by Ralph Peters
That too-familiar thwack struck horribly close. His horse reared, then dropped on its forelegs. It all went too fast and Hayes flew off, going black the moment he thumped the earth.
Perhaps the racket woke him. He sensed that he had not been unconscious long. He tried to gain his feet, only to collapse, hands grabbing his ankle before his brain had classified the pain.
Broken? Please, no. He tested the lower shinbone, down to the working bones and ligaments, that hard knuckle. He could have used Doc Joe, but had not seen him since the fighting began.
Quickly, Hayes fought his way to his feet, growling down his pain. His soldiers were gone. Had they thought him dead? He made an agonized effort to follow after them.
“You halt right there and surrender, you sonofabitch,” a Southern voice called.
Killing close?
Hayes ran. Hobbled and ablaze with pain, he cast himself into a gnarl of trees, ignoring the penny-nail thorns. Every other step sent a shock through his body.
Bullets sought him.
In another of the morning’s maddened turns, he found himself in a throng of milling soldiers, his own men.
“Boys! Come on, boys! We’ll stand, we’ll hold them here,” he shouted, limping and hoping.
Something slammed into the back of his head, knocking him to the ground and leaving him dizzied but conscious. He understood that he had been shot and urgently thrust a paw back over his skull.
No blood. Wonderfully, amazingly. Only a stunned feeling that his head was ten times its size, plus a wild ringing and a terrible moment’s loss of vision. Either the bullet had been utterly spent or its velocity had been slowed by a passage through other flesh.
During the moments required to make sense of his situation, his soldiers had fled again: A fallen commander hardly inspired courage.
An aide appeared, miraculously, from the mist, clomping forward on a roan as bullets wasped the air. He spotted Hayes and dismounted.
“You all right, sir?”
“That … would be an exaggeration. Good enough, though.”
“They told me you were dead. I thought I should—”
“I’m not. No thanks to the Johnnies.”
The aide helped him to his feet. Hayes winced and buckled. “Ankle.”
“Take my horse, sir. You’re more of a prize than I am.”
Briefly, Hayes considered turning him down: the old notions of honor, of Walter Scott gallantry. But he saw quickly enough that rallying what remained of his division and buying time for the army to deploy—playing his assigned part—mattered far more than storybook chivalry.
“Help me up.”
Hayes rode rearward, leaving the aide behind. With his head throbbing, the ankle pain sharp as a toothache when he pressed the stirrup, and visibility still a matter of yards, he did his best to gain the Valley Pike, certain that would be the line where the resolute men rallied, a marker on the landscape that made sense and promised order. And that was where the generals would be, organizing the defense and bringing up the Sixth Corps. That was where the Rebels could be stopped.
As he reckoned his way northwestward—wishing that he’d pocketed his compass—he managed to gather a few small clusters of men from his division, captains leading companies the size of water details and sergeants too ill-tempered to give up, all of them ready to follow him as long as he was heading away from the Rebels. By the time his new mount’s hooves struck the hardened Pike, Hayes had rallied sixty of the fourteen hundred men who had been present for duty an hour before.
His head throbbed, leaving his vision blurred at the edges.
He worked his way up the grade of the Pike between overturned wagons and inexplicable wreckage, calling to the hundreds of soldiers drifting rearward, attempting to graft strays from other divisions to his command, to build a useful force, but the plodding soldiers ignored him.
At least he seemed to have gained some ground on the Rebs: Their racket lagged back a ways.
He found Generals Crook and Wright by the lane to Belle Grove. Crook appeared grim, and Wright’s lower face was crusted with blood and dripping. They hadn’t much to tell him: only that Ricketts was bringing up the Sixth Corps and that Hayes’ fellow division commander Joe Thoburn was dead.
The Rebel yell crested waves of rifle fire. His head pulsed monstrously.
Appraising the shameful shred of Hayes’ Division left by the roadside, Crook said, “Form your men, Rud. This fight isn’t over.”
7:30 a.m.
The fields of Belle Grove
Jim Ricketts coughed, spit, and said, “That goddamned Wheaton.”
