Hell or Richmond

by Ralph Peters

  His men fired as rapidly as they could. Many of the cartridges were damp or soaked right through and could not be used. Rifles jammed, requiring urgent labor. Even so, the toll of men in blue was downright frightful.

  When they just would not stop their obscene, idiot attack up through the stumps where a grove had been, Oates leapt up on a sharpshooter’s bench, raised himself to his full height above the parapet, head, torso, arms, and one balled fist exposed to whatever the Yankees could bring to bear, and he shouted in a voice so naked it shocked him at least as much as it startled his men:

  “Learn your lesson, damn you! Learn your lesson!”

  TWENTY

  May 12, two p.m.

  On the eastern flank of the salient

  Despite the rain, Brown had slept a few hours and dreamed. He had been escorting Frances to the Methodist church. Only they weren’t in Schuylkill Haven. It was Knoxville and sharply cold. Concerned, he told her over and over that she needed a coat or a shawl. He had his greatcoat, but he couldn’t give it to her, though he didn’t know why. Then she was gone and he was shut in a room he could not leave, nauseated by piles of rotting apples riddled with huge worms. Later, he had a more private dream, an embarrassment and a pleasure.

  Now he stood at the rear of Company C, waiting for the order to advance. The rain had retreated, but looked apt to come on again. Meantime, a breeze swept old wet from the trees speckling the slope. The sodden men in his charge waited in two lines, facing west, peering into the smoke on the next ridge. That was where the Johnnies waited, but to the company’s front, their lines were hidden. The 50th Pennsylvania had drawn a position in the attack that would take them down across an open field and into woods that climbed to the waiting enemy. It was hard to say whether it was worse not seeing the Rebels than having them in plain sight.

  Brown told himself it might not be too bad this time. The 50th and the rump of the Second Brigade had been assigned to the second helping of troops, following Colonel Hartranft’s men. And Colonel Christ was gone, at last, replaced that morning by Colonel Humphrey of the 2nd Michigan, a fellow who seemed all right. No, it might not be too bad, Brown thought. Hartranft’s boys would get the worst of it, the first lines always did. With any luck, the 50th would get into the Reb ditches without many casualties.…

  That was only a fantasy, Brown knew. But a man had to fool himself sometimes, if he meant to keep going. Rumors had been chasing each other all day, every one of them ugly. And the fighting up to the right was just plain queer. Battles, even rough ones, hit lulls of minor skirmishing while both sides squirmed around searching for an advantage. But this day produced steady noise. Up there, on that high ground, in that smoke, men were killing each other with a fury, and no one was quitting.

  Lieutenant Brumm had command of the company now. He walked back to Brown and stood close to him.

  “What do you think, Brownie?”

  “Waste of breath to tell, sir. Just waiting.”

  Brumm thought about that and smiled. “You’re probably thinking about the same thing I am.”

  Brown smiled, too, although he didn’t mean to. “That we ought to get started and get this over with?”

  “Something like that.”

  Smoke filled the low ground before them. Their fate waited beyond it.

  Both men grew serious again. Wet and unhappy, and duty-bound to behave as if they were fearless. And no man, no sane man, was fearless.

  “Going to be hard to keep our alignment, once we reach those trees,” Brumm said. “I’ll be counting on you, First Sergeant.”

  “Do what I can, sir.”

  “Oh, I know that.”

  What was there to talk about, really, when a man couldn’t know if he was to live or die? Yet, men felt the need to talk. Maybe as a way of proving they were still among the living.

  From the low ridge behind them, Union batteries opened. The shots screamed overhead. Brown could not see where they landed.

  “Soon now,” Brumm remarked. “Soon enough now. What do you make it, Brownie? Five hundred yards?”

  “Maybe six,” Brown said. “Hard to tell, with the trees and all that smoke.” He wanted, badly, for things to have a reason. “I figure the point of our going in is to make the Rebs ease off elsewheres.”

  “Or get in their rear.” Brumm liked to add his baritone to Doudle’s tenor around a campfire. Now his voice cracked. “That’s likely what the generals have in mind. They like their fancy plans.” He smiled a last time, the sort of smile that had nothing to do with good humor. “Best take my position. Got to say it out loud, though: I miss Captain Burket.”

