A Chain of Thunder

by Jeff Shaara

  “They didn’t tell me precisely. All I know is something’s gonna start up pretty quick, and Colonel Maltby’s in charge.”

  Bauer stared out over the barrel of the musket, nothing moving along the rebel works, little sound close by but the low chatter of the sharpshooters.

  “You know the Coonskin fellow?”

  The man motioned toward the tower.

  “Right up there, I suspect. Best shot in the whole dang place.”

  Bauer looked that way, again nothing to see, a row of men in blue, muskets up, ready.

  “Guess that’s good. He’s kind of … interesting.”

  “He’ll shoot the eye out of a blue jay, and he’s already played hell with a passel of rebs. Happy he’s up there. You should be, too.”

  “Guess I am.”

  The other way, a single musket fired, voices now, an officer calling out.

  “Keep still! There’s nothing moving over there!”

  The man next to Bauer spit again, sighted down his musket, and said, “That’d be Graves. Most impatient man in the whole outfit. Shoots at shadows, rabbits, snakes, even says he hit a mosquito once. But sometimes he’s just a damn fool.”

  “He that good a shot?”

  “He says he hit a mosquito, I’d believe him. Seen him knock the hat off a reb at near four hundred yards. Right over there. Plugged the fellow from Coonskin’s perch. Earned him a spot out here, for certain. What’d you do?”

  Bauer wasn’t sure how to respond.

  “Sharpshooter duty. Knocked down a few.” He felt the urge to boast of that, knew he had shot a half-dozen men through the stovepipe, until the rebels learned that their clever invention wasn’t so clever after all.

  “Not gonna talk about it, eh?”

  “Not inclined to. They’re just men. I’ve done what they told me to do.”

  “Some advice for you, boy. Stop thinking of them as men. They’re rebs. Secesh. The enemy. You been on picket duty, talked to ’em?”

  Bauer thought of Zep.

  “Yeah. This morning.”

  “You wanna be a good sharpshooter, or maybe even train to be a long-distance sniper, you need to beg off that picket duty. I’ve watched too many boys sit out there and make friends with those rebs, like we’re all just out here for fun. Some say it doesn’t affect ’em, that they can go right out the next day and kill all those new ‘friends’ they made, stick a bayonet in the gut of a man they just traded coffee with. But I’ve seen the look. They hesitate. They start remembering the man’s name, all that friendly talk about a wife and kids and ‘back home.’ All that’ll do is get you killed.”

  “Guess so.”

  “You better guess so. You’re sitting in this ditch next to me, and it weren’t my choice. Just chance. But I want you killing people as quick as you can, before some lucky fool over there can take aim at my damn head. I’ll do the same for you.”

  Bauer didn’t respond, believed the man completely. Behind him, an officer moved close, huddled low behind the mounds of dirt.

  “Eyes to the front!”

  Bauer focused on the gun sights, stared out toward the massive redan. The ground there was constructed in a long V shape, the point aiming toward the Federal line. There was movement to one side, a dozen men slipping out into the trenches that curled closest to the rebel works, within twenty-five yards of the tallest mounds of earth.

  Beside him, the older man said, “Watch the top. Any reb’s gotta stand up tall to have a shot at those boys. Makes a perfect silhouette.” More men appeared now, packing the main trenches in a line four across, like a column of march. Behind Bauer, the captain again, nervous jabbering.

  “Forlorn Hope. That’s what they call them. Those boys up front. Forlorn Hope. Captain Hickenlooper himself’s leading them. God help him. General Logan’s over that way, says Hickenlooper’s boys did this, so it’s his place to lead the way.”

