The Battle of the Crater: A Novel
Page 1
In memory of the men of the 4th Division,
IX Corps,
Army of the Potomac,
who on July 30, 1864, gave the “last full measure of devotion.”
CONTENTS
Title Page
Dedication
Illustration #1: map of Petersburg
Prologue
Illustration #2: view of the battlefield from a trench
Chapter 1
Illustration #3: Arlington near the end of the Civil War
Chapter 2
Illustration #4: Harper’s Weekly illustration of Lincoln
Chapter 3
IIllustration #5: Harper’s Weekly, August 6, 1864: life on the front lines
Illustration #6: Harper’s Weekly illustration of Burnside
Chapter 4
Illustration #7: flag-bearers and drummers in front of the bridge
Illustration #8: Harper’s Weekly illustration of Meade
Illustration #9: map of Burnside’s plan
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Illustration #10: battle illustration, charge under fire
Illustration #11: an officer and drummer boy
Illustration #12: Harper’s Weekly illustration of Grant
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Illustration #13: Garland by campfire deep in thought
Chapter 9
Illustration #14: Harper’s Weekly, August 20, 1864: carrying powder to the mine
Illustration #15: Harper’s Weekly, August 20, 1864: Colonel Pleasants supervising the arrival of powder
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Illustration #16: Harper’s Weekly, August 20, 1864: detonation of mine at Petersburg
Chapter 12
Illustration #17: Harper’s Weekly, August 27, 1864: the charge on Cemetery Ridge
Chapter 13
Illustration #18: Harper’s Weekly, illustration of Robert E. Lee
Chapter 14
Illustration #19: bodies hauled up from the pit
Illustration #20: priest cradling dying comrade
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Illustration #21: Garland by campfire deep in though
Afterword
Acknowledgments
Also by Newt Gingrich and William R. Forstchen
About the Authors
Copyright
PROLOGUE
COLD HARBOR, VIRGINIA
JUNE 3, 1864
FRONT LINE OF THE SECOND CORPS, ARMY OF THE POTOMAC
4:50 A.M.
“Ten minutes to go, boys!”
James Reilly, artist and illustrator for Harper’s Weekly, looked over his shoulder at the colonel, who was holding his pocket watch up in the pale light before dawn; the man’s hands were shaking.
“Will someone tell that old bastard to shut the hell up?” a sergeant whispered.
“You go tell him, Patterson,” another sergeant groaned.
“He’s rattling the men.”
“Oh, shut the hell up. We’re all rattled,” a young lieutenant sighed. “Now see to your men.”
Reilly, having just reached the forward trench through a “covered way”—a communications trench from headquarters back in the secondary line—was confused as to which brigade and regiment he had fallen in with. Dawn was rapidly approaching and the dark shadows of huddled men, packed shoulder to shoulder inside the forward trench, were now being illuminated as they waited out the last minutes.
“Which regiment are you?” James asked the lieutenant.
“71st Pennsylvania. Why?”
“I’m looking for the 88th New York.”
“Down the line a bit. I think next brigade on our left. Why you asking?”
“My brother’s with them. Wanted to see him.”
“You’ll never get there in time. Who are you?”
“Just an illustrator with Harper’s Weekly.”
Like many of his profession traveling with this hard-fighting army, he had adopted their garb: a now battered, faded shell jacket he had not changed out of or washed since the beginning of the campaign twenty-eight days ago, when the army had crossed the Rapidan, filled with high hopes. In the dark he was often mistaken for a soldier. It allowed him to blend in without notice, but at times it caused problems with some officious types demanding identification.
His black, wide-brimmed slouch hat had lost all semblance of shape, one side of it clipped off by a Rebel bullet when he had incautiously decided to peek up over the lip of a trench at Spotsylvania. His shirt beneath the shell jacket was a dingy gray and beginning to rot off his body. He had lost his pack during the Wilderness when the forest caught fire, driving him and the regiment he was sketching back in a hasty retreat. A correspondent with the New York Herald had taken pity on him and given him an oversized haversack, a writing board, some pencils, and a sheaf of papers.
“Illustrator?” the lieutenant muttered, stepping back slightly, looking at him appraisingly.
“Nine minutes, boys.”
James nodded to the lieutenant, ignoring the colonel’s nervous timekeeping. There was a time when such an introduction would have elicited delight, a demand to have a sketch made for the papers, or at least something to send back home to the folks.
Not this morning.
He half-expected the man to request a quick sketch. There was silence for a moment.
“Can I have a sheet of paper?”
James hesitated but could not refuse the appeal, though his supply was running short. He nodded, tore a sheet off his pad, and handed it to the lieutenant.
“Sergeant Patterson, I got some more paper.”
The sergeant came over as the lieutenant took the oversized sheet, folded it into four sections, and tore it up, handing three to the sergeant, who grunted a thanks.
“Can I borrow your sketch board and a pencil for a moment?”
James handed them to the lieutenant, who then leaned against the wall of the trench and began to scribble something.
“Eight minutes, boys, eight minutes.”
