Bright Starry Banner

by Alden R. Carter

  The camp settles down, the men preparing as well as they can to survive another cold night with no shelter and little food. Everyone knows that the Rebels have been moving men and guns, but with little more than an hour of daylight left, no one thinks that an attack will come this afternoon. Even General Sam Beatty, who knows man to be a beast predictable only in his foolhardiness, has relaxed, riding down to the ford to consult with Colonel Grider on night dispositions.

  At 3:50 P.M., Brigadier General Roger Hanson rides to the front of Kentucky Brigade, unleashes his stentorian voice. “The order is to load, fix bayonets, and march through this brushwood. Then we will charge at the doublequick to within one hundred yards, deliver fire, and go at them with the bayonet. Maintain ranks, mind your officers, fire low. Remember that you are men of Kentucky Brigade. Carry this line, win this battle, and I promise you we shall see Kentucky again before the leaves turn green on the trees!”

  Kentucky Brigade roars its approval. Officers and sergeants bark orders. Ramrods clatter in musket barrels. On command, companies and regiments fix bayonets, the rattle of steel on steel cold, chilling to the blood. Hanson rides down the line to speak for a minute to the men of the 41st Alabama, adopted sons of Kentucky Brigade. Back in front, he waits. At precisely 4:00 P.M., Stanford’s Mississippi Battery of Stewart’s brigade fires four quick shots from the vicinity of the Round Forest. Hanson sidesteps his horse, brings the pommel of his sword to his lips in salute to his flag and his men, turns his horse about, and swings the sword forward. Kentucky Brigade roars, lunges forward.

  Behind the signal guns, Braxton Bragg steadies his horse with the same unthinking authority that he uses on all dumb creatures, waits for the smoke from the guns to clear. He half hopes there is a delay, perhaps a last-minute appeal from Breckinridge. He doesn’t suppose that he can actually have a former vice president shot. But he can sure as hell relieve him.

  Brigadier General Sam Beatty is cutting a chaw of tobacco while listening to Colonel Grider report that, except for one chicken, the brigade is down to a dozen boxes of hardtack and a few pounds of coffee.

  “A chicken, you say?” Beatty asks.

  “Yes, sir. Our Corporal Erb has been foraging again.”

  “I’ve heard of the corporal’s talent. I should assign him to my staff.”

  “I’m afraid you’d have to separate him from three very possessive sergeants.”

  Beatty smiles. “Well, I suppose there are some things even a general daren’t risk.” He is about to offer sympathy on the hardtack situation—for he has nothing more to offer—when four rapidly spaced reports roll down the river. “Look to the ford, Colonel,” he snaps. “It appears we still have some work to do today.” He jams the chaw into his mouth, kicks his horse toward the front line.

  Captain Mendenhall and General Crittenden are returning from army headquarters when Polk’s guns give the signal. Since his early morning eyeopener, Crittenden has abstained from alcohol the entire day. With Tom Wood no longer at his side, it is his intention to continue doing so as long as the army is in the immediate proximity of the Rebels. But with less than an hour of daylight remaining, he feels his resolve weakening. As soon as it is dark, he will take a restorative dram and then lie down for a nap. Rosecrans will no doubt call another of his midnight councils of war. He wonders if the commanding general might treat the assembled generals to a hot punch as he had back in Nashville on Christmas night. That had been exceedingly good punch, and though one can hardly expect the same ingredients under the present circumstances, a hot punch would nevertheless send all off to bed in a good humor.

  Lost in this contemplation, Crittenden does not immediately recognize the significance of the four successive reports until Mendenhall shouts, “General! I think the Rebels are attacking!”

  Crittenden frowns. “An attack? On whom?”

  “On our line on the far side of the ford. I think we should ride forward quickly.”

  “Very well. Lead the way.”

  They gallop along the lane toward the low bluff west of the ford where Mendenhall has established his formidable line of twenty-four guns. Coming over the top of a brief rise, they can see a seemingly endless line of Rebel banners advancing across the brushy land on the far side of the river. “My God, Mendenhall!” Crittenden shouts. “Can you do anything to help my poor men?”

