Valley of the Shadow: A Novel

by Ralph Peters

  Nor could he feel hatred toward those across the lines. He would fight them and kill them because it was a necessity, because his cause was true, however scarred. But he could not, would not, hate them. Instead, he worried over Southern friends. He hoped, when peace returned, to renew acquaintances from his Harvard days and others forged of convivial evenings back in Cincinnati. How could he hate Guy Bryan, all but a brother?

  He longed to see Guy again, whether in Ohio or Texas, and he hoped that Guy could put his own rancor behind him. Surely this war would long haunt its survivors, but Hayes did not mean to let it master his span, should he be spared. War might take his life, but it would not blunt his affection for his friends.

  A pair of birds winged through the dust. Hayes wiped cracked lips with a rag. His boils bit.

  At times, it seemed that the greatest challenge was not to defeat those who wore a different uniform, but to avoid becoming a man of demeaned worth. If he could not share Lucy’s Methodism, he certainly shared her faith in goodness and honesty, in the value of dealing justly with all men. If a fellow could not be great, he could be good.

  War made that hard.

  Hard, but not impossible, and Hayes refused to give in. Even in politics, he had proved that a man need not be craven. If politics asked compromise, it need not feed dishonesty. In this brief life, all a man possessed of value was his character. That and the love of those who adorned his life.

  Lucy, above all, Lucy! He dreaded disappointing her as other men dread Hell.

  A courier hastened toward him, raising dust within dust.

  His brigade had not received its marching orders until well into the morning, hours after even he had expected to go forward. All matters had run late, which meant that blistering urgency lay ahead.

  To live amidst war was akin to enduring a plague year: The man who rose hale and merry at dawn could not know if he would live until the evening. Dafoe would have understood.

  The courier could not stop his horse and pounded past Hayes and his staff before managing to halt his mount and turn it.

  “Begging your pardon, sir,” the lieutenant cried, “General Crook and Colonel Duval request your presence up yonder at the crossing.”

  “How do things look?” Hayes asked.

  Gleaming with sweat, the young man answered, “Confused.”

  11:15 a.m.

  The Union line at Winchester

  Despite the presence of the man’s brigade commander, Ricketts felt compelled to speak directly to the major leading the 14th New Jersey now:

  “You’ll be the man at the heart of it, Vredenburgh. This division’s at the center of the advance, the flanking divisions guide on us. That makes your regiment the unit of direction. Do not veer from the line of that damned road.” He pointed at the Berryville Pike. It led out past the skirmish line, where trees and smoke obscured it. “Follow it, if it leads to the Pit of Damnation. And maintain contact with Getty on your left. You understand?”

  The major nodded. Vredenburgh had performed heroically at Monocacy, but this was another day. It irked Ricketts that despite his efforts to rebuild his division, he still had majors and even captains leading regiments. While no end of colonels prowled the army’s rear.

  Bill Emerson, the man Ricketts had moved up to replace Truex as his First Brigade commander, felt obliged to put down a few cards:

  “Just hug that road, Pete,” Emerson told Vredenburgh. “Put your color guard on it and tell them to stay on it, or you’ll blow their brains out yourself.”

  That was hardly the tone to take when speaking of good men. Ricketts nearly fired off a remark, but restrained himself: Too late now to propound a theory of leadership.

  Ricketts’ mood had turned surly enough as his watch ticked round the hours. A day that had started off well enough, with ham biscuits and fair weather, was turning as ugly as a squaw with smallpox. The entire Sixth Corps, in position for hours, had waited all this while for a single division of the Nineteenth Corps to appear, at last, on its right. Ricketts did not doubt that the delay would prove worth more than a division to the enemy.

  Had Sheridan possessed the manliness to attack with the Sixth Corps alone, Ricketts was certain they could have crushed the meager Reb defense. With Getty on his left and Russell in reserve—without Russell, for that matter—they could have struck the Johnnies like an avalanche. But Sheridan, despite his swagger, moved with a spinster’s caution. Limited to prodding the Johnnies with skirmishers, Ricketts had watched as Reb artillery rolled into position, battery upon battery. And the guns, no doubt, would soon be followed by infantry. If Reb reinforcements had not already arrived. With the broken terrain, the swaybacked fields, odd groves, and overripe cornfields, the ground over which he had to advance was a division commander’s nightmare.

