Hell or Richmond

by Ralph Peters

He did not think once of the innocent face he had left behind in Connecticut.

  “Come on!”

  There were years in every second.…

  The Rebs fired freely now, as swiftly as they could load. His men dropped like bottles in a barroom brawl.

  A man could be an awfully fragile thing.…

  He slashed at the tangled branches keeping him and his soldiers from the hateful entrenchments. Furious. Determined to accomplish something worthy.

  “Come on!”

  To his right, a pair of his men made it all the way to the entrenchments, smashing their rifle butts at the protruding muzzles.

  “That’s the way!” Kellogg shouted.

  But when he looked rearward, wanting to lead a mass of soldiers over those piled logs, he saw little more than men falling, arms flying outward, while others crumpled in on themselves to drop headfirst and lie still. The hewn grove showed as many bodies as stumps.

  Yet, amazingly, wonderfully, living men in dark blue coats surged forward, toward the ramparts.

  He knew, though. They were no longer enough. His second line seemed to have gone to ground. He did not have enough men, of these good men, to break the Rebel line. They would have to regroup and charge again.

  Lowering his sword, he waved his hat.

  “Fall back! Regroup! Fall—”

  Someone punched him terribly in the jaw. He had never been hit so hard, not even in his wild sailing days.

  Just as he realized, an instant later, that it had not been a fist that staggered him, another bullet struck him, and another.

  * * *

  Upton spurred his horse forward, shouting, “Lie down, lie down! Don’t return fire. Lie down!”

  He was angry enough to feel the lure of profanity. Eustis’s brigade had not even attempted to come forward until too late. And Truex, from Ricketts’ division on the right, had gotten off to a tardy start, then disappeared into a ravine, as if the earth had swallowed him. His single brigade opposed a Rebel division, well dug in.

  Didn’t anyone in the army have any sense? Couldn’t anyone think?

  The Heavies were brave enough, though. He had seen Kellogg fall just short of the Rebel entrenchments. The other field officers from the new regiment had dropped at the head of their troops. It was now a captain’s fight.

  “Lie down!” He almost added, “Damn it.”

  He heard double thwaps in the instant before his horse buckled. Flinging himself from the animal’s back before it could trap his leg, he landed hard and felt his lungs empty of air. Gasping, he rose and ran from the shuddering, kicking animal to continue trying to save what men he could. The last of his aides had disappeared, sent back to demand assistance, support, anything that might save the attack from failure.

  Black specks flashed by. The Rebs were sporting with him. In a rage, he threw himself to the ground among the soldiers. Unable even to command his brigade.

  He knew that if he fell, the attack would collapse completely. And he wanted, at the very least, to hold on to the ground their blood had already earned. Surely General Russell, or Wright himself, would act like a leader, not an ignoramus?

  Even as he lay there, amid wounded, frightened, and slaughtered men, he could not stop thinking through the problems of modern war. There had to be a way to pierce entrenchments. At Spotsylvania, surprise and compact mass had done the trick. But there had to be a more reliable answer. And he believed he would be the man to find it.

  He did not pray. He would not insult the Lord by begging in time of danger. He trusted in the Lord.

  Minutes passed. And more minutes. The light began to soften. Now and then, a soldier called out in the short, surprised cry of a man struck by a bullet.

  Upton refused to give up. At the very least, these men would hold this ground. It would not be another Spotsylvania, where his success had been wasted. And it galled him to think that the first experience these new soldiers had of combat might be failure. He needed them to be confident, if they were to replace his butchered veterans.

  They had not performed badly. On the contrary. The march from Spotsylvania had been a torment for the pampered artillerymen, their feet unused to distances greater than the parade ground to a parapet. And they had been teased and chastised for their struggle to keep up. He had been merciless, because that had been the requirement. But now they had fought bravely, done their best, and he hated the thought of their lives and efforts wasted.

  “Stay down!” he said. “Don’t fire back!” If there was a chance, any chance, to push forward one more time, he wanted their rifles loaded when they reached the entrenchments. And firing now, into earthen walls and ramparts of logs, gained them nothing, merely drawing the attention of sharpshooters.

