Hell or Richmond

by Ralph Peters

  “Well,” Henagan said, “I reckon I’m more concerned with taking the crossroads than with the honor of it. The plain fact that those Yankee cavalry are still here, that they’ve been rooting and digging all night to get all nice and ready for us, tells a man they’re minded to hang on to that crossroads themselves. Just waiting for their infantry to come up.”

  “Then we must strike them promptly.”

  “Had yourself a look at those entrenchments?”

  Keitt corrected his posture from fine to perfect. “I have. And I find them no more than a hodgepodge.” He turned to fully face the jumped-up sheriff. “Battery Wagner had proper fortifications. There’s a difference between a Vauban and a vulgar ditchdigger.”

  Henagan’s lips moved, but no sound came out. Keitt wondered what the man lacked the courage to say.

  “If those cowardly mule drivers are, indeed, waiting on their infantry,” Keitt added, “better to see to them now.”

  Henagan began to shake his head, but caught himself in the act. “Sir, I’m asking you. Consider this a formal request, if that’s what it takes. At least wait for Bryan’s Brigade to get itself organized right. If nothing else, wait for Bryan. I know you were one of them Fire-Eaters in Congress, but this ain’t—”

  “If you feel … trepidation, Colonel Henagan, dismiss your concerns. My Twentieth South Carolina will take the place d’honneur on the right front. Your soldiers may follow behind.” He smiled, determined to encourage all the poor devils around him, men distinctly wanting in morale. “The Yankees haven’t seen anything like my men. They’ll think they’re facing Prussian grenadiers.”

  Henagan was impossible to console. He just said, “No, I reckon the Yankees ain’t seen anything like that.”

  * * *

  Along the line of the 20th South Carolina, sergeants adjusted the alignment of belts and cartridge boxes, straightened caps, and saw that collars were buttoned. Keitt could not have been prouder of his men. They would fill two-thirds of the brigade front as they advanced, weapons straightened at right shoulder shift and each man raising a knee exactly eight inches at every forward step.

  He nodded at his adjutant, who ordered, “Uncase the colors!”

  Henagan, on foot, peered up at him. The man was becoming an insufferable nag: No wonder a drunken ne’er-do-well had been able to push this army back against Richmond.

  “Sir, we could swing around through the woods. Take ’em in the flank. Ain’t no need to march out across that field.”

  “The shortest way to the enemy is the best way to the enemy,” Keitt told him. He kept his tone civil, but his supply of patience had neared depletion.

  Henagan looked at the ground and back up past Keitt’s gleaming, just dusted boots. “Dismount, at least. Go forward on foot.”

  “You may walk, if you wish, Colonel Henagan. I’m sure I have no objection.”

  Henagan saluted and turned away.

  Keitt unsheathed his sword. Raised skyward, it caught the sun.

  “South Carolina! Brigade! Forward!”

  The command echoed down the line.

  Instead of a supplementary command, Keitt lowered his blade to the horizontal, pointing it at the Yankees, and spurred forward. Barked orders moved the long line from the trees and across the road along which they had formed. As soon as they reached the edge of the open field, the men of his own regiment snapped into place beside their comrades, rectifying their own alignment and leaving hardly anything for the noncommissioned officers to do. In the sunlight, the lines—which he had ordered be kept compact—were fit to dazzle the world. Finer, he told himself, than the British Regulars he had seen on parade before the queen.

  He had not deployed skirmishers to herald his attack. He believed them to be undisciplined and unnecessary, fit only for march security. Shock would be the order of the day.

  Henagan had whined about that, too. Receiving the order, the man had all but cringed.

  From his perch in the saddle, Keitt twisted his erect spine to look past his own men to the remainder of the brigade. Deployed on the flank and coming along behind, the soldiers loped like cracker-barrel militia.

  He would see to that, in time.

  Masses of spring insects leapt from the grass, fleeing before the footfalls of his men. The Yankees, he imagined, would flee just so.

  The early sun grew warm, but the effect was not unpleasant. For one delightful moment, it seemed to embrace him.

  Again, he raised his saber high, letting it glitter before he employed it to point the way again. When the weight of the blade began to tell, he settled it against his shoulder.

