The Battle of the Crater: A Novel

by Gingrich, Newt

  Behind him was Colonel Henry Pleasants, mid-thirties. In spite of the years of war, his face had a certain gentleness to it, his frame diminutive; wearing spectacles, he looked more like a preacher than a regimental commander of a hard-fighting unit. A mining engineer before the war, he had joined with the regiment as a lieutenant. Whether he looked like a preacher or not, he had proven his mettle on every battle the Ninth Corps had faced, from New Bern to this godforsaken place, rising to command of the regiment after the Battle of the Wilderness.

  Men half stood at his approach, and he made a gesture for them to stay low.

  “How goes it, boys?” he asked, pausing to shake Johann’s hand.

  “Hotter than hell, sir.”

  “With the Rebs or that blasted sun?” and he made the gesture of taking off his hat to wipe his brow, nearly standing up.

  “Be careful, sir!” several of the men cried simultaneously, gesturing to the lip of the trench.

  “We got a deal with the boys over there,” Johann announced. “But not with the regiments to either flank of ’em.”

  “Besides,” Lubbeck tossed in with his barely understandable English, “they see an officer’s hat, and they go bang.”

  He made the gesture of shooting, then stabbed at his forehead with a finger and crossed his eyes.

  Pleasants chuckled, nodding his thanks. Unlike some of the officers, who were all full of fight, even when it was little better than murder—which was how he defined sharpshooting in a place like this—he had no problems with the informal truces the men might strike up.

  “I hate to tell you boys this, but we’re stuck on the line for at least another week,” he announced, his statement met with groans and curses.

  “Sorry, lads, orders from on high. All the regiments of the division are like us, half strength or less, and there’s no reserves to replace us on the line for now.”

  “Then let’s just blow the bastards up and be done with it,” Michael interjected.

  “Blow them up?” the colonel looked at him quizzically.

  Michael grinned.

  “Me and the boys have been thinking on it, sir. Take a peek through my hole for a second or two, sir.”

  He gestured for the colonel to come over to his sharpshooting position. The men around him fell silent.

  “Suggest you take that hat off, sir,” Johann interjected, and Pleasants forced a smile and handed his wide-brimmed officer’s cap to Captain Conrad.

  “Just eyeball the fort up there, sir, but not for too long.”

  Pleasants leaned up against the narrow hole, ventured a look for several seconds. A minié ball snapped overhead, sounding like an angry bee, followed by laughter from the Rebel line as Pleasants ducked down.

  “No peeking there, Yank!” came a taunt.

  “Thought we had a deal, Reb!” Johann cried.

  “One of the boys changed his mind. Damn officer here said we gotta shoot ya.”

  “Tell that son of a bitch to go to hell.”

  “Sorry, Yank, but he said you is on our land, trespassing like, so it’s back to shootin’. Just gave your boy over there a warning, but next time it’ll be for real.”

  Johann sighed.

  “So much for the truce.”

  He looked over at Pleasants, who was squatting by his side, handkerchief out, trying to clean his spectacles, sweat beading down his brow.

  “Well, at least he gave me a warning,” Pleasants offered with a smile, and the men around him laughed good-naturedly.

  “It’s that damn fort up there, sir,” Michael said. “You saw how it sits up on that ridge.”

  “Yes, and?”

  “Blow it up.”

  Pleasants sat silent, one of the men uncorking a canteen and handing it to him. He soaked his handkerchief, wiped his face, and then wrapped it around his neck.

  A bayonet was sticking out of the wall of the trench, serving as a candleholder. He pulled the bayonet out and started to scratch the ground.

  “The Rebs call it ‘Pegram’s Battery,’” he said, as if to himself. “A battery of six Napoleon cannons, garrison of a full regiment, anchored to either flank by at least two lines of trenches. We could throw the entire corps at it, and…” his voice trailed off.

  “And we all die,” Michael replied coldly.

  Pleasants drew it out on the ground as he spoke.

  A thump echoed.

  “Mortar,” someone announced. Johann looked up, but Pleasants continued to sketch in the dirt, not even bothering to raise his eyes.

