March Toward the Thunder (20 page)

“Men,” Sergeant Flynn said, “Corporal Hayes and I have one command we'd like ye to be listenin' for. Corporal?”

“Down!”
Hayes yelled.

Louis and all of the other men of E Company, veterans and new faces alike, dropped as one onto their bellies.

“Fine,” Flynn said. “Ye can hop back up again, me lovelies. But don't be getting up till ye hear me or the corporal ask ye to do so. If ye hear the bugle blowin' the attack, stay where ye are. Even if ye have some fine big officer with all sorts of bars and braids on his clean blue uniform hollerin' at ye from back behind the parapet, pay the man no heed. And when yer down there don't be lifting up and looking about. Just roll to yer backs if you need to reload. That way ye might come out of this blessed thing with all the limbs and heads the good Lord saw fit to give us.”

Two more days had passed without a major federal assault on the Dimmock Line. Now it was the afternoon of June 18.

The whole of Meade's mighty Army of the Potomac, 100,000 strong, was just sitting back on its haunches like a balky mule refusing to pull the plow no matter how hard its master whipped it with the reins and hollered giddyup.

Even a common private like me can see clear as spring water that we're stalled
.

The federal generals, it seemed, could not get together on anything.

Burnside and his Ninth Corps wanted to attack one minute and not the next.

Birney, as the newest commander of all, was waiting for others to decide.

Hancock was still out of action with his old wound bleeding.

And the most hesitant of all was Old Baldy Smith. He'd believed for so long the false rumors that large numbers had reinforced the Rebel trenches that by now they were likely true.

To put it plain, everyone from the top down was remembering just one thing. Cold Harbor.

Just yesterday, Joker had expressed it well. “You might say that our Grand Army of the Republic appears to of been infected by politeness. You attack first, General Burnside. Oh no, after you, General Smith, I insist. Like a bunch of naughty schoolboys, not wanting to be the first through the schoolhouse door to get paddled.”

But not today
, Louis thought. The Snapping Turtle finally had enough. Meade's orders left no doubt about what was to be done.

Flynn had shared the gist of the orders with them.

“‘Findin' it impossible to effect cooperation by appointing an hour for attack,' says the major general's order, ‘I have sent a message t' each field commander to attack at all hazards and without reference t' each other.'”

Flynn looked at the men in the company. Then lifting his hands up as if holding a piece of paper between them, he mimed the gesture of crumpling that paper between his palms and tossing it over his shoulder.

“Forward march.”

With Devlin to his left, Kirk to his right, and Belaney just behind him, Louis started to walk, one of thousands of anxious men.

As they passed the artillery batteries, a few of the cannoneers shouted “Huzzah!” and took off their hats. Most, though, stood silent or shook their heads at the thought of what lay ahead for the dumb infantrymen.

“You fixing to charge them works?” a crew member holding a rammer called to them.

“Nossir,” Joker answered back. “Our plan's to start at a trot, turn, and head back at full gallop. We had enough of earthworks at the Bloody Angle and Cold Harbor.”

Joker's voice was loud enough for their officers to hear, but not a one of them turned a head in his direction or said a word.

Louis looked up at the clear sky. From where the sun stood it was about four p.m. They were still on the safe side of the federal earthworks. Major General Birney was out in front of them now, telling the officers how to mass the brigade for its attack on the Rebel center.

We're too late and we all know it,
Louis thought, glancing at the grim faces around him.
Three days ago, we might've pushed through all the way to Richmond. Now there's been time for the Confederates to bring up enough men to turn the field ahead into a killing ground.

Four lines. The first two, where the men of the Irish Brigade were placed, was made up of veteran units. The two behind were the First Maine and the First Massachusetts. Heavy artillery regiments converted into infantry to make up for the immense losses of the past weeks.

Men who've not seen this sort of fighting before
.

“Lads,” Sergeant Flynn growled as he walked backward in front of their line, “soon as yer over the top, ye know what to do. Then wait for my command!” Sergeant Flynn looked over at Corporal Hayes. There was no expression on Hayes's face, but he nodded quicker than usual in agreement with the sergeant's words.

Louis wasn't sure which of the saber-waving officers gave that command, but all of E Company followed it without hesitating. Though when they reached the top of their works they all dove to their stomachs with such speed that they looked more like a great line of swimmers than an attacking army. A few shots popped from the Rebel line. Then it was quiet. No further response from the soldiers in gray a hundred yards away.

Louis knew now what every veteran learned. A man on his stomach is seldom hit by musket fire. Just like the Union boys, Southern soldiers tended to shoot high. For every minié ball with your name on it, a hundred pounds of lead whizzed over your head. So, as he crawled forward, he kept so low that he could taste dirt on his lips.

Still no Rebel fire.

The heavy breathing of other men around him as they crawled, the scrape of elbows and knees against hot red soil, the occasional soft curse as a man scraped a wrist or banged a knee on a stone. Farther from the safety of their own entrenchments. Closer and closer to the Reb earthworks.

A little stir went down the ranks, like hair standing up on the back of the neck of a giant. Louis turned his head.

A young lieutenant in a clean uniform ten yards away was waving his dang saber.

“Rise and charge!”
the lieutenant was shouting.

Other officers began standing up, echoing his command.

Louis looked toward Sergeant Flynn, ten feet ahead. Low on his belly as the enlisted men around him their sergeant stayed still as a stone. So did Louis and the other common soldiers in the two lines of veterans.

