Jacob's Ladder (34 page)

It had been such an ordinary spring evening. Now, unfinished letters fluttered against low bushes, were sent whirling aloft by shell concussions; playing cards were scattered, and near where slaughtered beeves dangled from tripods, a dead steer sprawled, a dead Federal soldier sprawled across his hindquarters, the man's blood as rich and red as the steer's.

Men wearing haversacks cut the straps of their haversacks and threw their rifles away to run the faster. Apron clutched around his waist, the German butcher fled for his life..

Across the wide meadow they ran, past a little church and the tavern where their officers had planned to meet that night. Scant air in their lungs, they ran, hearts bursting in their throats, young legs working like machines of panic.

Federal artillerymen unhitched guns and jump-mounted the horses and put the spurs to them, limber chests bouncing and case shot flying into the air whenever the equipage hit a rut, and other riderless horses ran wide-eyed, nostrils flaring, beside them.

Blood pounded in Duncan's ears and his perspective shortened to what was directly in front. Insensibly, the brigade's pace increased from quickstep to double-quick, and Duncan's men intertwined with Rodes's, two brigades screaming as one, killing fleeing men, point-blank. Federals dropped their swords, their guns, and threw up their hands and cried “I surrender” and were ignored by hot-eyed Confederates streaming past.

Stuart's horse artillery dashed down the plank road ahead of columns of men, four abreast. Duncan caught up to a shirtless Federal, his braces flapping, face half-lathered with shaving soap. Duncan dipped his regimental flag, the Confederate colors crept past the man's face, into his view, and the man lowered his head and lifted his knees, pumping, pumping, and suddenly the man tripped or was shot.

A Federal line was forming ahead, and a growl rose up in Duncan's throat and he was thinking, I'll show you, I'll show you, though what he was going to show the quavering line of frightened men he never knew.

Duncan and Gypsy and Stonewall Jackson's corps, Army of Northern Virginia, cavalry, infantry, artillery, entangled in a hard knot, struck the Federal line and disintegrated it.

The Confederates were exultant murderous men who worked in a red fury and could not afterward remember how they bayoneted that gunner, the gunner's blood and the sunset the same red. Others killed coolly, fastidiously, and their memories would be cooler than the reality had been: how the bare trees looked in the sunset or the empty rocking chairs on the porch of the little tavern, waiting for Federal officers who would never sit in them. Men forgot how they loaded and fired and killed and killed and fired and killed.

Although the Confederates had marched twelve miles that day, they fought as if it were Monday morning after a day of rest. They'd eaten only salt pork and hardtack that day but fought as if they'd feasted. Some of the men were old men, some damaged in other battles: at Chancellorsville they were boys and whole. They outran the desperately fleeing Federals, and after enough butternut soldiers passed them, many Federals sat by the roadside with their hands atop their heads.

Men fell and men were blown apart and men pitched forward like bundles of rags. Black-powder smoke hung over the field, lifting and lowering like mist, and men swooped through it like raptors. The smoke made their eyes prickle and their shoulders ached from the continual slam of firing, and when their rifles got too fouled to load, they snatched new ones from the unresisting hands of the Federals.

On the road, Duncan was jammed together with infantrymen, officers on horseback, color bearers, a limber of artillery—at a pace too fast for a man, too slow for a horse. The woods hemmed them in on both sides and there were yells and shots and explosions in those woods, but the men in the road paid no heed. Around a bend, three hundred yards ahead, trotted a column of Federal cavalry, unconcerned as if on parade. Startled officers shouted urgently and the columns hurtled toward each other, one brandishing sabers, the other bayonets. They collided with a shock; a bayonet darkened itself in an officer's rib cage, a saber split a man's clavicle. A horse was shot in the chest. Another, delicately trying to avoid trampling a wounded man, crushed a bald-headed man against a tree.

Duncan shifted the colors to his left hand and wrapped Gypsy's reins around his wrist, and when a fat Federal trooper raised his saber, Duncan thumbed off two shots, the first he'd fired, and lifted the man out of his saddle. The Confederate infantry was volleying, most of the Federal cavalry was down, but here came a second Federal troop full-tilt, and the infantry's rifles were empty and a cry, half rage half despair, issued from a thousand throats as big horses crashed into them. Men clubbed Federals off their horses, horses reared and their flailing iron hooves crushed skulls. Sabers were dipped with blood as a pen nib is dipped with ink.