  The words were meaningless to Bauer, and he stared out to the cluster of men in the farthest trench, saw them down low, no one moving, as though just … waiting. He felt his breathing quicken, didn’t really know why, could feel the tension in the men around him, the captain’s anxiousness annoying, the man thankfully moving away. Bauer stared at the top of the redan, nothing, no movement, no hint of anyone there. The line of sharpshooters was deathly quiet now, the instructions from the officers filled with a kind of finality that made each man focus on the job he was supposed to do. Handpicked, he thought. Sammie thought I needed to be here. Where? Nothing’s happening. He glanced up, the sun pressing him down, no shadows in the trench, no cool place. In both directions, men were doing the same, staring out silently, muskets up, and he felt frozen, uncertain, sweat in his eyes now, rolling down his face. He caught a glimpse of movement, high above, a bird, huge, then more, in slow, drifting circles. The silence from the men was magnifying the sounds of the open land around them, chirping birds, crickets, and close to one side, a bird landed on the dirt, startling him. The bird fluttered away, and Bauer tried to concentrate on whatever was supposed to be out there, whatever the officers were expecting. He felt drained of energy, a chill of sweat in his shirt, glanced to either side, still no one talking.

  “Eyes front!”

  Bauer didn’t respond, knew the order was directed at him. He put his cheek against the stock of the musket, kept his stare out to the top of the dirt wall, his mind drifting, and he glanced down to his pocket watch, instinct, but the watch was long broken. The words came out to no one, his brain trying to latch onto some thought, something to focus him.

  “What time is it?”

  The man beside him responded, soft words through hard breathing.

  “Half past three.”

  Bauer nodded, wanted to thank the man, felt an odd rumble beneath him. He gripped the musket, braced himself, a quake coming up into his legs, felt a bolt of panic, looked out, the rumble growing, spreading out in every direction.

  “What …?”

  Across the way, the rumble grew, louder now, the rebel works seeming to shake, rising slowly, like some great uncoiling beast. The blast came now, yards wide, the fat earthworks rising up in a cloud of black smoke, dirt and timbers, rising higher, the thunderous explosion blowing closer, dust in his eyes, and he blinked through that, stared with paralyzed shock, watching the earth itself bursting to life, tossing guns and pieces of wagons upward like so many toys, still rising, the plume of earth not merely disguising or shading the rebel works. It was the rebel works.

  THE 3RD LOUISIANA REDAN

  JUNE 25, 1863, 4:00 P.M.

  The Federal artillery far in both directions responded to the eruption of the mine by throwing out a heavy barrage of shot and shell, a diversion designed to keep the rebels in place, to prevent any great wave of reinforcements from surging toward the rupture in the redan.

  Bauer blinked through the smoke and dust, saw flickers of blue, the Forlorn Hope moving quickly into the gaping hole caused by the blast. Behind them, the first wave of assault troops rose up from the Federal trenches in a rapid blue wave, pouring up into the thick cloud of smoke. Hickenlooper’s Forlorn Hope had been charged with clearing away as much of the debris as possible, to make way for the rapid push by a hundred or more men of the Illinois regiment, those men hoping to shove a breakthrough completely through the rebel position. In the trenches now, more men moved forward, the next wave, waiting for the order to climb out and charge into the opening. Bauer searched frantically for a target, even a hint of a rebel soldier who might try to stand up against the blue tide. But the smoke and the debris hung thick in the air, the mass of blue troops disappearing as quickly as they surged through the remains of the rebel works. The men around Bauer were as anxious as he was, many calling out, cursing the rebels they could not see. Bauer shared their helplessness, but so far, there was no great battle, no sudden volleys of musket fire greeting the Federal advance, no sign that the rebels had been up on their parapets at all.

  His mind raced, straining to s
ee, trying to understand what was happening. Behind the sharpshooters, the officers seemed as paralyzed as the men before them, no one issuing orders, no one really in charge. The noise came only from the charging soldiers, a rapid scramble up and through the shattered embankment, the clouds of smoke still thick, obscuring whatever enemy the Illinois men had found. For a long moment, Bauer stared at the blue advance, flinching at every sharp sound, waiting for the inevitable, the horrific clash of muskets. To one side, Hickenlooper’s artillery battery opened up, a series of thunderous blows that Bauer had to believe were aimed far past the Federal troops. But there was nothing to see of that, either, no great fiery blasts among any rebel mass, the shells from the battery blending in now with much more shelling from Federal artillery farther down the lines. Bauer had heard this before, the Federal gunners supporting one another, every battery along the lines opening up, as though Grant himself was giving the enemy a sign, we’re coming, all of us, and this time we won’t stop until we drive you into the river. Bauer tried to feel the energy of that, but the waves of sulfur smoke began washing over him, watering his eyes, some of the men near him coughing, heads down, others straining as he did, trying to see just what was happening.

