Hell or Richmond

by Ralph Peters

  “Soon,” Meade said. “Wright and Smith don’t step off until five.”

  Grant nodded. “Late.”

  “The men were exhausted. Smith’s last division still hasn’t closed.”

  Grant sensed that Meade would have liked to point out Orr Babcock’s role in the mess of a march the night before. But he knew Meade would restrain himself just short of mentioning it. Meade bucked sometimes, but never enough to embarrass a good rider. Unlike that damned black stallion in New Orleans. He could still hear the slice of horseshoes on wet cobbles in that instant before the beast tumbled sideward. With him still in the saddle.

  “Smith’s only got the ammunition his men are carrying,” Humphreys put in. “No medical supplies, either. Or rations.”

  “Give him what he needs,” Grant said. “Rather see the men first and supplies after, than the other way round.”

  Meade and Humphreys. Excellent officers, good men. But they could not see beyond the coming fight. Meade knew exactly what the book said a man should do, and Humphreys could have written the book. But the book didn’t work anymore. Books tried to help a fellow win a battle, but what mattered now was to win campaigns entire.

  The scale of war was bigger now. Big as the country.

  “Things all right with Hancock?” Grant asked.

  “Yes, Sam, they are,” Meade said. “He’ll begin to withdraw as soon as darkness falls. Skirmishers will remain to keep Lee occupied. Captain Paine from the staff will guide the march.”

  “Hit Lee hard,” Grant said. “And early. Wright and Smith can start things up today, keep the Rebs off balance. But we’re going to have to finish the job in the morning.”

  Meade nodded. “We’re agreed on that. The last thing any man in this army wants to do is give Lee time to entrench again. The casualty lists…”

  Men who had never been poor as dirt didn’t understand the hard-figured cost of things. Meade and Humphreys were fine, fine men. But they did not understand, even now, how much killing this would take.

  He figured things were just about up with Lee. Put up a devil of a fight, give the man that, but the Reb attacks across the past few days had been easily broken. Feeble. Lee’s boys had to be about bled out. Take more blood to finish them off, though. And you couldn’t shy from it.

  Just had to make up your mind to do a thing. All the fine generals fought to win battles, trying again and again, while the war dragged on. Even Sherman had had a touch of that, thinking in terms of winning the next battle, all clean and proper. Cump was about over that now.

  You just could not relent, no matter the cost. If you did, the lives already spent were wasted. The way the Union was going to win this war was to outspend the Confederacy on every account, in men and blood, war supplies and gold, and to apply a strategy that didn’t look just at Virginia or Tennessee or the Mississippi Valley, but at all of it at once, from Georgia to Indian territory. You had to step back and look at how the whole country fit together and not worry too much over any one little piece of it. You had to see farther and think bigger than your enemy. And you had to close your heart to suffering now to save yourself greater misery tomorrow.

  He had been trained as all these fine officers had, by West Point, Mexico, and the frontier Army. They had been taught how to build bridges and harbor fortifications, how to fight brown men forced to fight by others, and how to keep a knee square on the back of broken Indians. But this war wanted more, a great deal more.

  Meade, Humphreys, Hancock … good men and fine. Skilled officers. And skill mattered. But nothing mattered as much as strength of will. The man who couldn’t fight to the last of his soldiers just wouldn’t do anymore.

  Lee had that strength, the necessary hardness. But Grant knew the man didn’t see the country whole. He hadn’t trapped Lee in Virginia. Virginia had trapped Lee. Lee had trapped Lee. And this was where the idol would be broken.

  You had to swing the hammer, and not worry about whose fingers might be crushed.

  Lincoln understood. Didn’t like all the pieces, but he saw the puzzle whole. Maybe it had to do with the western rivers, the way they captured the spirit. Maybe it all had started with him as a boy, taking his father’s tanned hides down the Ohio to the Mississippi and on down south, getting schooled in the bigness, the immensity, of the living land, with its muddy veins and arteries. Maybe all this was a child’s dream made real with the blood of millions.

  Didn’t matter if it was. All that mattered was winning.

