by Ralph Peters
“Keep them eyes of your’n open,” the corporal in charge warned.
Words to summon demons. No sooner had the corporal spoken than a skirmish line of Yankees rose from thick, high clover and coon brush, the closest of them not ten paces off, rifles leveled.
A burly sergeant thumbed rearward and said, in a used-to-things voice, “You Johnnies just get along now, walk back thataway. And count yourselves damned lucky.”
Nichols opened his mouth to shout a warning to his kind, but a less amiable Yankee pointed his rifle at Nichols’ belly, stepping so close that his bayonet almost touched the spot where a button had gone missing.
“Shut your pie-trap, boy.”
It was all wrong, overwhelming. This wasn’t only a skirmish party of Yankees. Long blue lines emerged from a yellowing grove. More Yankees than Nichols had ever seen this close. With a grand hurrah, the Federals rushed forward, thousands of them, hounds let off the leash. Following his four fellow captives to the rear, to Yankee Hell, Nichols paused to look back, with all the confused longing of Lot’s wife, only to stand stiffened, as if some backwoods wisewoman cast a spell on him. He witnessed a thing he had never seen, had never wanted to see, as the sweeping blue tide neared his surprised brigade. He watched his gray-clad officers struggling to bring the march formation, disordered by traitor trees, into battle order. The Yankees halted midfield and gave them a volley, disintegrating the gray ranks, then rushing at the remnants like hungry dogs. Barking, too.
Mortified, Nichols watched his own brigade break and run, a thing it had never done on any field. All of them—all of those Georgians who remained upright—just ran back into the trees, pursued by Yankees.
Nichols jumped at the tap on his shoulder. Whipping about, more nerves than man, he found a bewhiskered Yankee captain, no taller than himself, staring at him in wonder, hardly a pipe-stem off and smelling, indeed, of bad tobacco. On both the captain’s flanks, a second battle line of Yankees advanced, but the captain and those soldiers nearest him paused.
The captain gestured at Nichols.
“Chonnie, your gun. Gif it me now, or be shot.”
The captain wrenched the rifle from Nichols’ grip. Bewildered, Nichols only then realized that he had held on to his weapon, at insane peril.
For all that, he rued its loss: He had fired many hundreds of balls, perhaps a thousand, from its barrel. Toward such men in blue. It was a fine piece, cared for like the prize horse of a stable.
The captain saw its quality. Turning to a soldier, he held out the rifle and said, “Jacob, hier gibt’s eine feine Waffe, schau mal. Leave yours und nimm this one.”
Turning to Nichols again, inspecting him as if weighing a purchase, the captain said, “Du armer Kerl, du stinkst zum Himmel hoch. You go back there.” He pointed eastward, toward humiliation. “No one is hurting you. Maybe you can eat.”
But as Nichols shifted to step off, the captain caught his wrist.
“To which brigade are you belonging?”
“General Gordon’s. I mean, it was his’n.”
The captain straightened as if on parade. Delighted, he cried, “Komm mal, los geht’s! Der Gordon retreats! Los geht’s, los geht’s!”
Nichols believed he had never felt a hurt as cruel as that inflicted by those words in English.
As the foreigner-Yankees rejoined the advance—hurrying overjoyed—Nichols shambled into the trees, a crushed thing, scorched with tears. The shame of being captured, taken without even putting up a fight, was a terrible wrong. But the prospect of marching off to a Yankee jail seemed worse by a measure. He felt he would rather die than rot in a prison camp.
Surely the brigade would re-form. And the other brigades were back there waiting, closer to the Pike. When the Yankees ran into all of them, those sorry blue-bellies had to come reeling back. Gordon’s old brigade could not be whipped, it could not happen. Even if General Evans had not returned to lead it this day, Colonel Atkinson was a Christian man. The men of Georgia could not falter long, they had to counterattack.…
Instead of passing meekly to their rear, he followed the Yankees.
11:55 a.m.
