The Guns of the South

by Harry Turtledove

  The crash of gunfire resounded all around, louder by the minute as more and more Confederates got into the woods and collided with the Federals already there. As was their way, the dismounted cavalry had firepower out of proportion to their numbers, thanks to the seven-shot Spencer carbines they carried. But now the men of the 47th North Carolina could match them and more. It was a heady feeling. So was pushing the Yankees back.

  They went unwillingly. In the tangled badlands of the Wilderness, a few determined men behind a log or hiding in a dry wash could knock a big piece of an assault back on its heels.

  Caudell discovered “one such knot of resistance by tripping over the corpse of a skirmisher who had been shot through the head. “Gitdown, dammit,” a live Confederate growled at him. “They ain’t playin’ games up ahead there.” He pointed over to a clump of oak saplings. “There’s at least three of the bastards in there, and they won It move for hell.”

  Twigs cracked off to the right. Caudell swung his rifle that way, but the newcomers—almost invisible against the bushes in their gray and butternut clothes—were Confederates. “Yankees there,” he called, pointing at the thicket. As if to underscore his words, a couple of Spencers barked, making all the rebels flatten out against the brambled ground.

  He nudged the private next to him. “You and me, let’s put some bullets through there, make them keep their heads down.” When the fellow nodded, Caudell looked over to the soldiers who had just arrived. “You flank ‘em while we keep ‘em busy.” The words were punctuated by a dive into better cover as the Federals fired at the sound of his voice.

  He fired back. So did his companion. The other Confederates scrambled forward, from log to tree to bushes. Before they’d moved fifty feet, they disappeared from Caudell’s sight. A few seconds later, though, their AK-47s snarled. As Caudell had noted on the practice range, the new repeaters had a shorter, sharper report than any rifle he’d known before. He could tell which was which without having to turn and look, an asset on a field like the Wilderness.

  The oak thicket shook like a man with the ague. Caudell grinned savagely—the Yankees’ cover from the side couldn’t have been as good as it was from his direction. Four bluecoats ran for a stand of cedars. The private next to Caudell shot one of them. He went down in a thrashing heap, screaming and cursing at the same time. Dust puffed from the back of another Federal’s jacket as one of the flankers scored a hit. That Yankee pitched forward onto his face and did not move again.

  The other two cavalrymen stopped in their tracks. They threw down their carbines, thrust their hands into the air. “You got us, goddammit!” one of them shouted.

  The private flicked a glance at Caudell. He nodded; he had no stomach for butchery. Cautiously, he made his way through the brush to the Federals. “Throw down your cartridge boxes and your mess bags,” he told them. “Then pick up the wounded fellow there and head west. I reckon someone will take charge of you sooner or later.”

  “Thank you, Johnny Reb,” one of the men in blue said as he shed ammunition and rations. He stooped beside his injured comrade. “Come on, Pete, we’re going to pick you up now. It’ll be all right.”

  “The hell it will,” Pete gasped out between clenched teeth. He gasped again when the two unhurt cavalrymen hauled him to his feet and supported him between themselves. Seeing Caudell, he fixed him with a baleful stare and growled, ‘“‘Where’d you bastards come by all these repeaters? I ain’t been shot at so much in the last two years put together, and now one of you had to go and nail me.”

  “Don’t anger him up, Pete,” the cavalryman who had spoken before said. But his gaze kept flicking to Caudell’s AK-47, too. “What kind of rifle is that, anyway, Johnny?”

  “Never you mind.” Caudell gestured with the barrel of the repeater. “Just get going.” As the dispirited Federals obeyed, he scooped up their haversacks. He handed one of them to the private who had fought beside him. Both men grinned. “Good eating,” Caudell said; even with the Rivington men’s desiccated meals, belts had been tight all winter.

  “Coffee and sugar too, likely,” the private said dreamily. Not far away, a Spencer spoke. The private and Caudell dove for cover. A bullet could end all dreams in a hurry, or turn them to nightmares.

