March Toward the Thunder (16 page)

“We far outnumber the forces left to Lee. Prisoners have told us that the ranks are so short of food, they're boiling their shoes to eat—if they're lucky enough to still have shoes. They'll crumble like a piece of day-old corn bread at our first attack. The whole war could be over by the weekend.”

That was what Colonel Byrnes, their new commander, said.

Then the bugles sounded.

The Irish Brigade and all the rest, a full 50,000 men, surged forward.

“Huzzah!”
men shouted.
“Huzzah!”

Their shouts and thudding feet in quick step, flap of brigade and battalion flags in the winds, the occasional pop of a musket from their own ranks as some overeager soldier pulled a trigger out of sheer nervousness. But no enemy fire. Yet.

His breath burning because his throat was so tense, Louis trotted beside his friends.

Farther up the hill.

Farther still.

Were the Rebs truly there behind those earth walls? Or had they retreated in fear of the great mass of determined men coming up the hill against them?

Less than fifty yards till we reach the works. We might
. . .

Hundreds of black hats suddenly appeared above the dark earthworks. Like a shudder of lightning, the wall burst into flame. So many Southern rifles fired at once that it seemed more a volcanic blast than a volley. Then, less than a heartbeat later, the Southern artillery barrage began. Unlike other battles where Confederate gunners had a hard time finding the range, their aim was brutally accurate.

Things seemed to move around him in slow motion, but Louis knew it was all happening at a breathtaking pace. So many Rebel guns fired that men were struck not by one shot or two, but by half a dozen balls all at once.

Out of the corner of his eye, Louis saw the puffs of dust fogging out from uniforms as men were mowed down like wheat to either side. He tripped over a fallen body, lurched sideways, then was driven to his knees by two sledgehammer blows that struck low in the middle of his back.

His face pressing into the earth, dirt in his mouth, his arms flung out in front of himself.

Somehow breath came back to his lungs. Hands tugged him up, lifted him to his feet, thrust the rifle back into his hands. Joker. Kirk. Bull.

Move
, he told his feet. Thud of artillery. Ducking under the banshee screams of shells. Stumbling as the ground shakes like a badly laid board floor.

Hours later he'd discover that the tight-rolled rubber poncho on his back had stopped two minié balls.

Eight minutes. That was how long it took for most of the Union offensive to be stopped in its tracks. Those not hit by enemy fire went to their bellies, trying to scrape out rifle pits with hands, drinking cups, bayonets. Pinned down, desperate, unable to move forward or back. Bullets and shells thick as burning hail.

Not all stopped. The Brigade and the Legion pushed forward without pause. Though their ranks thinned, they pushed on, step by step up that endless hill.

A Gray soldier rose and raised a rifle. Louis hurled his body against the Reb, who fell back into the trench and was lost in the smoke.

“Brave work, boy,” someone shouted at Louis.

Colonel James McMahon, 164th New York.

The colonel was holding the flag in both hands, planting it atop the entrenchment.

A fool thought in the midst of battle, but before Louis could do anything—foolish or not—the smile on McMahon's face faded. His eyes rolled up, his legs folded beneath him.

Louis reached for the colonel as a spinning piece of hot metal from an exploding shell whistled by his ear. He found himself holding not the man, but the pole of that flag that had been planted. The colonel's torn body slumped at his feet. Someone took the flag from Louis's hand. Time to load and fire again and again.

Only after the artillery was trained on them did they retreat. Eyes half-blind with sweat and smoke, blood and tears. Never running. Never turning their backs. Step by step, they fought their way back to rifle pits fifty yards from the enemy lines uphill.

There they stayed. Then “Bloody Grant,” as some called him now, sent orders down for another assault. And a sort of miracle happened.

“Our own General Hancock, may the Saints preserve him,” said Sergeant Flynn, lifting up the cross that hung around his neck to kiss it, “did not even relay those orders t' his officers. General Smith of the Eighteenth Corps said that he plain refused to obey. Every living soul left among the tatters of our three corps knew 'twas impossible. So, after issuing that madman's order two more times with not a man movin' forward so much as an inch, Bloody Grant saw 'twas either court-martial the whole army or pretend he'd never said such a thing. So here we are building better earthworks than those we scraped out with our blessed fingernails in that godforsaken attack. Here lads, let me put me shoulder t' that.”

The sergeant stepped forward to help lift the log that Louis and Devlin had been trying to wedge into place atop their fortification. Flynn stepped back, dusted his hands, and nodded.

“Now take a moment t' catch yer breath, lads. Lord knows ye earned a bit of rest for all ye've been through.”

Louis slumped down onto the ground.

No less a miracle than that, though 3,000 had just died, not another man of his small circle had fallen. Others had died or were missing, men whose names and faces he had just begun to know. Better to try to forget them. In battle he'd stand shoulder to shoulder, even risk his life for any man in his company, but best not to hold the names of the new ones too close to his heart. Best not to make more friends. Better just to think of those remaining few who had begun this with him. Tired, worn out as old dishrags, but among the living. Sergeant Flynn and Corporal Hayes with their heads together talking. Songbird and Joker, Bull sitting across from him.

Louis met the eyes of each of his friends in turn, mouthing the words.
Thank you
.