He knew he was being unfair. New to division command, Frank Wheaton was doing his best. They all were. Himself, he was struggling to direct a corps for the first time. But battle allowed no excuses, and in the little time Ricketts had been seeing to his own division—fighting under Warren Keifer this day—Wheaton had fed his brigades into the butcher’s grinder piecemeal.
The damned Johnnies seemed to be everywhere. It was worse, far worse, than Monocacy. There you could at least see what was coming toward you.
Wright had ordered him to align the corps on the Pike, facing east and southeast, while staff officers and hangers-on hastened to pack up the headquarters at Belle Grove. At first, the danger had seemed to come from the left. Then Wheaton had his right turned, driving him back across a ravine and costing him a brigade. That tore a gap in the center of the corps. Keifer, too, was barely holding on and worried about being flanked himself.
Ricketts rode carelessly through pale fog, letting his horse sense the ground as best it could. It was not an hour for caution. Behind him, aides and orderlies, flag-bearers and a bugler, strove to keep up while avoiding the retreating men dashing here and there.
He had half a mind to ride a few down on purpose. It was the most shameful debacle since Bull Run. Of which he did not have the best of memories: Left for dead was not a pleasant condition, and thank God for Frances.
No, let the provost marshal see to cowards. Holding the Sixth Corps together amid this onslaught of chaos trumped all else.
Where had Early gotten so many men? His strength seemed to have doubled, at the very least. Had Longstreet really come, had that signal been true?
In the past, he had longed for a corps command, but granted it temporarily while encamped, he had not expected to lead it into battle. They all had agreed that Early was finished off.
Now here they were.
He yanked back on the reins so hard, his horse reared. Johnnies. Straight ahead. He’d almost galloped straight into their flank, headed directly toward that ragged red flag.
His escort cascaded to a stop around him. One man exclaimed, “Jesus Christ!”
If the Rebs were here, where the devil was Wheaton?
Correcting his course westward, he topped a crest and let his mount judge its way down a slope he half recognized. Infernal mess, all of it. Lucky if he wasn’t shot down by his own men in this confusion. A guesswork battle.
Rebs had guessed better.
He jumped a narrow streambed, reading the battle by sound. He hoped Keifer had the sense to refuse his left flank now. Did he even know Wheaton had pulled back? Where the devil was he?
The only man on whom he truly could count was old George Getty. Two of a kind they were, old Regulars, unfit for parlors but steady in a fight. Getty held the high ground on the Pike just this side of Middletown, holding open the army’s line of retreat.
Retreat. A damned disgrace. Conquered by scarecrows.
Too weak now to grip a hillside, the fog thinned up ahead. Ricketts saw uneven blue lines top a crest.
“There!” he shouted, pointing.
But if he could see his own men now—those had to be Wheaton’s boys—he couldn’t see the Johnnies, only hear their keening howls, hair-raising in the fog.
As his horse climbed the slope, the men in blue decided they shouldn’t shoot him, but it looked a near thing. Even veterans kept fingers
taut on their triggers. Earlier, he’d mentally chastised Wright for leading two regiments into a breach himself. The situation had been desperate—and still was—but an army’s commander, temporary or not, shouldn’t gad about leading tactical charges. Now here he was, blundering into Rebs as he searched for his lines, hardly a clever turn for a corps commander.
A drift of fog enshrouded the ridge anew.
“Where’s General Wheaton? Damn it, where’s General Wheaton?”
Nobody knew. But the men looked at him expectantly: He was a general, a father in uniform, supposed to be wiser than his powder-blotched sons, expected to wield secrets.
“Here they come!” somebody cried. The fellow had sharper eyes than Ricketts possessed.
Sure enough, that kee-yip wail rose from the streambed below, sepulchral and horrible.
Frank Wheaton materialized. “General Ricketts?”
“Frank, do you know where you are?”
“I think so.”
“Smarter man than me, then. Look, you have to hold. Until Wright can rally the army.” He paused. “Or bring it off.”
“That bad?” Wheaton asked.
“What do you think?”
“I’ve lost a brigade. They broke, I’m sorry.”
“I know. Don’t lose another.”
