The Bloody Ground - Starbuck 04

by Bernard Cornwell

  The rebels pursued into, the open ground and now the Yankee batteries by the Hagerstown Pike could join the fight and their case shot boomed and cracked into the gray ranks. Yankee skirmishers sheltered behind haystacks and farm buildings to lay a deadly fire on the rebel ranks, while out of the East Woods, which had seemed deserted not long before, new batteries of Northern guns appeared and, with the fuses of their shells cut perilously short, took the rebel charge in the flank.

  Starbuck was kneeling beside the broken fence that edged the turnpike. His battalion, which looked scarcely bigger than a company, was strung along the road where they sheltered from the Northern artillery that fired across the cornfield. Starbuck gazed in horror at the trampled corn where the bodies lay in clumps. Here and there a cornstalk survived, but for the most part the field looked as though a herd of giant hogs had rooted up a graveyard. Except that some of the bodies still lived and once in a while, in a lull of the guns' awful sound, a weak cry for help sounded from inside the corn.

  The fire of the Yankee guns stopped abruptly. Starbuck frowned, guessing the cause. One or two of his men glanced at him nervously as he gingerly stood, then as he climbed onto a wobbling patch of surviving rail fence. At first he just saw a cloud of gunsmoke, a cloud so thick that the sun was like a silver dollar in the sky, then in the lower smoke he glimpsed what he feared. There was a line of Yankees advancing out of the East Woods to take the rebels in the flank. "Back to the trees!" Starbuck shouted, "form there!" This battle, he thought, was a nightmare without end. It flowed like molten lava across the plateau and his poor battalion was being swept with the flow from one crisis to another. He paused halfway across the small pasture that separated the West Woods from the pike to cut off a dead Yankee's cartridge pouch, then he joined his men. "Take your bayonets off," he told them. "We'll just have to shoot the bastards down." He was about to send a man to find Swynyard and tell him the news, but suddenly there was no need, for a rush of rebels arrived at the tree line to add their rifles to Starbuck's shrunken battalion.

  The Yankees were walking to death. They were crossing the cornfield, stepping around the bodies, advancing toward the pike with its broken fences, and, once there, they were within point-blank range of the mass of rifles waiting in the shadows. "Wait!" Starbuck called as the Yankees reached the shattered fence on the far side of the road. There were not as many Northerners as he had first feared. He had thought a whole brigade might be crossing the cornfield, but now he could see only two Stars and Stripes and two state flags hanging limp in the still air. It was a pair of forlorn battalions thrown into horror. "Wait," he said, "let them get close."

  The two Northern battalions, their careful lines disordered by the need to step around the dead and dying in the corn, crossed the remnants of the first rail fence, then Starbuck shouted at his men to fire. The opening volley stunned the Yankees, throwing them down in a new tideline of dead and dying. The rear ranks stepped forward and fired at the rebel rifle smoke, but the Yankees were firing at shadows in shadows and the rebels had flesh-and-blood targets. Starbuck pulled his trigger, crying aloud with the pain of the rifle's recoil as it pounded back into the raw bruise of his right shoulder. At this range it was impossible to miss; the Yankees were not even a hundred yards away and the rebel bullets were thumping into the shrinking lines, banging on rifle stocks, jetting blood from men who were thrown two paces back by the force of the bullets, yet somehow the enemy clung to their position and tried to return the dreadful fire.

  Sergeant Case was at the right-hand end of Starbuck's line, though by now there were so many rebel units firing at the Yankees that it was hard to tell where one battalion began and another ended. The Sergeant wriggled back from the firing line. He had not shot once, saving his three bullets for his own purposes, but now he worked his way north until he could see Starbuck standing beside a tree. Case edged into some brush, then raised his head and watched Starbuck fire. He saw him drop the rifle's butt to reload, and Case glanced around to make sure no one was watching him and then he brought up the Sharps rifle and aimed at Starbuck's head. He had to be quick. The rifle's leaf sight was folded flat, for he was so close to his target that the heavy half-inch bullet would not drop as much as its own width in its brief flight. He put the front leaf sight on Starbuck's head, lined the rear notch, and pulled the trigger. Smoke billowed to hide him as he scrambled out of the brush and back toward the tree line.

