by Ralph Peters
Smoke thickened over the crest.
Jacobs’ horse quivered beneath him, as if gripped by a fever. Before Jacobs knew what was happening, the creature collapsed on its forelegs and he tumbled past its neck.
The animal shook its head and its mane flared, as if sweeping off flies. It struggled back to its feet and collapsed again. Jacobs rolled out of the way with a second to spare.
“You all right, sir?” Major Baetz asked. Men nearby had stopped firing, staring in concern.
Aching and raging, Jacobs got to his feet. “Zum Teufel, what are you looking at? Look at the Chonnies, not me. An die Arbeit!”
A miracle. The Rebs, greater in number, began to withdraw.
Krzyzanowski pierced the smoke, a broad-shouldered, somber man on a great black horse.
“They’ll be back,” he cautioned. “Fine work, but they’ll be back.” Above cutting cheekbones, his eyes were grave. “They’ll move around your flank. Refuse it by a company. Two, if you want. But hold as long as you can.”
Stung, the Rebs re-formed by the tree line. Within a minute, they sent out a well-controlled volley.
Krzyzanowski sat calmly in his saddle, leaning forward, as was his habit. But his eyes registered the losses all around him.
“We’ll hold,” Jacobs told him.
The Pole nodded but said nothing. He turned his horse to the left, toward the New Yorkers holding out on the other side of the farmhouse.
More of Jacobs’ soldiers dropped. And still more.
No man ran away.
Captain Winkler and his horse toppled together. Back from his duty on the skirmish line, Lieutenant Doerflinger shouted encouragement to the men, clutching his sword in one hand and, oddly, holding his haversack in the other. The young fellow managed to look both heroic and comical.
As Jacobs watched, Doerflinger’s leg buckled. Forgoing the sword and sack, the lieutenant clutched his thigh, bellowing in pain, rocking back and forth. Two of his soldiers dragged him behind the farmhouse then dashed back to the line.
Good men, such good men. The best men in Milwaukee’s German community.
They began to take fire from the flank, as Krzyzanowski had predicted.
He just didn’t have enough soldiers. He couldn’t pull more from the line.
How long had they been fighting? Fifteen minutes? Twenty? It seemed like hours and yet no more than an instant.
“Stand, boys, stand! Make your families proud! Stand for Wisconsin!”
Krzyzanowski reappeared. His face had been spattered with blood.
“Withdraw your regiment fifty paces. Re-form on the reverse slope.”
Jacobs gave the order. The company officers still on their feet repeated it.
Before he faded back into the maelstrom, the Pole told Jacobs, “I’ve sent to Schurz, I’ve told him we need reinforcements.”
“What’s happening?” Jacobs asked. “Everywhere else?”
Krzyzanowski opened his mouth to speak. Then he closed it again. Pondering. At last, he said:
“What matters is what happens here.”
The regiment stepped backward in good order, pausing to fire and bringing along as many of its wounded as could be carried. Many, too many, could not be moved.
The Rebs followed after. Shouting curses and threats. But they were more cautious now.
The back-and-forth volleys and loose firing resumed, reducing the regiment by the minute. The reverse slope helped little, it merely shortened the range. Looking over at the Johnnies, peering through the smoke, Jacobs understood that if the Rebs made one determined rush, his regiment would be overthrown in a blink.
His regiment. Never before in battle. And here the men stood. As unwilling to move as he was himself. No one would ever dare mock Germans again.
Back on his feet, Captain Winkler reported:
“Sir, we’re under fire from the rear, they’ve gotten behind us.”
“How many?”
“Some. Not many. Yet.”
What order could he give now? To refuse the refused flank? Was there such a command?
Krzyzanowski returned, at a gallop this time.
“I’ve ordered the Fifty-eighth to fall back. A fighting withdrawal. You need to pull back, too. We’re all but surrounded.”
“But … the reinforcements?”
“There are none. Not for us. They’re being held back with von Steinwehr. What few there are.”
“Where’s the rest of the army?”