  He had expected cannon, if only horse artillery, to contest his brigade’s advance. He had read of the destructive fire of the guns, how they opened first, long before the plank-on-plank clapping sound of rifle fire might be heard. But no artillery fire sought his troops, no cannon disturbed the excellence of the morning.

  Anyway, paltry fieldpieces would be nothing to the great guns defending the approaches to Charleston Bay.

  He spotted more of them now, the Yankees. Keeping low behind their sordid dirt piles, their logs and stacked fence rails, they appeared quickened, perhaps by dread.

  Susie! For all their squabbles and differences, the confusions of their passion, she would be burstingly proud of him this day. The former Miss Susanna Sparks had been a more formidable conquest than this Mongol horde of Yankees was apt to be.

  He raised the hand that held his reins to brush sweat from his eyes. Confused, his horse shied mildly, then eased again.

  He could not hear the birds now, but the brigade had long since left the trees behind. Thousands of footfalls sounded at his back, tapping the padded earth, swishing through a field that had gone to weed.

  He could not resist another look at his lines.

  They were perfect, immaculate. His men had not marched more grandly before the belles of Charleston.

  He saw the first Yankee faces now, bobbing here and there above blue jackets. He could almost make out their features.

  The heat seemed to have increased by twenty degrees in twenty yards. Sweat gripped him. He wanted to tug his collar away from his neck, but the act would have been unseemly.

  Why didn’t the Yankees open fire? They were infernally close. And yes: He saw cannon, their black muzzles gaping.

  He raised his sword and turned, ready to shout, “Charge!”

  The Yankee artillery opened. The range could not have been two hundred yards.

  Canister turned men into clouds of blood. His ranks gaped. Soldiers rushed forward to fill in the holes, only to be blasted in their turn, converted into lightning streaks of blood.

  He could not make his voice heard, could not speak, did not know if he had spoken. He felt caught in a world that sped by and held still at the same time. He meant to raise his sword, but his arm refused.

  Bewilderingly, a band played “Yankee Doodle.”

  Turning back toward his foe’s entrenchments, he saw a narrow, brilliant line of flames.

  Keitt struck the ground before he knew he’d been shot.

  * * *

  “Charge, damn it! Charge, boys!” Henagan shouted. He did not want the slaughter to be for nothing.

  That damned shit-for-chivalry Keitt. Yankees had led him on the way a hoor teased a drunken farm-boy. Men dragged him off with his eyes rolled back in his head, gut-shot, lung-shot, just shot to Hell, but alive thanks to, maybe, his sheer, arrogant bigness. But not alive for long, Henagan figured.

  Damned fool.

  He tried to rally his boys and the others, but the Yankees were sweeping the field with their cannon and repeating rifles, dropping men by the dozen, right and left. He had never experienced such a volume of fire.

  The only thing saving anybody now was the thick pall of yellow smoke that covered the Yankee line, leaving them to shoot blind and hope they hit something.

  Didn’t stop them from shooting, though.

  Taunting their attackers,
the Yankee band struck up “Dixie.” Henagan would have like to cut the throat of every last musician.

  Unlikely he was going to get the chance, though. The attack had gone into a stupor, with Keitt’s new men bewildered by the gore, by the raw noise, paralyzed like a boy shot in the spine.

  A section of Yankee artillery gave his own regiment another one-two of canister, shredding men like china dolls bashed on a wall.

  It was enough, enough. Fool charge, led by an idiot. He was about to order his men and Keitt’s pack rearward on his own responsibility when a runner found him.

  “General Kershaw says y’all are to pull on back. He says there ain’t no use to it.”

  Henagan wasted no time. “Back to the trees!” he shouted to his own men as he dashed to recall the survivors of Keitt’s regiment. “Withdraw to the trees. And start digging.”

  Three thirty p.m.

  Headquarters, Army of the Potomac, at Via’s Farm

  “I suppose,” Meade said to Humphreys, “I’ll have to be gracious to Sheridan.”

  Briefly free of the crowding and insistent grime of their headquarters, the two men watched from a shade tree as a column of soldiers marched away from the war. Volunteers whose enlistments were up, those troops were the only jolly men in the army.

