High Hearts (22 page)

At 11
A.M
. Mars begged Stuart to let him take a small force and scout the terrain. Their maps had roads and streams marked, but no elevations. J.E.B. Stuart, pleased with his old friend’s spirit, nonetheless informed Mars he’d already sent out such a party.

By noon, Stuart, impatience personified, mounted and rode off himself. Mars angrily threw his hat on the ground, then aware that every eye was trained on him, sheepishly picked it up and dusted it off.

When Stuart returned, the noise behind him was metallic bedlam. The smoke twirled up in black and deep yellow columns. Geneva stared at this sight, not comprehending what it meant. The dust from thousands of marching feet, feet she sometimes heard but didn’t see, made her eyes tear.

The temperature was already in the 90s. She untied her kerchief and wiped her face. It was grimy and she hadn’t fired a shot yet.

Nash, next to her, was conspicuously silent as he read and reread the Bible. Two hours passed, and Geneva realized Nash hadn’t turned the page.

Banjo played solitaire. He enjoyed an imaginary conversation with his deceased wife. He prayed to her each night
before falling asleep, and now he found himself talking to her in broad daylight. When he thought of goodness, he thought of her. He had difficulty imagining Jesus, but he could imagine her gentleness, kindness, and understanding. He figured that was as close as he would get to the exalted Christian virtues. He found himself suddenly fervent, and he prayed, “Sweetheart, if I die, it won’t be so bad because I’ll see you again.”

The air was now blue and sulfurous. The men and horses coughed. Mars harassed Stuart once more. Jubilant, he returned to his men.

Benserade called out, “Mount up. Dress left.”

For one quivering moment all five hundred men, stone quiet, stared at Mars. With a big smile, he shouted, “Remember your wives and children. If you don’t have a wife, remember mine.” The men cheered him.

Geneva’s heart pounded. Instinctively she reached for Nash’s hand. He touched her hand, but dropped it quickly. She wasn’t afraid. She only wanted to touch Nash, to reassure him. His face was gray. Banjo smiled through his stubble. He was ready.

The troops moved at a light trot. It was about one in the afternoon. They passed fields, a tiny orchard, and the guns grew closer.

They moved toward their left and ten minutes later passed the hospital station. The yellow flag with the large green H hung limply in the stifling heat. Inside, Colonel Jeffrey Windsor was already overloaded with wounded and dying. The screams of the wounded chilled Mars’s regiment, even in this inferno. Outside the hospital station, a huge pile of limbs, at least two feet high, shocked the onlooking cavalrymen. Jeffrey sweated, cursed, and cut. Spattered in blood from head to toe, he looked like torture incarnate. Each time an arm or a leg was tossed on a pile, a cloud of flies buzzed up like an evil umbrella and then gracefully settled down to their feast. The stench assailed Geneva’s nostrils, yet she remained calm, quite at peace with herself. Nash’s teeth started to chatter.

Everywhere signs of tobacco were in evidence, either to calm nerves or to kill the smell. Cans of Nature’s Ultimatum, Diadem of Old Virginia, Wedding Cake, and Sumner’s favorite, Darling Fanny Pancake, caught the light before being thrust back into breast pockets.

They passed wounded men straining to get to the field hospital. Someone said they were Fisher’s men from the Sixth Infantry of North Carolina. Fisher was dead.

She saw her first casualty, a man with his side blown away. He was turning black. She thought the temperature must be near one hundred. Any hotter and the dead would fry instead of rot.

They trotted into woods to hide their movements. Geneva heard bullets, and once she thought she felt a whizzing by her temple, a little streak of air. But she dared not give it a thought.

What did rivet her attention was the odd slapping sound—wicker, nicker, wicker—that the cannonballs made. She imagined she could hear them revolving in the air.

As they came out of the woods, suddenly there was the conjugated power of artillery and rifles. Nash’s teeth chattered uncontrollably. Geneva, heart pounding, felt only the urge to go forward, to fight. She felt no fear. Banjo’s face was thoughtful, but he didn’t look afraid. Mr. Poist, slightly ahead of her, chewed his tobacco furiously.

The breathtaking sight of men in flaming red pantaloons thrilled Geneva. They were the Zouaves, infantry who went into battle wearing a Turkish costume that provided excellent target practice for the Confederates. Fighting alongside and equally conspicuous in bright red trousers were the Fourteenth New Yorkers. Geneva laughed out loud.