  Couldn’t Sheridan see it? Why hadn’t he struck the Johnnies early and hard? Their line had been thin as rice paper.

  “All right, Major,” Ricketts told Vredenburgh. “When you hear the advance sounded, move immediately. We’ve lost too much time already.”

  “Yes, sir. New Jersey will do its duty.”

  Profoundly ill-tempered, Ricketts almost said something completely unfair. Again he controlled himself: You never took out your spleen on your subordinates. The 14th New Jersey had fought magnificently at Monocacy, and the regiment had paid for it. It would not do to scorn decent men because he was mad at Sheridan.

  Monocacy. Truex had led the brigade then. And the fellow had led it well. Then, in August, Truex had lied to him over a matter of horses. It had been a small enough thing in the midst of a war, but Ricketts was old Army. The subordinate who lied to his commander and went unpunished would one day do worse. Despite the man’s battlefield record, Ricketts relieved him.

  He hoped he would not regret the action this day.

  Monocacy, Monocacy. Poor Wallace, the man of the hour, had gone unrewarded, barely allowed to cling to his Baltimore post, while Ricketts had come in for praise beyond all deserving, in his own opinion. He had tried to speak up for Wallace, to do the man justice, only to find that the politics of the Army, once the arbiters turned against a man, remained unforgiving.

  His old wounds ached, both of the flesh and of the spirit.

  Ricketts turned his horse from the New Jersey line just as another surge of artillery fire probed his position. Oh, yes, the damned Rebs were waiting for them now.

  Bill Emerson trotted beside him, yapping about the effectiveness of the breechloaders his old regiment, the 151st New York, had been issued. They were out on the skirmish line now, popping away.

  “Arm the whole brigade like that, and you’d see something,” Emerson assured him.

  “Well, it won’t happen today. Christ. There’s Wright again.” Ricketts spurred his horse.

  His corps commander rode at a canter behind Ricketts’ second line. With a full complement of aides and all flags flying.

  What now?

  “Shall I come along, sir?” Emerson asked.

  “Stay with your brigade,” Ricketts called over his shoulder. “Get your boys moving the instant you hear that bugle.”

  He knew his men would go forward, but Ricketts was unsure of how much grit they’d show in a crisis. They’d behaved well enough in the minor scraps over the past month, but something had bled out of them on the Monocacy, a spirit that went beyond the casualty count. The officers would need to stay near the front of today’s assault.

  As Ricketts closed on Wright and his coterie, Warren Keifer, his other brigade commander, rode toward the corps commander, too. As ambitious as he was brave, Keifer had a fondness for the company of his superiors. An Ohioan with political connections, Keifer had defied the doctors to return to the war after his serious wounding in the Wilderness. Now the colonel rode with one arm in a sling and a star on his mind.

  Well, let him win his promotion, Ricketts told himself. If he can hold his half-wrecked brigade together.

  Amid a flurry of salutes, Horatio Wrig
ht asked, “Everything ready, Jim?”

  “We’ve been ready,” Ricketts replied. Demonstratively, he drew out his pocket watch. “Going on three hours.”

  Wright nodded. “Order’s bound to come down any time now. Where will my courier find you?”

  “Up by those guns.”

  “Good.”

  “We ought to be in Winchester by now.”

  “Well, we’re not,” Wright said.

  “Any word on Early’s movements?”

  Wright shrugged. “I expect they’ll be reinforcing. Nothing to be done.”

  For the third time in a matter of minutes, Ricketts held his tongue. Nothing to be done, indeed. Was Wright as blind as Sheridan?

  No. But Wright had not risen to corps command through incautious speech or public displays of temper.

  Ever so briefly, after praise spread for his stand on the Monocacy, Ricketts had flirted with the notion that he might be granted a corps command himself. His disillusionment had required no more than a look in the mirror as he shaved one morning. Every corps commander he knew had a pleasing appearance that he, drab and growing paunchy, would never possess.