  Mendenhall is already wheeling his mount to dash back along the lane to where Lieutenant George Estep’s 8th Indiana Battery is repairing its guns beside the road. Mendenhall feels a sudden, unexpected ebullience. I know where every battery is, he thinks, know where to site every gun. I am prepared for this. God, let me get all my guns in line, and then you can kill me. I ask nothing more than to do this once, triumphantly, precisely.

  On a low hill to the right and rear of the Rebel line, Pegram and Wharton have no orders to join Breckinridge’s attack. “Well, Wharton, what do you suppose we should do?” Pegram asks.

  Wharton shrugs helplessly. “What can we do? We have no orders. Breckinridge knows we’re here. General Bragg knows we’re here. Sooner or later someone is bound to send orders. Until then, I guess we wait.”

  “We could send Huwald’s battery forward to enfilade the Yankee left. That would be something.”

  “Yes, but suppose they’re going to send us wide to try for the pike again. We don’t want to go with our artillery ammunition expended.”

  Pegram, who hasn’t been given a battery of his own, glowers. “Well, it’s your battery. I guess you can handle it as you like.”

  Hardee is still prowling his line in the company of Pat Cleburne when the guns signal Breckinridge’s advance. Hardee stares to the east. “I didn’t think he’d do it, but I guess General Bragg feels this army must participate in one more hecatomb before it retreats.”

  Cleburne, who is used to both Hardee’s erudition and his bitterness, waits a moment and then says, “I’m sorry, General. The word is not one I know.”

  “Hecatomb. The sacrifice of a hundred oxen, a ritual enjoyed by our bloody minded ancestors, the Romans.”

  Not my ancestors, Cleburne thinks. I’m a Celt, and we have our own sacrifices.

  “Intellectual ancestors, that is,” Hardee says, as if divining Cleburne’s objection. “Lovers of gladiatorial contests, war, and blood sacrifices. Do you know they used to illuminate the Colosseum with living human torches? Coated prisoners in tar and set them afire. Puts rather a different light on the grandeur that was Rome, wouldn’t you say?”

  “I suppose so, General. Do you think General Bragg intends to push across the ford?”

  “I don’t know his intentions, but I know Breckinridge will never make it that far. Poor John; he’s about to take a pasting. The Yankees will do what they do best: kill with artillery. If their infantry and cavalry ever get half as good, we’ll be in for a very hard time of it.”

  Cleburne gives Hardee another minute with his dark thoughts, lights his short pipe, keeping the flame of the lucifer cupped against the drizzle. He knows the general’s pedantry is not intentionally condescending but more a bleak wondering at the mysteries of history and war. When the pipe is going well, he asks, “What if Breckinridge succeeds in driving the Yankee left?”

  “He won’t.”

  “All right. If he doesn’t, then what?”

  Hardee turns to stare at him in the settling dusk as the roar of cannon fire increases on the right. “Then what, Patrick? Why, then we have more blood, amputation, death, burial, and the weeping of women. The normal course of civilization. You know the problem with you Irish? You’re irretrievable optimists. I suppose it’s an endearing trait, but it’s a terribly mistaken one. Preposterous, really.”

  After considerable discussion, Corporal Erb and the three sergeants decide to soft-boil the eggs in the pot with the stewing chicken. They have just added the eggs when the four signal guns fire. The sergeants are up and moving before the echoes come shuddering back along the river from the bluff west of the ford. Erb grabs
his Springfield, kicks dirt over the fire, and runs to catch up. He may not be much of a soldier for routine, but no one has ever found him malingering when the brigade is under fire. But, damn, to lose a chicken dinner for duty… . It is almost more than a man can bear.

