Those in back of us might figure this is going to be easy. But those Rebs are just waiting for better targets.
Louis knew now what every veteran learned. A man on his stomach is seldom hit by musket fire. Just like the Union boys, Southern soldiers tended to shoot high. For every minié ball with your name on it, a hundred pounds of lead whizzed over your head. So, as he crawled forward, he kept so low that he could taste dirt on his lips.
Still no Rebel fire.
The heavy breathing of other men around him as they crawled, the scrape of elbows and knees against hot red soil, the occasional soft curse as a man scraped a wrist or banged a knee on a stone. Farther from the safety of their own entrenchments. Closer and closer to the Reb earthworks.
A little stir went down the ranks, like hair standing up on the back of the neck of a giant. Louis turned his head.
A young lieutenant in a clean uniform ten yards away was waving his dang saber.
“Rise and charge!” the lieutenant was shouting.
Other officers began standing up, echoing his command.
“Rise and charge!”
Louis looked toward Sergeant Flynn, ten feet ahead. Low on his belly as the enlisted men around him their sergeant stayed still as a stone. So did Louis and the other common soldiers in the two lines of veterans.
Bravery was one thing. Plain suicide was another.
Sounds from behind him. He squirmed around to see what was going on. The third line, the men of the First Massachusetts were rising to their feet. Before they got halfway to their knees, hundreds of veterans between them and the enemy called back to them.
“Get back down, y’ dang fools!”
"Y’ can’t take them works!”
“Lay down!”
“Down!”
Louis saw the looks on those Bay Stater faces as they realized the men shouting back over their shoulders at them were the Fighting Sixty-ninth, the bravest brigade in the army. As one, the First Massachusetts flopped back down and hugged the ground.
But now the First Maine stood up. The 850 men of that brigade figured they were made of tougher stuff. They began to march forward, ignoring the veterans’ warnings, stepping over the prone figures of the three ranks ahead of them. One heavy-footed Mainer with a beard yellow as straw stepped right on Louis’s back.
Louis paid it as little mind as he did the words some of those rugged Maine boys growled down at them.
“What’s wrong with you Irish?”
“You a bunch of sissies?”
“Ain’t you gonna fight like men?”
Then the First Maine was past them, moving on the double against the impregnable line ahead. Five, ten, fifteen yards away.
“May the good Lord who looks after fools and children protect ‘em,” Flynn said in a voice like that of an Old Testament prophet.
Louis closed his eyes.
But not soon enough. He saw the great burst of smoke and flame that billowed out of the thousands of rifle slots in the high earthworks as the Confederates opened fire en masse.
Not one man of the First Maine reached the Rebel lines. Less than a quarter were able to return.
Six hundred sacrificed like lambs, Louis thought as he wormed his way backward, pulling with him the weeping Maine boy who’d managed to stagger back and then fall by his side. If we’d all charged, it would have been four times as many.
No second attack went forward.
“Would you like to know the tally, lads?” Sergeant Flynn said in a weary voice the next morning. “A friend of mine at headquarters who keeps accounts of such matters, says there’s been seventy-two thousand of us killed, wounded, or captured since we started in the Wilderness.”
We’ve lost more men in the three months I’ve been a soldier than old Lee has in his whole army.
“But there’s t’ be no more attacks. Grant himself has agreed it’s time t’ rest and use the spade fer protection.” Sergeant Flynn made a low sad sound like a growl from the back of his throat. “And a welcome change that’ll be, if indeed we kin believe it t’ be so.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
A VISIT TO THE LINES
Monday, June 20, 1864
“If it han’t been for them thirsty hosses, we woulda been in Petersburg now.”
“Do tell,” Artis said.
Louis looked up from the stump where he was sitting and whittling. He was trying to pull the shape of a bear out of the piece of pine Artis had picked up as he and Louis and their new friend, Private Thomas Jefferson, strolled among the stumps on the hill behind the USCT entrenchments.