The Pole shrugged. “Wherever they are, they’re not here. You need to pull back now, Willie.”
To his embarrassment, Jacobs felt tears crowd his eyes. His men … they’d fought for this ground. They were still fighting for it.
“I can’t. We can’t withdraw. I can’t leave all my wounded. There are too many.…”
Krzyzanowski’s expression didn’t change. He might as well have worn a mask.
“You will obey orders. Immediately.” His voice softened a degree. “Willie, you either pull back now, or you’ll all be captured. Those who aren’t killed outright. Your duty now is to save what remains of the regiment.”
The tears broke free.
“I can’t.”
In a voice trimmed by agonized centuries spent fighting off Poland’s enemies, Krzyzanowski told him:
“You will give the order this instant. Or I will relieve you from command.”
Jacobs did as bidden. As his men began to pull back, loading and firing as they went, the Pole sat fiercely upon his horse, as if bullets had best avoid him.
* * *
As the long spring twilight deepened, Jackson’s anger grew. It wasn’t enough to destroy a Union corps, or even two. His plan had been to split Hooker’s army apart, to drive past Chancellorsville and reunite with Lee, to devour half of the Army of the Potomac.
He meant to reach the Chancellorsville crossroads, at least, before halting for the night. Tired they might be, but the men did not need to sleep. Or eat. They only needed to rejoin their regiments and brigades and refill their cartridge pouches. In the first predawn light, they would renew the attack and connect with Lee’s right flank.
They had not gone far enough, not yet. He judged that another mile had to be covered before dark. Or after dark, if need be. They must not stop. The Federals must not be given one moment to breathe.
He rode from flank to flank, from general to colonel and on to the next general, always insisting that they continue the advance without the least pause, hastening batteries along, clearing ambulances out of the way for ammunition wagons to pass, ignoring the prisoners plodding rearward like sheep … if his men were disorganized, the Yankees were demoralized. They had been defeated. Now they had to be crushed.
His soldiers could do it. Men did not understand what they could achieve until you taught them. And Thomas Jonathan Jackson would see that they learned.
* * *
Joseph Hooker issued a flurry of orders. Swinging between interludes of near despair and bursts of confidence, he had directed Sickles to hurry Berry’s division back to bolster Howard; ordered Van Alen to prepare to contract the lines; established a provost marshal’s line to intercept runaway soldiers; alerted Slocum to be prepared to support; and called up the artillery reserve.
When the chief of staff approached him with another report, he concealed his quivering hands inside his pockets.
He was all right, though. His mind was clear.
The artillery was an especial challenge. He saw now that he had erred by taking away authority from Hunt. The damned self-righteous artilleryman had seen it all along: the guns needed a central figure in control, no matter how the corps and divisions complained. Now, on the field of battle, his artillery was all captains and no colonels.
It was always the one thing you took for granted that bit you, a snake coiled in the outhouse. The way he had assumed that barley and wheat would prosper on his ranch in Sonoma.
Brushing off the latest report of disaster, he called for his
horse. It was time, at last, to see matters firsthand.
* * *
They surged forward again, weary men walking at a steady pace, flushing terrified Yankees from their hiding places just by putting one foot in front of the other.
“Got himself wounded,” Bill Lenier said. “Not to a muchness, though.”
Sam Pickens was sorry to hear that: He and Bob Price had shared many a blanket. He hoped that, indeed, Bob wasn’t too badly off.
In a small miracle, a number of the Greensboro Guards and more men from the 5th Alabama had found their various ways back to one another. Lieutenant Colonel Hobson had been wounded, too, but lightly. Colonel Hall didn’t quite have himself a regiment, but he had a respectable company’s worth of men again.
General Rodes came and went, all but flaying any man who lagged. The entire attack seemed to have regained its ambition.
Worn, though. They were worn. Ed Hutchinson was cursing to kill a deacon, angry as ever he’d been after tumbling, corporal’s stripes and all, into what he was convinced was a poison ivy patch.
“Hate this place,” he said. “Just hate it.”
