Valley of the Shadow: A Novel

by Ralph Peters

  It would be all right now. Sheridan had appeared mesmerized himself, but had snapped out of his trance in time, recovering his spunk and telling Wright, in Russell’s presence, to “send Russell in right now, put this in order.”

  And Russell meant to stop the bloody crumbling. He had been chafing, anxious to help Jim Ricketts and George Getty. The way Russell read the field, Early was desperate, throwing in all he had. If the Nineteenth Corps just held out on the right, Russell believed he could not only blunt the Rebel assault—which seemed to him to be thinning—but reverse the tide again.

  Ollie Edwards had taken in his Third Brigade, and the First Brigade was coming up fast, ready to swing in on Ollie’s flank. Russell intended to use those brigades to stabilize the line and grind back the Rebs. Then he’d unleash Upton and his Second Brigade.

  Upton was an enigma, a hardened Christian, mean as a Turk. The boy-general’s hostility to slavery was at least as fierce as that of a Knight Templar toward Mahomet. A brilliant, intolerant, merciless young man, Upton had seemed a madcap martinet, yet had outperformed every other officer in the entire army at Spotsylvania and Cold Harbor.

  Russell meant to send in Upton the moment the Johnnies wavered.

  Work to do in the meantime, though. He rode through the spatter kicked up by errant shells, ghosting through billows of smoke and passing knots of soldiers catching their wind after their flight. The stream of wounded only convinced him that everything hung on a few quick actions.

  Half a soldier’s torso hung from a tree.

  After overtaking two regiments of his First Brigade, the 4th and 10th New Jersey, Russell personally led them forward until he was certain they were solidly on his line of attack. The men seemed game and grisly. Next, he rallied two orphaned regiments from Jim Ricketts’ division, sending them up on the flank of the New Jersey men.

  Russell could feel it, sense the momentum shifting. The Confederates had advanced too far, running themselves breathless and losing contact on their flanks. The balance was tipping again on this seesaw day.

  He spotted Ollie Edwards from a distance, making out his profile through scarves of smoke. Ollie was in the thick of it, cap pulled down and sword thrust out, directing his brigade in the advance.

  Russell gave his horse the spurs, warning himself to master his emotions: His impulse was to ignore his own resolve and call for Upton to go in immediately, to come up behind Edwards and add weight … but boldness was one thing, impetuosity another. Discipline, not passion, had to rule.

  The world was alive with possibilities, though, with the prospect of victory, of the field redeemed. And Russell knew himself to be as ambitious as the next man.

  Discipline, he warned himself. You ask it of your soldiers, show it yourself.

  It was ever a thrill to command men going forward, to feel the power and thrust. There simply was nothing like it in the world. But it was a power that needed harnessing.

  And he owed it to Little Phil to save this battle. After all, he had been Sheridan’s captain back in the old Army, when their relationship had been reversed. Hadn’t he trained Sheridan for his astonishing rise? Little Phil’s victory—or loss—would be Russell’s legacy, too.

  As he neared the front line, men dropped on every side. The firing was quick and lethal, veterans killing veterans with resolve. Nor was he certain that either side wasn’t firing on its own kind amid the confusion: There was no solid battlefront now, just a savage ebb and flow. Dueling batteries warred like the gods above the plains of Troy.

  Amid the uproar, he caught up with Ollie Edwards.

  “Charge them, Ollie. They’ll fold like a poor hand at cards. Just charge and keep going.”

  12:55 p.m.

  Dinkle farm, east fields

  Colonel Oliver Edwards turned to explain that he planned to go forward en echelon, but as his mouth opened he heard a thud he recognized. Beside him, Russell jerked in the saddle, then stiffened.

  “Good God, General … are you badly … how badly are you hurt?”

  Clutching his side with one hand, Russell waved away his concerns with the other. “It makes no difference, Ollie. Not at a time like this.” He gasped. “Go on and charge. Order your brigade to charge.”

  Russell appeared to be stuffing his shirt into his side, attempting to stop up a deep wound. Yet the general managed to draw his saber.

  “Charge, Ollie! I’ll go with you!”

