Hell or Richmond (26 page)

Already hot. And the smoke stink, the burn in a man’s lungs. Entrails and death for a welcome. All the tiredness of the long night’s march, with its dead-end paths and inexcusable blundering, blew away like dandelion fluff. Nothing perked a fellow up like the prospect of killing others and being lauded for it.

The field sloped down, gently, the only gentle thing left in the world. Heel gripped by a varmint’s hole, Oates almost stumbled. Cursing hard, he turned to face the enemy lurking ahead. He had no intention of marching behind his men, or in between the ranks. He was in a going-forward mood.

The 15th advanced on the left flank of the brigade. Looking down the long lines, with battle flags pawed at by whore-lazy smoke and bayonets bright as gold teeth in a pimp’s mouth, Oates just felt an itch to
do,
to flail at the earth and sky in untempered wrath, to leave death and awe in his wake. There was nothing grander than this, not one thing finer. Not even a high-yellow woman after a creek bath.

The Yankees were down there all right. Firing now. Bullets slopping up the air, trying to slow things down. Oates couldn’t see his enemies for the sun’s glare, like jagged glass in the eye. Allied with the Yankees, thick smoke gripped the low ground, hiding death, while his men advanced over open land in raw light.

Be there soon enough, he told himself. Then we’ll see who’s king of the hill today.

“Steady, Alabama, steady!” Oates barked. “Major Lowther, address the second line.”

Lowther was back, in time for whatever glory he could steal. Oates didn’t trust the man, never had, but Lowther had friends in high places.

The 47th Alabama, off to the right, hit the trees first and paused to shoot, with their officers yapping at them.

“Nobody stops, nobody shoots,”
Oates shouted, throat already smoke-bit.

Yankees shooting plenty, but not aiming worth a damn.

By echelon from the right, the brigade’s regiments dropped into the trees. The way they went in, it was clear the gentle slope turned sheer in the undergrowth. Made sense. Fields ended where a man couldn’t plow any farther. Should’ve figured that out back a ways, Oates told himself.

Before the 15th hit the trees, a courier from Colonel Perry reached him. The young man, Cadwallader, did not fancy riding in front of the advancing ranks.

Saluting, the boy said, “Colonel Oates! There’s Yankees up on a rump of hill yonder, up ahead on your left. They’re shooting down into us, we’re caught in a swamp down there.” The lieutenant gestured into the morbid greenery.

“Acknowledged,” Oates said. And the boy rode off.

He halted the regiment, ordered a left face, and ran to the head of what was now a column of twos. Sword flashing, he called, “Forward. Follow me!”

Splitting away from the brigade, he plunged down the bank through tangled brush, pushing forward regardless of the clawing thorns. Before he poked a boot into the pig marsh at the bottom of the bank, he spotted the blue-bellies. Up on a spur where the trees were thinner, thick ranks of men in dark coats, lined up almost too perfectly, sent volleys down into the wet ground where the 15th’s sister regiments had gotten their cracker behinds stuck, with more Yankees ahead of them and these sonsofbitches firing down from the flank.

The brush and trees thinned between the narrow marsh and the enemy, as if the soil couldn’t nourish anything more. That would expose his men, but it also revealed the Yankees.

He splashed and slopped his way ahead, confident the long gray snake of men behind him would follow. Let them get their feet wet, too. Just make angry men angrier.

He noted a gap between the Yankees gone head-to-head with the brigade and their comrades up on the spur. No time to charge through it and turn their lines, but the gap meant the bluecoats up on that high ground wouldn’t get much support. And they were about to need a passel of help.

With the enemy shooting down at him and missing—men shooting downhill shot high, more often than not—and hollering insults and curses in his direction, Oates leapt up on a speck of dry ground, halted the regiment, and immediately ordered, “Left face! Forward! Right wheel!”

It was a thing of beauty. Morass or not, the regiment pivoted as crisply as if on parade in Montgomery.

Pointing his sword at the enemy up on the spur, Oates shouted, “Charge! Fire on the move!” He drew out his revolver as he ran forward, cocking the hammer with his thumb.

The 15th Alabama went up the hill like a pack of hounds after a three-legged fox. Some of the Yankees didn’t even pause to fire again, but thinned their own line by running. The remainder gave off a doubtful feel.