  To the south, artillery opened en masse. Wright’s guns. And, he hoped, Baldy Smith’s batteries, too.

  He lit a cigar to keep off the flies and said, “Wouldn’t mind a cup of your mud coffee, George.” He creased his mouth in a smile to put his hosts at ease.

  No, they didn’t understand. Lincoln did. And Sherman, more and more. But the only other person who saw it was Bill.

  “Yassuh,” his servant had said to him, “you jes’ like a dog has got him a big ole ham bone. Eat up all the meat to once, then chaw that bone in two. Even if it cut that ole hound’s mouth all up and bleeding. Just ain’t got no give-up, no suh-ree. I pities the man try to take that bone away.”

  Lee was a bone that had to be chawed in two.

  Four forty-five p.m.

  Cold Harbor

  The mulberry trees had been picked clean, as if by biblical locusts, and the dead had all been buried in shallow pits. His brigade had relieved the cavalrymen at noon, arriving so weary that many a soldier could barely keep his feet, but Brigadier General Emory Upton adhered to his hard-learned standards: The dead Confederates from the morning’s fighting had to be put in the earth, not to honor them—he would not honor men who fought for slavery—but to keep his own men in health. Discipline, sanitation, and faith were his bedrocks, and he would not have his men lie down among corpses.

  There would be more corpses, many more. The artillery had already begun its work, firing at targets hidden by a veil of scrub pines. His trusted 121st New York had deployed a heavy skirmishing party to clear the Rebs from their forward rifle pits, but the main Confederate line lay across a field and beyond a grove. His skirmishers reported trees felled as obstacles in front of a trench line that had already been given head logs. The enemy had learned to fortify with speed.

  He rode back into the low ground where his first line stood ready. The soldiers looked dusty and worn, impatient, nervous, and eager. Beneath the grit, their uniforms were new. They had not seen the elephant.

  His shriveled brigade had been reinforced by a garrison artillery regiment, the 2nd Connecticut Heavies, who had been converted into infantrymen with the suddenness of Saul transformed into Paul on the road to Damascus. Those fifteen hundred new, untested men had more than doubled his brigade’s strength on the road not to Damascus, but to Richmond. And their colonel, a profane but earnest man, Elisha Kellogg, had volunteered his men to lead this attack. Upton had been glad of it. If the artillerymen wished to disprove the jeers that they were bandbox soldiers, that was meet and good. Their turn had come to suffer battle and put their trust in the Lord. And his ever-fewer veterans would be spared the worst of the fighting for one day.

  The dead were buried, but the flies still sensed their presence and plagued the living. It would be a relief to go forward. It always was. Even when an attack appeared unlikely to succeed, all things became clear and purposeful once the first line stepped toward the enemy.

  He had arranged his men in the same formation he had used three weeks before at Spotsylvania, four lines that would advance briskly, with the same instructions not to fire until they had breached the enemy’s entrenchments. He would not have the element of surprise today, but punching rapidly into the defense seemed the only hope.

  The enemy knew they were coming. It was going to be bloody.

  Colonel Kellogg harangued his men, shouting to be heard over the guns, encouraging them to prove their worth in battle. Upton waited for the man to invoke the Lord and ask his blessing, but the call
never came. He did not interrupt, though. Kellogg had the loyalty of his men, and Upton had learned the value of worldly emotions.

  He would pray for all of them.

  Follow after me: for the LORD hath delivered your enemies the Moabites into your hands …

  His horse knew him and fidgeted, ready to go forward. Upton sometimes felt mortal tremors, the rebellion of the flesh, but his mind was ever at ease in the face of death. He knew this was a holy war, against Moabites and worse, against human beasts that had enslaved God’s children. Their ruler was Pharaoh, their priests were the priests of Baal. He who fell in battle against such enemies would be lifted high upon the wings of angels.

  And they slew of Moab at that time about ten thousand men, all lusty, and all men of valour; and there escaped not a man.

  Lord, let it be thus. Let it be for the righteous as it was in the days of Joshua, of Judges and Kings.