“This used to be a forest,“ Artis said, flipping the piece of pine branch to him. “See what you can make of it now.”
Precious little forest left around here. The Rebs had cleared most of it away for fortifications and to open a clear line of fire to the east. But the stumps at the edge of this stand of pines were just right for sitting.
The sky was as blue and clear above them as the firmament in the paintings Louis remembered from Father Andre’s residence at St. Francis. There’d been peace in the blue skies of those paintings, blue that framed the figure of Jesus Christ lifting a hand in benediction. But when Louis looked up at that cloudless sky above them he just couldn’t feel that sort of peace—not after all they’d been through.
Yesterday had been a Sunday that almost felt like Sunday. No fighting at all. Not even the drilling supposed to take place when there was no other action. On either side of the two opposing lines of dug-in trenches, redans, and fortifications, religious services had been held. The morning air had been hot, but so clear that the men of E Company could hear the hymns rising up from the other side.
Songbird Devlin cocked his head. “‘Rock of Ages.’ Not badly sung, but they could use a few baritones.” He nodded. Then he reached into his coat and pulled out a pocket-sized book with a water-stained cover. “It’s glad I am they’re singing the good old hymns, and not these.”
Louis leaned over to read the cover.
Hymns for the Camp. Published by the South Carolina Tract Society.
Songbird flipped through the pages. “Picked this up in one of the trenches where some Johnny dropped it as he was skedaddling. Here’s one to be sung to the tune of ‘God Save the King.’
“Our loved Confederacy
May God remember thee
And Warfare stay;
May he lift up his hand
And smite the oppressor’s hand
While our true patriots stand
With bravery.”
Songbird shook his head. “It’s a poor poet can’t find a better rhyme for hand than the selfsame word. Ah, but hear what they’re giving us now.”
Louis and the others in their company listened. As sweet a version of “Amazing Grace” as he’d ever heard came floating to them light as the wings of a dove. Then, up and down the line of trenches, Union men began to join in until at least a thousand voices and hearts of men in both blue and gray were lifted above the earthly battlefield by a song.
Today, though, was Monday. Up at five a.m. with the bugle, drill and march till breakfast, drill and march again till the noonday meal. Then they were gathered together by Sergeant Flynn.
“We’re to move again tomorrow,” Flynn said, using a stick to sketch yet another plan just as smart as the dirt it was drawn in. “Our Second Corps and General Wright’s just-arrived Sixth Corps. Sidesteppin’ west, toward the Appomatox River t’ cut the Weldon and Petersburg railway line that connects Petersburg with North Carolina.”
A few heads nodded, but mostly the men just listened. Flynn handed Louis a paper. “Take this to headquarters.”
It had been some sort of message from their new lieutenant. That job done, Louis had let his steps lead him first past Artis’s nearby encampment, where he’d collected his friend. Then farther down the line by the bivouac of the Eighteenth Corps they’d found Jeff just as ready to waste some time.
Seeing how they took to one another, Lou
is used every spare moment to get the three of them together. Sometimes it was to play marbles—which Artis always won. Or they’d wrestle. Artis and Jeff were evenly matched there, but neither had been able to throw Louis. Other times, they’d just talk. Or, more accurately, Artis and Louis would listen to Jeff hold forth. His plan after the war was to become a preacher.
Makes sense. Never heard a better talker. Not even Father Andre.
So here they were, Artis half asleep in the sun, Louis whittling, Jeff speechifying from the pulpit of a pine stump about what might have been had certain white officers been as sharp as the black men they led.
“Yessuh,” Jeff repeated, “them thirsty hosses.” He paused, waiting.
“What horses?” Louis asked.
“The ones what pulls the artillery carriages,” Jeff replied. “We was all set to move out towards them Rebs three hours before they let us go. But some officer misremembered that hosses needs to drink. Then when they finally saw how thirsty them hosses was, they unhitched um from the wagons and took um down to the river. And that was when we was supposed to be attackin.’ Had to wait a good two hours whilst they got them hosses back in their traces.”