  A shell burst above the two officers, deafening, rending the air with gale force. Gashed at the neck, Edwards’ horse reared and whinnied. As he struggled to control his mount, the brigade commander saw that fortune had favored him, but had finished Russell.

  The division commander leaned oddly in his saddle, as if he meant to fall but was unable. Blood painted what was left of him. A third of his chest had been torn away.

  Men rushed toward them. Russell’s orderly reached the general first, but seemed afraid to touch him. Russell’s cut-up horse meandered, wobbling. The general’s body pitched about, but remained eerily in the saddle.

  In a voice as fierce and heartless as battle demanded, Edwards told the orderly: “Leave him. Go find Upton. He’s senior, he’s got the division.”

  And God help us, Edwards thought.

  1:00 p.m.

  Center of the battlefield

  “And there was given unto him a great sword…”

  Brigadier General Emory Upton had been chosen by the Lord for this day’s purpose. The hand of Jehovah was at work, even in Russell’s death. God’s wisdom did not yield to the will of men, or to their sentiments.

  He, Emory Upton, had been given a great sword.

  “Maintain your ranks,” he called to his hurrying soldiers.

  The Lord had opened his eyes, as the Lord had seen fit to open them before, letting him spy the weakness of Satan’s legions. How else explain the way he saw opportunities to which those who served beside him remained blind?

  “Come on, men!” he called sharply. The double-quick pace was not quite quick enough, not for Emory Upton.

  His men came on, and they had the force of a multitude. He had been mocked for his rigor at drill, his discipline. The unbelieving never understood. Now, in the storm of battle, on a field obscured, his brigade rushed forward with a precision unmatched and a bloodlust unrivaled. Men who had hated him cheered him. Reviled, he had redeemed himself in fire.

  “And there was war in Heaven…”

  He would shine again, upon this battlefield. His brigade—now it was his division, too—would gleam like the archangels. And his division would not take one step back.

  “And out of his mouth goeth a sharp sword,” he recited to himself, “that with it he should smite the nations: and he shall rule them with a rod of iron; and he treadeth the winepress of the fierceness and wrath of Almighty God.”

  The division’s other brigades had staunched the slave-drivers’ attack, and the Lord had revealed, as if divine light had cut through the clouds of smoke, that the enemies of God and man had an exposed flank as tasty as a cutlet.

  He came up on Ranald Mackenzie, who had turned the 2nd Connecticut Heavy Artillery into an infantry regiment as good as any. Mackenzie was not a devout man. Upton even suspected him of unseemly lust toward women. But Mackenzie fought worthily, bravely, wonderfully. He, too, would be a tool of the Lord this day.

  “Our day, Mackenzie, this is our day. Deploy when you reach those trees. The brigade pivots on you.”

  “Shame about Russell, sir.”

  “God’s will be done.”

  Mackenzie rode to the head of the column, spirit immune to danger. His sword soon flashed, pointing the way, and the blue ranks began to unfold into battle formation, their actions crisp, nearly flawless. Bayonets shone like the fiery swords of angels.

  The first rank disappeared into a grove between two batteries. Upton noted Tompkins, the corps’ artillery chief, seated placidly on his horse, watching matters unfold as if he were viewing a sporting match of no par
ticular interest. A man of suspect theology but courage, Tompkins, too, had done the Lord’s work this day.

  Upton rode southwest, until he found Oliver Edwards, whose brigade gnawed forward. The carnage was hideous to the eyes of men, but surely pleasing to the Lord as a sacrifice to the cause of Abolition.

  Upton’s first extended contact with Negroes had come at Oberlin College, to which he had walked, still a boy, from his family’s farm on the hard soil of western New York. Striving beside them as he sought to prepare for a place at West Point—a place he prayed God would grant him, as God did—he had found those colored scholars reverent toward God, respectful toward men, and hungry for knowledge. They were no less human because of the hue of their flesh. No less, but more, by virtue of their suffering. Godly men, the lost tribe of Israel found, those sweet-souled Negroes had led him to fight slavery with every means in his power, standing—at first alone—against the Southern cadets at West Point, and now, on this day, on this field, for the sublime cause of freedom for all, a brigadier general, by the Lord’s grace, at the age of twenty-five.

