Hell or Richmond (56 page)

Wouldn’t do to make such a change with fighting under way, though. And he could hear Washburne’s voice in his head, cautioning him not to humiliate a man who, if not powerful on the battlefield, had powerful friends in Washington. No, placing Burnside under Meade required a calmer moment. And cooler tempers. Mustn’t look like a punishment. Had to be presented as a practical matter.

“I’ll see that Burnside goes in again,” Grant said. “How about Warren? He in? I wanted him in. An hour ago.”

“He’ll go in,” Meade said. “He’s kicking a bit. Doesn’t want to attack those same entrenchments again.” Meade made a face so woefully serious, it tickled Grant. “And, frankly, Sam, I see his point. But he’ll go in.”

“His corps is shot,” Humphreys said. “The men are demoralized. They’ve been going at that ridge for the last four days. Another off-the-cuff assault…”

Grant could not completely suppress his smile. He knew that Humphreys, a good, blunt man, wanted to say, “It’s all because your damned attacks weren’t half as planned as a carouse in a Mexican whorehouse.”

Truth was that Meade and Humphreys had been partly right. The morning’s attack could have used more planning. But that would have given Lee more time to get ready, too. Man just had to take his chances where he thought best. Sometimes the cards ran your way, sometimes they didn’t. But you couldn’t win if you kept backing up from the table.

And he had been right that an attack by a full corps would crack that salient. In his experience, no man had it all figured out. You just had to figure a tad better than your enemy.

As for the august Robert E. Lee, Grant reckoned he had not had his pleasantest morning of the war. His army had suffered a grievous hurt. Pride, too, most likely.

Turning to Meade, Grant said: “I’ll move Burnside. But I want supporting attacks across the front, not just from the Ninth Corps. I expect Warren to attack within the hour, keep Lee from raising the bid against Hancock and Wright.” He thought for a moment, then spoke to Humphreys: “You and Warren go back a time, ain’t that right?”

“We’re old friends,” Humphreys said.

“With General Meade’s permission, maybe you could go on down to the Fifth Corps? See that General Warren gets the gist of things?”

Humphreys appeared surprised, almost taken aback. But not unwilling. Man could smell blood, Grant knew the sort. He’d make it plain to Warren that he could either attack or lose his corps.

“Listen here,” Grant said, speaking now to all the nearby officers. “Fine fighting this morning. Way this army’s meant to fight. Nearly broke Lee. Still might.” He patted his pockets for a cigar and found them empty. “Meantime, this army is not to give back another inch of ground up in that salient.”

Ten a.m.
Laurel Hill

The rain had eased again, but the mire in the trench line rooted the men in place. Sometimes the suck of it threw off a man’s aim, as he wiggled about to get a dead-on shot. And all the while the Yankees just plodded up through the mud and the shattered trees, moving awkwardly, almost as if clowning, as if they downright wanted to get themselves killed.

Oates was out of temper. His men were sick, the food was bad, what there was of it, and they were all soaked through. The Yankees could have just stayed in their lines and stuffed themselves full of salt pork. But no, they had to come on, blockheaded, goddamned fools, up that same slope, past their own gone-green dead, corpses that, struck by a bullet, flopped about as the gas burst from death-fattened bellies. The Yankees just came on, butt-stupid Fifth Corps boys, and his men shot them down easy as hunting possums. Except that possums took their killing one at a time, and the Yankees came on by the thousands.

He hated the mud, hated the stink, hated the shit water staining his own drawers and the sudden bites in his belly, like a sharp-toothed animal in there, and the dizziness that only made him so angry he could almost kill the man next to him for spitting.