  “Long but it’ll be close,” Johann announced, eyes heavenward, tracing the line of flight of 4.5-inch mortar shell, fuse sputtering, passing just overhead and slapping into the ground ten yards to their rear, to detonate a second later.

  “Hey, Reb, cut the fuse a mite shorter, and you’ll kill us all next time!” Michael shouted.

  Pleasants stared at his sketch for several minutes; Stan, kneeling by his side, added a few comments about distance.

  “You the new recruit?” Pleasants asked.

  “Yes, sir, joined two weeks ago.”

  Pleasants smiled.

  “Heard you had a year of college.”

  “Yes, sir, my brother and father said they wanted me in the front office, not down in the mines.”

  Pleasants nodded.

  “You study drafting?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Come back with me then, Corporal; I just might have some work for you.”

  Michael leaned back and hooted derisively.

  “Promoted to corporal after two weeks. Hell, you’ll be a major general in eight weeks and me still a private.”

  Johann, obviously proud of the fact that his brother had been recognized, and inwardly relieved that he’d be off the front line for a while, glanced at Michael, but saw that his friend was just ribbing.

  Pleasants stood up, again the men chorusing to mind his head in spite of his short stature.

  “Boys, I think you just might be on to something,” Pleasants said with a smile.

  He looked over at Michael.

  “And you, Private Michael O’Shay, how many times have you been up on charges of drunk and disorderly?”

  Michael grinned.

  “Colonel, darlin’, I think you can keep count better than I. You see I was drunk at the time and you was not.”

  Pleasants grinned, reached into his haversack and pulled out a half-empty pint of whiskey and tossed it over to him.

  “You do better thinking with this, Private O’Shay, so my compliments and enjoy the bottle, but be sure to share it with your comrades so you don’t get charged again.”

  “How about a promotion instead, sir?”

  “And tear the stripes off you a week later?”

  The men around him laughed as Michael shook his head with mock sincerity, raised the bottle as a token of respect, and gulped down half of it before passing what was left over to Lubbeck.

  “Now, keep your mouths shut about this, boys,” Pleasants announced, and his friendly manner was gone, replaced by a cold sternness which every man in the regiment knew never to cross.

  “I know how you banter with the Rebs. That’s fine, but if one of you, just one of you, says a word across the line about blowing things up, I’ll have you tied to a wheel, then bucked, and gagged, so help me God I will. If I believed in flogging I’d do that, too, and in this case I just might do it anyhow. Do you understand me?”

  No one spoke.

  “I want this to stay here, not a word to any other men of this regiment, and by God not a whisper of it to any man of another regiment. For this to work it has to be secret, and the surprise has to be complete. Do we understand each other?”

  “Yes, sir,” and all were nodding in agreement.

  “Corporal Kochanski, come with me. Keep your heads down, boys. I’ll let you know if anything comes of this.”

  Crouching low, Pleasants, followed by Stan and Captain Conrad, went into the covered communications trenc
h that led to the rear.

  “Boys, thanks to me, we just might be doing some real digging now,” Michael announced, gesturing to Hans to pass the bottle back. Hans ignored him, passing it instead to Johann.

  “Let’s just pray we aren’t digging our graves,” Johann said quietly, taking a sip and then passing the bottle on and away from Michael.

  HEADQUARTERS, GENERAL AMBROSE BURNSIDE

  JUNE 25, 1864

  General Ambrose Burnside, commander of the Ninth Corps, assigned for now to the Army of the Potomac, stood silent outside his command bunker, just over a half mile from the front lines.

  The sun was setting behind the Rebel lines, silhouetting Fort Pegram, revealing it in high relief, perched atop a low crest line. He studied it, as he did nearly every evening now, with raised field glasses, the red glow of the setting sun glinting off the polished barrels of the bronze Napoleon field pieces. Six hundred yards beyond the fort, cut along the side of a low hill, he could see a couple of Rebel ambulances daring a passage on the Jerusalem Plank Road.

