Hell or Richmond (75 page)

Midnight
Confederate center

Tell it. Just tell it to me,
Oates thought.
You tell me just how it is that we keep whipping those blue-belly bastards, just cutting them down like hay in a fat field, and here we are with our rumps up against Richmond. Just tell me how that happens.

General Law resettled his tattered waterproof and said, “I’ll get a gun up there.”

Oates felt the man calculating, but on the slow side. Tired. Old-dog weary. Every one of them. His soldiers up on the new line had it the worst, sleepless and sour and just plain burnt, but determined to live through the coming day and working with the spades and picks brought up, digging down through an inch of mud and five feet of worthless dirt a poor-white wouldn’t farm, not even a set-free coon, a stretch of earth not worth the pissing on, but now worth dying for.

Law asked: “Rather have two pieces up there? Fairly sure I could rustle up a section.”

“No, sir. Just one. Don’t have no more room than that. But tell them to bring all the canister they can scare up. They’ll be able to fire front or, Lord a-pity those blue-belly sonsofbitches, put out enfilading fire to sweep right down the whole front of my regiment. Nary man nor beast going to live through that.” Oates swept rain from his beard, feeling the waterlogged weight of it, like a playful woman tugging slow and steady. “Any hope of food, General? Men been marching, working. Don’t want ’em giving out.”

But he knew they would not give out. When the Yankees came, they would rise to the work, maybe even fight on a time after they were dead, killing bluecoat bastards from pure habituation, the way a man’s arms and legs kept moving after his head got blown off.

“Commissary wagons aren’t up.”

And even if they were, Oates suspected, they’d be empty by the time they reached Law’s Brigade and the 15th Alabama. The great sow of this army didn’t have a tit to spare for the men who actually got down to the fighting. And the Yankees over there stuffing themselves full of side meat, no doubt. While his boys would’ve looked upon a quarter plate of half-cooked beans as the equal to a beef roast bright with gravy. His own belly didn’t just pester him, it hurt.

“Roads are being kept free for troops and ammunition,” Law added, Methuselah-voiced, aged beyond the biblical span by this turned-blunt-and-senseless war that had become all dumb muscle and no brain, just I-fight-you-and-you-fight-me because nobody could think of anything smarter and, Christ almighty, the newspapers still told of glorious victories and heroic struggles that Oates surely couldn’t recognize, all of them dressing up an old whore as a princess.

“Anything else?” Law asked. Law was a good man, given back the liberty of command until that black fool Longstreet returned some not-yet day to renew his call for a court-martial because Old Pete couldn’t shoulder the blame himself for the mess at Knoxville. What kind of army was it in which the generals cared more about court-martialing each other than thinking out some way to win and just make all this stop?

Exhausted, famished, and fatal of mind, he still felt Old Ned stirring in his loins. Had a comely woman been present, or even a hag, he feared he would have rammed her right there, in the rain and mud, while anybody watched who took a mind to.

He understood less and less about life each day. He just knew that he wanted to keep on living it, and that he’d do all the killing that would take.

“No, sir,” he told his general. “I believe that’s all. And thank you.”

“For what?” Law asked.

“Earlier. Standing up and saying it made no sense to charge out and take back those rifle pits.”

“I find,” Law said, “that the ambition of an order rises in direct proportion to the distance of the issuer from the front.” He jiggled his rain cape again, as if doing so might hide its rents from reconnoitering raindrops. “Don’t forget to send those skirmishers out.”

“No, sir. Fine job for Major Lowther.”

“He’s back?”

“Been back. I reckon he thought the fighting was about over.”

Oates couldn’t exactly see for the darkness, but sensed Law shaking his head, deliberately, like a judge plagued by his conscience.

“Man’s got powerful friends,” Law said. “You watch out for him, William. I need you.”

“I can handle Lowther.”

“You watch out for him.” Although he was the senior officer, Law offered the first salute, a blur in the darkness as good as a pat on the shoulder.

Rain was softening. Half of what was coming down now was drippings from the trees.

Oates had lost his own rain cape sometime back, when he gave it up to fashion a makeshift litter. Didn’t mind, really. Getting soaked through at least moved the dirt around on a man’s skin. And kept him awake, more or less.

The two men parted, Oates stumbling back through the darkness and slime to his laboring men, heading toward the clanging of shovels and curses almost too tired to come out of a mouth. Yankees were going to come in the morning, sure as the help spit in a hard man’s soup. Yankees were coming, at first light, no doubt, and they’d kill a right passel of them.

And then what?

After some doing, he found Lowther. Tucked under a tree.

“Get on up.”

“What is it?”

“General Law wants skirmishers out early. I’m sending Feagin with Company B. You’ll go along, in overall command.”

After a few seconds, Lowther found his voice. “I’m sick. I need to be excused.”

“You have a surgeon’s certificate? If you don’t, you get up right now and follow my orders, Major. You head out there with Feagin. And you make sure that skirmish line is the finest in the Army of Northern Virginia. Now get up.”

Lowther rustled and rose. “What time is it? Yankees aren’t going to come in this. Not in the dark.”

“Well,” Oates said, “you just get on out there and let me know when they do come.”

TWENTY-FIVE

June 3, four fifteen a.m.
Cold Harbor

The men knew.

In the first hint of light, Barlow looked over the waiting lines of soldiers. Their uniforms, and perhaps their spirits, had been dampened by a light rain. He certainly didn’t sense ardor in the ranks. Or in himself. The silence was ominous, scratched only by minor skirmishing to the front and slack artillery exchanges. Now and then, a last ramrod clinked home, or a provost guard shouted, “You there, halt!” as cowards attempted to slip away from their duty. The mood had the weight of a sodden overcoat.