“Someone tell him to shut the hell up,” came a whispered retort.
Finished writing, the lieutenant handed the board back.
James leaned over the lieutenant’s shoulder to see what he had written.
Lieutenant Andrew McCloskey
25 Exchange St., Philadelphia
71st PA
Wife: Ellen. Son: Eli, 4 years old
“You got a pin, sir?”
James, unsure what was going on, could only shake his head.
“I got some primer wire, lieutenant,” a young drummer boy offered, holding up a sliver of brass from an artillery primer. The lieutenant nodded a thanks, handed the piece of paper to the drummer, and squatted down. Laughing nervously, he admonished the boy not to stab him in the back as the youth pinned the slip of paper to the back of the lieutenant’s jacket.
James stood silent, as the light continued to rise around them. He saw that all the men were doing the same with slips of paper, envelopes, or any scrap they could find.
The lieutenant thanked the boy, putting a firm hand on his shoulder.
“Remember, Billy, you stay here. Promise me, you stay here.”
“No, sir,” the boy’s voice began to break.
“You stay here.”
“I ain’t no coward. I’m goin’.”
“That is an order, son.”
The boy began to cry.
“My God,” James whispered, “what in hell is going on here?”
The lieutenant looked up at him.
“You know, don’t you? You know what
is over there.”
He looked at the lip of the trench but was not fool enough to stick his head up for a quick glance. The sun was rising behind them; a head sticking up, silhouetted against the dawn sky, would be the last futile gesture he’d ever make. He had not survived three years of this war by making futile gestures and long ago had abandoned any shows of bravado. His job was to sketch the fight, which was easy enough to do once it was over … that, and to report privately to an old friend the truth of what he saw.
“They know we’re coming. You could hear them digging all last night, laying out dead falls. One of my boys crept up to their line and said the trenches are layered three deep over there.”
“I heard that, as well.”
“Where?”
“I was back at headquarters.”
“Six minutes, lads.”
“Do those damn fools know?” the lieutenant pressed.
“Yes, they know.”
“Damn them! Damn them!”
He did not bother to reply. Why tell them the truth now? He had a “friend,” a contact with General Hancock’s headquarters, well lubricated with an extra bottle of whiskey whenever James could find one. He had received the inside word. All corps commanders had said the attack was impossible. Two days ago the way to Richmond was wide open. Only six miles away, they were so close that with the westerly breeze yesterday evening he could hear the church bells. But that was two days ago. Old Bobbie Lee had rushed in troops to block the way, and they had heard the Rebs had been digging ever since. Yesterday morning it just might have worked, but no firm plan had yet been laid. The assault by the entire army, a full-out frontal assault, had been postponed for twenty-four hours, to but a little more than five minutes from now.
“They say the plan will work.”
Men around the two snorted derisively.
“We got twenty-five days left to our enlistments,” the lieutenant hissed. “We served three years and only got twenty-five days left. They used to pull you off the line for your last month, but not now. Not now. We’ve been in every fight since the Peninsula. We was at Antietam, we charged at Fredericksburg, we held the center at Gettysburg. And this is what they do to us now? In our last twenty-five days?”
His voice was edged with hysteria, nearly breaking. A gray-bearded sergeant put a hand on the lieutenant’s shoulder, and he braced himself.
“Now this.”
“Five minutes.”
“I don’t give a damn if he is the colonel,” the lieutenant hissed. “I’m ready to shut his damn mouth.”
“Leave off him,” the old sergeant whispered. “You know he ain’t been right since the Wilderness.”
James looked over at the sergeant.
“We lost half the regiment, including his youngest boy. The oldest was killed the year before at Gettysburg. He ain’t been the same since, God bless him.
“Hey, it’s Father Hagan, boys,” the sergeant announced, nodding to the communications trench that James had crawled out of minutes before.
The priest was wearing an officer’s jacket, unbuttoned, revealing his collar beneath and a crucifix resting on his breast.
“How are you, my lads?” his Irish brogue rang forth and for James, who was a son of Ireland as well, it was soothing to hear.
No one spoke.
“Boys, I am giving you all general absolution. Before I do so now, lads, empty those whiskey bottles,” and he tried to force a laugh. “No devil’s drink in your pockets when you go in.”
A few laughed nervously in reply, and some men began drawing out bottles. The priest forced a good-natured smile as they passed the bottles around, draining the last of the contents and then throwing them out of the trench to shatter.
“Four minutes, me boys, four minutes.”
Father Hagan looked back at the colonel, who was visibly trembling, and sighed.
“Now kneel, boys, and be quick.”
Nearly all did so. It was a moment that James could not etch on paper but he knew would be etched into his soul. He went down on his knees and joined them, even though he would not be going into the maelstrom. The rising light of dawn arched the sky overhead with shimmering streaks of red and gold, tracing over the wisps of fog and smoke that hung in the still morning air.
“Ego te absólvo a peccátis tuis in nómine Patris, et Filii, et Spíritus Sancti.”
