March Toward the Thunder

by Joseph Bruchac

  Sergeant Reese looked off to the place where the survivors of General Ferraro’s troops had their camp.

  “Those Negro lads was singing,” Reese said, tapping his chin with his pipe. “Now how did that song go?”

  “We looks like men a-marchin’ on, we looks like men of war?” Louis ventured.

  Gabriel and the men in the camp of the Ninth had been singing it the week before.

  “Indeed,” Reese said, tapping the air with his pipe. “The very song. And they did look like men of war—or at least men with some brains in their heads. Instead of going into that crater, they swung to either side to take the heights. With any support they might have made it, y’ know. But those Rebels had recovered and were pouring back to their wrecked line. Those brave black lads ended up being driven back into that infernal hole with all the other unfortunate souls.”

  Heat rose from the quiet field behind them. Even the small birds in the tree above them had grown quiet.

  Louis thought about all the men lost in the Battle of the Crater. He’d heard the figures from Flynn. Thirteen hundred men from the Ninth, Gabriel among them. Twice that many in the white divisions. Bad as Cold Harbor, maybe worse.

  Artis cleared his throat.

  “God save us from all generals,” he said.

  Sergeant Reese spat again. “Amen to that.”

  CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

  CITY POINT

  Saturday, August 13, 1864

  Moles. That’s what we’ve become.

  In the bitter weeks following the Battle of the Crater, the tents and huts near the line were no longer safe. Every day men were being struck by snipers’ rounds piercing the thin walls of canvas or brush.

  It was fall back or make better fortifications. So the whole Union Army moved more or less underground, down into deep trenches as heavily reinforced as bombproof forts. A soldier might now spend a whole day without the light of the sun touching his face.

  Here and there, the rough humor of men at war showed itself in hand-lettered signs placed by the entrances of those man-made caves.

  Louis read the newest one nailed to the timbers of the bombproof he passed on his way to morning drill.

  HOTEL COMFORT

  REASONABLE RATES

  The man just inside the door waved as he passed. The face wasn’t familiar, but Louis waved back. More and more folks seemed to recognize him now—the big Indian from the Irish Brigade

  “Hey Chief,” the man yelled, “you hear how the Rebs blowed up City Point?”

  Louis nodded and continued on.

  Old news by now. Four whole days ago. Plus we all heard the danged thing go up. Like it was right next door and not eight miles away.

  City Point. Grant’s headquarters. Placed on the peninsula where the Appomattox River joined the James, it was the nerve center and supply depot for the operations of the Army of the Potomac in Virginia. What had been a sleepy little tobacco town was now one of the biggest ports in North America.

  Louis thought about what it must have been like last Saturday, just at noon. Grant sitting in front of his tent looking out at the peaceful river where a supply barge full of artillery ammunition and supplies was sitting at anchor.

  Wha-boom!

  The whole barge had gone sky-high in a blast that rivaled the one two weeks earlier at the Crater. Forty-three men had been killed and hundreds injured, not just by the explosion but by the debris that rained down, including hundreds of new saddles intended for Sheridan’s cavalry.

  Awful as it was, Louis had to smile at the thought of those saddles flapping down out of the sky like giant bats.

  They say one of them landed right at General Grant’s feet.

  But the shower of shot, shell, pieces of wood, iron bolts, and bars and pieces of chain that put holes in his tent had left the Union’s commander uninjured.

  Word was that it was sabotage. A Confederate agent had given a wooden box to a crew member, telling him it was from the captain and should be stowed down below with the cargo. It had been a bomb with a clockwork mechanism and some black powder in it.

  It’s like the story of this whole war. One little box doing as much for the Rebs in five minutes as a whole corps of men did for us in weeks of digging. And without a single enemy soldier lost, to boot.

  When Louis reached the place where the Second Corps had been camped, what he saw surprised him. Everyone was packing.

  The tent he shared with Artis had already been struck. Artis had rolled up Louis’s blanket and laid out his gear to make it easier to pack.