  And Judah went up; and the LORD delivered the Canaanites and the Perizzites into their hand; and they slew of them in Bezek ten thousand men …

  Lord, let it be so.

  For thou shalt drive out the Canaanites, though they have iron chariots, and though they be strong.

  Lord, grant us victory, in thy name.

  He looked over the dust-caked, unknowing multitude, three ranks of former artillerymen and the last rank composed of his veterans. And he prayed that the Lord would have mercy on those who perished, especially on those deficient in their faith, for all would do the work of the Lord this day.

  He thought, as he often did, of the Negroes he had known at Oberlin College, before he had been selected for West Point. If their skin had been dark, their faith had been bright as silver. The thought of such men enslaved and bodily chastised, abandoned to conditions worse than the Babylonian captivity, made Emory Upton wish he could call down fire upon every Southron head, and on the beasts of their fields, on their orchards and vineyards.

  The South was not the mere Babylon of old. It was a Babylon of leprous souls.

  The cannon stopped.

  The silence swelled.

  A crow cawed.

  Colonel Kellogg looked to Upton, who nodded.

  The colonel dismounted and strode to the front of his troops. Raising his sword, he called, “Forward! Guide center! March!”

  Upton rode forward with them.

  * * *

  Well, it had been a good life. If it ended here, it did. Nothing to be done about it. No choice. He had to set the example for his men, who were going to fight at last.

  As he strode forward at the head of his regiment, Elisha S. Kellogg felt sweat trickle down his back. He knew it was not only from the heat.

  This barren place. Well, he had known others as bad. Young, he had sailed the seas on British merchantmen. He had chased the gleam of gold in the fevered beauty of California. And when the gold refused to leap into his hands, he had built a solid life up in Connecticut.

  He had regrets. And faults. He knew he blustered at times, but such was his nature. A man learned to live with his foibles, even to be amused at his own helplessness. And if he had, at times, been hard on his troops, determined to keep them soldierly in their long, dreary months in garrison at Washington, manning guns they had never fired in anger, well, he believed they had forgiven him, even that they respected him.

  Almost a nervous tic, he glanced rearward. And there they were. Marching handsomely enough to please that fox-faced babe of a brigadier general with Bible verses on his lips and murder in his eyes. The veteran regimental commanders had warned Kellogg never to swear or take the Lord’s name in vain in Upton’s presence. It was a hard sentence for a man who had strayed along the docks in San Francisco. Keeping off the Lord wasn’t hard, but cleansing his speech of the virile joy of obscenity—sailor’s delight—required vigilance.

  As his men tramped forward, three thousand feet marching over a fallow field, Kellogg did not call on the Lord to spare him or his soldiers. He had lived as he had lived, and he would die, if need be, as he died. And that was that.

  Wouldn’t mind living, though.

  He’d heard the dreadful tales of these frontal attacks. Arriving at Spotsylvania just in time to march southward under Upton’s unforgiving eye, his soldiers had been shocked by the look of those they joined—not only by their ragged filth, but by the dead eyes they brought to bear on a man.

  He stepped between abandoned rifle pits. The veteran skirmishers filtered back through his ranks. They did not pause to tease his soldiers now.

  He lifted his sword and felt the suck of rich sweat in his armpit. His regiment’s colors trailed him, limp in the still air.

  His men looked fine, though.

  He had been told that other brigades would advance on either flank, but he saw no one, not even a flag. He realized what that absence meant and shuddered, but kept his shoulders squared.

  Trees ahead, a pine thicket. Good for nothing but breaking their marching order.

  He turned his head sharply, to one side and then the other. Hunting the swarm of insects they had roused. Only when a soldier fell did he understand: The air was full of bullets. That was how they sounded.

  He turned to face his men. Marching with his back to the enemy, he saw one fellow break from the ranks to run rearward.

  “Steady, men! Follow your colonel!”

  He wheeled to face the enemy again. Before he tripped and made a fool of himself. Dignity mattered in a man’s life. He had never understood those for whom it was of no consequence. Every man did foolish things, but a good man lived his life upright.