“It’s goddamned contagious. The fear.”
“So is courage.”
A friendly volley punished their ears. The Rebel shrieking collapsed, but soon renewed itself. Closer now. A soldier turned to run and Wheaton shot him.
“No man runs,” the Rhode Islander barked.
Ricketts grimaced but nodded. It was that bad.
“All right, Frank,” he said. “Do all you can. The army’s counting on us.”
An uproar arose on Wheaton’s right. As if, God forbid, the Rebs had flanked them again.
“I’d best see to that,” Wheaton said.
“Get your flanks tied in. I’m heading back to Keifer.” Before turning his horse, Ricketts added, “This is when we earn our pittance, Frank.”
Scanning his shrunken escort, Ricketts called, “Owens, can you lead us back to Belle Grove?”
A former Regular with service on the Plains, the cavalryman rode up, saluted, and said, “Right to the house, sir. If the Rebs ain’t already visiting.”
“Keifer should hold them.”
“Like you say, sir.” The old scout led them off.
How long could the fog persist? It thinned only to thicken again, tore open to reseal itself as tight as a cholera coffin. Ricketts had never seen anything quite like it, not on a battlefield. Even at Spotsylvania the mists had cleared as the morning grew, leaving men face-to-face, clubbing each other’s brains out in the rain.
More cannon now. Rebs must have brought up theirs. The roar of battle menaced from three sides.
This was soldiering: not leading dashing charges on sunny days and gathering brevets, but clinging to worthless ground with unsteady men who shit in their drawers, unable to leave the firing line. Stubbornness was aces, valor a jack of diamonds.
And “stubbornness” described George Washington Getty. Getty would hold. No need to worry over his division.
Balls hissed by. It was hard to tell which side was shooting at the mounted party. Or if men were firing blindly into the mist.
In a hollow, Owens, the horn-hard old trooper, halted them.
“Ain’t right, sir,” he told Ricketts. “Don’t feel right.” As he spoke, soldiers in blue uniforms burst from the mist and streamed past them. Sixth Corps men. From Ricketts’ own division. Far from where their regiments should have been.
“Turn around, damn you!” Ricketts roared. “The Rebs are tired out! Turn back, boys, and we’ll whip them.…”
“Them Johnnies ain’t tired a lick,” a scurrying soldier corrected him.
But they had to be weary, didn’t they? They must have been marching all night to bring this off. There had to be hope. If only his line could hold.
Did he still have a line?
He turned his horse in the direction from whence the soldiers had come.
The old scout called, “Sir, I wouldn’t—”
A blow to the chest knocked Ricketts from the saddle. Pain grabbed his shoulder before he smacked the ground. Shock piled on shock.
“Son of a goddamn bitch,” Ricketts muttered, or thought he did.
Cold earth. Warm blood.
Aides dismounted and swarmed him.
“Let me breathe … Christ’s sake…”
“Get his coat open, open his coat.”
“I can do it,” Ricketts said. But he couldn’t. Hands tore at him.
“Hold on, sir.” Familiar voice. Whose voice? He couldn’t see. Pillows of fog pressed down upon his eyes.
“Frances,” he muttered. Then he straightened his spirit, if not his body. “Tell Getty … find General Getty … tell him he has the corps.”
He had his senses again, though. The sardonic thought pierced him that he had gotten his corps command at last—and made a bloody mess of it. Well, you played the cards that fell to you and only novices at the game complained. You played your cards as well as you could and then fortune decided.
Men lifted him up amid a riot of sounds.
He wondered, as he had back on the Monocacy, what would happen if he died.Would his spirit ascend to rejoin his first wife, Harriet? How unfair that would be to poor, dear Frances—what would become of her?
“He’s gushing blood,” a fearful voice exclaimed. “Put him down, we have to staunch it…”
He wanted to tell the lad to go to Hell. Instead he said, in a voice so calm it surprised him, “Just get me to the rear, boys. I don’t have a mind to be captured again.”
“Yes, sir. Sure enough, sir.”
Oh, it hurt, though. He’d been shot enough times to qualify as a connoisseur of wounds, and this variety seemed uniquely painful.