  Caudell kept moving east, now quickly, now slowly. The Federal cavalrymen put up a stubborn fight, but more and more Confederates were coming into line against them. Caudell spotted men he did not recognize. “What regiment?” he called to them.

  “Forty-Fourth North Carolina,” one of them answered. “Who are you all?”

  “Forty-Seventh.”

  “Let’s go, Forty-Seventh!” A rebel yell ripped the air. “Let’s flank these bluebellies out of their shoes again.”

  They drove the Federals past Parker’s Store and the handful of houses that huddled in the clearing with it. The open space gave the Confederates a chance to dress their lines a little; victory had left them about as disorganized as defeat had the Yankees. Caudell almost stumbled over Captain Lewis. “What are we aiming to do now, sir?” he asked.

  Lewis pointed east.” About three miles from here, I hear tell, the Orange Plank Road crosses the Brock Road. We want to grab that crossing. If we can do it, we cut the Yankees in half.”

  “Three miles?” Caudell gauged the sun, and was surprised to find how early it still was. “We can be there before noon.”

  “The sooner, the better,” Lewis said.

  Along with as many of the Castalia Invincibles as had reassembled around Parker’s Store, Caudell plunged into the woods again. As he scrambled along, he munched on a hardtack from the Yankee cavalryman’s haversack. The square, flat biscuit lived up to its name by the way it challenged his teeth. He choked it down, swigged from his canteen, and pushed on.

  The Wilderness was like no battlefield on which he’d ever fought. At Gettysburg, the whole panorama of war had spread out before him. When the 47th North Carolina joined in the great charge against the center of the Federal position, Caudell had seen every rifle, every artillery piece that slaughtered his companions. Here, he could not even see more than a handful of those companions, let alone the Yankees they were doing their best to slay. All he knew was that the Confederates were still rolling east, which meant they were driving back the enemy.

  By twos and threes, the Confederates dashed across a narrow roadway. Yankee bullets from the other side kicked up dust around their feet and knocked down more than one man, but before long the dismounted cavalry had to retreat again—they were not only outnumbered but outgunned. Caudell wondered if this was the Brock Road of which Captain Lewis had spoken. He didn’t think he’d come three miles since Parker’s Store, but in the tangle he couldn’t be sure.

  Evidently the Brock Road lay further on—he heard an officer yelling, “Come on, men, keep it moving! Give those damnyankees hell!” More rebel yells rang out. Caudell did his best to keep it moving. He reached up to settle his hat more firmly on his head, only to discover he’d lost it to a grasping branch or bush without ever noticing.

  Somewhere to the north, he could hear a great crash of gunfire. Ewell’s II Corps and the Federals were tearing at each other along the Orange Turnpike, then. He took a moment to wish his fellows well. A bullet crashed past his head and made him pay full attention to his own battle.

  Cheers came from just ahead. Caudell wondered why; the fight seemed no different now from what it had been all along—confusing, exhilarating, and terrifying at the same time. Then, without warning, he found himself out of the underbrush and standing in the middle of a dirt road which had recently seen heavy traffic, a dirt road that, by the sun, ran north instead of east.

  “It’s the Brock Road!” a first lieutenant from some other regiment bawled in his ear. “We done beat the Federals to the crossroads and trapped the ones who’ve already gone by.”

  For a moment, that made Caudell want to yell, too. But when he said, “Holy Jesus,” it came out in a whisper. He turned to the lieutenant.
“Does that mean they’ll be coming at us from north and south at the same time?” The lieutenant’s eyes got wide. He nodded. Now Caudell shouted, as loud as he could: “Let’s get some branches, stumps, rocks, whatever the hell, onto this road. We’ve got lots of Yankees heading this way, and we’d better have something to shoot from.”

  The Confederates worked like men possessed. Attacking the Federals’ fixed positions at Gettysburg had taught them the value of field fortifications, no matter how quickly improvised. Caudell dragged fallen logs across the roadway to help seal it off. On the other side of the junction with the Orange Plank Road, more soldiers ran up breastworks facing south. Still others started building barricades along the Orange Plank Road east from the Brock Road.