  “You’re doing fine, sir,” Brown told the lieutenant. He, too, smiled, amused at the way things went. “Myself, I miss First Sergeant Hill every single day.”

  “Good man, Hill.”

  Brown gestured toward their waiting men. “All good men. Pretty much.”

  “Pretty much,” Brumm agreed. “See you on the other side, First Sergeant.”

  Under the shield of the barrage, Hartranft’s men went forward. Brown knew the 17th Michigan, a good pack of boys, led to the 50th’s front. The Michiganders were offset, though, enough to leave the 50th exposed as the left flank of the division’s attack. The only comfort was that the left had been quiet all that day.

  After the lead brigade had advanced a hundred yards, the order followed for the next lines to advance. The 50th stepped off.

  Ahead, the guns tore into Hartranft’s lines. The men down in the swale double-quicked into the smoke and disappeared.

  “Going to be a lively afternoon, yes, sirree!” Bill Wildermuth declared.

  “Shut up, Bill,” Corporal Hill said.

  As they marched down the slope, it struck Brown that they were trampling a field of new rye, its furrows at odds with each other, as if put in by a wife in her husband’s absence. It was the smallest part of the war, a thing no man among them would remember, but no doubt the destruction would be a cause for sorrow in some run-down homestead. It was a poor place, this stretch of Virginia, as unlike the perfectly kept Dutch farms out Long Run as any farms could be. Home was so much the better place that Brown felt like a bully trampling those shoots.

  Ahead, the trees loomed. Smoke prowled between their trunks.

  Hartranft’s men were in the fight: Brown could hear the firing and shouting, but couldn’t see much.

  The Reb artillery shifted its efforts to the second wave, but the lines of fire spared Company C.

  “Keep your alignment in those trees,” Brown called. “Veterans, keep the new men in line.”

  Of course, they were all veterans now. The Wilderness had been worth a dozen other battles for breaking men in. He was glad that scrap was behind them.

  On the regiment’s right flank, Captain Schwenk’s company veered off into the open ground. Lieutenant Brumm told Company C to keep up the pace and maintain its order.

  Leaf trees gave way to scrub pines: The woodland was the sort of place where kids played hide-and-seek.

  “Just get on through there,” Brown called, “get on through.”

  The branches splashed the men and scratched their faces. But at least the pines weren’t useful trees for sharpshooters.

  Someone called, “Charge!”

  All of the company officers repeated the command, but Brown doubted a one of them knew where they were going. A man couldn’t see beyond the next few trees. They were climbing the far slope, though.

  The noise of battle closed around them, water swamping a barge. Couldn’t see a single Johnny. Only smoke and trees, and his men slipping on wet roots.

  Quitters from Hartranft’s assault filtered back through the pines, almost getting themselves shot by men from the 50th.

  “They were ready for us,” one soldier called, by way of an excuse.

  “Guess you weren’t ready for them, though,” a Pennsylvanian answered.

  “Watch what’s in front of you,” Brown snapped.

  Bullets tor
e at the fog. But he had yet to see a man from the company fall.

  “Come on!” Brumm shouted, determined to give the slowing attack fresh life. “Charge! Company C! Charge!”

  The bushy pines had disordered the entire regiment, but the men remained game and responded to the command by rushing ahead.

  Then the Rebs were right there, in front of them, their entrenchments tracing a jagged course through the trees. Blue-clad bodies decorated the raw dirt to their front.

  Brown’s men howled. The regiment howled. The Johnnies let go a volley and a shriek.

  Then it happened. Before they could close on the parapet. A Rebel yell and firing exploded to their left rear. It all went so fast that Brown couldn’t give an order, not at first. Rebs came swarming through them from somewhere deep in their flank, shooting on the run, clubbing men with muskets, and calling for them to surrender.

  Brown turned in time to see Levi Eckert fall, clutching his leg. Frank Sharon took a bayonet through the neck. Brown parried a tall, red-bearded Reb, and John Eckert the Shorter shot the man in the spine from five feet away.

  Brown nodded to the boy. He’d earned the pair of stockings.