Duncan shot a man and the man's hands clamped his face and his fingers spurted blood. A cavalryman slashed at Duncan and missed, but cut Gypsy, opening her neck muscles, red and white striations, stretching, contracting, stretching, contracting. Duncan lowered his banner like a jousting lance and skewered the Federal cavalryman, and the sudden weight on the end of his staff almost ripped it from his hands, but Duncan stood in his stirrups until the mortally wounded man flopped into the chaos where men fought with pistols and knives and teeth.

From a low hill, backlit by the setting sun, was a tremendous flash as Federal guns opened fire, and double-shotted canister smote the men on the road like a death wall. The echoes rang into silence, replaced by the shrieking of horses and men, and Gypsy was down on her knees, and Duncan slid off and looked for someone to kill, but the Federals had fled—a few had cut their way free and those who hadn't lay in the road.

When Gypsy staggered to her feet, her intestines spilled so she was stepping on them, and with each step more gray guts slipped onto the road. The colors fell from Duncan's hand. He said calmly, “I cannot bear this,” and clapped his revolver to his mare's ear and pulled the trigger, but there was no report, pulled it again, no report, and Gypsy screamed, reared clumsily, and her hooves trampled her own guts, so Duncan cut her throat.

The Confederate attack was finally halted by Federal artillery at the crossroads of the Hazel Grove Road and the old Orange Turnpike.

Blood-covered soldiers collapsed—in the woods, beside the road, on an overturned limber. With hoarse, unnatural voices, lost men sought their regiments. “Twelfth North Carolina?” “Fourth Georgia?” “Has any-damn-body seen Colquitt's brigade?”

Some picked through Federal haversacks for rations. Others counted fresh ammunition from the pouches of the dead. Some accompanied despairing Federal prisoners to the rear.

Duncan's flagstaff was cracked from butt to tip. He wiped the bloody tip clean with a blue forage cap. His eyes felt scratched by sand. He wondered where Catesby was, whether he lived.

The full moon rose smoky and red, and the entreaties of wounded men were muted as if night would heal them. A voice cried, “My God, boys! Stonewall's been shot.”

LETTER FROM LIEUTENANT CATESBY
BYRD TO HIS WIFE, LEONA

R
ICHMOND
, V
IRGINIA
M
AY
10, 1863

MY DEAREST LEONA,

I am grieved to inform you that your brother, Duncan, fell wounded on the second day of our recent battle near Chancellorsville. His left forearm was smashed by a minié ball and shell fragments have lodged in his chest near the breastbone. His left cheek and forehead were burned, though mercifully his eye was spared. Although his injuries are grave, he has a strong natural constitution and Surgeon Lane assures me that he has seen young men with worse prospects recover fully. I would have written you sooner but was waiting for the surgeon's report on the amputation of Duncan's limb, which seems to be healing as well as might be hoped. Some shell fragments were recovered, others left as too dangerous to extract.

Duncan was taken to Camp Winder, which is a hospital of some seven hundred beds beside the river to the north of the capital.

You will have heard that Stonewall died of his wounds. Here in the capital the flags are still at half-mast and weeping men as well as women are unremarkable on the street. I will always be proud that I fought under General Jackson, and wonder if his strong Christian faith, that bright moral beacon, won't be missed even more than his military skills. His last battlefield message was his prayer that Providence should bless our arms at Chancellorsville, and Almighty God answered his prayer. His dying words, we are told, were “Let us cross the river and rest under the trees.”

The circumstances of your brother's wounding are as follows. On May the 2nd, we marched furiously—a march of some twelve miles across Hooker's front to his unsuspecting flank, where that evening, at four o'clock, we assaulted his unsuspecting army. In the fury of our attack our regiment was mingled with others and I lost sight of Duncan. The Federals fled before us like sheep before wolves. It seemed almost shameful to slaughter them.

We fought until nightfall, but as we closed on the Federals' headquarters, their resistance stiffened and great gusts of artillery crashed into us. Their newfound resolution, our weariness, and the ebbing of the light brought the blood-drenched day to a close. I found your brother, face blackened, unhurt but despondent. His mare, Gypsy, had been mortally injured, and it had been Duncan's unwelcome duty to dispatch the poor creature. He could speak of nothing else. It was as if he had lost a child.

