March Toward the Thunder (24 page)

Just as he thought that, he heard the sudden whish of air.

Both Louis and Artis flinched, even though it was already too late to duck.

Crack! A minié ball buried itself in the log abutment a hand's breadth above their heads. Some sniper in gray must have climbed to a treetop high enough to get a line of sight over the top of the fortification. The two boys duckwalked the rest of the way along the ditch, then cut downhill.

“Thank ye both,” Sergeant Reese said as he accepted the small packet of tobacco that Sergeant Flynn had sent over.

The three of them sat under a wide-trunked Southern oak behind the camp of the 48th. From the leafy branches above them small birds in a hidden nest cheeped, uninterested in the doings of the humans below.

Reese's voice cut into his reverie. “Now, you and your friend would be wanting to hear more of the story, won't you?”

“Please, sir,” Artis said. Artis might joke with his friends, but he was always unfailingly polite to anyone older than himself.

Louis nodded agreement.

This was the real reason they'd been sent on this errand—to bring back Reese's side of the story to Flynn. A thousand tales were being told in camp of all that occurred on that dreadful day. Yet awful as the events had been, everyone wanted to hear more—as if hearing it might make another great failure easier to bear. To hear the most, you had to go to those who always know the most—the sergeants.

“The grand foolishness began the night before,” Reese said, packing his pipe and lighting it. “And the higher they go, the bigger the fools they are, y' know. General Burnside was happily goin' about his business, all his plans neatly laid for the morrow, when what should come to him but a courier from army headquarters. 'Twas a message from our grand generals Meade and Grant. Instead of having the assault led by the Colored Troops of the Ninth who'd been rehearsing the plan for days, the attack was now to be spearheaded by one of the white divisions.”

“Oh my!” Artis said, raising an eyebrow.

“And well might ye say that,” Reese agreed. He reached down, picked something up, held it before his eyes, and studied it.

A wood splinter. Even here, half a mile away, bits of debris fell from that godawful blast.

Reese used the splinter to tamp down the tobacco in his pipe. “And why would the high and mighty of the army be changing the plan at the last moment, y' might ask? Well, this is an election year, y'know. And there's been one embarrassment after another for our generals and our president. The Bloody Angle, Cold Harbor, and then this month past there was that hell-be-damned raid of Jubal Early's.”

Louis nodded his head.

He'd read about the daring Southern general's exploit in a three-week-old
New York Herald
Bull bought from a sutler. To the shock of the entire Union, General Early had led a hand-picked force of 10,000 Confederate veterans north. With so many federal troops massed around Petersburg, he marched through Maryland with little opposition and crossed the Potomac on July 5.

Early's small army came within a mile of capturing Washington. The city militia, the office personnel, and the war invalids were all brought to its defense. The veterans' hospitals emptied of anyone who could limp to the lines. President Lincoln refused to go into hiding, even though he'd been warned about secessionist plots to assassinate him. Instead, he traveled on horseback from one end of Washington to another during the siege. Lincoln even came under fire himself as he stood on the parapet of Fort Stevens, an inviting target for the Rebel marksmen a thousand yards away. Minié balls began whizzing past the lanky man in black whose unusual height and tall stovepipe hat made him tower two feet above everyone else. When an officer standing next to the president was struck by one of those sniper rounds, someone yelled, “Get down, you damn fool, before you get shot!” not knowing he was directing his remarks at the leader of the Union. An amused smile on his face, the Great Emancipator had finally climbed down.

The arrival of reinforcements had forced General Early to grudgingly withdraw on the twelfth of July. But as he moved back down through Pennsylvania he collected huge sums of gold and greenbacks from the cities he passed by threatening to burn them to the ground if they refused to pay up. The blackened ruins of Chambersburg attested to the seriousness of his threats.

“So,” Sergeant Reese continued, “if Honest Abe hoped to hang on to his high office and not lose to some ‘Peace-at-all-costs Democrat' like McClellan, 'twould not have been good for him to have yet another great embarrassment. Such as having his generals shove a corps of poor untested Negroes into battle to be slaughtered. Thus, in their great wisdom, Meade and Grant decided we had to show how much we cared for our Colored Troops by doing the one thing that would get them killed. Hold them back till things got so desperate they had to let them go. Ah, and they got desperate fast enough, y' know.”

The sergeant puffed again at his pipe.

Louis and Artis waited.

“Now they had to choose which unrehearsed white division would be the lucky one to take the forefront. No one volunteered, so Burnside had his three commanders draw straws. As evil luck would have it, the one who got the short straw was the worst of them all.”

Reese spat onto the ground. “Brigadier General James H. Ledlie. There's a man fierce at fighting—a bottle. And where was he during the whole sorry affair? As soon as that explosion went off, he scuttled down to the bombproof with a quart of rum. There he stayed for the whole day, you know. Not only that, General Ferraro, the man supposed to be commanding the Colored Troops, he joined him.”

Reese puffed out a ring of smoke, then shifted to cross his legs. “The fuse was lit at three a.m. Half an hour passed and it still hadn't gone. So we knew it must have burned out at the splice, just as we'd feared. So it was back into the tunnel for Lieutenant Douty and me. Cut the fuse, relight it, and run like rabbits being chased by a weasel! It went up just as we got out. I was deaf for a whole day after, y' know. Ach! The hole it made! Sixty feet wide and a hundred feet long! Thirty feet deep with sides of steep clay. Have y' seen it?”

“No,” Louis said.

“Not likely we'd be here if we had,” Artis added.

