by Marc Graham
“My pleasure, sir,” he said. “You gentlemen watch yourselves now, y’hear?”
We waved and began rowing back toward the southern bank. I heard one of Holmon’s men mutter, “We’ll see you boys in the morning,” followed by a chorus of muffled laughter.
In that moment, I transformed from brother Mason back to Confederate artilleryman.
“Maybe so,” I said under my breath, “but not where you think.”
The next day dawned grey and cloudy as the sun struggled vainly to brighten a heavy winter sky. It had taken hours to reach my battery after crossing Little Sugar Creek. Even on horseback, my progress was hampered by the slow-moving stream of infantry, engineers, supply wagons, artillery and cavalry. Sixteen thousand men filled the Bentonville Detour, which was little more than a game track tucked between the steep slopes of Elkhorn Mountain and Gann Ridge.
If the press of bodies wasn’t enough, the Federals had made matters worse for us by felling several dozen trees across the road. These had to be cleared before artillery and wagons could pass, and what had been planned as an eight-hour march was now pushing twelve.
The one bit of good news was that the Union troops were still facing south toward Little Sugar Creek, our unmanned campfires having held their interest through the cold night. Scouts reported a small reserve at Elkhorn Tavern, with a rearward picket posted near the tanner’s yard at the Cassville Road. This force reportedly had six artillery pieces, but they were all pointed south, away from our advance.
As we watched now, a small detachment of infantrymen silently scaled the ridge.
“I hope they hurry,” Lieutenant Willis—the oldest and fattest man in the battery—said as he puffed out his bright red cheeks. “I’m freezing my ass off.”
“I’m sure they’ll do their best to accommodate you, Lieutenant,” Captain Guibor said evenly. “Ah, and there they’ve done it,” he added as, without a shot having been fired, the all-clear signal was given. “Onward and upward, boys,” he ordered, then urged his horse up the steep shoulder of the ridge.
Horses strained and leather harnesses creaked against the weight of cannon and wagons. Iron-banded wheels crunched through the snow, which clung to the rims and further hampered our progress. Men whipped at the horses and beat the snow from the wheels until we finally reached the empty summit, one hundred fifty feet above the road.
“Something’s not right here,” I muttered as I surveyed the ridge. “Captain?”
Hank nodded as he directed the setting of his guns.
“I noticed. There, and there,” he indicated, pointing out the deep scars in the snow that told of the retreat of the enemy guns. “Lieutenant Willis.”
The older man heaved his way through the snow, his nose and cheeks bright red with cold and exertion. Sweat ran down his face in spite of the freezing temperatures.
“Yes, sir?” he managed between huffs.
“Locate Captain Galloway and find out how it is that the enemy’s guns are no longer here.”
Willis looked blindly about.
“Guns, sir?”
“I was told our Northern friends had a half-dozen guns on this ridge,” Guibor said, a crisp edge in his voice. “I want to know where they are.”
“Yes, sir,” Willis replied with a salute, even as the captain’s question was answered.
Before Willis’s hand could reach the brim of his kepi, head and cap disappeared in a puff of red. The gauntleted hand continued its upward motion and turned crimson in the fountain of blood that erupted from between gold-fringed epaulets. The portly body collapsed in an unceremonious heap, the dull thump of its falling masked by a thunderous boom that trailed behind the shot.
I stared in horror at the grisly scene, but only for a moment. A high-pitched whistle screamed past my face and the shock-wave of another passing round threw me off my feet. I found myself staring up at low, grey clouds as a dull ache radiated from the base of my skull and a thousand bells pealed in my ears. I felt the roar of the cannon pulse through my body, but could hear nothing over the ringing in my head.
Sergeant Parks, my lead gunner, appeared over me, his mouth moving insensibly as he helped me up. I regained my feet, shook him off and gestured clumsily toward our guns. He nodded and turned back to the battery while I reeled and tried to regain my balance. I managed only a couple of steps toward the guns before the ground pitched sideways and I found myself once more in the damp snow.
