not his Wisconsin brethren. But he hadn’t time to correct his course and he aimed for the New Yorkers’ color guard, running as fast as he’d ever run in his life.

  Something knocked him down, with a clang. When he leapt back to his feet, he saw that his sword’s sheath was bent at a useless angle.

  No time to feel for a wound. He ran on and felt a tug on his haversack, felt it slipping away. Still running madly, he clutched the bag against him. The strap had been shot through.

  “Come on, come on!” the New Yorkers hollered.

  He finally grasped that they needed to shoot and didn’t want to hit him.

  With a leap, he thrust himself through a gap they made for him.

  Behind him, the Johnnies howled.

  The New Yorkers fired.

  * * *

  By God, they stood the fire! Colonel Willie Jacobs was proud of his men, proud beyond words. As he sat on his mount directly behind them, he didn’t have a thought left for himself. Only for them, his boys, his Burschen.

  “Give it to them!” he barked, in a voice that would have shocked him had he heard it raised in his bank back in Milwaukee. He had always insisted upon decorum, and the Second Ward Bank had been an island of civility, of order and financial chastity, in the city’s lively, grab-a-dollar streets.

  He had never dreamed of going to war. But war had come to claim him. Now men who had trusted him with their savings trusted him with their lives.

  “That’s it, boys! Knock ’em down. Knock ’em down like pins. Gib Feuer!”

  Not a hundred yards away, Rebs massed in ragged lines took turns spitting flames from their rifle muzzles. In the softening light, the flashes appeared to be hundreds of giant fireflies.

  Deadly fireflies. Hugo Carstangen, Jacobs’ sergeant major, crumpled. The senselessness of his posture, the odd sprawl of his limbs, announced his death.

  The noise was painful. No drill field could prepare you for the noise.