The Battle of the Crater: A Novel (11 page)

Other USCT regiments were coming into the depot. To their delight one of them was the 29th USCT, recruited out of neighboring Illinois. More than a few friends and kin had been reunited. Near on to four thousand strong, nine regiments, they had assembled, waited, and drilled until at last a vast cavalry column, under the legendary Phil Sheridan, came riding in with orders for the men to fall in with him and proceed south … to the war.

The day before Sheridan arrived they had even seen their first action: a brief tangle with some Rebel militia and cavalry. The regiment had taken its first casualties, two dead and half a dozen wounded. That evening their camp had been buzzing with excitement—at last they were in the thick of it—until some white cavalry troopers, walking through their encampment, dulled their enthusiasm with disdainful remarks that their experience was nothing more than a little mischief against a handful of rabble, and they would sing a different song when they finally went head to head with a real army led by Lee himself.

Garland had taken it upon himself to go personally to Colonel Russell to seek his opinion on the affair. The colonel had expressed his pride in how they had handled themselves under fire but then agreed that it was merely a foreshadowing of far more to come.

Russell was a good man, a good officer, proud of his regiment, and had devoted many an evening since the regiment first mobilized back in Indiana to converting Garland from a man of the cloth, but already a leader of men, into a man of war, a sergeant major who would lead men into battle. The bond was now close, one of mutual respect. In the breast pocket of his uniform, tucked in behind a Bible, Garland now carried “Scott’s Manual of Drill,” personally given to him by Russell and far more difficult to master than even the most confusing and obscure passages of Revelations.

Standing on the edge of the wooden road, resting high out of the water on barges anchored every thirty feet across the mile-wide river, Garland could not contain his amazement at this vast structure. His army had built it in a single night to span a mighty river and then fling across it a hundred thousand men, two hundred pieces of field artillery, and all the accoutrements of war that went with them. It made him think of the vast bridges built by the likes of Alexander and Caesar to move their armies, and perhaps blasphemously, that even Moses and Joshua might have found this useful in their marches, if they had not had the hand of God to part the waters for them.

The drawbridge ahead was down for the passing of the division. Steam tugs were on the down-river side, pressed up firm against the side of the bridge, their paddlewheels turning ever so slowly to help keep the bridge firmly in place. The roadway beneath their feet lurched and moved back and forth—slightly.

“Route step, boys; no marching, lads; just route step,” Garland announced. He could see that more than a few of the men were nervous; the ones who could not swim were outright terrified, looking back and forth wide-eyed, exclaiming over the experience.

“Quiet in the ranks!” he snapped. “Just keep to route step and we’ll soon be across.”

He caught the eye of Sergeant Felton of Company A, motioning for him to keep the regimental flags up high and vertical. Felton nodded and whispered a command to the color bearers.

The regiment tramped across the hundred-foot span of the drawbridge, passing under the support trusses and the hissing steam engine used to raise and lower the bridge. The sound of the decking beneath their feet was different, the men bunching up nervously, trying to get across as quickly as possible.

“Keep in your files, boys. Just relax,” he said soothingly, even though it did make his stomach knot up as he gave a sidelong glance back over the side of the bridge … He couldn’t swim a stroke and knew that if the bridge should collapse, or if he fell over the side—burdened down as he was with pack, ammunition, NCO sword, and rifle—he would sink like a stone to the bottom of the dark muddy waters. It was one thing to be shot fighting for freedom. It was altogether more terrifying to imagine being drowned in that struggle in a dark muddy river.

The last of the regiment passed. Twenty yards behind them the men of the 29th approached, their colonel dismounted, leading his skittish mount by the bridle. Garland offered him a salute, turned, and double-timed along the side of his column, offering encouragement and a pat on a shoulder to a man here and there, finally regaining the front of the unit.

Russell, dismounted along with the other officers, looked over at him and smiled.

“All’s well?” Russell asked.

“Yes, sir. Boys are a bit nervous though with this bridge.”

Russell leaned over.

“So am I. Hate pontoon bridges; I can’t swim.”

“Nor can I, sir.”

The two laughed softly, the column slowing for a moment, commands shouted to stand at ease, then moving forward again.

The opposite shore was drawing closer, now only a few hundred yards off. The sight before them filled Garland with yet more wonder.

City Point had been converted from a small whistle-stop port on the James into the sprawling supply center for the army besieging Petersburg. There were dozens of ships of every description: tugs and barges, packet boats, two- and three-masted ships, an old stern-wheel boat flying a hospital flag, and two massive monitor ironclads, which were ponderously backing away from freshly built piers. A steam-driven crane was chugging away, lifting a huge stumpy-looking mortar that must have weighed half a dozen tons off the deck of a barge, swinging it over to a waiting wagon drawn by a dozen mules.

Scores of rough-made huts, hundreds of tents, and vast open-sided warehouses had gone up in just a few short weeks. Beyond the low bluff were hundreds of supply wagons, rows of guns, stacks of ration boxes, and pyramid-like piles of barrels. All along the waterfront, hundreds of men labored, moving crates and boxes of ammunition. With dismay, Garland saw that nearly all of them were colored and in uniform. They had labored this way in Washington when not on burial details, and again in the depot behind the lines at Richmond, and he had a momentary sinking feeling that this was to be their fate yet again: to have finally reached the front and then be sent to the rear, only to labor while other men, white men, got to fight for freedom.

As if reading his mind, Russell took in the vista before them and just shook his head.

“Generals ahead,” he whispered. “I think it’s Burnside and Meade. As soon as the men are off the bridge, marching step, eyes right, salute arms.”

Still a hundred yards from shore, Colonel Russell stilled his misgivings about being mounted on a shaky pontoon bridge, swung himself into the saddle, and unsheathed his sword.