Half my face lay buried in the snow, and I watched with one lazy eye as the men of my battery danced a deadly ballet about the guns, their motions drawn out in dream-like exaggeration. A corporal straddled the stock of his gun and squatted behind it as two men tugged it into alignment with the target. Two others fused a shell and rammed it into the mouth of the cannon. The corporal spun the elevating screw to dial in the trajectory of the shot, while another man jammed the primer into the breech of the gun and pulled the firing lanyard tight.
At the corporal’s signal, the last man yanked on the lanyard. The gun lurched back on its carriage as smoke belched from the mouth of the cannon behind a tongue of fire. The sound was little more than a muted rumble, but the concussion pounded my body like a hammer and shook the branches of the tree above me. Clumps of snow fluttered to the ground around me like hundreds of fallen angels.
I pushed myself to my feet and staggered toward the caisson while the crew readied the next shot. I shook my head and the ringing in my ears faded little by little until—like emerging from a deep pool of water—my head instantly cleared, the ringing replaced by the sounds of battle. As I reached the ammunition wagon, though, my head was again filled with a high-pitched scream. I clapped my hands over my ears and shook my head to clear the noise, when hands grabbed my shoulders and pulled me roughly to the ground.
A shell exploded not ten yards away, obliterating my second gun crew and throwing up a cascade of shrapnel and dirt and gore.
“The lieutenant would do well to learn to duck when shells start whistling in,” Parks suggested as he lifted his body off mine.
He slapped his kepi against his thigh and brushed bits of soldier and grit off his shoulder, then stretched out a hand to help me to my feet.
“Thank you, Sergeant,” I said as I balanced myself on wobbly knees.
Rage and horror welled up inside me as I stared at the wreckage of the gun, where my men—or what remained of them—lay sprawled about and atop the artillery piece. I managed to swallow the horror, but gave in to the rage.
“Where in hell are those guns, Sergeant?”
“That a-way, I reckon,” he said without irony, and spat a stream of tobacco juice from between the thick handlebars of his mustache.
“Well, then, find a glass or peel your eyes,” I ordered. “Just find me something to shoot at. Corporal Davis,” I yelled, and turned toward the young man at the breech of the cannon. “Davis,” I shouted again when he didn’t answer. I grabbed his shoulder and spun him around—then jumped back as his face turned toward me.
Half the young man’s handsome features had been torn away by shell fragments. He staggered toward me, his good eye fixed on mine while the other threatened to fall from a fleshless socket. Fighting the urge to run, I wrapped my arms around the boy and eased him to the ground. I packed snow into the yawning wound—the pristine whiteness rapidly changing to a sickly red—then turned back to the gun.
“Got them, sir,” Parks said as he ran back toward me from the lip of the ridge. “Down on the road, not three hundred yards out. They must be elevated,” he suggested, meaning that the muzzles of the guns were angled above forty-five degrees. “Gonna take them longer to reload. If we shoot now, we might be able to catch them between rounds.”
“Let’s hop to it, then,” I said. “Show me.”
Following Parks’s lead, two privates swiveled the gun carriage in the proper direction and planted the stock on the ground. I squatted behind the gun and aimed along the barrel. The sounds and horror of the battle faded away, r
eplaced only by what I could see through the bore sight of the cannon. Equations of speed, arc and distance flashed through my head as the blood and fire were reduced to cold, rational mathematics. “Case shot,” I ordered. “Three-quarter second fuse, load.”
The men rammed powder and shell into the barrel and I spun the elevation screw until the gun was aimed below the horizon in a depressed-angle shot.
“Ready,” I shouted when I was satisfied, then, “Fire,” and the cannon lurched in its carriage, rolling back two feet behind the force of the explosion.
Less than a second later, a ball of fire and smoke erupted as the short fuse ignited the charge within the case shot. Secondary explosions plumed up from the target area, and the men cheered my first murder as they rolled the gun back into place. A second set of explosions thundered across the distance as another round—from one of Hank’s guns—took out another cannon.
“Target,” I ordered, and my voice sounded strangely muffled in my unprotected ears.
