by Drew McGunn
Any thought of being an armchair general fled Charlie’s mind as he tallied the number of flashes. He swung the binoculars toward the Texian army’s hastily dug field works. Geysers of dirt flew into the sky when shells burrowed into the trench works before detonating. The blue jackets of the provisional Marine battalion stood out in an army uniformly adorned in butternut. Those Marines sheltered behind dirt walls.
“A battery of guns, about nine hundred yards east of our right flank.”
He heard the rhythmic clacking of the key striking the metal plate and knew his words would arrive below as fast as the teenager could transmit the message.
At the other end of the defensive works, several miles away, more rebel guns opened fire. More hastily erected trenches sheltered the men protecting the army’s left flank. He saw the flag of the 9th infantry flying defiantly over the earthen ramparts.
After giving the details to Sam, he turned and edged around the teen, who tapped out the last bit of information, and looked to the west. The Trinity River was in the distance. Even from a thousand feet in the sky, it was but a ribbon of blue. Despite the rebels’ destruction of the railroad bridge over the river, it was still the most direct line between Beaumont and Austin, as far as settlements, farms, and infrastructure were concerned. Had Beauregard decided to flank the army, Johnston could just as easily put the river between the two armies, thwarting the rebel army’s advance.
The sound of more artillery brought Charlie back to the other side of the basket. Several dozen flashes revealed where the enemy’s grand battery was located. As the news was telegraphed to the waiting men below, Charlie wondered how the men in the center of the Texian line were handling the bombardment. Jesse Running Creek’s Ranger company was there, holding the center of the front along with the rest of the army’s Rangers.
***
The problem with East Texas, G.T. Beauregard thought, was there were too few roads. With much of the railroad destroyed between the Trinity River and Beaumont, there had been no choice but to use the road that ran alongside the railroad bed. While it was well-maintained by the standards to which he was accustomed, the solitary road was insufficient to handle an army of twenty thousand as they marched into battle.
Even though only forty miles separated Beaumont from the Trinity River, those forty miles were through one of the densest forests which he’d had the misfortune to traverse. Even so, farms and plantations had pushed the forest back from Beaumont a few miles. He was grateful for the cavalry under his command, but the near-impenetrable wood through which the army pushed made him glad he’d dispatched the Alabamans under Major Forrest to the north. Until he could break out of the Piney Woods, his cavalry was of limited use.
Breaking out of the Piney Woods really was what today was about. Since encountering General Johnston’s scouts yesterday, he had deployed his own cavalry and skirmishers to screen his moves. Not that it mattered much. Without the benefit of other well-maintained roads, flanking Johnston’s army was impractical. He’d have to use his men to carve a path through the woods, carry boats along to ferry his force over the Trinity. There was scant hope he could cross the river without confronting the enemy.
He raised his binoculars to his eyes. Instead of meeting his command in the dense forest, like they had a few months before, Johnston chose to fortify his army along a shallow creek running parallel to the river a few miles away.
Now that most of his army were volunteers from the South, there had been rumblings through unofficial channels that if he didn’t use his formidable army to destroy the enemy, he’d find himself replaced by someone who would take the fight to Johnston.
If he failed, who would they replace him with? It wasn’t as though he was the only West Point graduate who could command the army, but Dammit, I’m the best one to command it, he thought.
So, he’d been up since the previous night deploying his artillery in whatever groves and pastures that were available. His remaining cavalry had been dismounted and put on the flanks. He didn’t think Johnston would attempt to flank him, not when he had far more men under arms than the Texians, but best to not take chances.
He had deployed his infantry behind his artillery. He’d been planning for this moment for several months. So, too had his army. There was no getting around the compelling reasons for massing musket fire. To force an enemy from the field, you had to kill or maim enough to break their morale. Volley fire had been an effective tactic a hundred years before anyone heard of Napoleonic tactics.
Now though, Beauregard refused to send his men against the Texians’ guns standing shoulder to shoulder. He’s spent the last few months begging rifled muskets from state armories across the South. The net effect was his army would still advance through the thicket with too many muskets and too few rifles. It was also the reason he was sending in his Texas Brigade against the enemy’s center. Most of them were armed with breechloading rifles and were, for now, better trained than much of his army.
