Hell or Richmond

by Ralph Peters

  “Heard the name,” Grant said. “Can’t place him.”

  Wright grunted. “Good fighter. And the most arrogant, self-righteous shit to wear a uniform. Bread-and-water Methodist who farts scripture. Abolitionist, of course.”

  “And the finest brigade commander in the Sixth Corps,” Meade added.

  “That so?”

  Russell, who had been Upton’s fellow brigade commander the day before, spoke up: “Yes, sir. Upton’s a bit of a character, but he’s splendid in a fight. ‘Barlow with a Bible,’ Uncle John used to joke.”

  Turning again to Grant, Meade added: “Upton’s been deviling everybody to try out an idea of his. May be sense in it. Rather than sending out long, thin lines and pulling up for a shooting contest, he believes an assault in column on a narrow front—an attack that stops for nothing—would punch through Lee’s entrenchments. Relying on speed and thrust. And bayonets.”

  “Like to see that,” Grant said.

  “Then you approve?” Meade asked. He wanted a firm commitment in front of the others.

  “Well,” Grant began, with one of his slope-shouldered shrugs, “I don’t see why not.” He contemplated the ruins of his cigar. “You don’t want a brigadier to lead it? Twelve regiments, that’s a lot of cotton for one colonel.”

  Meade exchanged looks with Wright and Russell.

  Grown sullen around Grant, Humphreys broke his silence. “This army’s brigadiers have had their chance. Upton’s hungry. And mean. The way those Bible-pounders tend to be. He’ll bring down the wrath of Jehovah on the Rebs.”

  “Or the wrath of Emory Upton, anyway,” Wright said. “Not sure which one might be more unpleasant.”

  Meade had one more matter to settle regarding Upton. “The man’s ambitious,” he told Grant. “He’s been pestering every one of us for a star. As far as I’m concerned, he earned one last autumn, but he doesn’t have the political weight.” He slapped at an insect bothering his cheek. “A word from you, though … I’d like to authorize Generals Wright and Russell to tell him he’ll make brigadier, if he breaks Lee’s line.”

  Grant snorted. “And if he doesn’t?”

  Wright said: “He won’t be expected back. He can try commanding cherubim and seraphim.”

  “Sounds like you don’t like him very much.”

  “‘Like’ is not a word that springs to mind.”

  The general in chief blew smoke into the afternoon heat. “Still set for five o’clock, George? No dawdlers today?”

  Meade shot Humphreys a look: Don’t you say a word, I’ll handle this.

  “Yes, sir,” Meade said. “In accordance with your orders. At five, Warren, supported by two of Hancock’s divisions, will attack the ridge again. To the Fifth Corps’ left, Upton’s assault on the salient will constitute the Sixth Corps’ primary effort. Mott, detached from Hancock, will attack on Upton’s left and exploit any break in Lee’s line.” Choosing his next words carefully, Meade asked, “Have you heard from General Burnside?”

  Grant shook his head. “We’ll get him moving. I’ve sent Badeau to see to things.” He scratched at his ginger beard: Virginia’s insects were persistent skirmishers. “If this Upton fellow’s attack don’t work, something else is bound to. Lee can’t be strong everywhere.”

  Grant still had not said a word about subordinating Burnside and the Ninth Corps to the Army of the Potomac, the only reasonable solution to the confusion that was manifest. Burnside needed rigorous supervision. Lacking it, he contributed precious little. The campaign cried out for unity of command, but Grant had to find his way to his own conclusions.

  As the man had finally come to his senses that morning regarding the wild-goose chase upon which he had launched Hancock the afternoon before. The Second Corps had not had time before nightfall to breach the second line of the Po, and, of course, Lee had brought up forces during the night to secure his flank. Worse, when Grant had finally taken a proper look at the map, he had grasped the point that Meade had sought to make: Hancock’s corps was cut off from the army by the river, thrust into a perfect trap, its position an invitation to Lee to destroy it.

  Grant had ordered Hancock to withdraw, and Win had pulled back Birney and Gibbon, leaving Barlow’s division as a rear guard while the others recrossed the river. Now Barlow had to extricate himself, with the Rebs swelling around him, and Hancock had gone out personally to see to matters. For his part, Meade did not believe Lee was going to let Barlow stroll back unmolested.