As though in answer, a puff of smoke blossomed from the tree line along the road, fifty yards beyond the pair of guns we’d just taken out. The target was hidden a second later when a geyser of dirt erupted harmlessly in front of us.
“Shell shot, one second fuse,” I shouted. “Load—Fire.”
We traded shots with the Union battery for an hour until, one by one, their guns fell silent. As the last echoes drifted down the slopes of the ridge, a different sound arose—that of scores of riders and hundreds of infantry cheering and charging up the opposite hill toward the Union position. Gouts of smoke rose from the trees and brush as the embedded infantry fired on our advancing cavalry.
“Limber up,” Hank ordered as the report of a thousand rifles rolled over us. “Double team, on the quick. Canister, and lots of it.”
The captain’s men attached the gun to its caisson and hitched up two teams of horses. The rest of his crew collected what ammunition they could from their other gun while Hank mounted his horse.
“You heard the man,” I told my surviving crew. “Let’s get this smoke wagon rolling.”
The men quickly had the gun ready to move. We salvaged the remaining ammunition from the disabled gun and piled it atop the caisson. I pulled myself into Orion’s saddle as Sergeant Parks whipped his twelve horses into motion, and the other men scrambled to catch up with the perverse flaming chariot that carried them into the pit of hell.
We followed Hank’s crew, on the heels of the infantry that scrambled behind the cavalry charge, down the steep grade and into the narrow hollow toward the road that led to the Elkhorn Tavern. We passed craters and the smoking ruins of men and guns. Heedless of the stench of war and death, we drove on, thirsty for blood and hungry for victory.
During the mad dash, Guibor lost three of his horses to enemy fire. One of my own was struck, and another broke a leg when it stepped in a hole. I slashed at the harnesses with my sword to release them before they could foul the whole team. Parks tried to steer the rig around the fallen beasts of both teams, but wasn’t able to avoid them all. Men, crates and ammunition lurched skyward as the rear wheel of the caisson rolled over the haunch of a fallen horse.
The beast screamed in agony and craned its neck to bite at the wagon wheel. Parks whipped on the remaining horses while men scrambled to collect what canisters and shells they could, then chased after the limber. I drew in Orion’s reins as I reached the crippled horse, its mouth foaming and eyes rolled back in its head. The animal dug at the ground with its forelegs as it tried to stand, but the shattered hip refused to cooperate. Orion nickered in sympathy as I drew my pistol and fired a single round into the other horse’s brain.
I raced after the crews and reached them where the road widened by the tavern. We followed Hank off the road, through the lines of our infantry and into position in the field at the front of the clearing. As my men raced to set up the twelve-pounder, I scanned the snow-covered field. The fleeing Union troops had not run as far as I would have liked—scarcely to the other side of the Huntsville Road—before their officers rallied them and drew up the line of battle. Less than a hundred yards separated the two guns of our battery from the hundreds of enemy rifles.
“Grape shot,” I heard Guibor yell, even as I ordered canister for my own gun.
Despite the exposed position and the nearness of the enemy, the men ran the drill with precision and speed. Within seconds of the order, Hank’s gun spat out its deadly barrage, followed closely by mine.
The effects of the short-range battery fire were at once horrible and fascinating. The canister fire spent most of its energy on the front ranks of the infantry, peppering wide swaths of men with lead pellets, as from a giant shotgun. The grape shot, on the other hand, was more concentrated, but each of the twenty-seven iron balls carried enough momentum to punch through whatever it struck, felling columns of men two and three deep.
We continued to peck away at the infantry with our guns, driving them farther and farther back toward the tree line. It wasn’t long, though, before the Union batteries managed to reorganize. With an unearthly roar, twenty guns unleashed their fire and a deadly hail of shot and shell rained down on us and our advancing infantry.
“Never mind their infantry,” Hank shouted. “We’ve got to take out those guns.”
“Sergeant Parks!” I shouted for the man to replace one of my fallen corporals and to help in turning the gun toward the tree line that sheltered the Union batteries.