  “Quite a feat,” Humphreys responded. “I’ll credit the bullet-headed little Fenian with that much. Holding off Lee’s infantry with those Camptown jockeys of his.” He waved off a veil of flies. “Maybe Grant’s right. That Lee’s on his last legs.”

  “Generals on their last legs don’t attack.”

  “Lee might. Desperation. Or a bluff.”

  “We’ll see, Humph. If Wright pitches into them before the end of the century.” Instinctively, he felt for his watch, but dropped his hand away. He knew what time it was. And for all the intermittent blasting of cannon and the crackle of skirmishing, there was no hint of a major assault. Nor would there be for another painful hour and a half. Wright’s men had reached Cold Harbor dead on their feet, and Smith’s corps was just closing, after one of Grant’s prized stock of aides had sent it off in the utterly wrong direction the night before.

  “Babcock, wasn’t it?” Meade asked.

  “What?”

  “Grant’s man. The one who took Baldy Smith on a wild-goose chase.”

  “Yes. Babcock. He’s hardly the worst, though.”

  “Order out to the chief surgeon?”

  Humphreys nodded. “He’ll do all he can.”

  A band struck up to serenade the departing veterans: “The Girl I Left Behind Me.”

  Meade’s voice came just short of a growl. “I still can’t believe the man. Steaming his corps down the James and up the York, leaving all of his medical supplies behind.”

  “And his ammunition reserve,” Humphreys added. “I suppose he saw us as the Horn of Plenty.”

  Meade grunted. “He’ll want rations, too, I suppose.”

  “He’s already asked for them.”

  “Yes,” Meade said. “And neatly done. Grant’s bunch couldn’t plan a picnic. Had you been in charge of his movement, this wouldn’t have happened. The man would’ve had his wagons and marched on time last night.”

  “Well, we’ve got him and his pack now. As of noon today.” Humphreys took out his pipe and began to fix it with fresh tobacco. “God knows, we can use them. When we’re stripping garrison artillery regiments to rebuild this army’s strength.…”

  It was Meade’s turn to fan away the Virginia gnats, which took sharp little bites out of a man. And his legs were tormented by fleabites gotten during a too-brief sleep. “Let’s just hope they can fight.”

  “Eighteenth Corps?”

  “No. Our tender redleg converts to the infantry. But, for that matter, yes. The Eighteenth Corps, too. We’ll see if serving under Butler hasn’t ruined them.”

  “Well, we know they don’t like marching,” Humphreys said. With a thin smile.

  One of the telegraph orderlies approached and paused at a careful distance. Humphreys gestured for the man to come closer.

  The corporal saluted. “Telegraph line’s in to General Wright’s headquarters, sir. You wanted to know.”

  Humphreys nodded. “Fine, Halloran. I’ll be in shortly.”

  The corporal, new to the headquarters, saluted again and did his best to perform a crisp about-face.

  “I don’t know how you do it, Humph,” Meade said, watching the young man go.

  “What?”

  “Remember all their names. Lord knows, I try.”

  “You’ve got other things on your mind.”

  Meade snorted. “And you don’t?”

  “I suppose I really should go in. Nudge Wright a bit. See if there’s an acknowledgment from Hancock. Christ, George, I could sleep like Rip Van Winkle.”

  A smile, untainted, crossed Meade’s face. “I’d outsleep you by a decade. Clean sheets, though. I’d like clean sheets.” He scratched at a bite on his cheek. “Isn’t it remarkable, though? We live in an age of wonders, Humph. Telegraph lines to every corps headquarters.…”

  “Not to Smith yet.”

  “In principle, though. Think of it for a moment. Telegraphic communications right on the battlefield. Troops moved by steam on land and sea … and the weaponry, rifled guns, repeating carbines … war’s changing. No, it’s already changed. Sometimes I feel I’m being left behind.”

  “You forgot the damned entrenchments. That’s the face of modern war, men digging their own graves and waiting to die in them.” The chief of staff’s expression reinforced the gripe in his voice. “Christ, I’ll be glad to get off the Totopotomoy. Another squandered chance, thanks to Slapdash Sam.”