Union center
Ricketts dared the Confederates to kill him. Galloping past knots of men left leaderless and others clutching the earth—waiting for someone, even a corporal, to take charge—he spotted Keifer near the front of his brigade, bellowing orders as round shot roared past, each projectile a miniature hurricane, accompanied by a hail of Minie balls. Behind Keifer’s mount, a crazed soldier flailed his arms as if trying to fly, splashing blood from the stumps of his wrists and keening. Keifer’s words were unintelligible, but clearly he hoped to restore his failing attack.
The brigade commander spotted Ricketts and turned his horse to meet him.
The attack in the center had faltered almost from the start. And poor Getty, on the left, was trying to advance his division over even worse ground. Only the Nineteenth Corps, on the right, seemed to have made easy progress—although Ricketts didn’t trust it. The Rebs didn’t just quit.
Keifer’s bad arm flopped in its dirtied sling. Before the colonel could speak, Ricketts said:
“I don’t give a goddamn how you do it, but get your men moving again.”
“Yes, sir. It’s that damned artillery. And there’s a gap on my right.”
“Plug it. Then take those guns.”
“Yes, sir. I’m trying.”
“Don’t try. Do it, man.”
“Yes, sir. How’s Emerson coming?”
“I’ll see to Bill Emerson. Look to your own front.”
A round shot howled by, so close they could feel its tug, almost an abrasion.
“I heard that—”
“Vredenburgh’s dead, Dillingham’s good as dead, and I need you to get the Rebs off Emerson’s boys till I get them moving again. Plain enough?”
Keifer nodded.
“Well, get on with it,” Ricketts told him.
Keifer would be all right, Ricketts decided. Just needed to be encouraged. And whipped a little.
He plunged back into the smoke, trusting to Providence that his own men wouldn’t shoot him by mistake.
With half of Vredenburgh’s neck and a shoulder torn off, Captain Janeway had taken command of the 14th New Jersey and sent a runner back for further orders—an unnerved officer’s time-honored method of skirting a decision. Ricketts rode south until he struck the Pike, then turned directly into the Rebel fires until he found the inert lines of the New Jersey men, all lying flat, as if bedded down for the night.
Janeway ran toward him. Ricketts bent from the saddle.
Unwilling to destroy the captain’s meager authority, Ricketts hissed, “Janeway, get these men moving. Now.” The junior man’s face, boyish and gilded with sweat, showed earnestness, good intent, self-doubt, and naked fear—not of dying, but of making a fateful error at his sudden assumption of command.
“Captain,” Ricketts tried again, “get your men up and continue the attack. Everyone else is making progress,” he lied. “Keifer’s almost at the Rebel guns. I need New Jersey to pull its weight today, don’t shame your state. Now … you see to your work, and I’ll get those Vermonters back there moving up on your flank.”
Janeway saluted, foolish and formal, but rushed back to his men, calling, “Colors to me! Come on, New Jersey, we’re being left behind!”
Poker was honest work compared to a battle, Ricketts decided.
He made a point of riding calmly forward, into the midst of the rising New Jersey troops, demonstrating a disdain for bullets no sane man could feel. “Come on, lads,” he shouted, forcing up a smile. “I know I can always count on the old Fourteenth.”
Given purpose and an example, men cheered him, a rare enough thing.
Ricketts made for the 10th Vermont, lied to their officers, too, and got the men going by shaming them as well. Then he praised and embarrassed the 106th New York back into action. As soon as the New Yorkers stepped off again, the Reb art
illery showed it had their range, blasting great holes in their ranks, tearing men apart in a squall of blood. But the chemistry had changed and the survivors leaned into their work, quick-stepping forward, almost running, to regain their place beside their sister regiments.
His dead and wounded already crowded the fields and bands of trees, but Ricketts had his division moving again.
11:55 a.m.
Confederate center
Early screeched as he rode by Nelson’s battery.
“Pour it into ’em, give ’em hell,” the army’s commander cried. “God damn their blue-bellied souls. Just pour it into ’em.”
Ramseur’s Division was holding, desperately, but Gordon, who had promised a prompt arrival, seemed to have blundered into a scrap of his own on the far left flank. Early needed Rodes’ Division to come up—he needed it this minute—to plug the gap between Ramseur and Gordon.