Sergeant Reese nodded. “Of course not. Try to take a peek now, y'll get your head taken off by some Southern sniper. The Johnnies are a wee bit peeved with us for blowing up their fort, y' know. And along with that fine fort and all its guns, three hundred Rebels or more was blown sky-high as well.”

Reese puffed out another ring of smoke and watched as it dissipated slowly in the still air around them.

“Now, blowing all that up was according to plan. 'Twas just, y' might say, a mite too successful. Everyone was so scared by the great force of it that they ran in the other direction. Not just the graybacks, but our men in blue as well. It took the officers half an hour to get 'em turned around and headed back. And where do y' think they marched?”

“Into the crater,” Artis said.

“Aye. It seems that in the confusion, our side forgot a wee part of the grand plan, which was to move the barricades to either side of the hole. So what did those advancing men see before them? Naught but a ten-foot-wide passway straight down into the crater. Now don't forget that the only ones who'd been rehearsed was those Colored Troops who'd been sent away to the rear. So where else could those soldiers in Ledlie's division go without their leader to tell them but down into that bloody hole, y' know? Leaping in as if it was the world's biggest trench where they might be safe from the enemy's guns.”

Reese cleared his throat and spat. “Once in, of course, with not a ladder among them and those clay sides so slippery and crumbling, they were caught like fish in a barrel. The second division and the third followed right behind, swarming down into that crater for cover. Then the colored boys arrived.”

Sergeant Reese looked off to the place where the survivors of General Ferraro's troops had their camp.

“Those Negro lads was singing,” Reese said, tapping his chin with his pipe. “Now how did that song go?”

“We looks like men a-marchin' on, we looks like men of war?” Louis ventured.

Gabriel and the men in the camp of the Ninth had been singing it the week before.

“Indeed,” Reese said, tapping the air with his pipe. “The very song. And they did look like men of war—or at least men with some brains in their heads. Instead of going into that crater, they swung to either side to take the heights. With any support they might have made it, y' know. But those Rebels had recovered and were pouring back to their wrecked line. Those brave black lads ended up being driven back into that infernal hole with all the other unfortunate souls.”

Heat rose from the quiet field behind them. Even the small birds in the tree above them had grown quiet.

Louis thought about all the men lost in the Battle of the Crater. He'd heard the figures from Flynn. Thirteen hundred men from the Ninth, Gabriel among them. Twice that many in the white divisions. Bad as Cold Harbor, maybe worse.

Artis cleared his throat.

“God save us from all generals,” he said.

Sergeant Reese spat again. “Amen to that.”

CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

CITY POINT

Moles. That's what we've become
.

In the bitter weeks following the Battle of the Crater, the tents and huts near the line were no longer safe. Every day men were being struck by snipers' rounds piercing the thin walls of canvas or brush.

It was fall back or make better fortifications. So the whole Union Army moved more or less underground, down into deep trenches as heavily reinforced as bombproof forts. A soldier might now spend a whole day without the light of the sun touching his face.

Here and there, the rough humor of men at war showed itself in hand-lettered signs placed by the entrances of those man-made caves.

Louis read the newest one nailed to the timbers of the bombproof he passed on his way to morning drill.

HOTEL COMFORT
REASONABLE RATES

The man just inside the door waved as he passed. The face wasn't familiar, but Louis waved back. More and more folks seemed to recognize him now—the big Indian from the Irish Brigade

“Hey Chief,” the man yelled, “you hear how the Rebs blowed up City Point?”

Louis nodded and continued on.

City Point. Grant's headquarters. Placed on the peninsula where the Appomattox River joined the James, it was the nerve center and supply depot for the operations of the Army of the Potomac in Virginia. What had been a sleepy little tobacco town was now one of the biggest ports in North America.

Louis thought about what it must have been like last Saturday, just at noon. Grant sitting in front of his tent looking out at the peaceful river where a supply barge full of artillery ammunition and supplies was sitting at anchor.

The whole barge had gone sky-high in a blast that rivaled the one two weeks earlier at the Crater. Forty-three men had been killed and hundreds injured, not just by the explosion but by the debris that rained down, including hundreds of new saddles intended for Sheridan's cavalry.

Awful as it was, Louis had to smile at the thought of those saddles flapping down out of the sky like giant bats.

They say one of them landed right at General Grant's feet
.

But the shower of shot, shell, pieces of wood, iron bolts, and bars and pieces of chain that put holes in his tent had left the Union's commander uninjured.

Word was that it was sabotage. A Confederate agent had given a wooden box to a crew member, telling him it was from the captain and should be stowed down below with the cargo. It had been a bomb with a clockwork mechanism and some black powder in it.

When Louis reached the place where the Second Corps had been camped, what he saw surprised him. Everyone was packing.

The tent he shared with Artis had already been struck. Artis had rolled up Louis's blanket and laid out his gear to make it easier to pack.

“We're pulling out, Chief,” Kirk said. “Our destination is a great mystery.”

Devlin grinned. “Wherever we're going, short of the gates of Hell, it has to be better than here.”

“Or so you hope,” Belaney added.

As they started their march, Louis looked back over his shoulder at the arid, desolate, battle-scarred plain outside Petersburg.

Their line of march reached City Point at noon. There, when they bivouaced, a pleasant surprise appeared. Not just the usual coffee and hardtack, but fresh-baked bread from the bakery on the grounds.

“'Tis said they're baking a hundred thousand a day,” Sergeant Flynn said, tearing off a piece from the warm loaf in his hand. “And look ye over there.”

Was it possible?

“Apples and pears!” Artis said in stunned delight.

“And that's not the only sweet thing here,” Belaney said. The reverence in his tone was like that usually reserved for prayer. “Look at those lasses!”