  From a distance, the Rebel lines appear splendidly ordered, the ranks moving forward in precise step, Enfields at right shoulder shift, the endless rows of bayonets undulating with the flow of the ground underfoot. Up close, there is little precise about the Confederate advance. Johnny Green and the other soldiers of the front rank thrash through brush, brambles, and thickets, the weight of the lines pushing them while thorns and branches snag their uniforms, carry away their hats, slash at their eyes. The second rank has it little better, the green branches and brush bent by the first rebounding to switch them hard enough to leave welts through their uniforms. Trying to break a wrist-thick sapling, a soldier two over from Green bends it down with his entire weight. But the sapling refuses to break, lashes out from beneath his brogan to strike the soldier following directly between the legs. The man yells, pitches forward. The soldier behind him grabs at his belt, but trips, his bayoneted musket flying from his shoulder and nearly impaling Green, who in dodging upsets two more files of marching men. The order of the entire company disintegrates in seconds, and the captain, with Colonel Hunt all the while yelling at him like the bloody devil, has to call a halt to re-form. The men regain their places, push forward, only the soldier with the lambasted genitals lagging behind, nauseous and swearing revenge.

  The Yankee guns on the far side of the river puff smoke, the black dots of the projectiles visible for an infinitesimal instant against the white. Solid shot tears through the undergrowth, goes bouncing and skidding through the ranks, knocking down men by the dozen. Case shot shrieks overhead, exploding in downbursts of grape and shrapnel. Shells explode at various heights from high above, to torso level, to a foot or two deep in the soft ground. A plunging shell buries itself a dozen paces ahead of Green’s squad, exploding in a geyser that drenches them in mud but leaves them otherwise uninjured. Similar miracles abound, allow the men to march on through what appears certain death.

  Watching Hanson riding calmly out front of the first line, Breckinridge yells to his staff: “Look at old Hanson! Come along, gentlemen, or we shall seem mere jackals in the lion’s wake.” He leads them forward, his blood up, for Breckinridge is a fighting man, can believe even in forlorn hopes once battle begins.

  Polk’s guns and Cobb’s battery on Wayne’s Hill respond to the Yankee fire. But there is no matching Yankee artillery, and the weight of Federal fire increases as batteries closer to the ford begin lobbing shells over the trees. The river serves as an organ pipe, sustaining the concussions until the roar of the guns overwhelms the ear’s ability to distinguish between reports. The butternut lines fight through the brush, absorbing the fire, the men no longer erect but hunched forward as if struggling up a steep slope, though the actual ridge they have been sent to take is still seven hundred long yards ahead.

  Gideon Pillow is an old man, nearly sixty, believes more in probability than Providence. He has known accident, disease, and riot; has fought duels and battles; has survived to an age when he deserves some consideration. Besides, he is a general, the value of his life multiplied manyfold by his responsibilities. If he is foolishly killed, others will suffer heavily in his absence. My God, how can they replace him on this field? The goddamn cavalry still isn’t in position, Breckinridge obviously too incompetent to muster a third of his assault force. Pillow cannot risk dying out front, no matter how glorious the death. He is a general, must forget such temptations in order to save as many of his men as he can from what promises to be the buggering of all buggerings. “Dismount!” he shouts. “Take cover behind those trees.”

  Pillow’s staff dismounts, scurries to the cover of a low hillock crowned with a few stubbly trees. Pillow himself takes shelter behind the largest trunk and, after a couple of minutes to catch his breath, calls for map and magnifying glass. The two dozen officers and orderlies of his staff crouch in the brush, praying that the Yankee artillery won’t spot the sudden accumulation of horses and men in this entirely too visible spot.

  Pillow squints through the magnifying glass. “Damn it! Hold the map steady,” he snaps at his adjutant, though it is Pillow’s hands that shake. To calm himself, to seem in command, he complains of the missing cavalry, of being buggered on the right by the longer Yankee line, of the need to halt the infantry until the cavalry comes up. It is all meaningless, mere show to cover the terror sluicing hot in his bowels. Dear God, he thinks, don’t let me shit myself.

  “General Pillow! Why aren’t you advancing with your men?”

  Pillow looks up to see Breckinridge, features flushed a dark crimson so that he looks more than ever like some Sicilian bandit and not at all like the former vice president of a pale-skinned nation. Pillow straightens, shoots back: “I am trying to figure a way clear of the goddamn mess you’ve made! Where’s the goddamned cavalry? Without it we’re buggered! Or have you been too busy shifting blame to me or General Bragg to notice that our flank’s in the air?”

  Breckinridge points his quirt at Pillow. “One more word, General, and I shall have you arrested! Go forward this instant and lead your men into battle.”