It enraged him that he could not draw his army together purely by strength of will. He regretted the excursion to Martinsburg. Hell, he regretted half the things done and undone since ’61. And yes, he regretted the folly of burning Chambersburg, which he had ordered in a fit of pique, an order that fool McCausland had carried out all too well, doing his spelled-out duty for once in his life, his duty and more. Early regretted poorly chosen whores and ill-made whiskey, feuds unresolved and decent men estranged. But regret, he knew, wasn’t worth one busted rifle. Battle was of the moment, and a man in its midst did as well to celebrate past sins as to rue their doing. Conscience was a toy for men at peace.
He needed Bob Rodes. Now. And he needed Gordon to straighten out his fracas and steady the left. He needed that lazybones Fitz Lee, who had cowered too long on a sickbed, and his hardly better than worthless cavalry to do their part for once. But for the moment all he could do himself was give vent to his spite as the blue ranks rallied and pressed forward again.
“Pour it into those sonsofbitches,” he shouted in that high voice he had learned to hate himself, a voice just short of cronelike, a squeak that failed to match his splendid rage. “Kill every goddamned one of ’em.…”
12:05 p.m.
Ramseur’s Division
Stephen Dodson Ramseur watched in horror as his line broke and collapsed. Soldiers who had fought fiercely the minute before, coolly taking aim at the oncoming Yankees, began to turn from their barricades and trenches, ignoring the imprecations of their officers and fleeing, alone, then in little groups, and finally as a herd.
Delivered late and at close range, a Yankee volley scoured the line of piled-up fence rails shielding the last brave souls. Ramseur’s stoutest men turned their backs and tried to outrun an avalanche.
The Yankees cheered and surged forward.
Caught afoot, Ramseur plunged into the mob of men turned wild-eyed and frantic, men stricken by an epidemic of fear and rendered numb to the blows their officers struck with the flat of their sabers.
“For God’s sake, men! Stand and fight, stay and fight! Don’t run like women, stand!” Ramseur bullied and begged. He might have been a mockingbird, for all the good he did.
Where was that priss Gordon, where was Rodes? Dallying over breakfasts? While he held Sheridan’s army by himself?
“Stop, men! Make a stand! We’re not whipped yet.…”
“Hell we ain’t,” an insolent private snarled.
“I order every man to halt. On pain of death,” Ramseur shouted.
Not one man paused.
Ramseur picked up a discarded rifle, called, “Halt!” a last time, then started swinging the weapon by the barrel, clubbing his own men with the stock, sweeping it toward their heads as they scurried by. He hurt a few, left some bloody on the ground. All of them took it meekly, unresisting. That only made him madder.
Whether it was due to his bashing of skulls or divine intervention, a miracle gleamed: The last of his men, those who had been reluctant to withdraw, began to congeal, not quite in a line of battle, but in pockets of humanity crowding together, as if for warmth in winter. They turned their rifles on the Yankees again.
The blue advance was inexorable, though. It rolled toward them like a storm-driven tide.
But every moment, every slice off a moment, mattered terribly. The only hope of saving the rest of the army was to make the Yankees bleed for every yard.
So many of them, though. So many. Too many regimental flags to count.
His division was dissolving, from the left flank to the right. It had dissolved. And the Yankees seemed to be everywhere, with only random clots of gray-clad men and stubborn-to-the-death batteries resisting them.
A single aide remained to him, all others either slain or swept away.
Ramseur gripped the lieutenant by the forearm. “Find General Early. Tell him I can’t hold them any longer.”
12:05 p.m.
Gordon’s Division
“Georgia!” Gordon declaimed from the saddle, in a voice resonant and grand, a studied voice. “Georgia may have been surprised. Georgia may have been tricked by her low enemies. But Georgia has not been defeated. Georgia … dear Georgia … is not even dismayed. No, no! Not dismayed and barely incommoded. Georgia will rally and take her revenge on those tricksters garbed in blue.” He glowered at the disordered, panting men. “Put plain, we’re going to go back there and whip those bastards.”
The cheers from his shattered brigade were halfhearted at best, but at least they were cheers. He needed these men, his old men, needed every man. And he needed them soon. The battle growled like a monstrous bestiary as gun crews served their pieces in a fever and his other brigades, Zeb York’s Louisianans and Bill Terry’s Virginians, swung out against the snout of the Union attack, matching in ferocity, if briefly, the Federal advantage in numbers.