“What’s that?” Artis said.
Louis shaded his eyes with one hand as he closed the jackknife against his leg with the other. Some kind of commotion was going on in the camp below them. People were circling around a small group of men on horseback. The tallest rider was the Big Indian himself, General Parker. But the other two men, one of whom was a bearded civilian in a dark suit, were unfamiliar to him.
Jeff followed Louis’s glance.
“Mah Lord,” he exclaimed, standing up, brushing off the seat of his pants, and throwing on his jacket. “You know who that is?”
“The Big Indian,” Louis said.
“General Ely Parker, one of my people,” Artis added with a grin.
“No, next to him. That’s the man hisself. Old Father Abraham.”
Jeff started down the hill at a trot with Louis and Artis close behind him.
The President of the United States. Abraham Lincoln. My stars!
By the time they reached the expanding circle of the Colored Troops gathered around the three mounted men, Louis recognized who the third person on horseback, a man much smaller than the other two, had to be. Although he was suited up in the uniform of a common soldier and not the resplendent finery some officers wore, the stars on his shoulders showed that he was none other than Lieutenant General Ulysses S. Grant.
As Louis and Artis approached, General Parker’s eyes caught theirs. He nodded to each of them in turn. Just one Indian to another. No one else in the crowd noticed it, not even Jeff, who was right by Louis’s side. Every other face in the crowd was fixed on the person in the black suit.
Dressed like a boss undertaker, though he does look to be easy in the saddle. Not handling his horse like a city slicker.
The lanky, bearded man took off his hat and circled with it toward the sea of dark faces, using his reins to gently turn the horse he rode so that he presented that gesture to every face looking up at him. A loud cheer rose up through the crowd.
“We’s with you, Mistah President,” someone yelled.
“God bless you, suh!” Jeff shouted, waving both hands above his head.
Men began reaching their hands up to gently touch his horse or the hem of his coat, then pull their hands back to press them to their mouths or their hearts. Everyone was smiling, but there were tears in many eyes, including those of President Abraham Lincoln himself.
There’s a man who cares for the folks around him. Or at least he knows how to make himself look like a man who cares.
Lincoln held up his hand. Silence came as quick as a heartbeat. Everyone waited for words from the Great Emancipator.
“Men,” Lincoln said in a rough, choked voice. “Men of the Eighteenth, I . . .” His voice broke and he paused to take a breath. “Men,” he continued, “for that is what you truly are. Thank you for your cheers, even though I am not worthy of them. I should be cheering for you, for your courage and your sacrifices. I promise you this. We accepted this war as a worthy object, and this war will not end until that object is attained. Under God, I will not rest until that time.”
Virtually unnoticed as he sat his horse a few yards back from the swirl of admiring former slaves and free men, General Grant nodded at the president’s words.
Louis saw that nod and the determined look on Grant’s face.
Am I right about what I think I read from that look?
Louis looked over at Artis, who raised an eyebrow and nodded back at him. You got it right.
The inspired Negro soldiers around them were cheering even louder now, but Louis hardly heard them. A knot the size of a fist formed in his stomach.
Mon Dieu! Grant, he’s going to send us back on the attack!
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
ONE MORE THRUST
Thursday, June 23, 1864
The thump of cannon, the crackling of muskets, the shouts and screams and confusion were behind him. Hard as that was to believe.
And I’m alive, Louis thought, looking at his blackened hands. His knee ached from running into something, there was a new tear in his shirt, his right hand was bleeding and he couldn’t recall exactly what had caused any of that.
A sound came from the tent behind him. Songbird. But the only song that was issuing from his lips right now was a soft snore from the cot where he lay fully clothed, despite the heat. After stumbling back into camp from the futile Union attack, he’d been too tired to even take off his boots and his coat.