  Pillow hurls the magnifying glass to the ground, where it explodes against a rock, stalks to his horse. Major Pickett of Hardee’s staff knows of a sudden that nothing but the raw courage of the men can save this day. But is it not always so when generals behave like squabbling brats? Pickett feels a sudden, untoward sympathy for Bragg.

  Breckinridge has done everything possible to bring the cavalry onto the field to extend Pillow’s right. He has sent three times to Wharton and Pegram; but though the two haven’t moved in the last hour, none of Breckinridge’s staff officers manage to find them.

  When the infantry is halfway across the thousand yards to the Yankee line, Breckinridge makes a desperate decision. He halts the lines under fire, orders the 20th Tennessee forward from Preston’s brigade to lengthen Pillow’s right and then sends two batteries galloping forward to cover the extended flank. All the while, the men stand under arms, sweating and shaking under the rain of Yankee iron. Courage is commonplace in this army but not universal, and some men drop out of ranks, scurry for the rear. Those who can stand the gaff wait with jaws clenched, silent, or seemingly so. But Colonel R. P. Trabue of the 4th Kentucky notes a low, continuous moan as he rides along his line: a discouraged, deeply frightened sound— unconscious, no doubt, but there nonetheless.

  With the new dispositions complete, Breckinridge orders the infantry forward in a slow left wheel to bring the advance face-on to the Yankee line. The movement fails to take account of the outward swing of the river which simultaneously forces Hanson’s line to the right. Hanson’s right and Pillow’s left begin to overlap, the lines becoming entangled. It is a correctable situation, requiring only a quick decision by the division commander, but Breckinridge is distracted, fails in this moment because he is a far better friend than he is a general.

  The shell explodes directly under Hanson’s horse, gutting the beast and propelling a fragment through the rib cage and saddle into Hanson’s thigh, severing the femoral artery. By the time Johnny Green reaches him, the wound is gouting blood. Greens slaps a hand over the wound, but the blood only squirts through his fingers. “Go on, son,” Hanson breathes. “I’m killed sure enough.”

  “I can’t, General. I’ll stay with you.”

  “No. You know the orders.”

  Orders there are, straight from Bragg: No man is to drop out of ranks to tend a wounded comrade. The penalty for disobedience is death by firing squad, a punishment also invoked in the East, where Stonewall Jackson is a particularly rigid adherent to the principle. And it is an expedient rule, for without it every attack would dissolve in real or feigned pity. But, God, it is hard. Johnny Green feels a hand on his shoulder, drawing him away, and M
ajor General John C. Breckinridge kneels by his friend, covers the wound with both hands, unmindful of the blood staining his uniform.

  Hanson is in great pain. Dr. John Scott of the 2nd Kentucky pushes in beside Breckinridge to apply a tourniquet. “Is the wound fatal, Doctor?” Hanson asks.

  “It is grievous, General, but we will do our best. I’ve sent for an ambulance.”

  “Do what you can do for me here and then go look to my wounded. I would rather die than have them deprived of your ministrations.”

  A moment later a two-wheeled ambulance rattles up, guided by Captain Richard Helm, Hanson’s brother-in-law and the brigade commissary. Tears stream down Helm’s face. “There, there, Dick,” Hanson says. “I die in a just cause, having done my duty.” He looks at Breckinridge. “And you need to look to yours, John.”

  Major Pickett is deeply moved, knows he will always remember: The dying hero, his distinguished friend and commander kneeling by his side holding back the lifeblood, all this under the fiercest fire of artillery that can be conceived. A portrait as glorious as the death of Wolfe on the Plains of Abraham.

  But all the while Pillow’s and Hanson’s lines tangle, ranks stumbling into each other, officers cursing, the center sagging as the flanks push forward.

  Sobbing, Johnny Green runs to catch up with his company, falls into the third rank as the line breaks free from the brush and into a field of dry cornstalks. An eerie silence falls, the guns on both sides holding fire for fear of hitting friends as the distance between butternut line and blue narrows. Atop the ridge, Price’s brigade watches the Rebels coming through the corn, the brown stalks falling in a long sibilant wave before them.