Wasn’t just far from Alabama. He was far from himself. Far from what he once thought he knew of human beings. Dirty-ass animals, every one of them, dirtier than dogs bloated by worms, that was all they were. And the life in which he had reveled, the animal joys that had been his heart’s delight, the cries of women and his own near howls when they brought him out of himself, all of it was drowning in this filth, in this disregard of everything a fool might have called “good.” In this great insult to a God who didn’t have the decency to exist, after all those lies he spawned, in this bottomless human filth worse than any mud, worse even than mud mixed with dripping shit from men too weary, sick, or excited to leave the firing line or who didn’t even know anymore when they soiled themselves.

The Yankees came on, and his men just shot them down. He wanted to reach down and scoop up the vile mud and hurl it at them, to try to shock sense into them. It was an insult to all godless creation, an ingratitude so loathsome it made Oates feel like a madman in need of a locked cell and buckled restraints.

The cheapness with which those blue-bellies squandered their lives riled the deepest parts of him, hidden places that had no decent purpose, that were best left undisturbed from birth to death. He was done damning their generals. Now he damned the men who lacked the sense to just fall down and play dead or find a nice fat body to lie behind, the sense to save the only damned thing they really possessed, their lives.

His men fired as rapidly as they could. Many of the cartridges were damp or soaked right through and could not be used. Rifles jammed, requiring urgent labor. Even so, the toll of men in blue was downright frightful.

When they just would not stop their obscene, idiot attack up through the stumps where a grove had been, Oates leapt up on a sharpshooter’s bench, raised himself to his full height above the parapet, head, torso, arms, and one balled fist exposed to whatever the Yankees could bring to bear, and he shouted in a voice so naked it shocked him at least as much as it startled his men:

“Learn your lesson, damn you! Learn your lesson!”

TWENTY

May 12, two p.m.
On the eastern flank of the salient

Despite the rain, Brown had slept a few hours and dreamed. He had been escorting Frances to the Methodist church. Only they weren’t in Schuylkill Haven. It was Knoxville and sharply cold. Concerned, he told her over and over that she needed a coat or a shawl. He had his greatcoat, but he couldn’t give it to her, though he didn’t know why. Then she was gone and he was shut in a room he could not leave, nauseated by piles of rotting apples riddled with huge worms. Later, he had a more private dream, an embarrassment and a pleasure.

Now he stood at the rear of Company C, waiting for the order to advance. The rain had retreated, but looked apt to come on again. Meantime, a breeze swept old wet from the trees speckling the slope. The sodden men in his charge waited in two lines, facing west, peering into the smoke on the next ridge. That was where the Johnnies waited, but to the company’s front, their lines were hidden. The 50th Pennsylvania had drawn a position in the attack that would take them down across an open field and into woods that climbed to the waiting enemy. It was hard to say whether it was worse not seeing the Rebels than having them in plain sight.

Brown told himself it might not be too bad this time. The 50th and the rump of the Second Brigade had been assigned to the second helping of troops, following Colonel Hartranft’s men. And Colonel Christ was gone, at last, replaced that morning by Colonel Humphrey of the 2nd Michigan, a fellow who seemed all right. No, it might not be too bad, Brown thought. Hartranft’s boys would get the worst of it, the first lines always did. With any luck, the 50th would get into the Reb ditches without many casualties.…

That was only a fantasy, Brown knew. But a man had to fool himself sometimes, if he meant to keep going. Rumors had been chasing each other all day, every one of them ugly. And the fighting up to the right was just plain queer. Battles, even rough ones, hit lulls of minor skirmishing while both sides squirmed around searching for an advantage. But this day produced steady noise. Up there, on that high ground, in that smoke, men were killing each other with a fury, and no one was quitting.

Lieutenant Brumm had command of the company now. He walked back to Brown and stood close to him.

“What do you think, Brownie?”

“Waste of breath to tell, sir. Just waiting.”

Brumm thought about that and smiled. “You’re probably thinking about the same thing I am.”

Brown smiled, too, although he didn’t mean to. “That we ought to get started and get this over with?”

“Something like that.”

Smoke filled the low ground before them. Their fate waited beyond it.

