by Ralph Peters
With the letter in his pocket, he walked the line again, watching the Yankees across the little valley. They swarmed like bees without the heart to sting. His enemies had suffered, too. He had made them suffer. He didn’t believe they were eager to bleed again.
The only thing that worried him was their numbers. Only way they’d won that fight: sheer numbers. Yanks hadn’t shown a lick of skill at Winchester, not one hint of tactical finesse.
Clouds off to the west, past Little North Mountain. Rain in the night, Ramseur figured. Trenches would get muddy as pigpens in May. Nothing to be done about it.
He had to stop, to stand stone still, and close his eyes against the throb in his head. Lord, the hordes of Yankees back at Winchester, those endless ranks of blue …
Winchester. He had expected praise from Jubal Early. His men had been the first to fight in the morning and the last to leave the battlefield at night. But all Early offered anyone was abuse. Ramseur recalled, with a rueful smile, how he once had hoped to be Early’s favored subordinate. Early didn’t like anyone.
Warm day. Not hot, but bright, painfully bright. The clouds to the west moved so slowly, they seemed to hold still. Could have used their shade that very minute. Head hurting like he’d been kicked by Jenkins’ mule.
Trailed by new aides in place of those lost at Winchester, Ramseur strode toward the emplacements of the Fluvanna Artillery.
Bryan Grimes intercepted him. The brigadier was limping—almost hopping—and clearly agitated.
“General Ramseur?”
“How may I serve you, Bryan?”
“Sir, we have to send a brigade, at least a brigade, down to Lomax. Cavalry won’t hold, not without support. There’s Yankees all over the mountain, they’ll turn his flank.”
What on earth?
Almost unwillingly, Ramseur turned to face Little North Mountain, shielding his eyes.
“What are you talking about?”
Grimes pointed. “That bald spot. Halfway up, or thereabouts. See that file of Yankees?”
Ramseur peered at the mountainside. “Only thing I see looks like a fence row. I don’t see anything moving.”
“Call for your field glasses, sir. There’s Yankees up there. On my honor, one Tar Heel to another. They’re going to come down behind Lomax, way they’re moving.”
Ramseur just wanted to close his eyes, but he forced an indulgent smile. He didn’t want to get off to a bad start with a new subordinate. “Well, if you’re right, it’s probably just a scouting party. Even the Yankees aren’t fools enough to attack that way, they’d fall to pieces.”
Grimes opened his mouth to reply but seemed to think better of it.
“What’s that limp of yours about?” Ramseur asked to soothe things.
The brigadier shrugged. “Damned-fool thing. Just plain walking along, not even running. And I gave my ankle a twist, craziest thing.”
“Well, go sit down, rest up. You’re apt to be needed over the next few days.”
Grimes saluted, crestfallen. “Keep watch on that mountain, sir. I’d be beholden.”
Alone again—but for his anxious aides—Ramseur continued on to the gun positions. He valued artillery and liked to display his knowledge. But as he walked in front of a piece drawn back for a repair, a sergeant said, “General, there’s blue-bellies on that mountain yonder, a right bushel.”
Ramseur took a breath to stay his temper.
“I know what’s caught your eye. It’s just a fence row.”
“Well, sir, that there’s a moving fence row, if it’s a fence at all.” The man’s tone was all but insolent. Had Rodes allowed such back talk? Or was it yet another mark of defeat? Ramseur shook his head, just to himself, and it felt as though his brains banged around in his skull. Everybody had the jumps. And the cannoneers around him plainly put more stock in their comrade’s words than in their general’s.
Only one way to settle this, Ramseur decided. He turned to his nearest aide.
“Go back and fetch my field glasses.”
But the battery commander had come up. He drew his own binoculars from their case. “Here. Use mine, sir.”
With an outright sigh, Ramseur took the glasses, tilted up the front brim of his hat, and began to scan the mountain a mile or so off.
He saw nothing but jutting gray rocks. Trees. Green tresses and tangles.
Then he stopped and held the glasses steady.
“My God.”
3:50 p.m.