Out of the corner of her eye, she saw her first Federal. He couldn’t have been more than twenty years old. Whether he was handsome or not, she didn’t know, for his entire lower jaw had been shot away. He walked mechanically in no particular direction like a bizarre windup toy.

“Charge!” Mars bellowed.

Geneva put the reins in her left hand and squeezed Gallant’s flanks. Yelling at the top of her lungs, Geneva Chatfield Hart joined the carnage. A sheet of flame leapt up before her as Zouaves fired. Men and horses tumbled. Between clouds of smoke she could see Mars ahead of her by perhaps twenty yards, his saber drawn, riding his animal with the grace so peculiar to him.

The First Virginia hit the Federal infantry with a shock. If the Yankees formed a square, they might have withstood the charge, but they were green. Artillery crashed around everyone.

The Yankees could not reload their rifles in the melee. They jabbed and parried with their bayonets. Geneva saw one large blond man plow his bayonet under David Poist’s rib cage and throw him onto the earth.

Nash brought the end of his saber down on a man’s head, knocking him unconscious. Banjo, cool and steady, rode down one Yankee after another, slicing them like bacon.

A Yankee tried to grab Gallant’s reins, but Gallant suddenly swerved to the right, knocking him over. Geneva thought she might jump the man, but he was smart and rough. He rolled under the belly of Gallant and grabbed her boot from the other side. He was powerful, but she was as crazed with battle lust as he was. She drew her pistol and without a second’s hesitation blew a hole in him as big as a silver dollar. Her left leg was black with powder burns. He held on to her boot, his fingers locking like steel.

“Die, you son of a bitch, die!” This time she fired straight into his skull. Although clearly dead, his fingers did not release their grip for another few seconds.

She jammed her gun back into its holster and drew her saber. Two men ran up to her on foot, their bayonets filthy with blood. She knew she could save herself, but she wasn’t sure she could save Gallant.

She pressed with her left leg, and he spun right, flinging the dead body out. She slashed at the advancing man as Gallant jumped over a dead soldier’s body. The Yankee fell with a scream.

Suddenly a steel saber burst through the chest of her remaining attacker. “Banjo!” Banjo put his foot on the man’s shoulder and pushed him off his blade.

Geneva looked about and saw her regiment thundering back into the woods. Banjo and Geneva wheeled their horses and headed after them at a full gallop.

Sweating and euphoric, Geneva found Nash unharmed.

“We broke ’em!” She grabbed her cap and swung it over her head.

Nash glumly asked, “Are you all right?”

“Yes, thanks to Banjo.”

Mars looked back on the field from where they had just come. A man was walking among the dying Yankees.

Mars grabbed the field glasses from Sam Wells, whose left
forearm was bleeding badly from a vicious bayonet slash. “It’s a priest!”

Mars cantered back into the field toward the priest. He had to be careful because the dead cluttered the earth and his mount, like all horses, hated to step on bodies.

Cannonballs flew over Mars’s head. The Zouaves and the Fourteenth New Yorkers were regrouping, but there were enough occasional shots to make the place still murderous. There was no way to tell if they would come back across the field.

Mars pulled up beside the priest, whose bald head shone cherry in the blistering sun. “Father, leave this place.”

“I’m giving these men their last rites, Major.” He spoke with a flat Northern accent.

“There’s nothing here but crushed intelligence. Your place is with the living. Allow me to conduct you back to our lines.”

A cannonball suddenly chewed up the earth and part of a dead Confederate not ten feet away.

“I belong to the Fourteenth New York, sir.”

“I can’t very well take you there now, can I?” Mars leaned down from his horse to help the older man up. “You’ll be quite safe, Father. We are Christian men.”

As they rode toward the woods, Mars’s men cheered. Mars delivered his human package to a makeshift medical unit. The good man immediately made himself useful by giving what aid he could to the bayonet cuts and bullet wounds.

Meanwhile, Stuart sent off couriers ordering his commanders to regroup their men.

The artillery sounded like God’s trombones.

Thousands of men marched—Geneva could see the telltale clouds of dust—but whose men and to where? She didn’t much care as long as she could get back into the fight again.

Mars rode up to Geneva. “You’re bright as a cigar band. Come with me, let’s take another look.”

Happily Geneva fell in beside him. They trotted through the woods to emerge near Henry Hill. The house on the hill looked like a piece of Swiss cheese.

Mars skirted the area, for the fire remained heavy.