As he whispered the prayer, Father Hagan repeatedly made the sign of the cross; nearly all the others were doing the same. Some of the men leaned forward, picking up a pinch of earth and putting it into their mouths, an all-so-ancient gesture and acknowledgment that from dust we have come and to dust we must return.
Finished with the absolution, the priest gazed upon them.
“God be with you, boys, and those who fall, tonight you shall sup in Paradise.”
Usually such words from a chaplain would elicit a chuckle, an invite for the priest to go along with them, but all knew his post was with the surgeon. His duty was to help there; to comfort the dying that were dragged back to face the blade and the saw, to offer final words of comfort and blessing as life slipped away.
There was no joking this morning, only a nervous silence.
“I must get to the rest of the regiment, boys,” the chaplain said, his voice nearly breaking. “God be with you.”
He edged his way through the crowd and pressed on down the trench. James could hear him. “Kneel, boys, and let me give you general absolution. God bless you, my brave lads.”
“Two minutes! Fix bayonets and form up!”
There were sighs of relief from some, the tension nearly at an end. The hiss of bayonets being drawn and locked into place over the muzzles of rifles was audible above the soldiers’ rustling. Some were praying out loud. A man backed away from the forward edge of the trench, sobbing. There was no problem with the sergeant; he was ignored. Several leaned forward and vomited. A man cursed as he was splattered and then turned to offer a bracing arm to his terrified friend.
The colonel, still holding his watch, started to push down the line. James caught a glimpse of the man’s face—ashen, lips trembling. His anger toward the unnerved colonel was gone, replaced with pity. The man’s nerves were shot: one charge too many, one death too many, had at last consumed him.
Some of the men had rosary beads out, muttering Hail Marys; others were stoic, silent. The lieutenant was up by his side.
“Keep Billy here,” and he nodded back to the drummer boy, who sat slumped over against the back of the trench, crying.
James nodded.
There was a distant cry and seconds later the hum of bullets was overheard. Fifty-eight-caliber minié balls began to snap overhead. The Rebs knew what was coming. He could picture them less than two hundred yards away, rifle barrels resting on the lip of their trenches, hammers cocked. The more excitable began to lay down fire and a Rebel yell began to swell up—a taunting challenge.
“One minute. Uncase the colors! And God be with you, boys!”
The colonel—sword drawn, a foot resting on a short trench ladder, hand poised on the top rung—was still holding his watch. Behind him, the regimental flag-bearers pulled the coverings off their tattered colors—the National Flag and the dark blue flag of New York. Emblazoned on them were the names of past glory, from Fair Oaks to Gettysburg. They had not bothered to note the half-dozen fights of the past month; there was no time to do so … and no desire. For no one had yet determined if the battles had been victories, defeats, or just senseless bloodlettings with no winners or losers. James looked at the flags as they were held up high. Within seconds the silken folds were struck a dozen times, tattering them into barely recognizable shreds.
What caught James’s eye, what he could not tear his gaze away from now that they were poised and ready, were the slips of paper pinned to the men’s backs, every single one of them. Men who had braved the cornfield of Antietam, had swept forward at Fredericksburg, had covered the retreat at Chancellorsville, and already, as the
stuff of legends, had stood against Pickett’s Charge. This was now their Pickett’s Charge, but they would not go forward with a cheer and a deep belief in victory, as did the boys of Virginia and North Carolina on that sunlit field in Pennsylvania a year ago. Three years had taught them much. It had taught them that this morning they would die.
Cannon fire, a battery firing to the east, back at the secondary line, was followed seconds later by the roar of a hundred more guns up and down the Union line. There would be no preparatory bombardment. The single massed salvo was the signal to begin the charge for miles along the entire front. There was a time when such charges had a purpose and a hope, when this war had been fought out in the open, volley lines facing volley lines. But a battle had not been fought like that since Gettysburg.
Perhaps Gettysburg had indeed been the last battle of a different age. It was now a war of digging, of trenches, revetments, moats, and deadfalls. Give the enemy two days, and they would construct two or three lines of trenches in depth. No artillery could dislodge that, and in reality no charge or bayonet could dislodge it, either, if the men behind the barricades held their nerve. Facing them were the veterans of the Army of Northern Virginia. They had nerve aplenty.
It seemed that only the high command in their tents behind the line still believed in the bayonet. But the men around James had lived the last year of warfare and knew far better about the new reality.
“71st! Charge, boys, charge!”
The colonel, his voice strangled, mounted the ladder. Before his foot even reached the top rung he was already pitching over backward, forehead shattered, his agony ended.
“Charge!”
Some went up the ladders, others vaulted up onto the lip of the trench.
The lieutenant looked back at James.
“Draw the truth, artist. Draw the truth!”
He went up the ladder.
A thunderous roar erupted. The sky overhead came alive with bullets clipping the air overhead, along with canister rounds hissing, mingled with the horrid sound of bullets striking flesh. Men were collapsing, falling back into the trench, or tumbling back to the earth like insects caught in a burst of flame. Men were screaming; a sergeant reaching out to pull the lieutenant up doubled over, collapsing; the lieutenant, letting go of the sergeant’s grasp, held high his own sword.