  He still marveled that he had somehow married not one, but two, true beauties. And both of them as good-hearted as Saint Clare.

  In quick succession, two Reb shells exploded just to the rear of the party on horseback. Close enough to make every officer flinch.

  “I suppose we’ve made ourselves a bit conspicuous,” Wright declared.

  Yes, Ricketts thought, and thanks for calling further attention to my division’s position. He only hoped his soldiers wouldn’t break. He didn’t want to face the shame of that. Oh, they’d fight, they’d fight. But for how long?

  It would come down to the dwindling number of veterans. They had to carry the new men and the shirkers, to drag them toward the Confederates. If the veterans quit …

  He had to hit the Johnnies hard and fast, to avoid any faltering.

  “All right, then,” Wright added. “I’ll leave you to your task. Give them the devil, Jim.”

  “What about Russell’s division? Can I count on him behind me?”

  Reining in his mount at another shell burst, Wright said, “I can’t move Russell without Sheridan’s consent.” He offered a smile in lieu of soldiers’ flesh. “Your boys can do this, Jim. Russell won’t be needed.” The corps commander’s horse would not be steadied, but Wright managed a nod toward Keifer’s sling. “Don’t show yourself too openly, Colonel Keifer. Johnnies see that sling, they’ll think we’re scraping the bottom of the barrel.”

  And Wright, with his flags and paladins, went off, bracketed by shells. As Union batteries replied, smoke drifted down the lines of waiting men.

  The waiting was terrible for them, Ricketts knew. Long delays made cowards of good men.

  “This makes no sense,” Keifer told him.

  “Damn it, Warren … I know that much.” Despite the mildness of the day, Ricketts found himself sweating. “Go back to your men. Stay ready.”

  “I’ve been ready since nine o’clock,” Keifer said. “Longer, for that matter.”

  For a fourth time, Ricketts held his tongue. He simply rode away, back to an eminence affording what passed for a view of this wretched terrain. The battery occupying the ridge kept up a perfunctory fire. The old artilleryman in him wanted to dismount and give the crews a lesson in gunnery.

  He let his own staff and colors catch up, then got down to empty his bladder. Before he could get to the business, though, a courier burst from the trees, lashing his horse.

  Without waiting for his mount to still, the rider shouted, “General Ricketts, you’re to advance at once!”

  Removing his fingers from his trouser buttons, Ricketts remounted, loins complaining. It was turning into one thoroughly wretched day.

  “On whose authority?” It was important, even now, to do things properly.

  “General Wright’s, sir. By order of General Sheridan.”

  Satisfied, Ricketts called, “Bugler, to me!” He drew out his watch to mark the time: It was precisely eleven forty.

  Horn shining on his hip, the bugler brought his horse abreast of Ricketts.

  “Sound the advance.”

  TEN

  September 19, morning

  Northern approach to the battlefield

  Nichols was wearied to a fright, so whupped down he nigh on lost his fear of the Good Lord. As the Georgia men marched out of the darkness into eye-cutting light, making haste just to halt and halt again, with every man sensing—just plain knowing—a fight lay up ahead, even that mortal excitement of the spirit had not been enough to master quitting flesh and punished souls. Men stumbled along, with equally tired officers coaxing them, pulling them, all but lashing them forward, and even the stalwart fell to sleeping upright at each sudden, tempting, unreasonable halt, leaning on their rifles as female leaned on male, snoring pillars of flesh, waiting to be roused, rumple-hearted, to hurry on down toward Winchester again.

  The only blessed man in the entire regiment who retained his manly vigor was Elder Woodfin. The chaplain had begun the night march ranting like a prophet against drunkenness as the hardest fellows puked out the last of their rotgut, then he preached in the pauses, warming up to Deuteronomy and howling chapter 20 over and over again, challenging Georgia’s manhood to rally itself to smite Israel’s foes, who surely lurked:

  “When thou goest out to battle against thine enemies, and seest horses and chariots, and a people more than thou, be not afraid of them: for the Lord thy God is with thee…”

  That was heartening somewhat, although no man was pleased at the thought of “a people more than thou,” which seemed all too frequent a situation these days. As night’s black fur grayed and slant-light stung strained eyes, the chaplain proved as relentless as Jehovah, pounding the morning with iron words: “Let not your hearts faint, fear not, and do not tremble, neither be ye terrified…,” and Ive Summerlin had muttered, “I’m too dogged tired to be terrified of much.”