Gordon turned to Ed Atkinson, leading his old brigade in the absence—much lamented—of Clem Evans.
“Ed, I know these boys need time. But time is one commodity we don’t have. I need you to get them up and organized and back into the line. Won’t be long before the Yankees realize we’re snapping and snarling without a tail to wag.” He stared at the good, earnest, brave, unready man commanding his Georgians, the best choice of those available to him after the crippling bloodletting on the Monocacy. “I’m off to confer with General Rodes, see if we can’t cooperate, instead of just plugging up holes and crossing our fingers.”
Bob Rodes, bless him, had rushed up and gone straight into the line, just in time to prevent a rout, filling the gap between Gordon’s men and Ramseur’s thinned-out ranks, unleashing his leading brigade like an iron bar slammed down on a china teapot. And still it wasn’t enough. They were holding, and York and Terry had rolled back the foremost Yankees a few hundred yards—helped not a little by a battery some angel had dropped in the fields just north of a creek-cut, guns that swept the Yankees from the flank and did good business. But his gains and those of his comrades were as frail as a maiden’s wrists.
Trailed by a much-reduced staff, Gordon threaded his way between knots of stragglers and wounded men withdrawing as best they could. There seemed little danger to his person back here, with the Yankee artillery occupied in supporting their advance, but stray shots did have a way of mocking men. He rode gingerly.
He found Rodes conferring with Early, Bob nodding in his priceless way and stroking his mustaches, while Early carried on like a shopkeeper robbed and upbraiding the constable.
As Gordon approached, he heard Early say, “Close-run thing, close-run, but we can hold now. Just shore things up, we’ll hold them now, all right.”
Rodes told him, “It won’t be enough, they’ll only pound us down. Sheridan won’t quit. Grant saw to that, I reckon.”
“And you propose?” Early snapped. “What? A charge? Like damned-fool Lee at Gettysburg?” He turned, sour-faced, to Gordon. “How about you, Gordon? What do you suggest? Figure I’d better ask, since you’re bound to tell me anyway. Now that you’re done dawdling down the road.” He looked bitterly from Gordon back to
Rodes and at Gordon again, shaking his head. “Jackson would have stripped both of you of your commands.”
Gordon resisted noting that Early wasn’t Jackson.
“I believe,” Gordon said in a voice artificially calm, “that General Rodes is right. If we just defend, they’re going to grind us down. Our only hope—a slim one, I grant—is to hit them right now, hard. We can do it, Bob here can do it. There’s a gap opening up, just about in the center of their attack. My bet’s on a corps boundary. Division, at least. The wing facing me’s drifting north, while the other’s hooking south. Bob’s fresh boys can run right down the middle.” He turned toward Rodes and smiled. “Or turn Cull Battle loose when he comes up.”
“I haven’t seen any gap,” Early said.
“It’s there.”
Rodes jumped in, lying his teeth off: “John’s right. I’ve seen it myself. They’ve split themselves apart, smack dab in the middle of their attack. I can ram right through.”
For all his surliness, it was clear that Early was pondering matters, giving their recommendations a fair hearing in his peculiar way. And Early, Gordon knew, was an attacker at heart, not one content to surrender the initiative.
“Damn me to bloody, blue blazes, all right, then,” Early declared. “Rodes, you see a chance, you go on in. Rip the guts out of those sonsofbitches.” He grinned, surprising both men, displaying bad teeth above his clotted beard. He canted his head northward. “My huntin’ ears tell me you’ve got yourself into another difficulty, Gordon. I’m hearing Yankee hurrahs. Best go see to it.”
And Early rode away.
The Yankee artillery fire intensified.
“Christ,” Gordon said. “Sheridan’s not playing jacks, give the little mick that. By the way, there really is a gap, Bob.”
The generals smiled at each other. “Well, if there wasn’t a gap, I suppose we’d have to make one,” Rodes allowed. “I can’t see waiting politely while Sheridan leads the dance. Shock ’em, John, it’s the only hope we’ve got.”