  Meade sighed.

  Everyone looked at him.

  “Problem, George?” Grant asked.

  “No, sir. Thinking about something else.” He waved a hand. “These damned flies.”

  “Sight worse crossing the Isthmus,” Grant said. “This Upton. West Point?”

  “Class of ’61,” Wright said. “As he’ll be only too glad to tell you.”

  “And this mad dog’s still a colonel?” Grant tapped the ash from his cigar. “Even without pull in Washington…”

  “He was stuck in the artillery for two years,” Russell explained. “As a captain. Before he took a regiment and got his jump.” Russell, a sober sort, broke into a smile. “I don’t know an officer in the corps who hasn’t heard Upton’s ‘why I’m not a brigadier’ story.”

  Humphreys spoke up again. “First-rate soldier, though. Brilliant work at Rappahannock Station. Knows how to take a fortified line. And to bluff. If he wasn’t a damned Methodist, he’d take the drawers off all of us at poker.”

  Meade noted that Russell let the slight go by. Russell, too, had been a hero of Rappahannock Station.

  Wright smirked and said: “Upton travels with a whole damned library. When he isn’t reading the Good Book, he’s crabbing through de Saxe or God knows who. Oh, General Humphreys is right, he’s quite the soldier. However…”

  Grant smiled, but this was Grant’s curled little smile, an expression that made Meade wary nowadays.

  “Sounds almost like you’re trying to get rid of him,” Grant said.

  Wright looked surprised. “No, no. Nothing like that. It’s just … I wouldn’t say he’s the corps’ most popular officer.…”

  Grant’s smile persisted. “Wasn’t all that popular myself.”

  Off toward Barlow’s division, artillery pounded.

  Two thirty p.m.

  Along the Shady Grove Church Road

  “Brooke, can you hold?” Barlow asked.

  Bullets from Rebel skirmishers hunted men in blue.

  “I can hold them,” the colonel shouted back. “Don’t know how long, though. Prisoner claims Heth’s entire division’s out there.”

  And Mahone’s division sat just across the south bank of the Po, ready to pounce. Outnumbered as much as four to one along his forward line, Barlow intended to draw blood as he withdrew.

  “I need you to hold for a quarter hour, at least,” Barlow told the brigade commander. “Give Smyth and Miles time to entrench at the bridgehead.”

  He was fighting with only two brigades up, Brooke’s men and Paul Frank’s lot.

  As the racket increased, Brooke pulled his horse close to Barlow’s. “I can do that, a quarter of an hour. Maybe longer. If Frank holds.” The colonel looked doubtful about the prospect of that.

  “I’m on my way to the right to have a look. Just hold them, John.”

  They had beaten off the Reb skirmishers handily. But great gray waves would break over them soon.

  Artillery rounds shrieked overhead, Union guns firing blindly from north of the river.

  Before Barlow could put the spurs to his stallion, Hancock rode up. Barlow had been furious about the botched operation the evening before, then about being left as the rear guard again. But Hancock had returned to fight beside him, after withdrawing the rest of the corps to safety. Courage canceled many another sin.

  No one saluted. The Rebs were too close.

  Hancock nodded to Barlow, then to Brooke. “Looks like you drew the short straw, John.”

  “M
ade sense, sir,” Brooke replied. “Given our dispositions.”

  Barlow caught the note of criticism. Hancock had left the division spread out to cover what had been the corps’ front that morning. Even entrenched, the defense was as thin as Japan paper.

  Hancock turned to Barlow. “Miles and Smyth have closed at the bridgehead. And all of the guns are across, except for Arnold’s.” His eyes shifted back to Brooke. “The pontoons are secure, they’ll be there when you need them.”

  “First, I’ll have to get to them,” Brooke said.

  Barlow beat down a smile. Brooke was no toady.

  And the colonel had a right to be disgruntled. Once Brooke abandoned these entrenchments and passed through the grove to his rear, there remained a half mile of open ground between his men and the paths down to the bridges. All the way, they’d be under artillery fire. Withdrawing was going to be tricky, to say the least. And Paul Frank, his weakest colonel, would have even farther to go than would John Brooke.