  And then, the musket fire came, well back of the smoking crater, farther away than he expected. It rolled toward them in a solid, rattling chant, the pulses of sound close together, row upon row of rebel soldiers standing, aiming, firing. From his perch, Bauer caught a glimpse of a flash, up beyond the blasted earth, more flashes, closer now, the Illinois men responding. Behind him, an officer, the captain.

  “Give it to ’em, boys! Give it to ’em!”

  The words were meaningless, the officer seeming to know that, the great boisterous cheer losing energy, even as others tried to take up the call. But the musket fire was distant, too distant, strange, as though the rebels had been pulled away, no one up on their closest parapets at all. The volleys poured back and forth, and Bauer could see the first wounded now, men staggering back out of the smoke, stumbling, falling among the churned-up dirt, rocks, timbers. Close in front of him, more men went forward, into the trenches, an officer, sword in hand, pointing the way. Some of those men broke ranks, helping the wounded, pulling them into the safety of the trench lines, while others climbed through the wreckage of the redan and disappeared into the rising clouds of smoke. The artillery kept up its fire, close by, deadening Bauer’s ears, the hard ringing penetrating his brain. Still he searched with the musket, expected to see rebels, to the side, perhaps, high up on the adjacent ground undamaged by the mine explosion. He felt the raw fear about that, that if the Illinois men had failed, had collapsed, the rebels would show themselves on the flanks, rising up from some hidden cover. Then the job would fall on the sharpshooters, on him, to push them back, to make the good shot, the very reason he was there. But there was no back-and-forth, no surge and retreat that anyone on the sharpshooter line could see at all.

  From the first days the mining operation had begun, the Confederates had been frantic in their attempts to locate the exact positions of the tunnels, men sitting low in holes in the earth, the digging and chopping by the Federal miners clearly audible somewhere close by, closer every day. Despite their efforts, the Confederate engineers could do nothing to halt the digging that was very soon right beneath their feet. What Major Lockett could not accomplish by stopping the Federal miners, he could instead combat by letting them complete their task. With the sounds of the excavation straight beneath the redan itself, Lockett had guessed when the Federal effort would end, and Lockett planned accordingly. When the mine exploded, the obliterated ramparts and mounds of ruptured earth were almost completely devoid of men. As the soldiers of the 45th Illinois drove through the ragged gap blown through the face of the 3rd Louisiana Redan, the enemy they expected to see simply wasn’t there. To the stunned surprise of Hickenlooper’s Forlorn Hope, followed closely by Colonel Jasper Maltby’s first assault wave, the Federal soldiers found no great expanse of shattered bodies, no throngs of tortured wounded, no sign that enormous numbers of Louisiana men had been tossed skyward. Instead, as they made their way through the crater, they discovered exactly what the rebels had done. Major Lockett had constructed another stout earthwork, well back of the leading edge of the redan, had withdrawn the Louisiana troops away from their parapets, lining them up in wait for the inevitable destruction of the forward-most walls. Pushing farther through the smoke and debris, the Illinois troops were suddenly confronted by an extended line of freshly shoveled earth, set back far enough from the blast that the rebels Lockett had positioned there were completely untouched by the explosion. The first wave of Federal troops shoved through the crater, climbing up the sloping hillsides far inside the redan. Emerging from the smoke, they saw several hundred rebel troops, a dense row of muskets raised and aimed, waiting for them.

  As Colonel Maltby’s first lines collapsed, reinforcements were called forward, the Federal commanders realizing quickly what the rebels had done. The blue surge drove out through the trench lines, then up into the crater itself. But the crater could only hold so many men, and quickly the Federal forces spread out along the base of the redan, some moving forward, to the far embankments of the crater itself.

