A Stillness at Appomattox (30 page)

Commands
were
broken
into
moving
fragments
which floated
blindly
about
trying
to
reassemble
without
the
faintest idea
where
their
comrades
might
be.
Reinforcements
lost
their way
as
they
tried
to
go
forward
and
made
the
trouble
worse, so
that
instead
of
adding
weight
to
the
attack
they
crippled it.
In
one
place,
men
would
be
standing
ten
ranks
deep,
and
a few
hundred
yards
to
right
or
left
there
would
be
a
complete gap
in
the
line,
with
nobody
at
all
to
hold
the
ground
and only
the
bushes
and
the
blinding
haze
to
keep
the
Confederates
from
seeing
what
an
opening
lay
in
front
of
them.
Brigades
got
in
behind
one
another
and
shot
blindly
into
the ranks
of
their
own
friends.
¹⁰

One
of
Hancock's
best
brigadiers
was
ordered
to
move
up the
road
and
support
Getty's
division,
but
before
he
could
get started
Getty's
division
had
been
crowded
over
to
some
other part
of
the
battlefield,
so
that
the
support
troops
moving
in without
skirmishers
ran
head
on
into
a
Southern
battle
line, which
opened
a
deadly
fire
before
the
Federals
realized
that they
were
anywhere
near
the
enemy.
The
brigadier
did
not know
whether
he
was
within
half
a
mile
of
the
place
where he
was
supposed
to
be—nor
did
he
know
what
he
was
supposed
to
do,
now
that
he
was
wherever
he
was,
except
fight, which
he
could
not
help
doing
with
Rebels
all
around
him. Long
after
the
war
he
wrote
that
he
still
did
not
know
what had
been
expected
of
him.
What
he
had
actually
done
was
to get
several
hundred
of
his
men
shot
to
no
purpose
at
all,
and at
seemed
improbable
that
that
was
quite
what
Hancock
had wanted.
¹¹

Near
the
road,
Wadsworth
was
still
moving
his
regiments about
so
that
they
could
renew
the
attack.
The
old
man
was tired
and
he
felt
unwell,
and
he
told
an
aide
that
he
really ought
to
turn
command
of
the
division
over
to
someone
else and
go
to
the
rear,
but
there
was
too
much
to
do
just
now
and he
would
wait
for
a
lull.
Somewhere
behind
him,
men
from the
IX
Corps
were
pushing
forward;
the
men
said
afterward they
made
the
final
fifty
yards
of
their
advance
crawling
on hands
and
knees
through
a
pine
thicket,
and
when
they
got through
the
thicket
they
had
a
terrible
hot
fight
with
some Rebels
behind
a
fence-rail
breastwork.
South
of
Wadsworth's division,
soldiers
said
that
all
morning
long
they
had
seen neither
a
general
officer
nor
a
staff
officer
to
tell
them
what
to do.
They
were
without
commanders,
and
each
regiment
was fighting
entirely
on
its
own.
¹²

This
sort
of
thing
could
last
just
so
long
before
something gave
way.
Nobody
knew
what
was
happening
because
nobody could
see
100
feet
in
any
direction,
but
suddenly,
without
any warning,
the
sprawling
line
across
the
Plank
Road
began
to come
to
pieces.
Out
of
the
smoke
came
men
who
had
stopped fighting
and
were
unhurriedly
going
back
out
of
action,
and nothing
that
anyone
said
to
them
seemed
to
make
the
slightest
difference.
One
of
Wadsworth's
soldiers
said
it
was
the strangest
sight
ever
seen:
the
men
pressing
to
the
rear
did
not seem
to
be
demoralized
or
scared,
and
yet
they
did
not
quite look
like
organized
troops
retreating
under
orders,
either. They
were
just
going
back,
looking
like
"a
throng
of
armed men
who
were
returning
dissatisfied
from
a
muster."
One
of Meade's
staff
officers
noticed
that
the
men
were
not
running, and
were
neither
pale
nor
frightened,
nor
had
they
thrown away
their
weapons:
"They
had
fought
all
they
meant
to
fight for
the
present
and
there
was
an
end
to
it."
A
New
Jersey
soldier
noted
the
same
baffling
traits
and
said
the
only
explanation
he
could
make
was
that
"a
large
number
of
troops
were about
to
leave
the
service."
¹³

Whatever
had
happened,
there
it
was—an
unpanicked
but irreversible
retreat
by
the
army's
shock
troops,
thousands
of men
turning
their
backs
and
sauntering
calmly
toward
the rear.
Wadsworth's
men
caught
the
infection,
and
as
they turned
to
go
the
Rebels
hit
them
with
hard
volleys
that turned
the
retreat
into
actual
rout,
and
the
whole
division
dissolved,
thousands
of
men
streaming
off
through
the
woods. Wadsworth
stormed
along
trying
to
rally
them,
but
a
Confederate
bullet
killed
him
and
for
the
time
being
his
division simply
went
out
of
existence;
of
5,000
men
who
advanced with
it
in
the
morning,
fewer
than
500
could
be
rallied
that evening,
the
rest
all
scattered
over
five
square
miles
of
un-plumbed
forest.
(It
might
be
noted
that
1,100
of
the
5,000 had
been
shot.)
¹⁴