  Lieutenant Brumm shouted for his men to rally, and Brown repeated the call. But the Rebs were just everywhere.

  Captain Schwenk reappeared, leading his company in a charge back down through the tumult, shocking the Rebs in turn. Men went at each other close as stink, sparks from their muzzles setting the garments of gut-shot soldiers afire. Isaac Eckert and Henry Hill were fighting back-to-back. Brown moved to join them, calling for other men to rally to them. As Brown neared his comrades, he shouted to get the attention of a Reb who was troubling Isaac. For one fatal instant, the Johnny glanced toward him. Isaac swept his rifle’s stock up into the man’s jaw, a perfect motion that snapped the Rebel’s neck. One thing no man could take away from Isaac: He fought mean.

  The three of them did the best they could to grab other soldiers and put up a fight, but below and behind them, surrounded men of the 50th began to drop their rifles and surrender. Cornered by half a dozen Rebs, Corporal Doudle raised his hands.

  “I ain’t giving up to no damned Johnny,” Isaac declared.

  Bill Guertler and Dave Raudenbush raised their hands, too.

  “Rally to Brumm,” Brown ordered.

  “Where the Hell is he?”

  “Over there,” Henry Hill said.

  Brumm and Sergeant Levan were wrestling a brace of Johnnies for the regiment’s flag. Down the slope, Captain Schwenk was struggling to form a firing line, and failing.

  Brown saw a gang of Rebels push John Eckert the Shorter into captivity, too distant for a rescue attempt to make sense.

  The men who hadn’t surrendered were falling back. Some began to run. Then more of them ran.

  “Come on,” Brown said to Henry, Isaac, and the handful of others they had gathered in. “We’re going straight down this hill, and straight through anything that gets in our way.”

  As they charged back toward their own too-distant lines, more soldiers joined them. Some fell to Reb bullets, but most pressed on. From all sides, Reb voices called on them to surrender.

  Their course intersected that of Lieutenant Brumm. He had the regiment’s flag, with Jim Levan swinging his rifle to clear a path. Brown dashed toward them and the other men followed, just because they wanted to be led: Somewhere. Anywhere. Away from the Rebs.

  They had a last brawl with a pack of Johnnies who had strayed from their regiment. After a go-to with rifle butts and bayonets—and some fists—they were able to take two prisoners of their own along. But it didn’t make up, couldn’t make up, for the dozens of men from back home forced to surrender.

  “Run, damn you,” Brown told the two sorry Rebs they herded along. Thin as famine itself, one of the men wore torn Union pantaloons, while the other Johnny was barefoot.

  A few shots trailed them into the trampled rye field.

  Out of breath, the men wheezed as they trotted up toward their busy guns, slowing as the slope punished them and the Rebel fire slackened. To their bewilderment, dead and wounded Rebels littered the ground where the 50th had waited to attack just minutes before.

  “What the devil happened?” somebody asked.

  The shoeless Reb said: “We done just crossed each other up, that’s what. Wasn’t after you-all, but them guns yonder. Couldn’t get ’em, and met y’all coming back, and howdy-do.”

  “Who you with, Johnny?”

  “Reckon I’m with you-all now, ’less I have a choice.” He spit out an object that might have been a tooth. “Marched with the Thirty-third North Carolina nigh on three years, though.”

  “Just keep moving, everybody,” Brown said. “Form up, once we get behind the guns.”

  “Sergeants,” the Johnny said in disgust. “I reckon they’re just the same old yard dogs ever’where.”

  Bill Wildermuth appeared, pale but unharmed. Brown felt the joy of a child.

  The men teased Wildermuth. Lovingly.

  “They got Doudle,” Wildermuth told them. “And John Eckert. Heimie…”

  “Saw that,” Isaac Eckert said. “Made a man sick.” They funneled through the space between two batteries and a sequence of fires interrupted Isaac’s speech. In the ringing quiet that followed, he added, “Old Doudle always did have a dread of Andersonville.”

  The two Rebs remained quiet after that.

  Lieutenant Brumm stabbed the regiment’s flag into the earth and ordered a private to hold it upright. “Company C,” he called. “To me! Fiftieth Pennsylvania!”