  The first lieutenant seemed to be the highest-ranking officer around. “Run ‘em back west, too,” he said. “If the Yankees can’t go through us, they’ll try to go around. They have to reconnect, or we chew ‘em up in detail.” He grabbed two men by their jackets. “Go back and tell ‘em to fetch us all the cartridges they can. We’re going to need ‘em.”

  The privates sprinted off. In a way, Caudell envied them. He’d already seen his share of fighting this morning. If he stayed here, he would see a lot more than his share. He hunkered down behind the thickest log he could find and settled himself to wait.

  He did not wait long. A party of Yankee horsemen came trotting down the Brock Road toward the breastworks. They pulled up in obvious dismay as soon as they saw them.

  The first lieutenant whooped. “Too late, Yankees! Too late!”

  The horsemen—officers, some of them, by their fancy trappings—rode forward again, more slowly now, to see just what sort of barrier the Confederates had built and how many of them crouched behind it. Caudell took careful aim at the lead man, whose gray hair said he might be of high rank. The range was long, close to a quarter mile, but worth a try. He rested the barrel of the rifle on the log in front of him, took a deep breath, let it out, pulled the trigger.

  The Yankee tilted in the saddle, as if he’d had too much to drink before he mounted. He slid off his horse and crashed to the dirt of the Brock Road. “Good shot!” shouted one of the men by Caudell. He and several others started firing at the men who had leaped down to help their stricken comrade. The Federals heaved him over the back of the horse. They all galloped away, though a couple of them reeled as if they were hit.

  “Skirmishers forward!” the lieutenant said. “There’ll be more where those came from.”

  Men hurried up the road and north through the woods. An ammunition wagon reached the crossroads. Its horses were lathered and blowing. Caudell and several other soldiers helped the driver unload crate after crate of cartridges. The wagon also carried hatchets and shovels. The driver passed those out, too, so the men could strengthen the breastworks in whatever time was left before the enemy descended on them.

  A corporal pried the lid off an ammunition crate. He started to reach down for a handful of cartridges, stopped and stared in disbelieving disgust. “What the hell goddam bucket-headed jackass sent us up a load of Minié balls?” The whole crate was full of paper cartridges for the rifle muskets the Army of Northern Virginia no longer carried.

  By the howls of rage that rose from several other soldiers, they’d made the same unwelcome discovery. Caudell ground his teeth in fear and fury. A big part of the Army of the Potomac was bearing down on him. He and his comrades would need every possible round, and here were boxes and boxes of cartridges they couldn’t use. “I just brung ‘em up here,” the wagon driver protested when the angry Confederates rounded on him. “I didn’t load ‘em in.”

  A few hundred yards to the north, the skirmishers began a brisk fire. A couple of them let go on full automatic. Caudell scowled and worked his jaws harder. Either they were overeager or a whole lot of Yankees were on the way, all packed together. He suspected he knew which.

  “Here’s the right ones!” somebody shouted, his voice rising in relief. Caudell hurried over, grabbed a couple of magazines, and stuffed them into his pockets. The firing was getting closer in a hurry, not just AK-47s but also the familiar deep roar of Springfields. Under the gunfire came the tramp of marching men.

  The Confederate skirmishers dashed back toward the breastworks. Some turned to fire last shots. Others just scrambled over the barricade or off into the concealing woods.

  “Yankees!” The shout came from a dozen throats at once, Caudell’s among them. A thick blue column appeared on the Brock Road, a sword-swinging officer at its head. He pointed his sword at the Confederates’ makeshift works. The Northern men, their bayonets gleaming even in the uncertain light, upped their pace to double-quick. They cheered as they charged, not the wild rebel yell but a more studied, rhythmic “Hurrah! Hurrah!”

  Caudell thumbed his change lever to full automatic. His rifle spat flame. He used up what was left of his first banana clip in the twinkling of an eye. He rammed in another, fired it off at full automatic, too. He knew he would never find a better, more massed target.