Little North Mountain
Rud Hayes grabbed a branch in time to stop himself from tumbling down the mountainside.
“Careful, Rud,” Crook told him. Crook was grinning, despite the day’s exertions. “I need you to help me out of this fix I’m in.”
But they weren’t in a fix, at least not yet. The movement up the side of the mountain and then along its flank had required sweat and muscle-burning effort, as well as costing any number of busted ankles and one broken leg, but the men, coming along in Indian files, had suspended their common complaints, with every veteran grasping what they were doing and what it might mean. Quiet curses erupted now and then as men lost their footing or banged a knee, but the corps as a whole moved in remarkable quiet, eager and murderous.
Hayes’ personal concern was the poison ivy, of which he had had quite enough across the summer.
Down where the armies faced one another, rifle fire annoyed the afternoon, inconsequential. These scrambling men would be Destiny’s executors.
Destiny? Did such a thing exist? Or was there just an endless collision of human aspirations, governed by chance? Lucy believed in a good and gracious God shaping mortal affairs, and Hayes had never belittled her beliefs. Belief such as hers was a gift, a wonderful comfort, but one he lacked. If he were to fall this day, he expected to fade into nature, into the general immanence, nothing more. War made it hard to credit a merciful God.
“Rud, you’re wheezing,” Crook teased. The corps commander was a few years the younger, but looked to be the older of the two. Crook had lived rough in remote, hardscrabble garrisons, while Hayes had resided in pleasant homes and offices lined with law books.
“Just drinking deep of the fine Virginia air,” Hayes told his superior. “Wouldn’t be half-bad here, but for the war.”
Correcting his footing, Crook said, “Ought to see the Northwest. Hard place, hard. But beautiful, the grandeur. You there, soldier! Tie up that canteen and stop making that racket.”
Hayes and Crook moved a hundred yards behind the head of the column, with Hayes determined to lead and do his duty, and Crook as avid to maintain control. Joe Thoburn had walked along with them for a time before going back to hurry his men along.
Really, it was astonishing. They just might pull it off, Hayes told himself.
The trees broke for a dozen yards, offering a view of the armies below. Puffing smoke, irregular lines stretched toward the hidden river. Beyond, Three Top Mountain loomed. Early’s army was a cork in a bottle.
And they were out to snap off the bottle’s neck.
“By God, we’re all but behind them,” Crook said.
Shots cracked up ahead. Stray shots, then a flurry. No volleys, though.
Hayes felt Crook tense and understood: It wasn’t the shots that worried him, Reb pickets had been inevitable. He just didn’t want his men to start up a howl and warn Early of the size of the force about to descend on his flank.
Crook hurried forward, plowing through a tangle of poison ivy. Hayes went around the bushes and rushed to catch up.
He soon rejoined Crook, who was questioning a captain.
“Only pickets,” the captain assured them both. “No more than a company, and a weak one. They skedaddled.”
“Damn it, though,” Crook said.
Panting, Hayes offered, “We’ve got them. It’s all right.”
Crook nodded. He told the captain, “Push on another two hundred yards, then hold up.”
The Rebs knew something was doing, though.
Artillery shells began crashing into the hillside, splintering trees. But the Johnnies were firing blind, guessing at targets.
“Hold up, halt!” Crook called.
“Division, halt!” Hayes echoed.
The order ran down the line. Hayes wondered how much the Rebs below them could hear. The Confederate artillery provided covering noise, a quirk of war, aiding an enemy.
“Left … face!”
That command ran down the column as well, converting the Indian files into two long ranks. Men pivoted as smartly as they could on the steep hillside. Hayes’ division formed the southernmost wing of Crook’s command, thrust beyond the Rebs’ front line, and he figured the best formation was the simplest. Speed was of more value than finesse.
“Advance your men,” Crook told him.
And off they went, gravity tugging them down the mountainside, with soldiers allowing themselves to hurry, barely maintaining a semblance of good order. Excitement sparked through the air.