  “Edwards, you’ve got to push harder. They’re ready to break. Don’t stop!”

  He could read the other man’s face, the face of a common sinner but fair soldier: temper, resentment.

  Jealousy?

  “Yes, sir.” Edwards’ eyes had narrowed, not from the smoke. The colonel added, “My boys have pushed them back a quarter mile, they’re hardly shirking.”

  “A good start, Edwards. But no more than a start.”

  A roar rose on their right.

  “Hamblin’s got my brigade,” Upton said. “Mackenzie’s in the lead. They’re splitting the Rebs open, the way they tried to split us. They’ll break in your front, too. Run them down like dogs.”

  “I don’t think my boys will have to be told.”

  “And don’t fuss about prisoners,” Upton added.

  He next rode to Campbell, who led the division’s First Brigade and its solid New Jersey regiments. Campbell’s men had thrust past a farmyard encrusted with dead Rebels and crawling with wounded. It was a splendid sight, a righteous judgment.

  After ensuring that Campbell understood he was to maintain his alignment with Edwards at all costs, Upton galloped back through the carnage and wasteland of smashed caissons and discarded weapons, avoiding the wounded as best he could but halting for no man, outrunning the staff inherited from Russell. He did not slow until he had caught up to his old brigade. With Mackenzie’s defrocked cannoneers setting the pace, the brigade had burst from a grove a mere hundred yards from the flank of the Confederates.

  The result had been devastating. The slave-drivers and whoremongers had barely resisted. Now they ran.

  Upton rode to the fore of his advancing, unbroken ranks, careless of any Rebels who wished him harm. The Lord would take him when the Lord saw fit, and his soul would rise up as his body fell.

  On his right flank, the Nineteenth Corps was under way again, punching forward, too.

  Paring the air with his sword, Upton kept pace with the blue ranks striding westward. After their first contact with the enemy, the men of his old brigade had re-formed immediately, advancing shoulder to shoulder. These men had mocked his rigor, as another had been mocked. But not now, not today. In battle, they were as firm as Frederick’s Prussians. He and the Lord had made them so.

  “And there was war in Heaven…,” Upton whispered, “and Satan which deceiveth the whole world: he was cast out … and his angels were cast out with him.”

  The last Rebels quit their attempts at organized volleys and made for the rear, even as slave-master officers tried to rally them. Soon enough, Upton’s ranks outpaced the smoke, emerging into a brilliant afternoon marred only by puffs from batteries resisting the Lord’s judgment.

  “And there was given unto him a great sword,” Upton repeated.

  2:00 p.m.

  Gordon’s Division

  All chance of a victory was gone, bled out, and the best hope now was for a stalemate until dark, followed by another Yankee withdrawal. But Gordon had begun to doubt even that possibility. Sheridan would not quit; he felt it and feared it.

  The shelling and rifle fire had grown so intense that he had dismounted, sending his horse back to lower ground. It was an action taken with great reluctance. The soldiers liked to see officers on horseback—especially him.

  “Try again,” he told Atkinson, wishing all the while Clem Evans were back. “Ed, I know the men are tired. But we have to silence that battery. Force them back, at least.”

  The Yankees opposite his division had finally brought their guns to bear effectively, disabling two of the precious cannon north of Red Bud Run and blunting every attempt at a fresh counterattack. His men had been driven back again and again to a rocky ledge, savages in gray confronting savages in blue and dying for a gain of a dozen yards, only to see it lost again.

  The pounding of the artillery was terrific, the bass drums of battle beating a rhythm beneath the rifle volleys.

  Atkinson’s posture was that of an old man, a portrait of weariness, as if he had aged decades in a day. Traces of blood streaked the powder smudges on his forehead and cheeks.

  “Yes, sir,” he told Gordon. “Just need to fill their cartridge boxes.”

  “No. Now. You have to go now. I don’t care if you have to use your bayonets.”

  “Sir…”

  “Damn it, Ed. I feel for those men just as much as you do. I led them for most of this war. I know their names, I know their wives’ names, I just about know each man’s stink. But they have to do what they have to do.”

  Atkinson was willing, but barely able. Gone pale, despite the ravages of the sun.