Out in the killing space, mist gripped the low ground. Beyond, the only sign of life was the occasional twinkle of a rifle muzzle, or the brief hellfire of an artillery piece. The rounds struck randomly, doing little damage but making men flinch. No one had slept enough.

Barlow had sacrificed a second hour of sleep to bathe his feet. The water delivered by his orderly had been coffee brown swill, but the relief he felt had been sweet. He had scrubbed off the peeling skin that topped his ankles now, relishing the queer mix of pleasure and pain as he swirled the raw flesh in the bucket, one foot at a time. He hoped to gain some peace from his feet, the better to make war.

He had eaten nothing, taking only coffee. Acid gnawed his stomach as thoughts chewed at his mind. He did not want to make this attack, but had prepared his men as best he could. The brigades of Miles and Brooke, his most experienced commanders, formed his assault line, Miles on the left, Brooke on the right, and both reinforced with the green but abundant personnel of heavy artillery regiments. Byrnes, who now had the Irish Brigade, was positioned to follow Miles. MacDougall, of whom Barlow remained uncertain, would follow Brooke, if ordered to go forward. Miles had the best grasp of the ground, after yesterday’s skirmishing, and Brooke was set to strike a minor salient, the one place along the Confederate line they all agreed might prove vulnerable. Given the order for a frontal assault, the dispositions were the best Barlow could do.

He took out his pocket watch. The hands tried to hide in the smoky light and he brought the watch close to his eyes.
Four twenty-five.
The attack would begin at four thirty. A signal gun would sound, and Hancock—nowhere to be seen—had ordered a bugler forward to blow the charge.

Clarion-beckoned or not, Miles and Brooke would go forward at four thirty. They had their orders, and Barlow had made them synchronize their watches again that morning. He was not going to chance misunderstandings or signals that went unheard.

The problem of a frontal assault across open ground defied him. Harvard was no help in devising tactics, and a solution eluded him as surely as it did the drunkards and illiterates. All he could do on this unpromising morning was to maintain better control than at Spotsylvania, where success had dissolved into mayhem and thence to butchery. He was
not
going to be swallowed by the excitement of the moment, but would remain near his lines, surrounded by a multitude of couriers, where he could best observe the thing entire. Brooke and Nellie Miles had a surfeit of couriers with them as well: He had ordered them to report each development promptly. He meant to control this fight, to the extent that any fight let itself be controlled. It seemed to him that confusion had become as much of an enemy as the Confederates. Confusion was the beast that had to be tamed. The challenge of command was to stay informed.

The Union guns had been silenced so the whole front could hear the signal shot. Apart from last pricks of skirmishing, the only sounds were of nervous horses and the Latin drone of a priest blessing New York soldiers in the first line of attack. Caps off for a moment, men dipped their heads as the bearded priest marched past. The most devout went briefly to one knee.

Every passing second enriched the light. Barlow watched a New York officer close his eyes and move his lips. The man’s neck muscles quivered.

He did not want to make this attack, no more than that poor bugger did. But if it had to be made, and if there was one chance in thirteen Hells to succeed, Francis Channing Barlow meant to do it.

“What are they waiting for?” a courier muttered.

The signal cannon sounded.

All along the Union front, artillery batteries opened, firing over the waiting troops. Even on horseback, Barlow sensed the ground trembling. The air shook.

Confederate guns replied, firing almost blind but compelled to respond.

Miles and Brooke had already stepped off, emerging from the tree line into a field of tall, wet grass and barren patches where the earth looked diseased. Brooke rode out with his lead unit, the massive 7th New York Heavy Artillery, whose soldiers were now infantry in all but name.

Barlow felt a rush of anger. He had told Brooke and Miles to go forward dismounted. He did not want to lose those men.

Looking left, he didn’t see anyone on horseback near the first line of troops, only couriers pausing to their rear. Miles, at least, had listened.

Roping in his temper, Barlow reasoned that Brooke felt a need to inspire the artillerymen, to show confidence. Still, he didn’t like being disobeyed.

His lines surged westward in good order, barely annoyed by Confederate artillery. It didn’t trick him into confidence: It only meant that the Johnnies had positioned their guns for enfilading fire.

As the blue lines reached the north–south road that cut the field in two, more guns opened, seconded by bright snakes of rifle volleys. Men fell, individually and in clusters. Barlow raised his field glasses, paused to calm his horse, and brought the glasses to his eyes. The road had been worn below the level of the field, creating a shallow trench. Briefly, jarringly, Barlow remembered Antietam, the brief glory and the long recovery from his wound. He snapped his attention back with brutal force.

The 7th New York’s flag had threatened to fall more than once, but the green troops had advanced quickly to the road. Now, though, many men didn’t want to leave it. Natural enough, Barlow knew, it was the base instinct of the human animal to survive. This would be the test for the 7th’s officers. Barlow could see them dashing about, re-forming their men, readying them for a charge toward the salient.

They advanced again. The pause had been brief, not enough to break their sense of momentum. As soldiers always did under fire, men began to crouch as they hastened forward, as if struggling through a gale. And it was a gale, but of lead. The Reb entrenchments on the high ground blazed, and cannon double-charged with canister cut swathes through the ranks as the men pressed on. The Heavies had advanced farther and faster than any other regiment on the field.

Something unexpected happened. It made Barlow lower his field glasses, wipe his eyes to uncloud them, and raise the glasses again. Close to the Reb lines, within a few dozen yards, the artillerymen had begun to go to ground.

He figured it out: It was trick terrain, its contours unclear from a distance. Up close to the salient, the sharp rise from the field created a safe harbor for attackers, just below the Reb lines. The Johnnies couldn’t see them, couldn’t depress their artillery sufficiently to target them, and even Reb infantry would have had to stand atop or emerge from their entrenchments to fire down into them.