  That road was the main artery stitching the Confederate line together. Once darkness fell, if the night was still and there was a breeze coming from the west, it was easy to hear the rumbling of their supply wagons, jouncing along the plank-covered way, moving what meager supplies and equipment Lee still had in his possession. It was the one and only road just behind the siege lines that ran parallel to the Rebel lines. Cut it, and the Rebel army would be cut in half as well. The road was described to him by one of his staff as the “aorta of Bobbie Lee, cut it, and he and his army will be dead.”

  A week and a half ago they had come so damnably close to doing just that; their last futile charge going to ground in front of the Rebel fort atop the ridge; during the ensuing night his men digging in just below the lip of that ridge. Common sense dictated that he should have pulled the men back to here, the next ridge line over, but George Meade, in direct command of the Army of the Potomac, had insisted that the forward line be held, and it was now the closest and most dangerous position of the entire vast siege line that arced around Petersburg.

  Even here, eight hundred yards back, his staff was not all together happy with his evening surveys. Just as he thought about that, a bullet hummed overhead.

  A stray round, but Captain Charles Vincent, his adjutant, flinched and then made the gesture of stepping in front of him.

  He smiled.

  “How often do we have this argument, Vincent?” Burnside asked.

  “Every damn night, sir. I tell you that Rebs over there can spot you easy enough, and well, sir, you do present a rather imposing figure.”

  He chuckled and shook his head.

  Ambrose Burnside, unassuming as he was inwardly, knew that he was one of the more recognizable men in this army, in which so many vainglorious men strove to stand out. He did not so strive himself but achieved it, nevertheless, with his immense muttonchop whiskers, his towering frame, and impressive height—the same height as Lincoln, though stout, with a good sixty pounds more weight than the gaunt President—and, of course, his high conical hat, which he deliberately wore so that his men could easily spot him in the smoke and confusion of the battlefield.

  The evening was hot, and it was good to be out of the bunker, which served as his command post. Unbuttoning his double-breasted jacket, he pulled out a handkerchief and wiped the sweat from his brow and neck. A scar from an Apache arrow, picked up while serving on the frontier after the Mexican War, still troubled him at times, and tonight it was sensitive to the touch as he flexed the muscles of his shoulders and winced slightly.

  “Vincent, I admire your loyalty, but you stand barely five two in your stocking feet, so unless you get a ladder to stand on, I doubt you will catch a bullet if it is meant for me.”

  “Sir, a Rebel armed with one of those Whitworth rifles could drill you certain.”

  “Why, at this range, he couldn’t hit…” his voice trailed off, a touch of superstition evident. He was about to finish the sentence, which had been the last words of his old friend John Sedgwick of Sixth Corps, killed last month by a Rebel sharpshooter at Spotsylvania at nearly this same range.

  A few more bullets whizzed past; it was obvious they were indeed aiming for him.

  Fear for his personal safety had never bothered Burnside all that much. Far more frightening to him was the responsibility of his command. He loved the men of this army, especially those of his loyal Ninth Corps. His mistakes, and he was frank enough with himself to know when he was taxed beyond his ability, had cost many a life, such as at the infamous bridge at Antietam across which he had ordered suicidal frontal attacks, and especially when he briefly commanded this entire army a year and a half ago at Fredericksburg. Twelve thousand dead and wounded that day, and a day did not go by when he did not feel a deep and dreadful sense of inner torment over that tragedy.

  He had not wanted the command when Lincoln offered it to him, in fact he had turned it down twice, only relenting when told that if he did not take it, it would go instead to Joe Hooker, a man whom he secretly detested as lacking in moral fiber.

  Relegated back to command of his old Ninth Corps after Fredericksburg, he and his men had become the most “wandering” corps of the army. While the Ninth Corps served at Vicksburg without Burnside, he rejoined them for the Knoxville Campaign and served with the Army of the Potomac. Under his own independent command they had absolutely trounced Longstreet at Knoxville. Then Grant recalled him east for what was now known as the Wilderness Campaign. He and his men had gone through the toughest fighting of the war these last seven weeks, his command sustaining over 50 percent casualties in the ghastly bloodlettings.