  That morning, as the corps withdrawal began, Hancock had explained Grant’s decision to leave Barlow in place as long as possible to deter Lee from shifting forces away from his left. The rationale was little consolation. The wait thereafter had been grim, until George Meade, bless him and all Philadelphia, had sent down orders to withdraw the division.

  It looked as though he had waited an hour too long.

  As for Hancock, Barlow was glad of his presence now, despite his taste for independent action. With an extended front to cover, he couldn’t be everywhere. If Hancock just saw to the bridgehead, to Miles and Smyth, it would be an enormous help. And Hancock, regal as Henry V in the saddle, was always an inspiration to the men. Barlow had been frustrated with his superior of late, finding his hero to be a bit of a hen, but Hancock shone today with his old verve.

  “Here they come!” Brooke shouted.

  The three officers looked across the road and down a fallow field. Red banners waving, a motley gray mass advanced up the long incline.

  The Rebs let loose with their wild squeaking and hooting. They picked up their pace.

  Barlow turned to Hancock and Colonel Brooke. “I’d best see to Paul Frank. Brooke here can manage.”

  Hancock smiled. Voice raised to be heard, he told Brooke: “I believe, Colonel, that your division commander has just dismissed me from his forward line.” And turning to Barlow: “I’ll see how your micks are doing, then go on to Miles.”

  As Barlow kicked his horse to life, Brooke called to his men, “Hold your fire, damn it.”

  Brooke would give a good account of himself.

  The Rebs came on fast now, screaming, thousands of footfalls beating the drum of the earth. Barlow didn’t bother to look. He didn’t need to.

  Leading his staff through a bad bit of greenery, he had to back up and go around a thicket. He reached Frank’s left just as the German’s brigade opened fire on the Rebels.

  Too damned soon, Barlow thought.

  As he rode from the trees into another open field, a pair of Frank’s officers spotted him and lashed their horses toward him as if in a race.

  They didn’t give him time to get a word out.

  “Colonel Frank’s drunk,” a sweat-stained major complained.

  “Drunk as an Irish priest,” a captain added.

  The gunfire along the road became a steady roar. Rounds snapped past the mounted men.

  “General Barlow, you have to relieve him immediately,” the major added.

  “I’ll decide what I have to do, Major,” Barlow said coldly. Of course, Frank would be drunk. That was the icing on the cake, if not the cork in the bottle. His anger at Hancock surged again. Why had he reinstated the Teuton ass?

  Assuming a more appropriate, if still excited, tone, the major said, “Sir, he’s so drunk he can hardly stay in the saddle. The men all see it.”

  A wry smile crept over Barlow’s features. He was tempted to think that Frank might do less harm in a drunken stupor.

  The damned thing was that he couldn’t muddle things further by relieving the man in the middle of a withdrawal.

  “Every officer will be held to account,” Barlow said. “At the appropriate time. Meanwhile, I expect the regimental commanders to do their duty. For now, that duty is to defend this line. You may pass that along, Major. And look to your own responsibilities.”

  Barlow rode behind the embattled regiments. Frank was not in evidence.

  Probably went to ground when he saw me coming, Barlow decided.

  The men began to cheer. Through the smoke, Barlow saw the gray lines withdrawing, their order broken.

  Well done. But only the start.

  Wounded men stumbled rearward. Where were the stretcher bearers? Barlow took a hard line when it came to the medical side of things. He knew every unguent and potion in a surgeon’s kit, had made it his business to know. And his surgeons had learned to wash their knives and saws at least once a fortnight.

  Barlow believed in bayoneting cowards, but men with honest wounds deserved good care.

  “Black,” he called to his aide. “Find Colonel Frank and stay with him. You know the plan. See that he follows it. And be prepared to write a report on the idiot.” Barlow thought a moment, then added, “If he questions your authority, shoot him dead.”

  He took off into the grove again, stopping by Brooke’s brigade just as the Rebs came on a second time. Arnold’s battery fired from the right, doing good service but exposed to capture.

  “Maynard,” he called back to a lieutenant. “Tell Arnold to find a position nearer the river. He’s to keep his limbers close, he may have to run for it.”