“Don’t worry,” he said, but his voice was weaker now. “I won’t die.”
And he had resolved to live. Never liked to fold a hand too soon. He just plain resolved to live. He owed Frances that much, after all she’d done for him. But Jim Ricketts also knew the worth of mortal resolutions.
8:30 a.m.
Lost Brook
Riding his prancing black, Custer exploded from the haze, displaying himself to Merritt and his staff. Doffing his hat, the better to fling back his locks, the intruder called, “Say, Merritt! What news, old fellow?”
Not entirely pleased by Custer’s advent, Brigadier General Wesley Merritt said, “Damned mess. That’s evident. You should be back with your men, George.”
Merritt understood exactly what Custer was about: George’s division held the westernmost ground, farthest from the battlefield. George was worried that he’d be left behind to watch the flank, stranded out there, while others got into the fight and—a bane to George—gathered the laurels.
“Oh, my boys are fine.” Custer winked at Devin. “How-do, Tom? Got your Irish up?” Without waiting for a reply, he turned again to Merritt and said, “Rosser’s spooked, he won’t be any trouble. He’s had enough for one morning. I know him inside out.”
“Orders still apply, George.”
Custer smiled. He had the innocent-yet-mischievous grin of a child, complete with one twisted tooth. But for all his clowning and flamboyance, Custer was a bloody-handed instrument, Merritt knew. George didn’t just love to fight, he loved to kill.
“Just thought I’d see what was going on. Bit dull out where I’m stuck.” Custer waved his hand toward the cacophony off to the east. In the high fields, well away from the river and creekbed, the mist was retreating. Soldiers in blue could be seen in the middle distance, fleeing as individuals or in clusters. “Ought to give them a sharp taste of the saber,” Custer added. “Damned cowards.”
“I’ve got men out there rounding them up,” Merritt told him.
Merritt, too, was impatient to join the fight and couldn’t understand why Torb
ert or even Wright hadn’t sent down an order to stem what seemed a shameful defeat. Had Wright lost control entirely? Or plain forgotten the cavalry? Sheridan wouldn’t have.
Merritt had concerns and ambitions aplenty, but unlike his fellow division commander, he believed in discipline and sobriety. Some of the troopers, amused by the contrast, had nicknamed the two of them “Poker-face and Joker-face.” Merritt didn’t mind—as long as he had the poker-face.
For his part, Custer imposed draconian discipline on subordinates, but took a long list of liberties himself. Starting with his costume, that velveteen sailor’s blouse festooned with stars of ludicrous size, the red silk scarf, and the floppy hat with its coiled snakes of braid. And the hair, of course, gleaming with Macassar oil. As far as literal sobriety went, Custer wasn’t a drunkard—he had that to his credit—but the joke ran that he needn’t bother with whiskey, since George was drunk on himself.
“What if old Torbert’s been captured? Could be why we haven’t gotten orders.”
“Don’t be an ass, George.” But Merritt felt his own impatience welling.
“What do you think, Tom?” Custer asked Devin. “Wouldn’t you like to ride over and join the revels?”
Devin bristled, shrugged. Tom Devin shared his view of Custer, Merritt knew, admiring George’s pluck on the battlefield, but otherwise annoyed at his shenanigans. And there was a bit of jealousy, Merritt had to concede. Not least on Devin’s part. Given Tom’s service record, he should have had a division long before George got one of his own. But Sheridan treated Custer as a son, if an improbable one.
For all the temptation to quarrel, they fought well together, Merritt had to admit. Rivalries had their virtues as well as their dangers.
“Halloo!” Custer called, although there was no need for shouting. The battle’s noise, while troubling, was off in its box. But Custer had spotted the galloping rider first through the mist’s rear guard and couldn’t restrain himself. The man’s exuberance was uncontrollable.
Merritt was certain the rider would carry the order to join the fight. Or at least to cover the army’s withdrawal. Of a sudden, he longed, even ached, to give his men the order to remount and ride eastward at a trot. Tom Devin, too, had quickened. But Merritt maintained his outward rigor, “straight of spine and straight of deed,” as his father liked to describe a worthy man.