  The order to the sharpshooters was specific and urgent: Run hard to the front side of the redan, spreading up and out along the crest, taking aim at any rebel troops who might be driving toward the crater. Bauer ran with the others, down into the trench lines, back up, across open ground. The walls of the redan were soft dirt, and he stared toward the breach, the crater, the smoke still thick, the sounds of the fight ongoing. To one side, an officer waved his sword, driving the men up onto the embankment, a stretch of high ground that spread out away from the chaos in the crater. Bauer collapsed on the crest, a line of men on either side of him, most of them lying prone, again sighting with their muskets, seeking targets. He tried to steady the weapon, his breathing in hard bursts, dirt in his eyes, smoke choking him. The officers were still calling out their commands, but the sharpshooters were mostly silent, a few firing their muskets. Bauer stared into smoke, saw flashes in the distance, the thick lines of rebels far away, men in blue pushing that way, slow progress into a storm of fire. The crater itself was thick with men, too thick, many of them pulling away, back out into the open, climbing up the face of the redan, trying to do what the sharpshooters were already doing, to find some way to make a fight. On the far side of the crater, rebels began to appear, easing up to the crest, shooting down into the blue, most not aiming, the targets dense and easy. Bauer aimed the musket, a long shot, saw a cluster of rebels along the crest nearest to him, focused, still shaking, the musket firing, a jolt to his shoulder. Others fired as well, the targets visible, a surge of rebel troops coming up close to the edges of the crater. Bauer pulled the weapon back to him quickly, sat up, reloaded, rolled over again, searched. But the rebels had learned, were mostly down behind the embankments, few making the foolish attempt to stand tall and fire downward, completely exposed to a hundred blue marksmen. Bauer saw movement, rebels gathering within a hundred yards of him, shouted that way, but the others had seen as well, more muskets aimed that way.

  The artillery began again, muzzle blasts behind the rebel works, answered by a storm of shells from Federal guns passing close over Bauer’s head. He flattened out, instinct, closed his eyes, heard the shells splitting the air very close to him, cursed the artillerymen. But the shells were high enough, impacting far back along the rebel position, more shells launched down the line, more support from distant guns. The roar was deafening, screeches and rumbles from the different shells, his own reflex pressing his face into the sand. After a long minute, the shelling seemed to move away, toward new targets, and he looked up, wiped the roughness from his eyes, struggling to see anything at all. The rebels were in a solid line now, across the crater, the men in blue making a fight upward, many falling, shot down in the smoking crater itself. Officers still came forward, and Bauer
marveled at that, a color bearer scampering forward, more officers, the men reaching the far side of the crater, right below the rebels, what seemed to be the safest place to be. Bauer sighted the musket, scanned the crest above those men, struggled to breathe, wiped at his eyes again. Beside him, a man fired, calling out to the rebels, the man reloading now, leaning close to him.

  “Hey, boy! This is some kind of holiday, eh? Sometimes it’s good to hug the bosom of Mother Earth.”

  Bauer saw the man’s face, gap-toothed grin, the man rolling away, aiming, firing again. He called out to his intended targets again, and Bauer felt the strange confidence, no fear, the man going about his job with perfect efficiency, whether he was hitting anything or not. Bauer stared out to the far side of the crater and asked him, “You see anybody worth shooting at? They’re so damn far away.”

  “Who cares? They want us shootin’, well, I’m shootin’!”

  The man laughed, manic, a chattering giggle, and Bauer tried to ignore him, stared out again, saw rebels slipping along the hillside away from the crater.

  “There!” he said.

  Bauer aimed, fired, too quick, made a loud grunt, angry at himself, slid back down the hill, reloaded, saw an officer climbing up toward him, the man struggling in soft sand, his sword in his hand.

  “Prepare to advance! There’s too many of us clogging up the breach. We’re going over here! March toward the far side of the crater!”

  Bauer saw the fear in the man’s eyes, the officer trying to steady himself on the steep slope. A bugle sounded now, somewhere below, and Bauer saw a line of men coming up from the trenches, climbing toward him, more officers, colors, and the officer saw as well, waved the sword over his head, shouted out, “Up! Advance! Don’t be frightened!”

  The man was moving away now, along the hillside, more shouts to other men. Bauer soaked in the man’s words, the absurdity, moronic foolishness. Don’t be frightened. He shouted a response, curses, angry words that meant nothing, no one to hear, and screamed at himself now, “Get up! Go!”