It was well after midnight before Duncan and I lay down. Alarms and tentative Federal assaults made the night bark with gunfire, but I think not much real fighting was accomplished. Duncan and I slept for a few hours.

Rations wagons had come up during the night, and we made a fine breakfast of hardtack and salt pork. Although Duncan still mourned his Gypsy, his appetite was good. Since five a.m. there had been fighting to our front: a hillock called Hazel Grove.

By half past seven we took that hill, where fifty of our guns now fired. Their noise was indescribable.

After Jackson and A. P. Hill were wounded, the gallant J.E.B. Stuart assumed command of Jackson's corps and Stuart's artillery commander, young John Pelham, directed our guns. Smoke wreathed Hazel Grove and wreathed the open ground over which our regiments were advancing through dense woods, woods so smoky that much of the time we fired at shapes rather than men. Although I could see the man to my immediate left and him on my right, everyone outside that narrow compass was invisible. When the Federal soldiers counterattacked, we withdrew past our wounded and dead, and when we counterattacked, we reacquainted ourselves with our less fortunate fellows. The fight had a ghostlike feel, as if the death we were suffering and inflicting was not quite real, and in fog and confusion, fighting might have been going on for untold centuries. Though blood darkened the waters of a small stream, thirsty men drank without qualm.

General Jones had fallen; now Colonel Garnett fell and Colonel Vandeventer replaced him. When we faltered, J.E.B. Stuart came, told a few jokes, and sang a verse of “Oh, Joe Hooker, Won't You Come to the Wilderness” to inspire us. J.E.B. Stuart has had more hairbreadth escapes, more bullets pass through his clothes, more horses killed under him, than any other man in the Confederacy. He makes death seem a lark. When finally our assaults proved irresistible and the Federal line broke, we were issued thirty more rounds of ammunition and began the final drive.

At such a moment there is a feeling I cannot describe. Every man is aware of being part of something profound and terrible.

Just to the south was a once prosperous plantation: an open meadow, house, several barns, cherry trees in full bloom. This plantation house had been occupied by the Federal general, Hooker. From here he had plotted the mischief our army was confounding.

Our men burst onto open ground with a shout. Dearest, I am not a demonstrative man, but I was yelling as loudly as the rest. In my heart I wished to murder blue-clad soldiers. Interspersed among the fleeing Federals were horses and beef cattle and ambulances and forage wagons. When one of their regiments formed a line of battle we rushed toward that center of resistance as if pulled by magnets.

The air trembled from shot and shell, and riderless horses ran in all directions. Our rough-clad fellows fell snarling upon the Federal guns and slaughtered the gunners. Men cheered and sobbed and yowled. Streams of wounded men passed to the rear as if blood our army was bleeding. Columns of dirty white smoke laid a blanket between us and the sky. Amidst this scene, General Lee himself appeared, mounted on his gray Traveler. Ahead, his enemy's headquarters was in flames, pouring a black, turbulent smoke. The woods through which we had passed was also burning.

Before his powder-blackened, underfed, weary battalions, General Lee passed, slouch hat in his hand uncovering his magnificent gray locks and fine features to every man's view. We raised a wild cheer—infantrymen waving overheated muskets, cavalrymen spurring their exhausted horses, even, I swear to you, dearest Leona, our wounded and dying lying on the dirt. The man who had wrought this victory had come to take his bow; to stand unafraid before tens of thousands of fleeing Federal soldiers with their cannonade bursting around him, to savor his triumph and announce his mastery. I think in that moment I never loved a man so much. Lee was in that moment all we ordinary men aspire to be and rightfully fear to become: the ideal Christian Warrior surveying the dreadful work his brilliance and the valor of his soldiers had created. Darling Leona, I wept at the sight.

The Federals escaped into prepared positions, and our army pursued no further. When the 44th Virginia regrouped, I missed Duncan and volunteered to officer those searching for our wounded.

The battle had set the woods afire, and though we dragged many men of both armies from the flames, others were overcome. Their cries and entreaties were dreadful to hear. Your brother, thank God, had suffered his wound nearby the stream aforementioned and had had the presence of mind to immerse himself and escape the heat and flames.

