Hell or Richmond

by Ralph Peters

  “Form back in the trees and go to the river,” he shouted.

  In the burning trees.

  By the time he reached Arnold’s guns, he was in a fury.

  “Why don’t you get out of here, you fool!”

  Arnold looked up, surprised. “No orders,” he shouted.

  “I’ve sent courier after courier. Save your guns, damn it. Pull back to the high ground above the river. Support the withdrawal, but no last stands.” Then he added, “I’m going to need you, Arnold.”

  The Rhode Islander took that as a splendid compliment. He began barking orders to limber up the guns.

  As Barlow cantered back over the field, he found one of the most confused spectacles he’d yet witnessed in the war. Pockets of men grappled to the death. On one side of a brawl, prisoners and the wounded hurried rearward, while on the other side, men just ran. Everywhere, blue and gray uniforms intermingled. Rebs stopped to loot haversacks, while his own retreating soldiers tore their blankets from their knapsacks, yanking them free of the straps to swing them over heads and shoulders as they dashed under flaming limbs in their flight to the rear.

  The spreading fires made some Rebels hesitate to continue the pursuit. Their officers railed at them. One fired his pistol at Barlow.

  Barlow galloped back to a farm track along the last high ground, beyond the reach of the flames, and made his way to the long field his men had to pass. Much of Brooke’s brigade had held together, withdrawing in impressively good order, but the Reb cannoneers were merciless.

  As for Paul Frank, he seemed to have disappeared from the face of the earth, along with his staff. With any luck, Barlow thought, Heth’s men had grabbed him.

  He turned to gauge the Reb advance and saw a lone blue regiment leveling volleys, alone and too close to the enemy, stalwart unto madness. He thought he could make out a Pennsylvania banner through the smoke.

  Over the protests of his staff, Barlow kicked his horse forward.

  It was the 148th Pennsylvania, Jim Beaver’s regiment. The colonel sat his horse with perfect aplomb amid the chaos. His men fired by four successive ranks, a tactic Barlow recognized from his plunge into history early in the war. Marshal Turenne had used the technique to great effect two centuries before, but no one had thought to apply it to modern war.

  More to Beaver than he’d realized. He’d always thought the fellow dull, if brave.

  When Barlow came up, the colonel flashed his anger.

  “We never got the damned order to withdraw.”

  “You’re doing well enough, Beaver.”

  The Pennsylvanian growled. “Somebody had to form a rear guard. Since everybody else was off to the races.”

  “Good work. Slow the buggers down, but get your men back.”

  He turned his horse again. Most of Frank’s soldiers appeared to have gone sauve qui peut for the river west of the bridges, but Brooke still had his brigade roughly in hand. His last men, save Beaver’s, were passing the crest that dropped to the pontoons.

  Reaching the river overlook, Barlow found a regiment of Smyth’s Irishmen, the 116th Pennsylvania, positioned to cover the last of the withdrawal. Growing confident that he’d have some semblance of a division left at the end of the day, he made his way east to Miles’ position, where entrenchments had been thrown up with remarkable speed. Two of Miles’ regiments had not fully withdrawn from their forward positions, though.

  Flaring, Barlow said, “Get them back, Miles. Or you’ll answer for it.”

  Friendship was for the rear.

  He paused by Miles’ side long enough to look down the long field and watch a full division of Confederates advance with battle flags flying. From the higher north bank, tiers of Union artillery opened on them.

  “Just get those regiments back,” Barlow repeated, and he rode westward again to see if any other crises needed attention.

  He soon found Captain Arnold with his little artillery column, close enough to the crossing site to make it over to safety. Arnold was weeping as if he had just learned of his mother’s death.

  “I lost a gun, sir,” he said. “It got stuck in the trees, in the flames. We cut the others free, but I lost a gun.”

  “Be glad you didn’t lose your whole damned battery,” Barlow said. He had no time for the artilleryman’s romanticism. Never did have, really. Guns could be replaced. He had even heard complaints about the artillery reserve clogging the roads with an excess of guns.

  “It’s the first piece the Second Corps has ever lost,” the captain said.

  “We’ve got more cannon than we know what to do with,” Barlow told him. “Straighten up, and get your battery over that goddamned bridge.”