The strategy was simple. His artillery would open fire first and soften up the enemy’s defenses. Then the infantry would advance, under cover of both the artillery and the forest. With a three-to-one advantage, Beauregard intended for his men to swarm over the enemy. Because of the heavily wooded terrain, the defenders would be deprived of clear fields of fire. The thought his men could approach undetected to within fifty yards of the enemy line in some cases brought a smile to his face.
“Sir,” a voice broke through his reverie. “It’s time.”
Beauregard turned and nodded at his orderly. “Pass along the order.”
Riders raced away with his orders, and a few minutes later, the southernmost battery opened fire, followed a few minutes later by the northern batteries.
Several officers waited nearby for orders. As the thunder of the guns rolled across the wilderness, he let a moment of optimism through. “Gentlemen, I do believe we’ve caught the enemy napping. With any luck, our artillery will pound the enemy to pieces. It’ll be the devil’s own problem returning fire with any accuracy. You’ve got to see something to hit it.”
One of the men pointed into the western sky, “What in the name of Jehovah is that?”
Beauregard turned and looked up. Floating over the enemy line was an observation balloon.
***
Captain Jesse Running Creek leaned back against the wicker gabion, and fished a handkerchief from his pocket, running it across his grimy face. He looked at the cloth, it was smeared with dirt. But the gabions were in place and sandbags filled in the gaps. Now all there was to do was wait.
“Chief,” his first sergeant collapsed beside him, “Hell of a way to spend Easter Sunday. Preparing defenses so we can send a lot of bastards to Hell.”
He took the handkerchief Jesse offered and wiped his own dirt-stained face. As he handed it back, he wore a half smile, “I hear tell, Indians have fertility celebrations instead of Easter, what do the Cherokee do?”
Jesse glowered at his first sergeant. “Dunno. My pa dragged my ass to the Baptist church, probably the same as yours. And if I squirmed around too much, I’d get a hiding the likes of which I’d not soon forget.”
His sergeant pulled a plug of tobacco from his haversack and bit a chunk from it. “Not me, I hid in the woods. But, Lordy, the whipping I got afterward made me wish for the second coming.”
The ground shook and from the east came the thunder of artillery. In the narrow strip of no-man's-land between their hastily fortified position and the thicket of trees, a geyser of dirt sprayed into the sky when a shell plowed into the ground as it exploded.
Jesse grimaced as he climbed back to his feet and picked up his rifle. “No rest for the wicked, Sergeant. Before long, second coming or no, there’s a lot of men that’ll find themselves in Hell tonight.” He raised his voice, “Stand to, men. Stay low, but let’s keep an eye on where those trees start. Not much time to react if they come a-running.”
Time dragged on as shell after shell churned th
e dirt in front of their position. Occasionally a shell would strike a gabion or pulverize a sandbag or explode over the crudely built fortification. Before long, the guns behind their lines replied.
It seemed that for every shell falling in front of them, the artillery under Colonel Sherman threw back three rounds in response. As a shell exploded nearby, and the gabion he sheltered behind shook as shrapnel peppered it, Jesse didn’t care if their own artillery were better, faster, or more accurate than the rebels. He just wanted to barrage to end.
Just like it had started, the barrage from the Southerners stopped nearly as suddenly. Jesse shifted a sandbag squeezed in between two wicker gabions and looked past the no-man’s-land. He swore when he saw men wearing butternut filtering through the trees.
“We’ve got rebels to our front. Fire as you will,” Jesse shouted. He slid the barrel of his own rifle through the wedge, resting it on a burlap sandbag, and drew a bead on a solitary soldier who was running between two trees. He fired and watched the soldier tumble to the ground as he grabbed at his leg.
Jesse levered open the breech and inserted a brass cartridge. He snapped the breech closed and fired at another living target.
Men, wearing the same butternut uniforms as the regular army, were firing back at Jesse and his Ranger company. And there were a lot of them. Bullets thudded into the opposite side of the gabion.