  Stalled in front of Petersburg, the army had tried one more flanking attempt and come within a hairsbreadth of success. Richmond’s present survival was dependent on the Confederate supply line being kept open at Petersburg, where four railroads and several plank roads converged. Take Petersburg, and Richmond had to surrender. General Grant had seized on the idea at last, but then moved too slowly, allowing Lee to shift to meet this new threat. If only he had been ordered to attack a day earlier. The heights guarding the Jerusalem Plank Road had been all but naked, but a furious night of digging by the Rebs had thrown up a defensive line, and he had lost more than a thousand men trying to storm it. In the days since, every night one could hear them digging over there, strengthening the line which protected their one vital artery, an artery that connected the Rebel army together along a siege line more than a dozen miles in length.

  Another bullet hummed by, close enough that he felt the concussive slap of the bullet.

  “Oh, for heaven’s sake, General,” Vincent sighed.

  He simply nodded, scanning the enemy position one more time. On the Confederate left flank of Fort Pegram, a third of a mile or so north, was high ground, crowned with a church, called Blandford. It predated the Revolution by nearly a hundred years. It was within range of his heavier guns, but he had issued the strictest orders that it was not to be molested. But … if only they could take that church-and cemetery-crowned hill, just beyond that rise, the city of Petersburg would be at their feet. Put a division up there, backed with a battalion of artillery, and Lee would either have to counterattack head-on and bleed himself out doing so, or abandon the city. Abandon Petersburg, and Richmond would have to be abandoned as well.

  It would be the end of the war here in Virginia, perhaps triggering an entire collapse of the Rebel cause … and his men were the ones in the perfect position to do it. If not for that seething anthill, that fort atop the heights, which would turn any charge into a slaughter ground as bad, perhaps worse, than Cold Harbor … He paused in his thoughts … or, yes, as bad or worse than what he had tried and failed to do at Fredericksburg.

  “All right, Vincent, let’s go back in,” and his adjutant sighed with relief, the poor lad flinching when, seconds after they stepped away from the low parapet he had been standing on, a couple of more bullets slapped t
he air.

  He forced a smile to cheer Vincent.

  “Not yet our time,” he said good-naturedly, slapping the shaken adjutant on the shoulder.

  They stepped down into the bunker, a log-sided structure cut into the earth along the main reserve line for the sector. The fourteen-gun battery, a quarter mile to his left, opened up, each piece firing in measured sequence, beginning the nighttime of harassing fire to be dropped onto the Jerusalem Road. The Rebel mortar battery inside the fort opened a reply, lobbing shells toward the heavy battery. The nightly fireworks had begun.

  His telegrapher, sitting in the corner of the bunker, looked up and just shook his head, indicating no new messages from Meade or Grant. In the gloom, illuminated only by a smoky coal oil lamp, he took off his jacket, preparing to bed down for the night on a cot in the corner. But then he noticed someone had entered the bunker while he was out for his evening stroll and examination of the line.

  “Colonel Pleasants?”

  “Sir,” and the man stiffened to attention.

  He prided himself on knowing the name of every regimental commander and often many of the subordinates of the nearly forty regiments of his corps.

  “To what do I owe the honor of this visit?”

  “Sir, something has come up, an idea from some of my men, and I wanted to talk to you about it directly.”

  He hesitated. He wanted his men to feel he was approachable but some of the sticklers for regulations would, of course, object if Pleasants had not gone through the proper chain of command by first going to brigade and then division before coming here.

  “General, I’m taking the liberty of coming straight to you with this. Sir, you were an engineer before the war, and I think, sir, you’ll grasp what I’m talking about. Going through channels…” he hesitated. “Well, sir, if I had gone to General Ledlie first, it might have taken days. I think this is too important to wait. Also, sir, you know how staff officers can talk when they’re not supposed to. By the time my suggestion got up to you, dozens would be chattering and well, sir, this idea depends on complete surprise so thus I’ve taken this liberty, which I hope you will forgive.”