I could only aim at the bursts of light that flashed out from the darkened trees. As the men settled into the drill, we managed a shot every ten seconds between the two guns, but these were answered every one or two seconds from the other side.
While we exchanged fire with the Federals, our infantry and cavalry secured the area around the tavern and continued to push back the Union forces. A troop of horse regrouped from a charge and found shelter behind a blacksmith’s shop.
I caught a glimpse of Matt, his head held high and a feral grin on his face. The grin turned to something else. He mouthed something at me, but I couldn’t hear him over the cannon fire. Captain Champion rode over to Matt, looked to where he pointed, then cupped his hands around his mouth.
“Guibor,” he shouted, “they’re flanking you.”
“I know it—Fire,” came Hank’s reply, as he continued the assault without pause. “But I can’t spare a gun to turn on them.”
I ordered my men to fire again, then looked to see what was happening. A picket of bayonets—hundreds upon hundreds— poked and waved through the brush on our flank as the enemy infantry tried to encircle our position. Our troops were halfway across the field and pinned down by the Union cannon fire. We had to support them, but doing so was sure to be our undoing.
“I’ll charge them,” Champion said, his voice booming across the tavern yard. He wheeled his horse around to rally his men. “Battalion, forward trot—march.”
The horsemen emerged from behind the smithy, and my heart sank. Fewer than two dozen cavalrymen rode out against several hundred infantry. “Gallop—march,” Champion ordered his men, not seeming to mind the odds. He drew his saber—the blade gleaming in the sunlight that finally broke through the clouds—and shouted in a lusty baritone, “Charge!”
Twenty riders drove in behind their leader’s suicidal rush against an army some forty times larger. The horseman immediately behind Champion lost his hat, exposing an unruly mane of fiery red hair that could only belong to Matt. While Guibor and I continued to nibble away at the enemy batteries with our guns, the surging lines of Union infantry met and swallowed up Champion’s riders, including one corporal who ran on foot after his horse was shot out from under him.
The rough riders’ progress was measured by the glint of sabers, puffs of pistol fire and an occasional flash of red hair against a blue and grey backdrop. Oddly, there was little return rifle fire. The foot soldiers seemed too stunned by the bold charge. Sheer numbers, though, must soon outweigh the surprise.
“Sir?” I shouted at Hank.
“Do it,” Guibor said.
“Sergeant Parks,” I said, “wheel left. Double canister shot, load.”
While the gun turned toward the rushing infantry, two loads of canister were rammed into the bore and I lowered the muzzle of the gun for the short-range shot.
“Fire! Reload.”
With no more than fifty yards between us and the advancing enemy, the double-shot load had a horrible, lethal effect.
It might seem like a waste of ammunition, I remembered my artillery instructor’s words about the tactic, but if you’re the one on the receiving end of it, it’ll ruin your whole damn day.
In proof of those words, thirty men fell instantly as a swarm of lead pellets tore a line of smoking black pockmarks in faces and uniforms. The blue wave continued to press forward, but the second round of fire heaped another rank of wounded in front of their lines.
By now, the whole enemy line was flagging—the right from the hell-spawned charge of Champion’s riders, the left from the supporting fire of my gun. As I loosed a third round into the infantry, the Union colors fell. The fight drained out of the Yankees then and, as one, they turned and fled back to the sheltering woods.
Champion gave a short chase to speed them on their way, but quickly recalled his troopers. Matt wheeled around and raced back toward the tavern yard. He reined in Pegasus when he reached the Union colors and leapt down to pick up the banner, then raised it in his fist in a triumphant gesture.
Matt’s body stiffened, and triumph turned to confusion. Across the body-littered field, he looked at me, then lowered his eyes to his chest. Still clutching the Union colors, he pulled open his tunic to expose the growing red stain in the center of his white muslin shirt.
“Sergeant, take the battery,” I ordered, then rushed across the field before anyone could object.
Matt fell to his knees, and I reached him just as he was about to pitch forward into the trampled snow. I wrapped my arms around him and eased him to the ground.