  It all went madly fast thereafter, with Nellie Miles giving the Rebs a splendid blast of musketry before scooting over the last pontoons to safety under the massed guns of the corps. Barlow was among the last to cross, and he found a number of Brooke’s officers laughing like Bedlam lunatics on the other side. They tightened their expressions as Barlow approached.

  “Well,” he said, “what’s so funny, gentlemen? Your survival, or mine?” Suddenly, he couldn’t help it. He grinned, too. “Hoping you’d seen the last of me, you dogs? Go on, tell me. What’s so funny?”

  A brave major stepped closer, volunteering as spokesman for the rest.

  “It’s Colonel Beaver, sir. Of the Hundred Forty-eighth.”

  “I know which regiment Beaver has.”

  “Yes, sir. Well, you know he never touches a drop of spirits. Hasn’t had a drink the entire war.”

  “And?”

  “Well, I suppose you had to see it. To get the full flavor. Old Beaver gets himself cut off from the bridges, so he has to leave his horse and lead his men down that tangled-up bank and across that marsh a ways up. And the Rebs are shooting down at them as they’re running and splashing along for all they’re worth, but damn if Beaver doesn’t go back to fetch some wounded officer and lug him across. The Johnnies stopped shooting, they just let him go.”

  “And that’s comical?”

  “No, sir. But … you really had to see it. Old Beaver drops the wounded fellow down and collapses like he’s given up the ghost. And this Irish gunner, this sergeant, who’s been watching the whole thing, he offers Beaver a drink of whiskey from a bottle he’s got in his blouse. And Beaver looks at it, starts to wave it off, then takes it and drinks it down to the last drop. The poor mick like to fainted.” The men who had witnessed the doings laughed again. “And Colonel Beaver, he gets up on his feet with a roar and starts giving orders like it’s the end of the world.”

  “All right, carry on.”

  Barlow nudged his horse along, riding between his re-forming regiments, past wounded men sitting and waiting for litters or just a surge of strength. Farther up the slope, successive lines of batteries tore at the heavens.

  Hancock came up, face smeared.

  “Good work,” he told Barlow. “Damned fine work. You can be proud.”

  “Seemed like a bucket of slops to me,” Barlow told him.

  Hancock snorted. “You want a bucket of slops? Grant’s ordered Birney and Gibbon to support another assault on that fucking ridge.”

  “Laurel Hill.”

  “And I’ve damned well got to go over and put a good face on another fucking waste of our best men.”

  “Sounds like they’re starting without you,” Barlow said.

  Hancock frowned. Then grimaced. And drew out his pocket watch. “That sonofabitch Warren. Wasn’t supposed to go in until five. What the devil … Morgan? Do you know anything about—”

  Hancock had lost interest in Barlow, and Barlow needed to get down from the saddle, stretch his legs, grant himself a long drink from his canteen, and, at some point, get his boots off and soak his feet. The itching was enough to drive a man mad.

  Then he saw Paul Frank.

  Three twenty p.m.

  Laurel Hill

  It was a damned insult. The Yankees Oates and his men faced for a t
hird day had learned nothing. Just refused to learn. Fifth Corps blue-bellies, Warren’s men, fools led by idiots, just coming on in more half-assed assaults, straight on, all of them like blind billy goats leaping out of their entrenchments, only to be butchered like sheep until the survivors flopped down like lambs under Confederate musketry and artillery so deadly it seemed unfair even to Oates, who never thought killing Yankees a bad idea.

  The Federals came on so thick and stupid, one damn fool brigade or strayed-off regiment after another, that Oates and his officers reloaded soldiers’ rifles for them so they could keep on firing down the slope like engines of death.

  Didn’t the Yankees have one sane general left?

  Another pack got up, advanced, tumbled down, and fell apart. The stink was worse than anything Oates had experienced, with his men forced, even in the throes of an attack, to break from the parapet and dash back a few yards to squat, shaking, and shit brown water. To the front of the works, bodies baking for a third day reeked of burst guts, belly gas, and rot. Even a hard man lived on the verge of puking.

  On top of it all, his hip pained him like the devil, even when he held still.