  When, a few seconds later, the second magazine was also gone, he stuck on a third banana clip and glanced down to switch the change lever back to single shots. He looked up over his sights at the head of the oncoming Federal column. The lead ranks were all down, some writhing, some still and obviously dead—he was far from the only rebel to have hosed the Yankees with a stream of thirty bullets, or more than one.

  The Northern officer, incredibly, still stood, still waved his men on. Even as Caudell took aim at him, he spun backwards and fell, clutching at his right side. But the Federals, stumbling over the wounded and slain men in front of them, advanced without him. Through the unending rattle of gunfire came a bugle’s high, thin cry, urging them forward.

  The bluecoats in the lead fired at the Confederates who were slaughtering them. Two men over from Caudell, a rebel sagged to the dirt, the back of his head blown out. One or two others at the breastwork screamed as they were hit. But then the Yankees had either to stop and reload or keep on charging and trust they would live long enough to use bayonets or clubbed rifles.

  Even against a firing line of single-shot Springfields, both choices would have been evil. Caudell had not been at the battle of Fredericksburg, where Lee’s men on Marye’s Heights smashed wave after wave of attacking Yankees; the 47th North Carolina had not yet joined the Army of Northern Virginia, but was further south in that state, on provost guard duty at Petersburg. Now, though, he knew what the defenders must have felt then, with men too brave to run away coming at them again and again, rushing headlong toward annihilation.

  The Federals on the Brock Road were brave men too, as brave as any Caudell had ever seen. They kept trying to rush the long barricade. None of them got within a hundred yards of it; no man in the open roadway could push farther than that in the face of the withering fire the Confederate repeaters put out. Wounded soldiers reached out and grabbed at the legs of men pushing past, trying to hold them back from the deadly stutter of the AK-47s. But the fresh troops shook off those hands and advanced—until they were wounded or killed themselves.

  At last even their courage could bear no more. The Federals stopped hurrying forward into the meat grinder. Even then, they did not break and run. They ducked into the woods and huddled behind the dead bodies of their mates and kept up as strong a fire as they could.

  Off the Brock Road to either side, the crackle of rifle muskets crept closer to the Orange Plank Road. Caudell gnawed nervously on his lip. The Yankees had cover in the thickets and tangles of the Wilderness. That let their numbers count for more against the repeaters than was possible on the road itself. If they forced their way around the crossroads, they might yet link up with the corps trapped to the south.

  A whistling through the air, a crash—Caudell threw himself flat, all strategic considerations driven from his mind by pure and simple terror. The Wilderness was such a jungle that artillery could find few jobs. Firing straight down the Brock Road at the
Confederate breastwork, unfortunately, was one of them.

  The first shell landed short. A moment later, another one screamed overhead, to detonate about fifty yards beyond the barricade. Caudell’s belly turned to ice. Split the difference between the two of them and…He’d been shelled at Gettysburg. He knew only too well what came after “and.” The Federals started their hurrah again.

  But the third shell was also safely long. If the Yankees had set up two guns in the roadway, perhaps the first one’s crew had overcorrected. That kind of luck, though, could not last long.

  It did not have to. Off to the left rose a great racket of AK-47 fire and rebel yells. The Northern hurrahs turned to shouts of dismay. Yankees began bursting out of the bushes and dashing across the Brock Road from west to east. For a moment, Caudell was too bemused even to shoot at them.

  The first lieutenant, who still seemed to be the ranking officer at the crossroads, let out a whoop. “Here comes the rest of the corps, by God!”

  Caudell whooped, too. If the Federals had formed their line in the woods to try to force the Confederates off the Orange Plank Road, then the rebels advancing from the west toward the junction with the Brock Road would have been ideally placed to take them in flank and roll them up—and, incidentally, to reach the Brock Road and drive away those field guns or put their crews out of action. Caudell had no idea which had happened. He did know no more shells landed close by, for which he was heartily glad.

  Not all the Yankees had been smashed; firing continued in the woods as knots of soldiers refused to give ground. On a more open battlefield, that would have been impossible; in the Wilderness’s thickets and tangles and clumps of bushes, men could find places to make a stand even after their comrades had given way. But the Confederates had gained a long stretch of the Brock Road.