  Instead of quickening against Ive’s near-enough blasphemy, Nichols had found himself in sour agreement.

  The daylight had taken on weight, yet another burden, and the dust was a smothering curtain a man had to gasp through. In the distance, rifles crackled, still far off, the concern of other men, and only as the sun climbed Heaven’s flagpole did the cough of artillery call for broad attention.

  Men griped and grumbled, heavy of eye, but their backs began to stiffen.

  Couriers spurred their horses along the line of march, discourteous. As one lieutenant pounded by, brush-your-sleeve close and freely distributing horse-stink, Lem Davis, that good Christian of soft temper, remarked, “Bet that rich boy never sprouted one blister.” To which Dan Frawley, nurtured with the milk of human kindness, added kill-voiced, “Feet probably never touched the ground in his life, even shits in his stirrups.”

  “And has a nigger to reach up and wipe his ass,” Tom Boyet, who never had a nigger, said.

  Of greater force than any Yankee artillery, Elder Woodfin bellowed, “What man is there that is fearful and fainthearted?”

  “Passel of such, I reckon,” Ive Summerlin grumped.

  They were ordered off the road to clear it for guns and supply wagons, exiled like the people of Israel, into the fields and groves, the thickets and creek-cuts, hundreds of yards to the left to shield the trains against a surprise attack by the Yankees. Just made things worse, that did, with fall-down-right-here-and-go-to-sleep men required to push through briars and clumsy-climb fences, hurrying surly through foot-wetting streams that would have been dry in September, but for the mocking rain the day before, as if, unthinkable thought, the Good Lord had switched sides and joined the Yankees, a thing impossible.

  “… thou shalt smite every male thereof with the edge of the sword…”

  “Suppose a bayonet will have to do,” Sergeant Alderman put in, his tired voice longing to be one of them again, to be among equals as he had
been before his elevation to striped sleeves.

  “Or a Barlow knife,” Ive Summerlin proposed. Untangling himself from a scourge of thorns, he added, “Lord does work in mysterious ways.”

  They did fierce labor, marching cross-country while struggling to remain a proper regiment, a brigade, and not a mob, all the while keeping up with the horses and vehicles rolling along the Pike, at least a quarter mile to their right now, and every man afoot hating those who rode.

  The battle sounds edged closer, yet remained without form, as the earth had been in the early time of Creation, so that a veteran soldier could not tell if either side felt serious about fighting, or even where.

  With a marked limp, Captain Kennedy worked back along their ranks, or what passed for ranks, and surveyed the beat-down faces before calling, “Private Nichols to flanking duty. With them four yonder. Yanks are out there somewheres, don’t get us surprised.”

  The captain, a brave man, yawned.

  “Yes, sir,” Nichols said, made instantly miserable by this separation from close comrades, condemned to join men from another company, good men, surely, but still …

  Ive Summerlin laughed, not harshly. “That there’s what you get, Georgie-boy, for being famed as the soberest man in the regiment.”

  “Here now, give over your blanket and haversack,” Lem Davis told Nichols. “You won’t want to be laden.” And Nichols, after a moment’s doubt, passed the treasures over his shoulder, relieved to be less encumbered for this duty.

  Off he went across a stubble field, over earth clotted by yesterday’s rain, thrusting heavy-limbed into the near-noon, catching up to the four men moving abreast, them advancing almost languidly, weary as the ages and wary, too.

  Louder and louder. Those guns. But the war was not yet upon them, nor were they in the war. On this late and lovely forenoon, when any man of sense wished to be elsewhere.

  The flankers bickered about just how far out they ought to go, cutting a path diagonal from the long gray caterpillar crawling many-thousand-footed over the ups and downs of earth eternal, five carved from the multitude, just five, headed off to skunk out the Yankee army, that ungodly agglomeration of Amorites and Jebusites.