  “Just kill ’em,” Oates bellowed, angry at the Yankees for murdering themselves, for insulting the worth of all lives, blue or gray. “Kill every last one of those bastards.”

  Five p.m.

  Headquarters, Army of the Potomac

  Meade raged at the world, at all men, and, above all else, at himself. Warren had come to him hours before, earnest as smallpox, pleading to be allowed to move his portion of the grand assault up to three o’clock. G.K. had sworn that his morning efforts had fatally weakened Lee’s defenses up on the ridge, that the Confederates were spread thin. Warren had positively begged, insisting, in front of Grant, that the opportunity was fleeting, that the Rebs who had faced Barlow would soon return to strengthen the line. The attack had to be moved up to three o’clock, or it would fail.

  Reading Grant’s mood, Meade had acquiesced. Grant promptly spoke up to support the decision. Was there ever an attack Grant would oppose? And what of his grand assault set up for five o’clock? What of Mott’s supporting attack? Of Upton’s ploy? And the two divisions from Hancock on their way to lend Warren a hand? All left to be put in piecemeal again. Grant discarded plans the way a rogue discarded women.

  Weary, worn down, pressed from above and below, he had been unmanly, bending to Warren’s fickle spirit, and doing it to please Grant. And Warren had attacked. And failed gruesomely. Again. The slope of Laurel Hill had sprouted a fresh crop of blue-clad corpses and twitching wounded. For not an inch gained.

  Only Upton’s small effort remained. Supported by Mott, who had yet to distinguish himself in division command. Wright and Russell had asked for a postponement of Upton’s movement, given the confusion in the wake of Warren’s mess, and Meade had granted that, too.

  He wondered, should he call off Upton’s attack? It was bound to be another waste of men. Of good men. But Grant had made it his gospel that Lee was about to fold at any moment. It was always, “One more good blow, and Lee is bound to crack.”

  This had been another wretched day, the only faint positive Barlow’s rescue of his own division. And Hancock did seem his old self again. Perhaps, on another day …

  For now, there was only young Upton and horrible odds.

  Six fifteen p.m.

  Sixth Corps line, opposite the west face of Lee’s salient

  Fornication. Blasphemy. Drunkenness. Gambling. And worse. Profane lives of philistine wealth built on the tormented Negro’s bloodied back. Colonel Emory Upton knew the men he faced. They had mocked him for his piety at West Point, drawling their sarcasm, even the pace of their speech enfeebled by the monstrous god they worshipped: human bondage. Now he was about to pay them back.

  Across the Sixth Corps front, the artillery did the work of Jesus Christ when he raged in the temple. Ready to assault the Moabite lines, Upton prayed a final time to serve the cause of justice and become the wrathful angel of the Lord, a glittering blade dipped in the blood of Jehovah’s leprous enemies.

  He knew how to make war. If the Academy taught him drill, three years of war had shown him proper practice. Joshua and Kings had become his guides: You had to fight with rigor and without compassion. The Israelites had been punished for being merciful. He would not repeat that error.

  Around him, behind him, twelve regiments waited to burst from the trees and rush across a field veiled with drifts of smoke. Two hundred yards away, two hundred raw yards, waited the Midianites, the bronzed shields of Baal, the army of Pharaoh.

  General Russell and General Wright were oblivious to God’s hand, but surely it was not coincidence that he had been given twelve regiments this day, as many regiments as Jesus Christ, mankind’s eternal Savior, had disciples. “Let there be no Judas in their number,” Upton prayed.

  Nor did Upton neglect mundane concerns. He studied war with a devotion second only to his Bible reading. And much had been revealed. He would not have men fight in ignorance. Ignorance lost battles, as surely as ignorance of the Lord lost souls. He had led the regimental officers forward, creeping through the trees beside the farm trail, to point out the buckle in the Rebel line where they must strike. He made each commander repeat the plan aloud, how the first block of the column would have their rifles loaded and capped, but must not stop to fire until they reached the enemy entrenchments. When crossing that field, no man must stop for anything, not for a wounded friend or even a brother. The first wave would pierce the line. The second block of regiments would split to the left and right within the enemy’s works, expanding the breakthrough. The third wave would be prepared, upon entering the entrenchments, to fight straight ahead and deepen the penetration. The fourth block, the splendid Vermont Volunteers, would be his reserve. His echelons would be as the four saints inspired to set down the Gospels: Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John.