  Ah, not all of the foolish things were things he wished undone.…

  He brushed past a pine tree. And saw a living Rebel. Aiming and firing, then trotting rearward. The trees hardly made up a forest or even a grove, but they hid whatever waited behind their greenery.

  That henna-haired darling in green velvet on the Barbary Coast …

  Won’t find one like that a second time.

  He stiffened his arm, pointing his sword like the needle of a compass. For the last course a man sailed.

  Why was he being so morbid?

  He knew why.

  The fox-faced brigadier would have no complaints about his men this day. Again, he looked rearward. His men struggled to keep their ranks amid the starved-looking pines. Upton, on horseback, followed behind the first battalion, staying ahead of the second. Even at forty yards, the man looked savage.

  Their course sloped downward, easily, into a dry swale. More firing now, from men who could not be seen. Soldiers fell, some with a small cry, others as silently as if in an opium trance. The colors dipped, but an eager sergeant caught them.

  Good, good.

  One of his men had surprised him by bringing him a cap half-filled with mulberries. They had tasted all the better for the kindness. He had not always been a gentle commander. But he was a man whose heart was touched by the oddest things, sentimental in ways he could never share.

  When he told her good-bye that last time, the night before he sailed from San Francisco, she had refused his money. Of small gestures were the sweetest memories made.

  Why think of her now, and not of his orderly later life, his upstanding years?

  He knew why. Oh, he knew.

  He was a large, strong man, but the damned sword seemed as heavy as China-trade ballast. Still, he held it extended.

  A compass needle, pointing God knew where.

  They climbed the far side of the swale. Confederate cannon, still unseen, opened fire, but overshot. All those long months of manning big guns, and now the cannonballs were coming toward them.

  He could be an awfully clumsy fellow in dealing with other men, awkward, but quick he was at seeing the humor in life, the jokes fate played.

  He glimpsed open space beyond a last row of pines.

  Was that where they were? Waiting?

  “Come on, men, come on! That’s it, boys! Onward, Connecticut!”

  His throat was so dry his
words seemed to cut its flesh.

  It wasn’t a field that awaited them. Pushing through the last pines, he saw a midget’s forest of stumps, their tops pale and glinting with sap.

  Across the new-made clearing, the harvested trees had been woven into an obstacle. Behind rose a rampart of raw dirt and fence rails, topped with freshly cut logs. The Rebels were not even visible. He saw only their rifle barrels, thrust through narrow gaps. To the left, the muzzles of cannon peeked from hastily made emplacements. A red flag hung slack in the trees.

  The earth exploded. Rifles flared. Artillery flashed blindingly, then gauzed itself with smoke. All around, his men recoiled, struck, shocked, wavering.

  He lifted his sword so its point aimed at the heavens.

  “Come on, boys, come on, come on! Forward the Heavies! Come on!”

  He dared not look about him. Then he looked anyway. Yes, some men had lost heart. But most stayed with him.

  The enemy rifles had disappeared, drawing back like serpents’ tongues. Now they thrust through the openings again.

  “Down!” he shouted on instinct. “Get down!”

  The men who heard him dropped. Others followed their example, just as another dragon’s breath of flame shot from the line.

  “Re-form! Re-form! On your feet, re-form!”

  The cries of the wounded, of his shattered men, cut through the gale of noise.

  But men rose. Still plenty of them. They dutifully sought to form ranks.

  As he looked about, he saw—to his astonishment—that Upton remained mounted, showing himself above a stand of dwarf pines, a pistol shot away.

  Waving his sword like a signal flag, Kellogg began to run forward, toward the mesh of felled trees, toward the fortress the Johnnies had forged from the wretchedness of Virginia.

  “Come on, boys! Charge!”

  They ran forward. Shouting. Their force felt irresistible.

  He dashed between the stumps, waving his sword. Bursting with passion, he pulled off his hat to wave it, too. He felt as if he could tug the whole army behind him.

  God love the bad women, for the awful truth was that they’d been the joy of his life.