Somehow they’d gotten rightward of the road, about the distance of a full company front, with men from the brigade gathered on both flanks and Colonel O’Neal in every bit as whipping a mood as Rodes.
“Old Jack lit a fire under those boys,” Joe Grigg put in. “Bet you gold dollars.”
“You ain’t got no gold dollars,” Ed Hutchinson told him, cranky.
Joe cackled. “Got me two Yankee watches, though. And looking for a third.”
Doc Cowin, recently reunited with his camp mates, said:
“Ah, the spoils of Troy.…”
They entered an open space marred by Yankee debris. It was a tad brighter, once out of the woods, with the field and sky about the same half-night paleness. They were even closer to the road now. A double line of strangers advanced ahead of them.
Rifle fire crackled here and there, and the occasional gun thumped in the distance, but they seemed to be through the worst of it.
“Think the Yanks went quits?” Joe Grigg asked.
His answer came immediately.
One right after the other, artillery pieces thundered to their front. The shadowed line ahead of theirs burst apart: men flew or fell, while some dissolved in a blur.
A severed head bounced toward them.
“Canister!” a man shouted. Others took up the cry. But few men went to ground. Instead, ranks closed and thrust forward.
A second turn of canister slowed them.
“Where are they?” a voice demanded.
“In the road. Ahead there, in the road.”
“Going to kill those blue-belly sonsofbitches.”
* * *
Again and again, Battery I of the 1st Ohio Light Artillery had been forced back—not by the Johnnies alone, but by the endless fugitives corrupting their already limited fields of fire. By the time the skedaddlers cleared the muzzles, the Rebs were all but atop them. Each Napoléon got off one round before the battery had to pull back and repeat the cycle.
Now it was different. Captain Hubert Dilger’s six guns faced a rough-made battle line of Rebs crossing a clearing. His artillerymen blasted them, reloading with practiced speed. It was the first time that day that Dilger felt he’d served a purpose.
The Rebs kept coming, regardless, their losses made good by ever more arrivals. His men kept firing. Gun crewmen jerked suddenly and collapsed, but the savvier Rebs aimed at the limber and caisson horses.
General Schurz appeared in the roadway.
“Dilger,” he called. “Hold as long as you can. We’re forming a new line.”
“Yes, sir.”
“Wiedrich’s lost half his guns. He’s in a bad way. I’m counting on you.”
Dilger wasn’t certain he heard much hope in Schurz’s voice.
He thought again of that dismissive cavalry major lounging at Hooker’s headquarters, the bastard who’d called him a coward when he tried to report that the Rebs weren’t retreating at all.
Where was that lout now?
Remnants of broken regiments rallied briefly by his guns, but as the Rebs closed the distance they melted away.
“One more round of canister each,” he shouted, riding his gun line. “Then move. Five hundred yards to the rear and unlimber again.”
Six muzzle blasts in succession sent Confederates flying to Hell. His men scrambled as Reb sharpshooters paused to aim at the horses.
Neighs, shrieks, chaos.
Three guns got off quickly, followed by a fourth then the fifth. The last gun had three horses down out of four. Still, its crew tried to cut the traces and drag off the gun. The Johnnies shot them down, one after another.
“Leave it,” Dilger told the survivors. “Get out of here, leave it.”
The gun was lost, he didn’t want to lose good men as well.
He turned his horse to follow his battery.
Johnnies screamed behind him, cursing him.
The horse buckled and fell, pinning him beneath its flank. As the animal convulsed, Dilger yanked the right rein as hard as he could, desperate. And the mount twisted up just far enough for the captain to free his leg.
He got up. Fast. Hurt like the devil. He almost lost his footing.
Bullets stung the air. Southern voices cried: “Give up, Yank. Give up, you murdering sumbitch.”
He ran, hobbling.
Not enough time.
The Rebs.
Hate to be shot in the back.…
His orderly rode back toward him through a blue cloud of fleeing infantrymen. Dilger ran stiff-legged toward him, aching at each second step. Inexplicably, his mind filled with the phrase the world as will and idea. He repeated it like a prayer, willing his survival.