  Sensing that he was still obeyed, he rose and rushed back to the pines, pursued by bullets. Russell had to do something, drive Eustis to try again, anything. He did not want to order his men—these men—to retreat into failure.

  The third rank had taken shelter in the swale amid the pine grove. His veterans waited behind them, the last rank, perhaps a last hope. But he hated to order those men to carry the works.

  He found one of his aides, lightly wounded but unwilling to quit the field.

  “What word?” Upton demanded.

  “You’re bleeding, sir. Are you—”

  “My horse went down. What word from General Russell?”

  “General Russell’s been wounded. No further orders.”

  “Badly?”

  “I don’t think so. He’s still on the field. But everything’s confused.”

  “Everything’s always confused.”

  Something shifted. It took him a moment to reorder his thoughts, to grasp the meaning.

  Hurrahs. Union hurrahs. Not Rebel screeching. Amid a great burst of firing. Behind the Rebel lines, if his ears were worth anything. In the Reb lines, and just to the right.

  Truex. Had his brigade reemerged from the underworld?

  Upton grabbed the aide by the upper arm. “Find General Russell. Tell him we’re attacking. With everything. Tell him we’re in their lines.” He thought for just an instant. “First go to the Hundred and Twenty-first New York. They’re to advance on our right flank. The other regiments are to remain in reserve until I call for them. Then find Russell. Tell him to put in everything he can.”

  The aide stared at him in disbelief.

  “Just do as I say,” Upton commanded. “Go!”

  Upton took off himself, drawing his sword again. He had always envied Wellington’s decisive command at Waterloo. Now he had his own chance to adopt it:

  “Up, men, and at ’em! We’re in their lines, we’ve broken their lines. Come on, boys, up and at ’em!”

  A few men rose, then more.

  There was no time to order their ranks. Seconds mattered.

  Smoke drabbed the weakening daylight. But Upton saw U.S. colors behind the parapet.

  “Come on, boys! It’s our turn now! Come on, let’s go!”

  Men sensed things. He could not say how. His faith was of the practical, orderly, impatient-with-mysteries sort. Yet, he’d noted a magic in masses of men, an abrupt heightening of awareness, as if a greater mind had taken over. And these men, his men, grasped that their lot had changed.

  They rose up and followed him, outpaced him. It was their turn now, and they knew it.

  They began to hurrah.

  The Reb fire from the entrenchments still killed, but had only a shadow of its former power. The Heavies crashed into the barrier of felled timbers and branches, clawing and climbing, some of them shouting obscenities ripe with hatred.

  “Get inside! Get inside and fire. Then use your bayonets!”

  The first of his men were at—and over—the rampart, shouting and shooting. The 2nd Connecticut’s flag came up beside Upton.

  “Plant the colors on that wall!”

  An artillery section blasted the men following him with canister, turning their flesh into rags of meat. But other
s came on, undeterred.

  The Johnnies were about to get a lesson.

  “You! Captain! Get your men inside and wheel left. Silence those guns!”

  Climbing over the berm himself, he saw that Truex’s men were deep in the trees, sweeping leftward, southward.

  “Wheel left!” Upton shouted, waving his sword. “Don’t stop! Wheel left! Charge!”

  Some Johnnies were fighting hand to hand, no cowards. Others, wiser, withdrew, firing as they went. A few just plain ran.

  Then more ran.

  His rechristened artillerymen became furies. What they lacked in skill, they made up for in brutality, crowding around resisting Rebels to club and bayonet them beyond all need. One long-bearded, withered-looking Reb fought madly, holding his rifle by the barrel and swinging it, catching a sergeant on the side of the head. A second later, a soldier pressed a muzzle to the Johnny’s ribs and fired, blowing the man backward.

  “Don’t stop! Push on! Wheel left! Come on!”

  The Confederate line collapsed like a row of dominoes.