He looked down at Garland and smiled.

“Let’s make a good first impression. Order the fifers to play ‘Hell on the Wabash,’ let them know we’re Indiana men here to fight, Sergeant Major.”

*   *   *

General Ambrose Burnside stiffened to attention as the head of the column cleared the approach ramp to the bridge, smiling inwardly as the fifers at the front of the column broke into a jaunty air, the theme song for men from the Hoosier state.

“That must be the regiment from Indiana,” one of his staff, Captain Maury Hurt, exclaimed. He had always liked that tune, being a graduate of Oberlin College, and, though a Quaker, he had joined the fight for the ending of slavery.

“They look good, damn good,” another of his staff exclaimed.

“Looking good and fighting good are two different things,” one of Meade’s staff retorted.

Burnside did not let the remark bother him, though he did look over his shoulder at the major who had made it, fixing him with his gaze for a second. The man just smiled defiantly. Turning back he caught a glimpse of a photographer with Brady trying to capture the scene, nearby him an illustrator with sketchpad out, working feverishly with quick strokes to try and capture the moment. Good, he hoped they would capture the truth of the moment.

“Battalion, prepare to pass in review!”

Although he did not recognize the mounted officer, he was obviously the commander of the lead regiment, and he spared a glance over his shoulder as he looked back at his column. Facing forward, sword resting on his shoulder, his mount nervously danced a bit as they came up the slippery, corduroyed road, paved with logs split in half and rough-hewn boards.

Flag-bearers of the regiment hoisted their colors high, the national flag and the distinctive sky-blue colored flag emblazoned with an eagle: flags unique to the regiments of the USCT. A light breeze was coming in off the James, flinging the colors out, so that they snapped and fluttered, the gold thread catching the sunlight so that the flag seemed to sparkle.

General George Meade, in direct command of the Army of the Potomac under Grant, stood with his staff a few yards away, showing no emotion one way or the other, but then again, he rarely did. He came to attention though.

“Battalion, eyes right! Pass in review!”

As one the men of the 28th stiffened, left hands crossing their breasts to steady their weapons, turning heads to the right, shifting from the route step, required on any pontoon bridge, to the march, keeping perfect time to the beat of the fifers and drummers.

“Very smart indeed,” Burnside announced as he returned the salute.

Regiment after regiment passed by, the men of the 29th out of Illinois, followed by the 31st out of New York, their fifers playing, “We Are Coming, Father Abraham.” Each regiment showing a smartness to drill, shoulders squared back, uniforms new and clean, muskets polished to a mirror-sheen.

They did not yet look like the true veterans of the Army of the Potomac did after nearly two months of solid campaigning in the field. A scattering of those stood on the far side of the road, the dye of the dark blue of their jackets faded from the sun, sweat, and rain, cuffs of trouser and jackets frayed. Trousers once sky blue were now a dingy, faded, nearly indistinguishable color, heavily layered with the red clay of Virginia. Their knees were patched with whatever fabric could be found, and trouser leggings stuffed into heavy oversized gray wool socks in a vain attempt to keep out the chiggers, fleas, and ticks that swarmed in the fields and trenches. Few of them wore the regulation kepi hat, a useless issue to soldiers if ever there was one. Most had tossed them aside for broad-brimmed floppy hats of black, gray, or brown to shade the eyes and the back of the neck from the blistering sun. The only thing about the veterans that was precise, clean, and obviously well tended were their rifles, which were casually slung, inverted, over their shoulders.

Most were unshaven, all of them lean and wiry, and their eyes had that strange hard gaze of veterans, as if looking off to some far distant land that only a veteran could truly see and understand.

The men of the nine new regiments of this, the newly formed Fourth Division of the fabled Ninth Corps, did not yet have that look, that “feel,” no matter how proudly they now marched. More than a few derisive comments drifted from the other side of the road: “Fresh fish”; “You boys gonna see the elephant now for sure”; “Hey there darkie, you think you’re a soldier?”; and far worse. The worn veterans of this worn army did not take lightly to new recruits until they had proven themselves in battle, and now they could complain further about the fact that they were black as well.

In spite of the insults only a few of the men marching by wavered, turning slightly to cast an angry glance at their taunters.

“They better get used to it,” one of Burnside’s staff whispered.

“No, we better get used to them,” another staffer responded firmly.

Burnside ignored the comments, eyes fixed on these men, examining them with the practiced gaze of a general who had commanded men in battle for over two years and in nearly every theater of the war.

When in Mississippi, Tennessee, and the coast of Carolina, he had seen slaves by the thousands coming into their lines, but these men looked different. All nine regiments were recruited out of northern or border states, the muster rolls showing him that in fact, contrary to myth regarding the USCT, a very high proportion of them had been born as freemen in the North. The majority even had some education and could read and write. Those not born free had either been manumitted by their owners long before the war or had purchased their own freedom and then drifted north. Few had come straight from slavery into army blue. They looked healthier than the typical slave who had endured years of hard labor, usually with scant rations and few comforts.

Their officers, as he knew, were the pick of the army. When the USCT began to form after the Emancipation Proclamation, the decision had been made that all their officers were to be white. The criteria for their selection were rigid. They had to be combat veterans, preferably of noncommissioned rank, of good moral character, literate, with letters of recommendation from their company and regimental officers.

If they passed this first mark and were accepted by the examining board, it was off to a newly established officers’ training school in Philadelphia, the first of its kind. The veterans were then drilled yet again, but now in how to teach drill to new recruits, along with classes ranging from history to military justice and proper etiquette of an officer. Only after testing and another review board were they recommended for promotion to either lieutenant or captain of a company. Potential regimental commanders, already commissioned, went through the same rigorous drill before at last being assigned to their regiments.