Hayes soon caught the animal sense himself, the predator’s foreknowledge that this charge would be irresistible. In their haste, men tripped and plunged face-first. Rifles discharged accidentally. Struggling color-bearers trailed their flags, yanking them from the clutch of branches and briars. But every man’s heart raced.
They were going to roll up the Rebs like a parlor carpet.
“Hold them back,” Crook called as the bottom neared. “Hayes, keep your men together.”
But the soldiers wouldn’t wait. Sensing level, open ground ahead, the entire corps broke into a wild roar. Anticipating an order, men began charging.
Ignoring the pleas of their officers for discipline, dozens, then hundreds, then thousands, of men exploded from the tree line. Flags rose and unfurled. Soldiers hurrahed as if they’d already fought and won a victory. The savagery of it felt barbarous, as if his men were Huns from the pages of Gibbon.
“Come on, boys!” he shouted, unable to contain himself, encouraging men who needed no encouragement.
Ahead, a paltry line of Rebs fired from a barricade of fence rails. But they didn’t fire long. Men in blue swept over the obstacle, knocking it to pieces, collaring prisoners whose faces still shone with amazement.
Hayes wasn’t sure he commanded anything now. He was just one man among many, his rank stripped of its potency. He kept up as best he could.
The veterans didn’t need his guidance, anyway. They stormed across the intervening low ground, brushing aside all resistance, to aim at the heights where the Reb infantry waited, up where the Johnnies were hurriedly countermarching and manhandling guns, shocked and caught unready.
The gray columns scrambling to refuse the flank were too few. Hayes saw that his division—his bellowing, beautiful mob—stretched well beyond the defenses. On his left, Thoburn’s boys encountered resistance, blasted by artillery up on the hill, but they soon surged forward again.
The national colors, division and brigade flags, the torn regimental standards, all thrust onward, racing ahead, climbing the slope with their blue-coated clans about them. Few men fell. The handful of Johnnies opposing them couldn’t reload fast enough to stop them.
On the right, the last Reb cavalry bolted, with Averell’s troopers charging them in the wake of Crook’s attack. To the left, Confederate infantry made a hopeless stand in Thoburn’s path while cannoneers harnessed horses to save their guns. Straight ahead, a patchwork skirmish line faced Hayes’ division.
“Straight for their rear!” Hayes called. “Go straight for their rear!”
Enraptured, he wasn’t panting anymore. Pointing his pistol up the long slope, he shouted his throat raw.
On the distant left, the noise of battle swelled. Sheridan had advanced the rest of the army, Hayes figured, taking swift advantage of Crook’s success.
Most of the Rebs on the heights turned tail and ran as their foes closed in, but a lone brigade stood its ground, ragged and fierce. They were giving Thoburn’s lead regiments all they had.
Hayes had no idea who led those Johnnies, but he had to admire the man.
Colliding more than once with rushing men as he traversed the field, Hayes found Hiram Devol of his old brigade and ordered him to outflank the Rebs blocking Thoburn, to put an end to that lonely, desperate valor.
“Threaten their flank,” Hayes said. “They’ll break, they’ll catch the panic.”
The brigade’s color-bearer staggered. Another man caught the flag.
Devol said, “They’re already breaking, look.”
Across the entire field, hurrahs rang out. Fleet with excitement, Hayes rushed back to his right, outpacing the younger officers on his staff. He couldn’t recall such pure exhilaration, but he never had been part of so easy a victory.
When Hayes rejoined the vanguard of his division atop the heights, he saw an unrivaled spectacle of defeat. Men in gray and shades of mottled brown fled by the thousands, converging on the one road left to them all or just plain running through the countryside. Mounted batteries whipped their way southward and caissons overturned, crushing men and toppling the rear teams, tangling harness and panicking horses left upright. Waving their swords and evidently pleading, maddened officers rode through the mob that had been a proud army only minutes before. When an ambulance lost a wheel, its crazed team dragged it along until it splintered, flinging its cargo. In ruptured defenses, abandoned cannon waited, silent and prim, for a change of masters. A headquarters tent collapsed as men tripped over its ropes. Soldiers sprawled forward, shot in the back. A wagon laden with ammunition exploded.