  “We’re pulling out, Chief,” Kirk said. “Our destination is a great mystery.”

  Devlin grinned. “Wherever we’re going, short of the gates of Hell, it has to be better than here.”

  “Or so you hope,” Belaney added.

  As they started their march, Louis looked back over his shoulder at the arid, desolate, battle-scarred plain outside Petersburg.

  Me, I am glad to leave this place behind.

  Their line of march reached City Point at noon. There, when they bivouaced, a pleasant surprise appeared. Not just the usual coffee and hardtack, but fresh-baked bread from the bakery on the grounds.

  “’Tis said they’re baking a hundred thousand a day,” Sergeant Flynn said, tearing off a piece from the warm loaf in his hand. “And look ye over there.”

  Was it possible?

  “Apples and pears!” Artis said in stunned delight.

  “And that’s not the only sweet thing here,” Belaney said. The reverence in his tone was like that usually reserved for prayer. “Look at those lasses!”

  Louis had been so overwhelmed by the sheer size of City Point, the thousand new sights, that he hadn’t noticed what else was truly different about this place. The presence of the fairer sex.

  Mon Dieu, there’s females everywhere.

  It wasn’t that he’d not been seeing women over the past four months. Women dressed like women, that is, and not disguised like a man as Mary had been. There’d always been some women around Petersburg or any of the places the Army of the Potomac pitched their tents for more than a night. Some were wives and daughters of sutlers, some were laundresses plying their trade. Others were daughters of Eve earning a living in a less respectable way.

  Louis’s face grew red as he thought about them. He had no experience with those fallen angels, but he’d heard other older soldiers speak of those women with their forward ways and extravagant clothes.

  Fallen angels, Cyprians, ladies of the evening. Those were some of the names he’d heard them called.

  These women here at City Point, though, didn’t look like the ladies of the night. Their demeanor and dress were modest. They walked with purpose as if on their way to accomplish worthy tasks.

  Louis tried not to stare.

  “True angels of mercy,” Flynn said in a surprisingly tender voice, putting a meaty hand on Louis’s shoulder. “Nurses come t’ care for our sick and injured. They make me think of me own sweet, modest Lizzy back home in Boston.”

  Louis turned to look at Flynn. Lizzy? He’d never thought of his sergeant as being anything but a soldier, not a man with someone waiting for him back home. Was that a tear in the corner of Flynn’s eye?

  Flynn patted Louis’s shoulder once more and then turned to walk down the pier.

  Louis looked again at the purposeful women around them.

  Women nurses. I’ve read about them.

  The Women’s Nursing Corps. Another new thing brought into being by this war. Louis took note of the plain brown or black dresses that marked those women as nurses. Standard uniforms for those allowed to join the organization founded by a woman named Dorothea Dix early on in the war.

  What was it I saw in the New York Herald about them?

  “If a woman is too fond of adorning herself with finery or her face is pretty, she shall be judged unsuitable to join.”

  Modest and plain, that was how a nurse was supposed to be.

  “Let’s g
et us some of that fruit,” Artis said.

  “Huh?” Louis said. “Oh.” His friend was pointing with his chin toward the commissary workers with the baskets of apples and pears.

  Joker, Songbird, and Bull joined them. The five made their way over to the edge of the pier where the fruit had been unloaded. Fifty yards downriver from them were broken and blackened timbers—signs of the recent catastrophe.

  “Guess you had some fun here last week,” Kirk said to an old man with a thick gray beard handing out apples from a basket.

  The old man jerked his head toward the right. "Y’ wanta hear ’bout that,” he said, “y’ought spen’ some time with them fellas over there what seen it firsthand.”

  Louis and Joker looked in the direction the man indicated. A wide field spread with hundreds of tents stretched off into the distance.

  “Depot Field Hospital,” the old man said proudly. “Two hunnerd acres ‘n’ ten thousand beds. Makes it ’bout the biggest hospital in the world, don’t it? A right popular place. Men’s jest dying t’ get in there.” He guffawed at his own joke.