Both men grew serious again. Wet and unhappy, and duty-bound to behave as if they were fearless. And no man, no sane man, was fearless.

“Going to be hard to keep our alignment, once we reach those trees,” Brumm said. “I’ll be counting on you, First Sergeant.”

“Do what I can, sir.”

“Oh, I know that.”

What was there to talk about, really, when a man couldn’t know if he was to live or die? Yet, men felt the need to talk. Maybe as a way of proving they were still among the living.

From the low ridge behind them, Union batteries opened. The shots screamed overhead. Brown could not see where they landed.

“Soon now,” Brumm remarked. “Soon enough now. What do you make it, Brownie? Five hundred yards?”

“Maybe six,” Brown said. “Hard to tell, with the trees and all that smoke.” He wanted, badly, for things to have a reason. “I figure the point of our going in is to make the Rebs ease off elsewheres.”

“Or get in their rear.” Brumm liked to add his baritone to Doudle’s tenor around a campfire. Now his voice cracked. “That’s likely what the generals have in mind. They like their fancy plans.” He smiled a last time, the sort of smile that had nothing to do with good humor. “Best take my position. Got to say it out loud, though: I miss Captain Burket.”

“You’re doing fine, sir,” Brown told the lieutenant. He, too, smiled, amused at the way things went. “Myself, I miss First Sergeant Hill every single day.”

“Good man, Hill.”

Brown gestured toward their waiting men. “All good men. Pretty much.”

“Pretty much,” Brumm agreed. “See you on the other side, First Sergeant.”

Under the shield of the barrage, Hartranft’s men went forward. Brown knew the 17th Michigan, a good pack of boys, led to the 50th’s front. The Michiganders were offset, though, enough to leave the 50th exposed as the left flank of the division’s attack. The only comfort was that the left had been quiet all that day.

After the lead brigade had advanced a hundred yards, the order followed for the next lines to advance. The 50th stepped off.

Ahead, the guns tore into Hartranft’s lines. The men down in the swale double-quicked into the smoke and disappeared.

“Going to be a lively afternoon, yes, sirree!” Bill Wildermuth declared.

“Shut up, Bill,” Corporal Hill said.

As they marched down the slope, it struck Brown that they were trampling a field of new rye, its furrows at odds with each other, as if put in by a wife in her husband’s absence. It was the smallest part of the war, a thing no man among them would remember, but no doubt the destruction would be a cause for sorrow in some run-down homestead. It was a poor place, this stretch of Virginia, as unlike the perfectly kept Dutch farms out Long Run as any farms could be. Home was so much the better place that Brown felt like a bully trampling those shoots.

Ahead, the trees loomed. Smoke prowled between their trunks.

Hartranft’s men were in the fight: Brown could hear the firing and shouting, but couldn’t see much.

The Reb artillery shifted its efforts to the second wave, but the lines of fire spared Company C.

“Keep your alignment in those trees,” Brown called. “Veterans, keep the new men in line.”

Of course, they were all veterans now. The Wilderness had been worth a dozen other battles for breaking men in. He was glad that scrap was behind them.

On the regiment’s right flank, Captain Schwenk’s company veered off into the open ground. Lieutenant Brumm told Company C to keep up the pace and maintain its order.

Leaf trees gave way to scrub pines: The woodland was the sort of place where kids played hide-and-seek.

“Just get on through there,” Brown called, “get on through.”

The branches splashed the men and scratched their faces. But at least the pines weren’t useful trees for sharpshooters.

Someone called, “Charge!”

All of the company officers repeated the command, but Brown doubted a one of them knew where they were going. A man couldn’t see beyond the next few trees. They were climbing the far slope, though.

The noise of battle closed around them, water swamping a barge. Couldn’t see a single Johnny. Only smoke and trees, and his men slipping on wet roots.

Quitters from Hartranft’s assault filtered back through the pines, almost getting themselves shot by men from the 50th.

“They were ready for us,” one soldier called, by way of an excuse.