“Give ’em the bayonet!” Oates hollered. But his men were screaming to wake the dead and he doubted he was heard. Mostly for the benefit of the Yankees, he added, “Kill any bastard who doesn’t drop his rifle.”

Even with time slowed down the way it did when men started killing each other, it still seemed but seconds before his men were in among the Yankees, shooting them belly-wise with leveled weapons, smashing in heads, and, here and there, using bayonets. In a brace of minutes, there were more Yankees with their hands in the air than cottonmouths in Pike County.

Oates came face-to-face with a lieutenant begging his men to rally. He shot him in the center of the chest. The soldiers the boy had gathered up dropped their rifles and raised their paws.

The Yankees were got up fine, with uniforms unravaged by campaigning, the color of their blouses still darkest blue.

Coming up on his major, who didn’t seem to be doing much other than tagging along, Oates said, “Lowther, you pull the boys back, get ’em organized again. Most quick. Hear me?”

“I’m shot,” Lowther said, calm as a fellow reporting indigestion. “In the foot. I have to go to the rear.” And he strutted off.

Oates didn’t mind seeing the bastard go.

A string of disarmed Yankees came by, with Sergeant Ball shoving them along. Oates grabbed one by the arm, a boy hardly of shaving age, and yanked him out of the gang of bewildered bluecoats.

“Talk to me, boy. What’s this here unit of yours?”

Terrified at the sight of Oates, at the death grip of his hand, the boy stammered, “F-Fifteenth New York Heavy Artillery, sir. Fifteenth New York Heavy—”

Oates released him. What the Hell? Were the Yankees so desperate they were plugging artillerymen into their battle line? Explained the worthlessness, though.

His hip reminded him of last year’s wound. It just made him feel meaner.

The 15th New York Heavy Artillery? Christ almighty. Probably couldn’t tell a rifle’s muzzle from a pig’s ass. Took a lot of the polish off the business. He would have preferred to whip a veteran regiment.

Re-forming his men as quickly as he could, Oates spotted Cadwallader, Perry’s aide, splashing through the marsh toward him. The lieutenant was on foot and speckled with mud.

Pride comes before a fall, Oates thought with a smile.

“Colonel Oates! Colonel Perry needs you to rejoin the brigade quick as you can, sir.”

“Tell Colonel Perry we’re about to hit those Yankees of his in the flank.”

The lieutenant looked doubtful. “The colonel hasn’t authorized that movement, sir.”

“He will when it’s done,” Oates told him. “You go along now.”

The lieutenant saluted and plodded off. Oates was never fond of messenger boys. In his experience, they found you too late and delivered instructions that no longer made sense.

He ordered every man to reload, then led them off along a saddle on the Yankee side of the marsh. He had that gap in mind. Indeed, nobody had come to the aid of the pressed artillerymen. The other Yankees hadn’t even been aware of what was transpiring.

“Sergeant Morgan,” he called. There was no time for the chain of command to relay orders.

Face still showing the beating he’d taken two days before, the Welshman rushed up and saluted, open-palmed, the way the English did.

“Take a few men yonder, along the ridge there. Stop when you see the Yankees and before they see you. Let me know how the ground lies. We’ll be coming right along.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Well, move, man!”

Morgan had a way of prowling that came naturally to some men, while others could never learn it, hard as they tried. Oates believed in attacking fiercely when you weren’t sure what you were facing, but he didn’t mind knowing.

It had not been a half hour since they had marched by Robert E. Lee.

As the column advanced through the brush, Oates turned and snapped, “Y’all hush. Officers, keep your men quiet.”

Ahead, a battle raged, but the regiment moved along in a pocket of silence. Oates wondered if those Yankee artillerymen had just been forgotten by their army. Devil of a business, war. Like dice, but with worse odds.

At one point, Oates could peer down the trough of the marsh. The brigade was still mired. A few thousand men on either side fired at each other, unable to see much of anything, just loading and shooting and hoping. That kind of fighting didn’t appeal to Oates. He believed that fighting was about doing, not just waiting for something to be done to you.

Movement in the trees: one of his men returning from Sergeant Morgan.

Fleet as a deer, the private stopped just a breath from Oates and pivoted to march beside him. The boy talked hot: “Sergeant Morgan says they got no idea we’re here, they’re all just having themselves a time shooting at the brigade. He said to lead you over to where he is.”

“You go ahead, son. And don’t run.”