  “Barlow took a bite out of them.”

  “A bite’s not enough.” Humphreys shook his head. “At least, the ground at Cold Harbor looks a bit better, we should be able to get at them for once.”

  “If we hit them before Lee has time to turn it into a fortress.” Meade’s face grew as somber as the day was hot. “I can’t abide this slaughter, Humph, just banging up against entrenchments the men know can’t be taken.”

  “Tell Grant.”

  “I have.”

  “And?”

  “You know.”

  Humphreys nodded. “And we’ll both obey our orders to the end. We’re trained like show horses.”

  “Well,” Meade mused, “Grant was a champion horseman at West Point.” He shook his head, part weariness, part despair. “One hopes he knows what he’s doing, after all.”

  “Lincoln believes in him. Grant’s got the man charmed. Two westerners. Speak the same language, I suppose.”

  Meade sighed and could not resist saying, “I wish he’d believed just half as much in me. What you and I could have done together, Humph…”

  The final increment of departing troops left a billow of dust. Another contingent of infantrymen turned into the road, marching in the opposite direction. These men, in distinctly different spirits, headed toward the war.

  Humphreys shook his head. “You’re right, though. War’s changed. And I suppose it’s only going to get deadlier. Story of mankind’s history.” His smile twisted, as if screwed from within. “Give us time enough, and we’ll figure out a way to kill every last man and dog upon this earth.”

  “Oh, come now. It’s not as bad as all that.”

  “You’re more of an optimist than I am,” Humphreys said.

  Meade laughed. He could not remember the last time he had laughed like that. “Great God, Humph! I believe that’s the first time any man’s ever said those words to me. I’ll have to write Margaret and tell her.”

  Humphreys shared a smile, but didn’t quite laugh. “All right, George. Too much thinking, not enough doing. I’ll go back in, push Wright and pull on Hancock.”

  “Warren?”

  Humphreys shrugged. “Back to his old tricks. More promises than activity. Complains that his men are tired. We’re all tired, for Christ’s sake. And Burnside�
�s always got an excuse. He’s like a tardy schoolboy.”

  Meade shifted the subject back to the day’s priority. “I wouldn’t mind a bit, if Wright—or even Baldy—gave Lee’s men a whipping. Not a good day when only Sheridan shines.”

  “Well, shine he did. He’s a curious man, our little mick.”

  Meade swept a drift of dust away from his face. “What I’ve noticed about Sheridan … is that he’s quite the shebeen scrapper, all right. He likes to scrap, that’s the thing. But ask the man to do what cavalry should, screen the army or conduct reconnaissance, and he’s Burnside on a horse.” He frumped his chin, pulling thoughts into words. “I’ll be fair to the man, though: He’s splendid when he’s doing what he wants to do. And worthless at anything else.”

  The gnats swarmed the two men again. Virginia hardly seemed worth such a terrible struggle. “Make sure Hancock’s on the road by dark,” Meade said. “If Wright makes any progress, Grant will want a general assault in the morning.”

  “And if Wright doesn’t make progress, Grant will want an assault in the morning.” Humphreys shook his head, swatting at the flies and turning to go. “I want to believe he’s right. After we’ve lost nearly half the men we had back on the Rapidan.” He raised his eyes. “What you said about our friend Sheridan? Apply it to Grant, too. He’s all for doing what he wants to do. And the rest of the world can go hang.”

  From the miasma of dust along the road, a man emerged astride a grand brown horse. A small retinue trailed him, edging past the soldiers plodding south.

  “Speak of the devil,” Humphreys said.

  Four p.m.

  Via’s Farm

  None of them understood it. And explaining wouldn’t do. They wouldn’t know what to make of it. But some things just had to be.

  He dismounted and, limping slightly, approached Meade and Humphreys. The injury he’d taken from his New Orleans tumble had come back to nag him, right out of the blue. The way an attack ought to come. You needed to hit the enemy the way pain struck a man, without warning and without mercy.

  “Don’t hear the guns,” he said. There was desultory artillery fire in the distance, as well as the intermittent snap of rifles, but the two men understood him.