I’m bone-weary too, but I can’t sleep.
Louis wiped some of the dirt and gunpowder stains off onto his pants.
Give thanks, his mother’s remembered voice spoke in the back of his head.
“Bon Dieu, for preserving my friends yet again, ktsi oleohneh. Great thanks.”
He plucked another briar from the torn cuff of his trousers. Then, picking up a stick, he began to draw in the dirt the way he’d seen Sergeant Flynn do so many times.
Here’s our Second Corps, Louis thought, drawing three short lines in a row to stand for the Union divisions. He drew three more short lines below and behind them. And here’s Wright’s corps just arrived.
With the point of his stick Louis scratched two arrows, one for each of the corps, pointing toward the west. And there’s the way we was supposed to go to cut the Weldon rail line. Nothing to it. Just cross the Jerusalem Plank Road and go two more miles west.
Louis shook his head. That had been the plan. But, as always seemed to be the case with everything in this campaign, things had gone wrong.
As they marched through the darkness and crossed the Jerusalem Plank Road, they found themselves in the sort of unpleasantly familiar tangle of woods and brush that E Company had encountered time and again since the Wilderness.
Good ground to hunt in for a man who knows it. Bad for keeping an army together.
Within a hundred yards Wright’s corps lost contact with Birney’s.
Louis drew a third arrow coming from the west.
And here comes Rebel General A. P. Hill and his men. Hitting right in between our two separated Union commanders, holding off Wright with one division and mauling us with the other.
The only thing they’d been able to do was retreat. And even that had been bungled. Not that many killed or wounded, but so many cut off and caught. A whole Union battery—six cannons and all their crew. Hundreds and hundreds of soldiers so beat down by weeks of battle that they just threw down their rifles and raised up their hands.
Louis thanked his lucky stars for his good night vision and always being able to remember ground he’d crossed. He’d helped E Company get back through the woods in a fighting retreat, kept their battle flag from being taken.
That, at least, is something we can be proud about.
No flag of the 69th had ever been lost to the enemy, right on down to this last batt
le. According to Flynn, no other regiment of men in blue could make that claim.
Louis thought about those who had been taken along with their flags. Seventeen hundred of the Second Corps now on their way to Andersonville, the Rebel prison that was one step lower than Hades.
I don’t think I could stand that.
Being captured worried him more than being a casualty. According to last week’s newspapers, that prison camp down in Georgia held more than thirty thousand men penned like hogs. The only two ways out were escape or death. Lots of ways to die there, too—starvation, sickness, getting beaten to death or shot by the guards.
Back at the start of this war, Louis knew, when one side captured a man from the other side, they’d just ask him to promise not to do any more fighting and then let him go. That hadn’t worked so well, seeing as how the Union found itself capturing the same men again and again. Then they tried prisoner exchanges. That meant if you got caught, you’d be treated pretty well, since you could be used to get back some of the other side’s own boys.
Now those days are long past.
No more prisoner exchanges.
The North can afford to lose more men than the South. By keeping those Rebel boys in our own prison camps—like the one in Elmira—we’re slowly draining them dry. No matter that our boys are rotting in Andersonville. Plus it’s different now that we’re throwing the Colored Troops against them. That’s really made the Rebs mad. They catch a black soldier, the usual thing that they do is just kill him outright.
Louis scraped the point of his stick across the ground, wiping out the lines and arrows he’d drawn. No sense to it. No matter how many diagrams you drew, war was just plain crazy and nothing in it would ever be simple. Louis sighed. Too much thinking about it was just making it worse. All you could do was try your best and help the men closest to you.
Louis studied the position of the sun. A good hour left before they’d have to assemble for roll call. He could crawl back into the tent next to Songbird. But even that seemed like too much of an effort right now. He leaned his arms and head forward on his knees and closed his eyes.
March Toward the Thunder Page 15