Songbird nodded. Joker gave him a wry grin. Bull rolled his eyes up toward the sky as if to say only heaven knew how they'd made it this far.

Louis rested his face in his dirty, blistered hands.
The six of us might make it through this terrible war alive.

For some reason, that thought brought tears to his eyes.

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

STALEMATE

“Sure and I've been here before.”

Louis and Artis looked up from the circle they'd drawn in the dirt between them. Only three aggies remained inside. Each of the boys—for that was exactly how both of them had felt for the last half hour of their game, like boys again and not grim fighting men—had won exactly the same number of marbles. Each had managed to knock twenty of those little balls of chipped clay or agate out of the ring with their shooters.

“Where's that, you dumb Irishman?” Artis said in a pleasant voice. “At a cutthroat game of marbles?”

“No, ye ignorant savage,” the scar-faced soldier answered in just as friendly a voice.

Francis O'Grady. That's the man's name
.

Artis had introduced him to Louis as one of his best buddies and a faithful mess mate. Part of being friends with Artis meant enduring the sort of teasing that Indians often only reserved for each other. The two traded insults with each other the way other companions might pass the time of day or remark upon the weather. From what Artis had told Louis, O'Grady was always ready to share a spare blanket or whatever food was sent him from home, and to watch out for his mess mates on the battlefield. Though Louis could tell that O'Grady's singing was nowhere as sweet as Devlin's, he was quick to raise his voice in a song.

Francis O'Grady was the old man in Artis's company, having joined up a full two years before his Mohawk protégé. The scar that drew a puckered line from his right forehead down to his jaw line was the result of a wound the sardonic Irishman had suffered during the Virginia Campaign of 1863. O'Grady, Artis had explained, helped his Mohawk friend learn the little tricks of survival a rookie soldier needed to learn.

The fact that O'Grady was with them now was evidence of that. When the two of them had gone to search out a level place to play their game, O'Grady had come with them. Not to play, but to sit with his rifle in his arms on a fallen log. Although he looked relaxed, Louis noticed how O'Grady's eyes were never still. Even when he seemed to just be stretching he was actually looking around behind him. This close to the Rebel lines they might be taken unaware. So O'Grady was keeping guard.

“Where you been before, aside from dodging duty?” Artis said, taking aim at the red agate marble to the left.

Click!

Both his shooter and the red marble spun out of the circle.

O'Grady slapped the trunk of the oak tree beside him. “Here!” he said.

Artis nodded. “Oh, I see. So that's the tree that you and your other little monkey brothers and sisters was born in?”

Louis had a hard time keeping a straight face at that one. O'Grady's shoulders shook a bit as he lowered his head to cover the fact that he'd been tickled by Artis's barb. Apparently, Artis even amused himself with that one. His aim was off as he shot at the brown clay marble to the right.

It was Louis's turn now, but he waited to hear if O'Grady could match his Mohawk friend.

O'Grady shook his head sadly. "And here I thought I was talking to an eagle-eyed son of the forest and not a blind man.” He cocked his head to stare at a spot on the tree's wide trunk.

“Well, I'll be a monkey's uncle,” Artis said.

"No relative of mine.” O'Grady grinned.

Louis walked over to look at the marks on the trunk he'd assumed to be nothing more than scars made by errant bits of iron or lead. Where battles had been fought it was hard to find a tree untouched by flying metal.

Louis traced the letters with his little finger.

"Francis Xavier O'Grady,” Artis's mess mate said. “We took this very ground last year and then gave it up again. Most don't know we got this far, but there's me initials in the trunk to prove me claim.”

O'Grady sighed.

“Go back to yer game, lads. I'm itching to see at least one clear-cut victory that doesn't end in a tactical withdrawal or a stalemate.”

Stalemate. Both sides dug in and facing each other like two snapping turtles with their heads pulled into their cracked shells.

Although no shots came from the other side, Louis kept low as he walked back toward his own company. He did stop for a moment, though, where a merlon, a raised battlement with embrasures, gave a view of the no-man's-land between the two armies.

Free of the dead and dying for now
, he thought, looking through the open spaces for shooting.

During the three days of battle, parts of the bloodied ground had been piled six deep with bodies. That many of them were not yet dead but only wounded had been no cause for hope. Anyone who ventured out on that field, whether for mercy or not, was a target. The fourth of June brought a halt to battle, but no truce.

Some said Lee himself refused a cease-fire for Union doctors to go out and minister to those men who were dying slowly, moaning and calling for water. Others said Grant wouldn't agree to the terms. Men in gray uniforms were also out there among the wounded, though nowhere near so many as blue-clad soldiers. Leaving them out there to die cut the diminishing Confederate forces just that much more.

Because generals refused to help the wounded didn't mean that the common soldiers couldn't try. When the dark of the first night came, Louis was among those who volunteered to crawl out and bring in the nearest of those so desperately hurt, they couldn't crawl to safety on their own.

It was hard work disentangling the living from the dead, but it was worth it to hear the two men Louis dragged back one after another weakly whisper their thanks. Whether they survived or not, he never knew, though their chances were slim. Both had so many grave wounds that likely more of their blood had soaked into the soil than still flowed through their veins.

June 5 passed and then June 6.

Anyone who tried to lift a head above the fortifications was soon driven back by fire from the other side. As the pitiless sun beat down, the cries of the wounded faded.