  Starbuck had lowered his head to spit the bullet into his rifle. A bullet whipped past his skull to whack the tree beside him with the force of an ax hitting timber. Splinters of bark lodged in his hair. He cursed the Yankees, brought up the gun, primed, aimed, and fired. A Northern flag-bearer whipped about as he was hit in the shoulder and his flag rippled prettily through the smoke as it fell. Someone snatched up the banner and was immediately hit by a pair of bullets that threw him back across the broken fence. The Yankees were at last going back from the galling fire. They went reluctantly, holding their ravaged ranks as they stepped rearward so that no man would show his back to the enemy.

  None of the rebels pursued. They fired as the Yankees retreated, and kept firing until the two battalions had disappeared into the smoke hanging over the cornfield. The two battalions went as mysteriously as they had arrived, their contribution to the day a row of bodies by the pike's bullet-riddled fences. There was a pause after the Yankees vanished, then the shells began to come again, crackling through the high tranches, exploding leaves and twigs in showers, and spitting metal fragments down to the woods' floor.

  A staff officer shouted for Swynyard's brigade to form up in the wood. Swynyard himself was talking to a grim-faced General Jackson. The Colonel nodded, then ran toward his men. "The Yankees are in the church again," he explained grimly.

  The brigade stumbled south through the trees, too tired to speak, too dry-mouthed to curse, going to where more Yankees waited to kill and be killed.

  And it was still only morning.

  Colonel Thorne watched grimly as General McClellan tried to understand the messages that arrived from across the creek. One dusty messenger spoke only of defeat, of a horde of rebels destroying General Sumner's troops in the far woods, while other aides brought urgent requests for reinforcements to exploit successful attacks. McClellan met all the messengers with the same stern face with which he had learned to hide his uncertainties.

  The Young Napoleon was doing his best to understand the battle from his view across the creek. It had seemed simple enough in the dawn: His men had attacked again and again until at last the rebels had been pushed out of the nearer woods, but in the last hour everything had become confused. Like a spreading forest fire, the battle was now raging across two miles of countryside and from some places the news was all good and from others it was disastrous, and none made sense. McClellan, still fearing Lee's masterstroke that would destroy his army, was holding back his reserves, though now a sweaty, dust-covered messenger was begging him to send every man available to support General Greene, who had recaptured the Dunker church and was holding it against every counterattack. McClellan, in truth, was not too sure where the Dunker church was. General Greene's messenger was promising that a successful attack could split the rebel army in two, but McClellan doubted the optimism. He knew that General Sumner's corps was in desperate trouble to the north of the church, while to the south there was a maelstrom of fire erupting in the bare fields. That fire was sucking in every new brigade that crossed the creek. "Tell Greene he'll be supported," McClellan promised, then promptly forgot the promise as he tried to discover what was happening to the far south, where General Burnside was supposed to be across the creek by now and advancing on the rebels' single road to retreat.

  But, before General Burnside could cut that retreat, he first had to cross a twelve-foot-wide stone bridge, and the bridge was guarded by rebel marksmen well dug into the steep slope on its western bank, and General Burnside's men were piling in heaps of dead as they tried to storm the crossing. A
gain and again they rushed the bridge, and again and again the rebel bullets turned the leading ranks into quivering heaps of bloody men who lay in the broiling sun and cried for help, for water, for any relief from their misery. "General Burnside can't get his men over the Rohrbach Bridge," a messenger admitted to General McClellan. "It's too closely defended, sir."

  "Why doesn't the fool use a ford!" McClellan protested.