  His men howled, driving all before them, seizing guns and hurtling over secondary trenches. Deep in the grove, Truex’s men thrust on.

  Men wrestled for flags amid drifts of smoke.

  A lean company of Johnnies tried to organize a volley, but barely half had loaded and fired before the Heavies crashed into them. Deprived of his rifle, a Reb charged into the melee, wielding a log as a lance.

  Why wasn’t the rest of the division, of the corps, supporting their success?

  They had pushed so far down the line of entrenchments so quickly that Upton knew his men were overextended. And he also knew what would be coming soon: a Confederate counterattack. Lee and his paladins would not let this success go uncontested.

  The only question was how near the Reb reinforcements might be.

  His New York veterans were fighting on the flank, not wildly, but methodically. His other veterans remained to the rear, spared, holding the ground bought with blood in the earlier evening. He wanted them there, a surprise for the Rebels, if a surprise was needed.

  He remained with the Heavies, who were going to need leadership when the Rebs came screaming through the trees with the last sun at their backs.

  Knots of tattered prisoners scurried rearward, outraged at their predicament, shocked, but bending forward as if from a heavy rain, determined not to catch a bullet now that they were formally out of the war.

  He looked around for officers from the 2nd Connecticut. They had to regroup, get the men into some form of order that could respond to commands.

  Slow and brilliant, the final shafts of sunlight stabbed through the trees. The denser patches of the grove had already succumbed to the twilight. In gilded smoke, men gasped for breath, eyes vivid and astonished to be alive.

  “Company commanders! Form your men! Form up!”

  Some soldiers responded purposefully. Others just meandered.

  “Any man separated from his unit, join the nearest company. Officers, pass on the word. Gather ammunition from the dead. Wounded men, turn over your ammunition.” He strode among the trees, ignoring harassing shots from defiant Rebels. “They’re going to counterattack. Every man, get ready.”

  He heard an irritated voice say, “We whipped them, fair and square.” As if there were rules the enemy must obey.

  “Prepare for a counterattack!” Upton shouted.

  Some of the new men appeared dazed, while others had lost their rifles but tagged along anyway. Most still seemed capable, if no longer eager. Upton understood that, too, the sudden deflation of energy as an attack runs out of push.

  He seized upon a sergeant who seemed to have his men in decent order. “You, Sergeant. Take these soldiers back to the main entrenchments. And don’t let any of these other men pass by.” He stepped closer, raising his voice instead of lowering it. Needing each of the nearby men to hear him. “Shoot or bayonet the coward who runs.”

  It was a bluff. He doubted these men would shoot their own comrades, let alone give them the bayonet. But he also knew that men, especially those new to battle, could stand only so much. And he would need to push them to the extreme.

  The firing had dropped to a grudging give-and-take. Deeper in, Truex was still advancing, by the sound of it. The prospect made Upton long to renew the attack. But that would be a fool’s choice. When the Rebs hit Truex, he’d be spread too thin to hold.

  Fight for every inch, he thought. Swing back, if need be, to the primary trench line they had conquered, but not a step beyond it. Hold that ground.

  If you held until full night, you probably could hold until morning. And in the morning, surely, reinforcements would be up.

  The luminous twilight darkened.

  He sensed them even before he heard them raise their Rebel yell. Bounding through the forest, predators hungry for a kill. Veterans coming on against these tired men of his, their spirits half-disarmed by their success.

  The howling began. It was always startling, even unnerving, to men who had heard it for years. A thousand unsure soldiers tensed around him.

  “Here they come!” he shouted. “Men of Connecticut! We must hold this line!”

  The surviving company officers appeared solid. That was good. On their own, they were cautioning men to hold their fire until they had a good target, to let the Rebs come close.

  A shot-through man pawed at Upton’s boot, begging, “Don’t lee-me here, don’t lee-me here…”

  Upton walked on.

  * * *

  They held. Bless them, they held. They had not maintained their forward-most position, but the best of them wouldn’t quit the Rebel line and they still owned a stretch of it. Most of the other Heavies had halted in the field of stumps, on the left and just to the rear, asserting a ragged line of their own, many a man lying flat, but at least not running, while their comrades fought on in the near dark.