“Are we winning, Major?”

“Not yet.”

“Do you think we will?”

“We could.”

“Was it like this in Europe?”

“I was in some skirmishes from time to time, but nothing like this. I suppose I could have gone to the Crimea if I’d begged the British, but I felt I had more to learn from the Prussians.”

“So this is your first big battle.”

“Jimmy, this is every American’s first big battle. Well, except for the fellows who fought in the Mexican War, and I was too young for that.”

A cannonball whirled overhead. A spent bullet suddenly severed Mars’s left rein and grazed his horse. The animal reared, but Mars brought him down quickly by pulling the right rein straight down. “There, there, fellow. You’re in better shape than most.” He looked at the battlefield and saw disemboweled horses, decapitated horses, and horses screaming with pain. The artillery horses suffered more injuries than the cavalry.

“Let me see if I can knot the two ends together.”

“I can ride without my left rein. We’d better keep moving.”

“Banjo says it takes a man’s weight in lead to kill him, so we’ve got time.”

“The guns are hot. They’re too goddamned hot. I need water if you want me to keep firing,” an artillery captain shouted to a courier. They were perhaps seventy yards away, but a momentary lull let the captain’s voice carry.

A column was seen in the far distance, but the flag was limp. Mars said, “By God, I hope they’re ours. If we’ve been flanked, we’ll crack like walnuts.”

They rode toward the column, and the shelling resumed. They dipped down behind the hill and enjoyed a moment free from immediate danger. Mars slowed. “Can you see the flag now?”

Geneva stood in her stirrups. “I think it’s ours, Major.”

“Damn, if we just had a bit of breeze.”

“You thinking it’s Patterson?”

“I’m praying it isn’t.”

They stayed there for what seemed like an eternity. Geneva hated the sounds she heard all around her. Crying men called for their mothers, or they called for some water. Then their bodies would go into convulsions, a grand tremor, and that would be the end of it for those lucky enough to die
quickly. Others lay sprawled in the cursed sun while the flies laid eggs in their wounds. Men prayed for deliverance, if they could pray at all. The medical staff couldn’t get soldiers off the fields fast enough. Around Widow Henry’s house, the fire was so intense that no one dared retrieve the wounded. Their comrades, who were unaccustomed to battle, had abandoned them when they were told to fall back.

A slight flutter gave Mars what he wanted. “Ours! Let’s go.”

While Mars and Geneva were riding back to the battlefield, Nash, so as not to think about what might come next, assisted the priest.

“Are you a Catholic?” asked Father Quinsberry.

“No, I’m an Episcopalian,” Nash replied while holding an unconscious man’s leg straight.

The priest was busy picking out cannister. “That’s a Catholic without the incense.”

Nash smiled. “Yes, I guess it is.”

“There’s a nasty sliver in here.” Father Quinsberry pointed to a deeply imbedded piece of steel. Nash worked on it with his boot knife until he could pull it out.

“I killed today.” Nash bent over his task.

The priest replied, “You’re a soldier.”

“I ask for forgiveness, nonetheless. Doesn’t the Bible tell us ‘Thou Shalt Not Kill’?” Nash yanked out another hunk of steel. The man moaned. “I know if I hadn’t killed those fellas, one of them would have killed me. Did you ever kill a man, Father?”

“No.”

“Would you?” Nash asked.

“I’m a man who has given my entire life to the word of Jesus Christ. If God wills that you or any of these men shall kill me, then so shall I die. But I shall not kill.”

As Mars and Geneva rejoined the regiment, Nash walked over.

“Nash,” Geneva said, “we saw a column approaching us. Ours!”

“You’re a born soldier, aren’t you?” Nash said with great sadness.

Mars wheeled on Nash. “That’s right, Piggy. He is.”

Nash said nothing more. Geneva, hurt, dismounted and
walked Gallant to a water bucket, then drank herself from Nash’s offered canteen.

By two o’clock Dr. Jeffrey Windsor had run out of anesthesia. His quinine was also low. Desperate, he sent a message to his Northern counterpart. The courier, carrying a white flag, rode behind the right flank of the Federals. He stopped one of Heintzelmen’s men who directed him to the hospital. Either the Northerners did not care that he was a Confederate or because some Northern troops wore gray and some Southern troops wore blue, they were confused. Or maybe they saw the white pennant and decently agreed to it. In any case, the courier rode back to Jeffrey an hour and a half later.