Young and gun-crew brawny, the orderly barely halted his mount as he helped Dilger swing up behind his saddle.
Then they rode headlong.
His artillerymen cheered when they saw him. Their guns were ready to do their work again.
* * *
Schurz’s last attempt to form a division line consisted of the remains of five regiments. The men stood well, until a flood of Confederates flowed past their flanks, threatening to engulf them. The surviving field officers struggled to hold their commands together as the line broke.
Schurz tried to rally them, too. Several times he persuaded a number of soldiers to stop and face about. But as soon as the gigantic swarm of Rebs approached, they ran again.
There were just too many of them. The Johnnies were wild and disordered, but they came on in multitudes, smelling blood.
This wasn’t a contest of armies any longer. It was a battle between mobs.
He galloped back to Buschbeck’s line, where Schimmelfennig and Krzyzanowski were rallying their survivors to stand with von Steinwehr’s men by a country church. Even in the dying light, Schurz could see from one end of the blue line to the other. And there just weren’t enough men.
While they waited for the shrieking Rebs to appear through the brush or across the scant open ground, the soldiers dug frantically at their shallow entrenchments, wielding bayonets, tin plates, or naked hands.
Even the regiments that had held together smelled of defeat. They’d fight. For a time. But no man could say for how long.
Why hadn’t Hooker rushed up reinforcements? Why hadn’t Barlow’s brigade returned?
Before Schurz could reach his brigade commanders, Howard intercepted him. He’d glimpsed Howard often, right at the front lines—to the extent one could speak of lines—and no one could accuse the man of cowardice. Of folly, yes. But not of cowardice.
The corps commander had regained a degree of composure.
“Krzyzanowski,” he began, mispronouncing the Pole’s name as he always did, “was magnificent. At that farmhouse. My compliments.”
“You should tell him yourself, sir.”
Howard’s features weakened. “I tried.” After a p
ainful interval, he added, “He was busy. He was too busy.…”
Schurz said nothing.
“I’m ruined, you know,” Howard said, with remarkable calmness.
Schurz almost exploded, a human round of canister. Howard wasn’t ruined. He never would be. Schurz knew the politics of it better than any man on the field. Many another might be ruined over this debacle. But not Howard.
“I need to see to my men,” Schurz excused himself.
* * *
Buschbeck’s line collapsed and with it went the hope that von Steinwehr’s division might redeem the corps. Outflanked yet again, the surviving regiments withdrew in relative order this time, simply unable to withstand the onslaught, their ranks infected with a soldier’s sense that they had been hopelessly beaten and could do no more. Generals and colonels rode back and forth in the deepening darkness, attempting to maintain discipline and rally the soldiers on the brigades rushing forward from other corps.
An unidentified officer galloped about, shouting an order to the last holdouts to join the withdrawal.
But Hubert Dilger did not want to abandon his position. So he didn’t. He kept his five remaining guns in battery, covering the collapse.
The Rebs were at once triumphant and angry, converging on him in the gloaming, roiling shadows under the sky’s faint paleness, spooks from a child’s nightmare.
He had one stroke of luck. The last blue-coated men to retire along the road were Ohio boys, from the 61st. Dilger hailed an officer he recognized, but when the captain didn’t respond he spoke right to the men:
“Don’t abandon Ohio’s guns, Sixty-first! Stand with us, cover our flanks.”
Men slowed, but didn’t stop. The few officers seemed doubtful.
“Damn it, Ohio!” Dilger snapped. “We’re staying. Somebody’s got to put up a fight.”
“By God,” a man called from the ranks, “that Dutchman’s right.”
At first a few, then dozens of the Ohio infantrymen spread out by the guns.
For a handsome moment, they stopped the Rebel advance, with the foot soldiers firing and shouting, “Ohio! Ohio!” while Dilger’s crews worked their fieldpieces. The artillerymen were black as minstrels now and wreathed with smoke, darker than the new night.