  The five of them took their food to sit in the shade of a tree. As the breeze from the river washed over him, an unfamiliar feeling of contentment came to Louis.

  I wouldn’t mind spending some time here.

  A shadow fell across his feet.

  “Don’t get too comfortable, men.”

  The five men looked up at Corporal Hayes, pointing up the river with a hand that held a half-eaten apple.

  “Re-forming the company over there. Boarding that barge in ten minutes.”

  Louis looked up and his eyes met those of their corporal.

  Here we go again, the look on Hayes’s face said.

  As soon as the last man had tromped across the planks, the transport barges began to steam away, heading east from City Point. Joker elbowed his way next to Louis, who stood leaning over the rail.

  “A fine rumor’s being spread,” Kirk said, putting an arm around Louis’s shoulders. “If we go downriver they’ll be sending us to Washington so as we can help recruit and train more men to fill in the gaps. And wouldn’t that be fine?”

  “Better,” Louis said. “Too good to be true.”

  Downriver. Out of the fighting?

  At Wilson’s Landing, twelve miles below the point, they anchored for the evening. At midnight, though, the anchors were weighed and the engines reversed. Back upriver they went until the light of dawn showed their true destination. They pulled in to shore by a familiar-looking pontoon bridge.

  “Deep Bottom,” Corporal Hayes said in a sepulchral tone.

  We’ve been here before.

  “Lads,” Flynn intoned, his voice heavy with irony, “once again our orders are easy ones. Our simple task is t’ break through the Rebel lines and take Richmond.”

  CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO

  REAMS STATION

  Wednesday, August 24, 1864

  Louis sat back to back with Artis as they refilled their cap boxes from the new supply of shiny copper percussion caps, each shaped like a little top hat.

  More than a week had passed since they’d disembarked from the transport barges and made their first two-hour march. Under the blazing sun of midday, it had been so hot that two men fell dead out of the line of march from heatstroke. And that had just been the start of their trial by fire.

  A few yards away from them, Songbird was recounting the latest battle at Deep Bottom to an awed circle of recruits— brand-new arrivals about to be pressed into service for the first time in this campaign.

  You can almost read the word green on their foreheads. No need to learn their names. They won’t last long enough.

  Meanwhile, Songbird’s words were coming close to a martial hymn.

  “New earthworks had been thrown up near the New Market Road since our previous battles. Impregnable, they seemed, perched high as hawks on the steep hill above us,” Devlin intoned. “But the brave remnants of our brigade pushed forward, bent double from the effort, holding our fire, whilst ball and shell buzzed above us like great evil bees. Brigadier General Francis Barlow of the First Division—brave soldier but a petty man—had doubted from the start we could prevail. He was sure that we’d be broken, but we did not fail. With a great-throated shout that near drowned out even the roar of shot and shell, we rushed like a sweeping tempest through the foe. ’Twas a grand victory.”

  Louis fastened the cap box shut at the exact same moment as Artis.

  The two exchanged a nod and a glance, then began filling their cartridge boxes with .58-caliber ammunition at the same rapid clip.

  Victory. You might call it that if you don’t count the cost.

  Reinforcements had come up against them, their advance had been halted. Under a flag of truce the two sides had spent the better part of the next day retrieving and burying their dead.

  Their job now was to move on Reams Station to destroy the Weldon railroad. Only lightly defended—or so they were told.

  So few of us veterans left, it had better be that. New fish trying to swim against the tide? Draftees, not worth the powder to blow them to Kingdom Come.

  Men forced into the army would as often run as fight. Not like the friends who’d been by his side and, by the grace of Ktsi Nwaskw, still remained there. Somehow, those closest to him since Merry’s departure had survived. Devlin and Kirk, Belaney, Corporal Hayes, Sergeant Flynn and Artis. The six of them, himself making it a lucky seven. All there was of a platoon that had once numbered twenty in an Irish Regiment of a thousand that was now fewer than five hundred men.