The hip, the leg. His body’s untimely recalcitrance enraged him.

The distance remaining was nothing. In less than five minutes, he had the regiment ranked and ready behind the crest of another low ridge that overlooked the Yankees. They had neglected to outpost the rise, figuring those defrocked artillerymen had their flank well covered. They were going to pay for it.

Oates glanced down the silent ranks of his regiment, allowing himself a few seconds to savor the beauty. The world crackled with death. Smoke sneaked around like a no-good woman’s fingers.

He kept his voice low: “Regiment! Forward!”

At the tenth step, he called, “Halt.”

On their twelfth step, the men stood ready. Overlooking a maddened nest of men in blue, thick as ants on cornmeal, every last damned one concentrated on killing the men in gray trapped to their front.

Not twenty yards away, and they hadn’t heard a thing.

A blond-bearded Yankee looked their way at last. The man’s mouth opened.

Oates opened his mouth, too: “Aim, fire! Fire at will!”

Some of his men got off second shots before the Yankees cottoned to their predicament. Then the blue-bellies howled. Like one big, wounded creature. And men began to flee.

“Colors to me!” Oates cried
. “Charge!”

With a screeching, biting, terrifying yell, his men leapt forward, the old veterans able to trot along and reload as they went down the slope. Other men raced forward to grab a Yankee or a flag. Moments later, another great Rebel yell arose, the Alabama version, and the rest of the brigade joined the charge, splashing forward, banners high and catching in branches.

After that, it was nothing but hounds and hares.

*   *   *

“Ride with you, Micah?” Longstreet asked Brigadier General Jenkins. Longstreet maintained a steady aspect for the world, but inside he was glowing. That morning, he had redeemed his reputation.

“The South Carolina Brigade would be honored, sir,” Jenkins told him. “As I am myself.”

Longstreet rode close. “You know, it would not be taken amiss if you—”

The highborn son of the Low Country cut him off. “I’m fine, sir. Just fine.”

But Jenkins wasn’t fine. The dashing young man looked twice his age this morning. Longstreet knew that the brigadier had been carried to the battlefield in an ambulance, flat on his back, and had managed to mount his horse only at nearby Parker’s Store.

“And you understand what you’re to do?” Longstreet said.

The pale young man smiled. “Not the most complicated order I’ve received, sir. Straight up this road. Take the junction and hold it. Finish what Billy Mahone and the rest got started. My congratulations, sir.”

Yes, Longstreet felt, congratulations were in order all around. But he said, “Save those sentiments until we’ve finished with Hancock. We’re only partway there.”

“From what I hear, it’s a good partway,” Jenkins said.

Hancock! God, what a fine morning it had been. After two days of wretched roads and trails, of error-riddled maps and incompetent guides, and of constantly changing orders from Lee and his staff … after all of that, he had arrived in the nick of time, able first to blunt Hancock’s grand attack, next to contain it, and then to grind it back. After which Moxley Sorrel, bless him, had brought word of a railroad cut on the right, a perfect thoroughfare to channel a force hard onto the flank of Hancock’s penetration and roll him up. It hadn’t offered a deep envelopment as originally foreseen, the scheme of attack up the Brock Road from Todd’s Tavern. But today, a shallower flank movement had to do.

And it
did
do. Guided by Sorrel—who was in his glory—Billy Mahone’s Virginians, with Wofford’s Georgians abreast, had slammed into the left wing of Hancock’s advance, and one Union brigade after another had disintegrated. Then entire divisions began to collapse. Mahone had swept all the way across the front, crossing the Plank Road to the north at last report.

It was as brilliant a maneuver, Longstreet believed, as Jackson’s flank march at Chancellorsville had been. And the strategic consequences might prove greater. If Hancock’s entire corps could be destroyed …

Longstreet’s pride had been wounded again and again, first when he was blamed for Lee’s blindness at Gettysburg, then, after a too-brief glow of triumph at Chickamauga, for the defeat at Knoxville. But this … this must lift his reputation high.

Longstreet refused to dwell on the blow to Grant, his old friend and a man fools underestimated. Nor did Meade leap to mind. His goal was to complete his rout of Hancock, the Army of the Potomac’s battlefield lion. Destroy Hancock’s Second Corps, and the remainder of Meade’s army wouldn’t count for much. There was glory to spare in laying Hancock low.