Bravery was one thing. Plain suicide was another.

Sounds from behind him. He squirmed around to see what was going on. The third line, the men of the First Massachusetts were rising to their feet. Before they got halfway to their knees, hundreds of veterans between them and the enemy called back to them.

“Get back down, y' dang fools!”

"Y' can't take them works!”

“Lay down!”

“Down!”

Louis saw the looks on those Bay Stater faces as they realized the men shouting back over their shoulders at them were the Fighting Sixty-ninth, the bravest brigade in the army. As one, the First Massachusetts flopped back down and hugged the ground.

But now the First Maine stood up. The 850 men of that brigade figured they were made of tougher stuff. They began to march forward, ignoring the veterans' warnings, stepping over the prone figures of the three ranks ahead of them. One heavy-footed Mainer with a beard yellow as straw stepped right on Louis's back.

Louis paid it as little mind as he did the words some of those rugged Maine boys growled down at them.

“What's wrong with you Irish?”

“You a bunch of sissies?”

“Ain't you gonna fight like men?”

Then the First Maine was past them, moving on the double against the impregnable line ahead. Five, ten, fifteen yards away.

“May the good Lord who looks after fools and children protect ‘em,” Flynn said in a voice like that of an Old Testament prophet.

Louis closed his eyes.

But not soon enough. He saw the great burst of smoke and flame that billowed out of the thousands of rifle slots in the high earthworks as the Confederates opened fire en masse.

Not one man of the First Maine reached the Rebel lines. Less than a quarter were able to return.

Six hundred sacrificed like lambs,
Louis thought as he wormed his way backward, pulling with him the weeping Maine boy who'd managed to stagger back and then fall by his side.
If we'd all charged, it would have been four times as many
.

No second attack went forward.

“Would you like to know the tally, lads?” Sergeant Flynn said in a weary voice the next morning. “A friend of mine at headquarters who keeps accounts of such matters, says there's been seventy-two thousand of us killed, wounded, or captured since we started in the Wilderness.”

“But there's t' be no more attacks. Grant himself has agreed it's time t' rest and use the spade fer protection.” Sergeant Flynn made a low sad sound like a growl from the back of his throat. “And a welcome change that'll be, if indeed we kin believe it t' be so.”

CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

A VISIT TO THE LINES

“If it han't been for them thirsty hosses, we woulda been in Petersburg now.”

“Do tell,” Artis said.

Louis looked up from the stump where he was sitting and whittling. He was trying to pull the shape of a bear out of the piece of pine Artis had picked up as he and Louis and their new friend, Private Thomas Jefferson, strolled among the stumps on the hill behind the USCT entrenchments.

“This used to be a forest,“ Artis said, flipping the piece of pine branch to him. “See what you can make of it now.”

Precious little forest left around here
. The Rebs had cleared most of it away for fortifications and to open a clear line of fire to the east. But the stumps at the edge of this stand of pines were just right for sitting.

The sky was as blue and clear above them as the firmament in the paintings Louis remembered from Father Andre's residence at St. Francis. There'd been peace in the blue skies of those paintings, blue that framed the figure of Jesus Christ lifting a hand in benediction. But when Louis looked up at that cloudless sky above them he just couldn't feel that sort of peace—not after all they'd been through.

Yesterday had been a Sunday that almost felt like Sunday. No fighting at all. Not even the drilling supposed to take place when there was no other action. On either side of the two opposing lines of dug-in trenches, redans, and fortifications, religious services had been held. The morning air had been hot, but so clear that the men of E Company could hear the hymns rising up from the other side.

Songbird Devlin cocked his head. “‘Rock of Ages.' Not badly sung, but they could use a few baritones.” He nodded. Then he reached into his coat and pulled out a pocket-sized book with a water-stained cover. “It's glad I am they're singing the good old hymns, and not these.”

Louis leaned over to read the cover.

Hymns for the Camp.
Published by the South Carolina Tract Society.

Songbird flipped through the pages. “Picked this up in one of the trenches where some Johnny dropped it as he was skedaddling. Here's one to be sung to the tune of ‘God Save the King.'

Songbird shook his head. “It's a poor poet can't find a better rhyme for
hand
than the selfsame word. Ah, but hear what they're giving us now.”

Louis and the others in their company listened. As sweet a version of “Amazing Grace” as he'd ever heard came floating to them light as the wings of a dove. Then, up and down the line of trenches, Union men began to join in until at least a thousand voices and hearts of men in both blue and gray were lifted above the earthly battlefield by a song.

Today, though, was Monday. Up at five a.m. with the bugle, drill and march till breakfast, drill and march again till the noonday meal. Then they were gathered together by Sergeant Flynn.

“We're to move again tomorrow,” Flynn said, using a stick to sketch yet another plan just as smart as the dirt it was drawn in. “Our Second Corps and General Wright's just-arrived Sixth Corps. Sidesteppin' west, toward the Appomatox River t' cut the Weldon and Petersburg railway line that connects Petersburg with North Carolina.”

A few heads nodded, but mostly the men just listened. Flynn handed Louis a paper. “Take this to headquarters.”

It had been some sort of message from their new lieutenant. That job done, Louis had let his steps lead him first past Artis's nearby encampment, where he'd collected his friend. Then farther down the line by the bivouac of the Eighteenth Corps they'd found Jeff just as ready to waste some time.