  But no one was certain where the ford was and the General's map was no help. McClellan, in desperation, turned on Thorne. "Go, show them! Hurry, man!" That, at least, got rid of Thorne, whose baleful gaze had unsettled the General all morning. "Tell them to hurry!" he shouted after the Colonel, then he looked back to the open fields across the creek where the battle had become so inexplicably fierce. A message had arrived telling of a trench-like lane that was holding up the advance, but McClellan was not at all sure why his army was even attacking the hidden obstacle. He had not ordered any such assault. He had intended for his attacks to hit hard in the north and, once that enemy flank was turned, to harry the rebels from the south before advancing to glorious victory in the center, but somehow the Northern army had become embroiled in the center long before the enemy's flanks had collapsed. Not only embroiled, but, judging from the white smoke that boiled up from the fields, the center was fighting as hard as men had ever fought.

  It was hard because the rebels were in the sunken road, and from its lip they were turning the fields of newly sown winter wheat into croplands of the dead. Thousands of men, bereft of orders when they crossed the creek, marched toward that battle and one by one the brigades went forward until the rebel fire ripped their ranks apart. One Northern battalion was defeated before it even came within sight of the rebels, let alone within reach of their rifles, for, as it was marching past a spread of farm buildings, a rebel shell tore into a line of beehives and the enraged insects turned on the nearest targets. Men scattered in frantic disarray while more shells plunged blindly into their panicked ranks. Northern guns were taking up the fight, dropping shells over the heads of their infantry at the rebels in the road, while from beyond the creek the heavy Parrott guns fired at the rebel rear to smash the wagons trying to bring ammunition to the road's defenders.

  It was nearing lunchtime. In the kitchen of the Pry farm the cooks readied a cold collation for the General as telegraphers sent a message to Washington. "We are in the midst of the most terrible battle of the war," McClellan reported, "perhaps of history. Thus far it looks well, but I have great odds against me. Hurry up all the troops possible." The twenty thousand men of his reserve, who could have given him victory if he had hurried them across the creek and sent them to the Dunker church, played horseshoes in the meadows. Some wrote letters, some slept. Theirs was a lazy day in hot sunlight, far from the blood and sweat and stink of the men who fought and died across the creek.

  While to the south, still far to the south, the rebel Light Division marched toward the guns.

  Starbuck crouched in the woods. Sweat poured down his face and stung his eyes. The remains of the Yellowlegs were back at the edge of the trees near the Dunker church and it was plain that the Yankees were also back in force about the small building, for when Potter's skirmishers had run forward they had been greeted by a withering blast of rifle fire that had spun one man down and persuaded the others to seek cover. Yankee bullets whipped through the trees as more rebel battalions were brought back to make the assault on the church. To Starbuck this fight for the church was like a private skirmish that had little connection with the storm of fire that sounded further south. If the battle did have a pattern, then he had long lost all understanding of it; instead it seemed like a series of desperate, bloody, and accidental clashes that flared, flourished, and died without meaning.

  This new fight for the church also promised to be bloody for, while Starbuck waited in the trees, the Yankees brought up two guns that unlimbered just across the turnpike from the Dunker church. The horses were taken back while the gunners rammed their weapons, but instead of opening fire, the gun's commander ran toward the church. He was evidently seeking orders. The nearest gun was no more than two hundred yards away and Starbuck knew that one blast of canister would be sufficient to destroy what remained of his battalion.

  The idea came to him then, but he was so befuddled and tired that it took some few seconds for him to realize that the idea could work, then more seconds while he debated whether he had the energy to make the necessary effort. The temptation was to do as little as possible. His men had fought beyond the expectations of anyone in the army and no one could blame them now for letting other men do the dying and fighting, but the appeal of the idea was irresistible. He twisted and saw Lucifer crouching with his dog. "I want the officers here," he told the boy, "all except Mister Potter."