  The Rebs spilled over a line of raw works he had ordered abandoned earlier. They came on shrieking, determined to reach the blue line north of the road, to reach their prey and slaughter it on the spot.

  Again, Brooke’s men repulsed them.

  The colonel rode up to Barlow’s shrinking party.

  “Rebs don’t seem short of men today.”

  “We’ll leave them shorter.”

  “Things all right over there? With Frank?”

  “As one might expect. Hold as long as you reasonably can, John. But don’t lose your brigade.”

  More Confederate guns opened from south of the Po, off to the left. Their fires crisscrossed those of the batteries supporting Heth’s attack, weaving a deadly web.

  Barlow spurred his horse back toward the broad field in the rear, the expanse across which Brooke’s men and most of Frank’s command would have to withdraw to reach the river and safety. Faulty shells plopped in the dirt like mighty raindrops.

  Thanks be to God, Barlow told himself, for the Southern gentry’s distaste for manufacturing skills.

  He stopped his party in the middle of the field. Short rounds burst overhead, not all Confederate. It was all a damned mess, but it looked as though Smyth had gotten his men clear. On the far left flank, Miles’ skirmishers remained behind to delay an attempt at envelopment by Mahone’s division.

  If Rebels plunged across the Block House Bridge, Brooke and Frank would be cut off from the army.

  He wanted to ride to the bridgehead to inspect the progress on the earthworks, but there was no time. Hancock would have to see to that. Better to remain with his exposed brigades. The time was approaching to pull them out in an interval between charges.

  As he rode back toward Brooke’s entrenchments, he saw with a start that patches of trees to the rear had taken fire. The grove was only middling thick, but with memories of the Wilderness fresh and raw, the prospect of burning woods might panic the men. Still worse, the pattern of shelling told him that Arnold’s battery remained in its old position.

  Bravery was one thing, folly another. He had sent Arnold clear orders to remove his guns. The situation called for an accounting, once the fight was done.

  He dispatched another rider to tell the captain to withdraw immediately.

  The third Rebel charge announced itself with another Rebel yell. It sounde
d as though the attackers had been reinforced.

  Frank’s brigade front would be the point of crisis now. Skirting Brooke’s position, Barlow led his staff into the grove, counting on speed to get them past the stretches of fire. But burning trees blocked the way. Turning his party again, he hastened to the rear of Brooke’s line. Just in time to witness a mighty charge.

  This time, the Rebs came on at a full run. As men fell to Brooke’s volleys, others filled their places. Red flags waved, fell, and rose again. The men in gray and homespun screamed their lungs out as they leapt over empty entrenchments and their own dead.

  Before he could reach Brooke, the foremost Rebs surged over the dirt wall. Brooke’s men stood their ground. The fight grew demonic.

  A captain clutched his ribs and fell from his horse at Barlow’s side. Barlow kept riding. Yards away, a riot of men went at each other with rifle butts and bayonets, breaking the unspoken rule that, pressed to a certain degree, men would retreat. There was a new viciousness now, an anger that thickened the air. Gore splashed from crushed skulls and guts ripped wide, from bones smashed out through flesh.

  He found Brooke firing his revolver into the melee.

  “Do what you can, John. Pull for the river, do what you can to keep the men together. I’ll see to Frank’s brigade.”

  Instead of trying to thread through the grove, Barlow kicked hard with his spurs and raced between the fighting and the trees. He drew his saber.

  Men on foot, in blue and gray, leapt from his path.

  Frank’s left regiments stood their ground as well as John Brooke’s boys, fighting as brutally. As he rode the line, Barlow ordered each successive regiment to withdraw fighting and move to the river. One lieutenant colonel looked over Barlow’s shoulder, eyes filled with doubt. When Barlow turned, he saw the woods ablaze. The pockets of fire had become a conflagration.

  And Arnold’s battery still had not withdrawn.

  More officers complained about Frank’s drunken state, but Barlow had not laid eyes on the man since the morning. There was nothing he could do but give orders himself, and he gave them crisply.

  Riding his horse as if he meant to kill it, he plunged through a breaking regiment. He cursed the men, but he spared them blows from his saber. They’d fought as well as any man could expect. The Confederate numbers had reached overwhelming levels.