  He had needed to call up one more veteran regiment, but his brigade still had some depth. In case the Johnnies brought on reinforcements and risked a night attack.

  Much of the Reb order had broken on Truex’s men, driving them back, but growing confused in the process. A line-turned-mob had struck Upton’s soldiers hard, forcing them back amid fighting that was often hand to hand—or fist to fist. He had seen a Johnny thrust a rifle muzzle under the chin of an artilleryman, literally blowing the man’s brains out when he pulled the trigger, but fatally misjudging his own action: The rifle’s recoil had slammed the butt down upon the Rebel’s knee, making him stagger in pain for the pair of seconds necessary for one of Upton’s men to catch him in the face with the tip of a gun stock, bashing him down and then bending to crush his skull.

  But Upton sensed that the Heavies were nearly used up. The men holding in the shelter of the trench still fired into the smoke-bruised glow that was giving way to night, but more and more of those scattered among the stumps and trees just lay there, letting other men decide the battle.

  If the Rebs, who had stopped a mere fifty yards away, caught their breath and came on again, these men were going to run … or quit and surrender. It was just the way men were, taking so much, but no more. God had made them so, for his own purposes.

  You couldn’t let them lie there cuddling their fears, that was the thing. They had to be active, too busy to think, whatever the action you squeezed from them might be.

  “You!” Upton snapped at a soldier tucked behind a stump. “Load your rifle and give it to me. Now!” Other soldiers had alerted, lifting their faces a few inches from the earth in expectation, though they knew not of what. “You, too. And you. All of you. Load your rifles and pass them here to me. And keep reloading. We’re going to hold this line, we’re not going one step back.”

  Ill-aimed bullets hissed through the settling night. A slash of moon above the groves and random firing lit the world enough for men to see each other’s forms and blue ivory faces.

  A soldier held up a rifle. Upton took it.

&nb
sp; He steadied his elbow on a stump and fired toward the opposing muzzle flashes. For a second time, he nearly pronounced a profane word. He had not fired a rifle in many months and had forgotten to pull the stock tight against his shoulder. The kick hurt.

  He passed back the rifle and chose from the others extended toward him.

  “Don’t point it at me!” He took the proffered arm.

  Shifting deeper into the pack of men strewn over the ground, he chose a surviving tree for his position. It wasn’t much of a tree, but it concealed his silhouette from the enemy. He was not afraid of being shot, but knew that if he was hit, these men would flee.

  Again, he fired toward the shadowy Johnnies. They were almost close enough to duel with rocks. But they had stopped. That was the thing that mattered. As long as they didn’t rally for one more charge.

  He fired. Took another rifle and fired that. And he kept firing, shoulder hurting like the dickens. A man forgot so much of what his soldiers felt.…

  Around him, first one man, then more of the Heavies, fired in the direction of the enemy. Upton knew it would be pure chance if any shot hit a Reb, but that didn’t matter. What mattered was the belief of these men that they were fighting back.

  It was always belief that mattered.

  The sword of the Lord, and of Gideon.

  Each muzzle flash was a tiny hint of hellfire.

  And he smote them hip and thigh with a great slaughter …

  With enough men firing now to warn off the Rebs, Upton shouted, “This ground belongs to us. Every man not firing, start digging in.”

  That was a command the men were glad to follow. They scraped with bayonets and their bare hands.

  Upton chose a soldier who seemed reliable, waited until the fellow got off a last shot, and tapped him on the shoulder. “Go to the rear. Find any officer at the rank of major or higher. And tell him General Upton”—he almost said “needs,” but caught himself—“wants ammunition brought forward immediately. Tell him we’re holding a lodgment in the Rebel entrenchments.” He considered. “If you can’t remember those words, just tell him we’ve taken a good bite out of the Rebel line and mean to keep it.” He gripped the man’s arm. “Understand?”