  The boy darted away through the brush while Starbuck turned back to stare at the nearest gun. It was a Napoleon, the French-designed cannon that was the workhorse for both armies. Its flared muzzle could fire a twelve-pound roundshot, canister, shell, or case shot, but it was the canister that the infantry feared most. The Napoleon might not have the range and power of the big rifled cannon, but its smoothbore barrel spat canister in a regular, killing pattern where the larger rifled guns could skew the shower of lead into strange shapes that sometimes flew safely overhead. The Napoleon, so far as the infantry was concerned, was a giant shotgun mounted on massive wheels.

  The Yankee gunners were relaxed, plainly unaware that enemy infantry was close. A faded Stars and Stripes hung on the limber, which stood with its lid open. A shirt-sleeved man carried ammunition and stacked it close to the gun, where another man leaned on the barrel and cleaned his fingernails with a knife. Every now and then he glanced over his right shoulder toward the east as if he expected to see reinforcements coming, but all he saw were his gun's horses cropping the pasture's bloodied grass a hundred yards away. After a time he yawned, folded the knife, and fanned his face with his hat.

  Dennison and Peel joined Starbuck. These, with Potter, were his only captains. After the battle, Starbuck thought, there would needs be wholesale promotions, but that could wait. Now he told the two men what he wanted, cut short their anxieties, and sent them away. A minute later their shrunken companies came to the tree line, where Starbuck concealed the men in the shadows and thick brush. He walked behind the line of men telling them what he expected of them. "You don't fire till the gun has fired," he said, "then you kill the gunners. Then you charge. One shot up your barrel, bayonets on, don't stop to reload." An excitement touched Starbuck's voice and communicated itself to the men who, tired as they were, grinned at him. "They say we're no good, lads," Starbuck told them, "they say we're the Yellowlegs. Well, we're about to give the army a present of one gun. Maybe two. Remember, one shot only, don't fire till the cannon's fired, then charge like there was a score of naked whores serving that gun."

  "Wish there were," a man said.

  There was a sudden crashing in the timber behind Starbuck, who turned to see the drunken Colonel Maitland, who had somehow recovered his horse and now rode with drawn sword toward Starbuck's battalion. "I'll lead you, boys!" Maitland shouted. "Victory all the way! Up now! Get ready."

  Starbuck grabbed the bridle before Maitland had a chance to roust the men to a premature attack. He dragged the horse round, pointed it toward the heart of the woods, and slapped its rump. Maitland somehow kept his seat as he rode away shouting and brandishing the sword. The noise he made was drowned by the furious sound of the fighting further south. "Wait, lads," Starbuck calmed his men, "just wait."

  Sergeant Case stared at the unsuspecting gunners. He was tempted to fire at them as soon as the attack on the Dunker church opened, and so deny Starbuck his victory by alerting the gunners to their danger, but Case only had two bullets left for his Sharps rifle and he dared not waste one. His hatred of Starbuck was being fed by what he perceived as Starbuck's unprofessionalism. Soon, Case reckoned, the battalion would be so shrunken that it
would cease to exist, and what of Dennison's promise then? Case wanted to be an officer, he wanted to command the Yellowlegs, whom he planned to drill and discipline into the finest battalion in the Confederate army, but now Starbuck was threatening to thin its emaciated ranks even further. It was amateurism, the Sergeant thought, sheer bloody amateurism.

  A cheer sounded in the woods, then the rebel yell erupted. Swynyard's voice shouted out of the shadows. "Go, Nate! Go!"

  "Wait!" Starbuck shouted at his men. "Just wait!"

  A splinter of rifle fire met the rebel charge, then a louder volley sounded as the charging rebels fired at the Yankees. The gunners had sprung to life. The barrel of the nearest gun was aimed roughly where Starbuck's skirmishers were placed and Starbuck prayed it was not charged with canister. He watched the gun captain duck aside and yank the lanyard that scraped the friction primer across the tube. The gun bucked violently back, spitting its flame and smoke toward the trees.