“Chief, take a gander,” Jesse’s first sergeant said.
Looking toward the tree line, there were hundreds of men, crouching behind trees or seeking shelter near the ground. Jesse cursed and said, “Pass the word to the other companies we’re about to get visitors.”
Before the rebels declared their intent to overthrow the government, the small professional army had six specialized Ranger companies; they were four-hundred and fifty of the most hardened and best-trained soldiers in Texas. While many infantry companies and cavalry troops were stationed across the Republic’s far-flung borders, those six companies continually drilled for war. Every week, they spent hours on the firing line, practicing. Or marching. Jesse’s legs tingled as he thought about how much marching his men had done. When they hadn’t been shooting or marching, they had held wargames, pitting one company against another.
The army had more than doubled since the rebellion, but those six companies were all the Rangers in it. And they held the position at the center of the Texian fortifications, a few hundred yards in front of the army’s grand artillery battery. If they cracked, the whole line could unravel. And there are a hell of a lot more of them than there are of us, Jesse thought as he looked through the gap between gabions.
From the woods, he heard a shrill yelping sound as thousands of men raised their voices, steeling themselves for what was to come. A glance confirmed they were running between the trees, some stumbling on the undergrowth. Jesse raised his rifle and fired. Along the entire line, thousands of rifles barked out, responding to the attacking rebels.
In Jesse’s narrow view, he saw dozens topple to the ground. But even more leapt over their fallen comrades, racing to reach the barricade between them and the defenders. Jesse reloaded and fired again.
Centered in the middle of the Ranger’s defense was a battery of four Gatling guns. The shrieking ripping sound of their fire could be heard over the roar of the Rangers’ raging fire, as more than a thousand rounds per minute were sprayed like a fire hose dousing a fire. But the fire they extinguished were the lives of men racing across the field of battle.
Jesse watched in horror as men tumbled to the ground, torn apart by the heavy slugs from the Gatlings. Despite the constant fire from the guns, many enemy soldiers reached the barricade, stepping over their fallen comrades.
Jesse dropped his rifle and yanked the revolver he wore at his side. He raised the pistol and fired at a rifleman, clambering over the wicker obstacle. No sooner had his victim fallen away than he was replaced by another man, whose scream of rage was turned into a cry of pain when Jesse fired again.
Six rounds, six shots. Six men who tried to kill him were heaped on the opposite side of the gabion and sandbag fortifications. The hammer snapped onto an empty chamber, and Jesse’s mind registered his weapon was empty. He was ready to throw it in the face of the next man who tried to claw his way over the barricade.
It dawned on him the Gatlings had fallen silent, and the gunfire nearby was slacking. Gunsmoke swirled around where he and his Rangers had made their stand, and the no-man’s-land was cloaked in low lying smoke. As the ringing in his ears faded, he became aware of voices screaming out in pain. One plaintive cry, higher pitched than the others, called for his mother.
“Lord have mercy,” Jesse turned and saw his first sergeant. A rag had been wrapped around his wrist, but blood seeped through the cotton, streaking his hand red. “The only thing worse than a battle won is one that is lost.”
The smoke between their barricade and the nearby trees cleared enough so that Jesse could see. The ground was carpeted with dead and wounded. Close by the trees, he saw enemy soldiers going among the fallen. When they found an injured comrade, a couple of more men hurried forward, carrying a stretcher.
***
Colonel Jason Lamont put more pressure on his left leg, and although it twinged with pain, he could put his weight on it.
“Colonel, I think you twisted your ankle when your horse fell on you. It’ll hurt for a week or two, but you’ll be fine. At least as much as the leg will ever be. Now, if you’ll excuse me. There are a lot more boys that I’m not going to be able to say that about, who need me.”
Lamont waved the regimental surgeon away. What remained of the day promised grim work for the doctor, who had a few months before been running a thriving medical practice along the Saluda River. He gripped the cane he’d used since Travis shot him in the knee years before.