“I am very glad to see you.” Duncan sat propped against the stream bank, a belt around his arm for a tourniquet. Litter bearers carried him to the surgeons. The flames made night bright as day while we Confederates searched thickets as yet unconsumed and rescued many a wretch who had expected the next face he saw would be an angel at Judgment Day. The only way to distinguish the dead of one army from the other was to roll blackened bodies over so that telltale scraps of butternut or blue might identify them.

I worked until rain cooled the smoking, stinking battlefield and Colonel Vandeventer ordered me to accompany our wounded officers to the field hospital.

Though the field surgeon had advised the removal of his arm, Duncan begged that the final decision be made in Richmond, and the surgeon, who was half mad with fatigue, told Duncan that he didn't have time for damn fools, not with hundreds of men awaiting his knife: he placed a poultice on Duncan's poor burned face and dismissed us. The limb heap outside that surgeon's tent was the height of a man.

Duncan and I boarded the slowest most mournful train in the Confederacy. The Richmond, Fredericksburg & Potomac is scarcely fit for the transport of cattle, let alone gravely injured men. There was an ambulance car for officers, and I laid Duncan on a bunk, his ruined arm across his chest.

The train trundled south not much more rapidly than a man can quickstep. Sometimes the railbed was so dangerous that those who could climbed down and walked beside the train, and twice the trainmen inserted iron prybars beneath suspicious rails as our cars passed over.

The ambulance car was filthy, and dark smears on the window moldings proved this was not its first engagement. A major of cavalry who had lost both his legs moaned in his delirium and cried, “Mary, beautiful Mary,” over and over again.

In small towns, citizens met us on the platforms, and while the engine recharged itself with water and wood, ministering angels came aboard our car to proffer sweet water and the blessing of their tears.

The enemy's guns have taken so many of our young men, it is hard to think what our poor nation will do when the war is over. The only survivors may be the posturers and fools that inhabit Confederate statehouses. I would readily trade them all for a dozen good infantry privates!

I am sorry to seem unpatriotic, but our army sacrifices again and again and prevails, despite daunting odds. I am coming to think that we are the Confederacy and our leaders third-rate politicos, men suitable for no other employment if governing were not so agreeable to them. If it were not for what our army captures from the Federals, we would have no means to make war. The very locomotive drawing our train, I was told, was one of those Stonewall captured.

I was last in Richmond with Duncan and his friend Spaulding, in that spring of 1861, when all things seemed possible. We were such a brave new nation! The long slow evenings after a day of drill, rich with the jests of healthy young men, full of ardor and as yet untouched by war. One morning I tugged on my boots to discover that some wag had cut away the soles the night before and my bare feet went through to the floor. To think we were so wealthy we would cut up perfectly serviceable boots!

The Richmond, Fredericksburg & Potomac station, that noble edifice, has been visibly darkened by war. In the yards a gang was removing boiler plates from a damaged engine. Two damaged engines make one whole one: that is Confederate arithmetic.

I accompanied Duncan and several other officers to Camp Winder Hospital. One begged me to notify his family of his wound. Dearest Leona, can you perform this service for me? Please write Mrs. Martin, Raleigh Springs, North Carolina. Her husband, Lewis, is shot in the knee and he hopes they will not amputate. He would be pleased if his wife could come to Richmond and bring his best trousers.

The surgeon sniffed Duncan's wound and, ignoring Duncan's protests, proceeded with the amputation. Since I was fatigued to the bone, a busy matron directed me to an empty stall in the hospital's cow barn, where I slept the clock around. The next day I walked into Richmond and procured a meal for only ten dollars! Somewhat comforted by my repast, I went into a church—St. Paul's Episcopal—and sat in a back pew. Though there were no services that morning, the pews were filled with citizens at prayer. Many were women, some dressed in mourning, but there were veterans too, some on crutches, others dandling children on their knees. I cannot describe the satisfaction I derived from sitting on a clean wooden bench in a clean place where all thoughts were of love, mercy, and forgiveness.

I was saddened by the news of Aunt Kate's sudden demise but cannot help thinking she may be better off in Paradise. Grandmother Gatewood is an all-consuming companion.

Kiss dear little Pauline for me, tell Thomas I expect him to act as a man, and know that you are the last vision in my mind before sleep and the first upon arising.

Your Loving Husband,

Catesby