  “Come on,” Gordon said. And he led the way himself, shouting at the Georgians, calling out the names of valiant men he knew, cajoling them to give their lives for the faintest of faint hopes.

  He had discarded his sword and scabbard as too unwieldy, and he pointed the way with his pistol. His soldiers followed him again, some even cheering, despite their long-dry throats. They leapt from their cover of trees and lips of stone and broken walls, advancing raggedly but doggedly, their bravery scorned by Yankee volleys, a lottery of death.

  “Don’t stop, boys, don’t stop!” But Gordon let the men pass him now, aware that he had to act as a major general, not a captain. Risk, yes. But not folly. Early needed him whole. The entire army needed him. As it needed Ramseur and Cull Battle, and Breckinridge, who had got caught up in a bad fight to the north. Rodes was dead, and Zeb York, of Gordon’s Louisiana Brigade, had been carried off terribly wounded. And the toll down among the line officers was grim.

  Returning to a scrap of trees, pursued by breathless aides, he turned only to see his men repelled again—not running, but retiring, their movements those of laborers exhausted by the hardest work of their lives, put to a task they just could not perform. As Gordon watched, a man threw wide his arms and fell.

  For all that, the nearest Yankee battery appeared to be pulling back. Out of ammunition or out of nerve.

  How many lives had that cost?

  Don’t try to count them now, Gordon told himself.

  He wanted a drink of cool water, but there was none. Perhaps there’d be well water back at the house he’d picked as the centerpiece of his next position, should the Yankees force him back again.

  Hold until night, just hold until night. Don’t let them turn the flank.

  A Yankee who had been too brave to survive, who had come too far, sat bedazzled against the trunk of a tree, cramming intestines back into his belly. He didn’t even move his lips, just clawed at his slopping innards. His hands worked like the paws of a frantic mouse.

  That is war as it is, Gordon thought, not as men will remember it.

  Had to give Early credit, that was a fact. After that pigheaded rush to Martinsburg and the break-a-man night march back, Early had shone on this battlefield, ornery but everywhere, full of bile, but equally full of figh
t. Gordon had to admit that for all the individual bravery he had witnessed, it was Early who had made the right decisions with promptitude, a man as gifted as he was unlikable.

  The human species never failed to interest John Gordon.

  “Here they come!” a soldier shouted.

  And the Yankees took their turn at failure. Tiny gains were soon reduced to no gains. When this latest round of firing eased again on Gordon’s front, the armies glared at each other over their guns, each unable to advance and unwilling to retreat.

  They had come close, so close, to embarrassing Sheridan. Only to be driven back a mile and more. Now they stood behind barricades of hate. Waiting.

  He would not, dare not, let on, but Gordon’s spirit was not as firm as his posture. He sensed that if Sheridan managed to bring up more forces—if he had more troops available and used them with any art—Early could not hold on for very much longer. Valor might withstand numbers, but only to a point: After all, the Persians, not the Greeks, had won at Thermopylae.

  Early understood. They all did. The jolly naïveté of this war’s early days had been put to death. And every man in command knew that a retreat, if forced upon them now, would break not only morale, but perhaps the army. With Winchester at their backs, a debacle loomed.

  The only hope was to hold on until night.

  “I will encounter darkness as a bride, and hug it in mine arms…” That was Shakespeare, Gordon knew, though he could not recall which play. What good had his love of the classics done, after all? War took men beyond words, exposed their uselessness. Strut an hour upon the stage, indeed.

  What if they couldn’t hold, if they just could not? Fanny was in Winchester, and she wouldn’t be sensible. She’d wait for him, or news of him, before leaving. And by then it might be too late. She was such a hardheaded, irresistible woman.

  A woman worth living for, that one.

  In the lull that fell upon his weary soldiers, another encounter, off to the north, grew audible. Were Breckinridge and Wharton still up there, trying to stave off some unholy passel of Yankees? Gordon knew that Early had sent repeated orders to Breckinridge to come down to Winchester at once, but every battle had a mind of its own. And if Breckinridge did obey, who would stand in the way of a Yankee envelopment? Fitz Lee? Gordon had seen him in passing that morning. Lee had been fit for a Chimborazo ward, leading his tattered cavalry when he should have been in bed, taking quinine.