  Captain Schwenk showed up, too. He seemed to be the senior officer left. Many, many men were missing now. For a time, they waited, hoping that more survivors would make their way back across the field, and a trickle did come in. Then it stopped. Brown guessed the regiment had lost at least a hundred men. A good sight more, if you counted the wounded still on their feet but who would be leaving the ranks. He dreaded calling the roll.

  They had accomplished just plain nothing. Again.

  It began to rain.

  Eleven p.m.

  Grant’s tent

  Bill said: “If’n you ain’t going nowheres no more, them boots wants oiling up.”

  At the end of a rough-hewn day, Grant slumped and told his servant, “I suspect there’s a general or two wouldn’t mind seeing me confined to quarters about now.” He nodded toward the boots, which Bill had just helped him remove. “Smell like week-old fish, too.”

  “Nothing I can do ’bout that, Genr’l. You gots the feet the Lord give you.”

  The rain hit the canvas hard, but could not drown the sounds of combat from the distant salient. It was a soldiers’ fight now, relentless, and had been that way since the morning. The men had struggled at close quarters for over eighteen hours, with no hint of an end to the intimate killing. Grant tried not to think about it. He had no more wish to see it in his mind than he did in the flesh. After evading a close look at the savagery all that day, he hoped to avoid dragging it with him into sleep. It did no good to dwell on the horrors, when horrors had to be. A man did what was necessary, after which you had to let things run. The battle belonged to the men out in the rain now. Tomorrow was his affair. If the rain eased, he meant to attack.

  The day had started grandly, but Lee had spunk. Give him that. And his scarecrow soldiers had heart. What had surprised Grant was the determination of his own men to stick to it, going at it hand to hand in the mud. The Army of the Potomac had more grit than folks credited.

  The generals were another matter. Burnside had pissed in his hat again. And Warren’s men had achieved just about nothing. Wright needed time. Hancock puzzled him. Win seemed not to have bothered thinking beyond his first jump at checkers. As if he had lacked faith in his own success. He was still the best of the corps commanders, especially now that Sedgwick was gone, but Win seemed burdened by common things he would have carried lightly in the old days.

  They were tired. Grant u
nderstood that. But Lee’s men were worn down, too. And the first side to give up would lose, no fact shone with greater clarity. The past week had taught Grant that the Army of the Potomac could fight. Now he wasn’t sure that it could think. For all his temper, Meade was steady enough. A thorough soldier, he did what he was told. But George Meade thought things through too finely, until the dangers got to him. Like too many generals, he saw spooks. And some of those spooks were real, but others weren’t. As Meade’s chief of staff, Humphreys was four aces. But even he wanted to see everybody else’s hand before he bet.

  Well, a man had to play the cards he drew. And the hand he held would serve. Game might run on for a time, though.

  Bill had the mud-crusted boots in hand, but dawdled. Fussing. Which meant he had something itching him.

  “Know what I’d like?” Grant asked. His expression was pure mischief. “Any idea what I’d appreciate right about now? What would truly do me good?”

  Bill applied a grave expression to his blue black face. “Ain’t going to be none of that, Genr’l. Mr. Rawlins, he’d chop me up and feed me to the hogs.”

  “Now, Bill … John Rawlins is the gentlest creature to walk on God’s green earth.”

  “That some other Rawlins, maybe, not the one I’m fearing. He love you like a dog, but he guard you like a wolf.”

  True enough. If ere a man had befriended him sincerely in this life, it was John Rawlins. With Pete Longstreet next in line. Pete had been wounded in the Wilderness. Badly, if the reports were true. Grant worried over him. As he did over Rawlins’ cough.

  He had been teasing Bill, nothing more. He understood that indulgences of any sort did not lie in his near future. But it was one of his few allowable pleasures to see Bill flustered.

  “Well, then,” Grant said, “I suppose I’ll have to settle for hearing what’s on your mind. And don’t tell me there’s nothing. You’re just about spilling over.”

  Bill inspected the seams of the battered boots. “Oh, just got to thinking as how it’s a shame those U.S. Colored Troops ain’t in all that fighting. Now it’s dark and all.”