It reminded Hayes of an illustration he’d seen of the Last Judgment.
5:00 p.m.
Confederate center
As Ramseur’s worthless cowards ran, Early galloped for Pegram’s leftmost regiment, a hundred honest men who had not budged. Closing on the trench line, he recognized the flag of the 13th Virginia.
Riding straight for Captain Sam Buck, Early shouted at the top of his voice, “You, Buck! You men, all of you! Stop those goddamned cowards down there. Shoot ’em like dogs, if they won’t do their duty.”
Buck’s face showed incomprehension. What couldn’t the lowborn simpleton understand?
“I said stop any coward who retreats,” Early railed, hating the high-pitched sound of his own voice. “Any man who won’t stop, shoot him dead!” Growing more furious by the moment, he shrieked, “What are you waiting for? Shoot those yellow bastards, shoot them now!”
Buck shook his head. Slowly. As if the damned fool couldn’t do that much right. The Virginians closed around their captain, in evident support. Glaring at Early. Insubordinate. Traitorous.
Early pointed at the mob of fugitives again. “I said shoot them, damn you.”
Sullen as a whipped buck nigger, a Virginian threw down his rifle, then just stood there. Eyes on Early. Another man cast down his weapon, too. Then another.
“I won’t give that order, sir,” Buck said at last.
“Then you be damned!”
5:00 p.m.
Union Sixth Corps
Sheridan wove in and out of the foremost skirmish line, waving his hat and shouting, “We’ve got ’em, boys, come on! Crook’s in their rear, don’t let him have all the glory! The cavalry’s chasing them high-tail, come on, come on! Don’t let up, go after them! Don’t stop!”
Wherever he rode, men cheered as they rushed forward.
5:15 p.m.
Gordon’s Division
Nobody could rightly tell what the devil was going on, only that something wasn’t exactly right. Uproar aplenty, a ways over on the left, but the Yankees had been fussing around all day. Nichols couldn’t see much, what with the turn of the ground and thickening smoke to westward. Just dark clouds high up, rolling over that mountain. But they all heard Yankee cheering and no Rebel yells.
It wasn’t fear of the blue-bellies themselves that pestered Nichols. Wasn’t scared of fighting them one bit, he didn’t believe. But he’d sprouted a dread of being captured, a
nd he wasn’t apt to go handsome on his bad leg. It hurt, too, even when he kept his weight on the other foot. Not that there was much weight to him nowadays. All he could do was hobble, like Jackie Tate, the crippled fellow back home, the one who sat outside the livery barn, a butt of jokes. Clear as a vision from the Lord, Nichols foresaw Yankees overtaking him, pummeling him, mocking.
He stood in the trench beside his friends, growing uneasy but held in place by pride. Waiting for the Yankees to be fool enough to try to climb that bank right to their front. Steep as a wall, it made for the best position on Fisher’s Hill, officers and men alike agreed. No Yankee was coming up that just-about cliff and living to brag on it.
And when the Yankees blundered forward at last, sure enough, they didn’t get very far. They just fumbuddled around, as if they couldn’t make up their minds to step up and do their duty. They weren’t the problem, although they wanted watching. The worrisome doings were elsewhere, off in that westward ruckus, off where a man couldn’t see.
Not knowing was a terrible thing.
General Gordon showed himself, though not for long. He rode off looking as though the Devil were at him, sour as pickles. In his wake, the officers got jittery, telling their men too often to stand tall.
“Gordon takes on that look of his, ain’t nothing good ahead,” Ive Summerlin noted.
And there wasn’t nothing good. The battle marched nearer, still unseen. Scared fellows ran by, wailing that the Yankees were in the army’s rear. All they got was hard jests for their yellowness. Then the artillerymen on the left dragged off their guns with ropes, hauling them back to be hitched up to their limbers.
It was the rarest thing for the guns to desert them. Without even waiting to learn what was afoot.
“Dear Jesus Lord,” Tom Boyet cried.
And there they were, the Yankees. Over where that battery had been, one crest away.