  What odds does that set against any of us getting through another fight? Our luck is due to run out. Overdue.

  He finished filling the cartridge box, raised his hands, and looked over at Artis—who had finished a moment ahead of him and wore a small satisfied smile.

  “That makes two apples you owe me,” Artis drawled.

  “If I ever see one again,” Louis said.

  They glanced over at one of the groups of new men sitting together fifty feet away from Artis and him. Confused farm boys who’d been forced into the army like cattle being driven to the stockyard. One of them, who was having a hard time fumbling his caps into the box, lifted his head to smile at them. Louis quickly turned away.

  No. I don’t want to make any more friends and see them get killed.

  He turned his eyes toward the sky, listening for a rumble of thunder. Back home they’d be harvesting the green corn now. How long had it been since he’d had any thoughts in his mind of working the land rather than fighting to take it? It seemed forever. But in terms of days and weeks, in truth, not that long.

  August 25th tomorrow. May 4th when we crossed the Rapidan. Three months and eleven days.

  As planned, they moved out at dawn. Their position was to the left of the Fifth Corps. But as they began to tear up the rails, they were attacked from the flank and the rear. In no time at all, the twelve pieces of artillery they’d brought to the battle were taken by the Confederate soldiers and turned on them. No support from the new recruits. Once the fighting began, the entire division refused to move forward or discharge their weapons. The Irish Brigade was on its own.

  Louis heard the sick thud of a minié ball striking flesh. He looked to his left. Belaney lay on the ground beside him, his face pale and blood pouring from a great wound in his shoulder.

  Louis reached toward Bull. Someone grabbed at his coat. Sergeant Flynn.

  “There,” Flynn shouted, pushing him back, pointing to a line of partially dug trench near the station. Other members of the Brigade were already taking cover there.

  “Behind them breastworks.”

  Sergeant Flynn’s hat flew off. He clutched at his temple. He took two slow steps and toppled like a great oak tree.

  Someone else pulling at Louis’s arm. Artis.

  Artis’s lips moved. Louis couldn’t hear the words. There was a roaring in his ears like a storm wind.

  Move! Artis was mouth
ing. Move.

  Louis willed his feet forward, found himself kneeling behind the wall of earth Flynn had pointed to before being hit.

  Corporal Hayes was shouting orders, tears streaming down his face, dripping off the ends of his mustache.

  Keep it up! Pour it on.

  The charge came at them.

  They fired and loaded, fired and loaded. The Rebels fell back.

  Another charge. Fire and load. Fire and load. One wave of Rebel attackers after another.

  Such desperate courage in those grayback boys who refused to quit.

  Handle. Tear. Charge. Draw. Ram. Prime. Shoulder. Aim. Fire!

  I wish there was some other way.

  Another wave of enemy soldiers hit the entrenchment. Corporal Hayes grappled with a Southerner whose bearded face and dark-stained uniform made him look more like a bear than a man. They fell over the breastworks and were lost from Louis’s sight.

  More cannons firing on them. A Union officer with the insignia of a lieutenant shouting.

  Abandon the works.

  Crouching, moving back. Joker lurching as if struck in his side by a great hammer. No time to stop. Load and fire.

  In the woods now. Trees giving some cover, not enough. A great splinter of wood flying from the pine next to him. A mist of red springing up from Songbird’s neck, his finger pulling the trigger of his Springfield that fired one last time as he crumpled.

  All of them but Artis and me.

  He tried to raise his rifle to his shoulder. To his surprise there was no strength in his arms. Not only that, he was no longer standing. For some reason he was on his back. A warm wet feeling on his side. His left leg was splayed out at a strange angle. His blue trousers turning bright red at his lower thigh. Red. Crimson red, the color of a cardinal’s wing spreading wider.

  No pain. Hard to speak or breathe. No sounds of thunder. No sound at all.