The steady crackle of gunfire in the distance was a constant reminder the battle was not yet over. Despite two attempts earlier in the day to knock General Johnston’s Texians from behind their makeshift fortifications, the army had failed in its task. Now, elements of Johnston’s army were in pursuit. The idea of the smaller Texian army pursuing the much larger provisional army reminded him of a little dog nipping at the hoofs of a horse.
If the dog were too aggressive, he’d find the horse could still kick and do a lot of damage. As if to bring that home, a battery of horse-drawn artillery rolled by. A small troop of cavalry rode ahead, clearing the road of retreating foot soldiers. The army still had a lot of fight left in it. There were thousands of men who had yet to be fed into the meat grinder of battle. The challenge that previously hobbled Beauregard’s army, along the narrow lane, now posed the same problem to Johnston’s Texians as they hounded the Southern army.
“Uncle, I mean, Colonel, thank God you’re alright. I heard about your horse and thought you’d been hurt.”
Lamont turned. His nephew, Elliott Brown, rode toward him, winding his way between clumps of soldiers from the regiment, who, like Lamont, were waiting for orders.
Young Elliott Brown’s neatly pressed and clean gray uniform was now streaked with dirt and torn where sharp thorns had tugged at it when the regiment had advanced through thick undergrowth. But he wore his kepi at a jaunty angle, reflecting the resilience of youth.
He slipped a hand into his jacket and retrieved a folded note, “Major Moultrie’s compliments, he’s bulled back his battalion wing. They’ve been replaced by those Georgia boys who arrived last week.”
Lamont took the note and read the hastily scrawled script. “How many men did he lose, Lieutenant?”
Brown scratched at the weeks’ worth of scruff on his face. “Adding it to what we lost when we attacked the enemy earlier today, I’ve confirmed thirty-five dead and a bit more than a hundred wounded. But some of them won’t survive the retreat to Beaumont, Uncle.”
Lamont was tempted to correct the familial familiarity, but he bit his lip when he saw the haunted look on his nephew’s face. Instead, as he stood
on his bad leg, he managed to bite back the pain he felt. In the young officer’s battle-worn face, Lamont saw his sister, the boy’s mother. He wanted to tell him how proud he was of the young man. Every time he’d turn around, looking for a runner, Elliott had been there. The words hung in his throat. He gripped the young man’s arm and nodded. Then he said, “Before I beg that horse from you, go find General Hampton. Tell him the Third is assembled and ready for whatever is to come.”
He watched his nephew ride off, in search of the brigadier commanding the small South Carolinian brigade before settling himself on a log to wait. War wasn’t what he’d expected. As a teenager, his copy of Ivanhoe had fallen apart from his reading and rereading it. The image of Ivanhoe’s nobility played no small part in how Lamont saw himself and other members of the planter aristocracy. Soldiers nobly riding or marching off to war, with the promises of their wives and sweethearts in their hearts met their match in the Piney Woods of Texas. Guns that could tear a line of soldiers to ribbons held no glory. Idealized images from the Revolutionary War couldn’t hold a candle to the death and destruction the Texians had visited on him and his men.
A bit later, his nephew cantered back to him, a look of relief on his face. He dismounted and handed the reins to Lamont, “We’ve been ordered eastward. General Hampton’s been instructed to prepare a defensive line near our encampment outside Beaumont.”
Chapter 9
Late April 1852
Jimmy bit back a sob. Tears spilled down his powder-caked cheeks as he stood over the open pit. The body sliding down the side, wrapped in a blanket was small. Too small to be Watson Brown’s torn and bleeding body. The regiment had fought a running battle starting the day before, continuing until just after dawn. The rebels and their slaver allies had finally dispatched cavalry to challenge the 1st New York’s primacy in Northeast Texas.
Jimmy shuddered, closing his eyes as for a moment he relived the hell of the past twenty-four hours. They had just finished burning another slaver’s house and were preparing to head south, Colonel Brown had decided to accept President Travis’ offer to join the freedom-loving Texian army when word arrived of rebel cavalry approaching. Colonel Brown had deployed his little army on one end of the clearing in which the farm was burning. He sent forward a platoon to see what was coming, and they waited.