  He then had made the officers explain the plan in detail to their subordinates, so that every man in the chain of command understood and the attack could continue, no matter who among them the Lord called home.

  And once the assault began, every officer on the field would confine his commands to the simple word Forward! until they broke into the Rebel works.

  The soldiers, too, had to understand their roles. They would go forward at a run to cross the field. He saw to it that knapsacks were grounded, freeing the men to fight without encumbrance, and each soldier was told that he must not cheer or yell, nor stop to fire until he reached the entrenchments. Cowards who tried to fall out must be bayoneted.

  Oh, the officers had blanched at that last command—many in the corps thought him too harsh—but they did not understand these men as he did. Whether from the hills of Pennsylvania or the mountains of Vermont, from Maine’s hard coast or New York’s icy lakes, he knew them as a shepherd knew his flock. They came of the sturdy-minded boys he had worked beside at harvest and by whose side he had puzzled out his lessons. Together, they had sung Wesley’s words of praise in country chapels, and swum together on hot afternoons when farm work allowed them respite. He knew they took the Bible’s injunctions seriously, even those who had strayed from belief. They believed in justice swift and sure, and the private hardened by war saw clearly what his captain might not, that the man who faltered or ran away increased by that much the likelihood that the next bullet would strike down the braver man. He who shirked his labors in the grim vineyards of war was no more than a Cain to his brother Abel.

  He finished his silent prayer: Thy will be done.

  Around him, four thousand souls waited for his command.

  The gunnery continued, further delaying an assault already delayed. He was not without concerns: The great coordinated attack of which he had been told had fallen to pieces, with the Fifth Corps attacking hours ahead of time. And Mott, whose division was to support his effort, had made no attempt to communicate, nor had Upton’s courier found the man. But he would do his d
uty, the Lord’s duty. And should he fall, his slight sins would be washed clean in the blood of the Lamb.

  As near as Upton could judge through the gauze of smoke, the artillery barrage was having little effect, with most of the guns overshooting the Rebel entrenchments. He wanted the batteries to stop, to let him go forward. Should he succeed—and he believed he would—the rest of the army would need time to exploit what had been achieved. Before Old Night forbade a Christian victory.

  Would Mott be there, when needed? “Concentrate on the task at hand,” he told himself, “just concentrate on the work you have been given.”

  It strained him to wait for the cannon to cease their work. And he felt like tension in the men around him, men who had crept forward in their multitude, quiet as serpents, after the Rebel skirmishers had been driven off to prevent them from observing his preparations and sounding a warning. But every passing minute increased the chance that his men would be detected. And that could mean a slaughter in place of success.

  He believed that speed and shock had been the missing factors in the army’s tactics to date. This war of fieldworks and massed fires demanded concentration at the decisive point, an unexpected blow delivered on a narrow front by a force with depth, a hammer blow descending with merciless speed. But failure now, no matter the cause, would discredit his vision and condemn the army to the old suicidal tactics.

  “Speed and shock,” he muttered to himself, as if it were a mesmerizing prayer. “Speed and shock.”

  The guns stopped.

  Emory Upton raised his sword.

  * * *

  Would he ever see Harriet again? Captain John Kidder of the 121st New York knew what Colonel Upton would say: “If you’re not meant to see her again on this earth, you will be reunited in Heaven.” But Kidder longed to clutch his living wife in mortal arms.

  When would the guns stop? Around him, the men of Company I knelt in the weakening light beneath the trees. Those men had kicked when Upton took over the ailing regiment a year and a half before, irate over tightened discipline and drilling in all weathers. But they had soon grown proud. Fervent believers or whiskey-loving heathens, the men might pretend to complain as they once had, but gloried in their nickname, “Upton’s Regulars.” And they grew vain of their colonel, too, a man hardest on himself. They had even come to enjoy his quirks and missed him when he moved up to command the brigade. He was, even the worst sort agreed, a man of integrity.