The Battle of the Crater: A Novel (15 page)

He flipped the book shut and stuffed it back into his haversack. Michael sat counting on his fingers, from the measurement of yesterday.

“That’s eight feet, nine inches of actual length,” Lubbeck announced quietly, and the sergeant chuckled over his win.

Pleasants sat back and looked over at Burnside.

“Men, this is most impressive. I wish I could bring a few officers down here who just a week ago were telling me this was impossible.”

“Well, sir, it will be impossible if we go much further without a proper theodolite.”

Burnside sighed.

“Engineering at army headquarters claims they lost them during the march from North Anna to Cold Harbor. There’s not one to be found.”

Pleasants looked at him coldly, not saying a word.

“I wanted you to see how slapdash all these measurements are, sir. I’m doing the best I can with what I have, but off by even a few degrees, and at four hundred feet, that could mean half a dozen feet or more out of alignment. And God forbid we start our gradual climb to compensate for the slope but get it wrong. And distance—I need to shoot at least a couple of good bearings, outside and to either side of this tunnel, to get an absolutely precise distance. Without that, we could very well wind up blowing a huge hole behind the fort, in front of it, or to either side, or suddenly pop out of the ground right under their noses.”

“I know, Pleasants,” Burnside replied, and there was a bit of a cross edge to his voice.

“I find it hard to believe there is not a single theodolite with the entire army.”

“Both of us do, Colonel,” Burnside responded with a growl of frustration.

He looked at the enlisted men, realizing they were taking in every word.

“Pleasants, you know what kind of instrument you want?”

“Yes, sir.”

“If I sent you personally back to Washington, there are several instrument makers there. If you take the afternoon dispatch packet, you could be up and back in three days.”

“Sir?”

“You know what you need. Go up and buy the dang thing and get back here with it.”

“Sir, a proper instrument is damn expensive, a couple of hundred dollars at least. And I’d want a better compass and level, and some well-made measuring rods; using string the way we are, there’s always stretching.”

Burnside smiled.

“Remember, I was trained as an engineer at the Point before I got into gun making. I know how much it costs. I’ll get you the money; you get the instruments…”

He paused and looked at the diggers.

“And you, lads, keep at it.” He reached into his pocket, pulled out a pint bottle of whiskey, and handed it to the sergeant.

“After you are done for the day, men, and not before.”

Squatting low he waited for Pleasants to pop the door open, and there was a rush of a breeze as the airtight seal was broken, the candles lining the tunnel flickering with the change in wind direction. As the officers got out, Burnside stood up to stretch, and Pleasants grabbed him by the shoulder and yanked him down with a warning.

With the hatch open, the morning digging crew crawled out into the boiling heat of midday, men now reaching in to grab the crates full of dirt that had stacked up inside the airlock, hauling them out into the trench and restacking them. After dark, work crews would haul them down into a ravine, dump them, and cover it all with topsoil just in case some Rebel managed to slip through the lines and spotted the difference in soil color.

More empty crates were loaded in through the airlock, firewood for the stove. The next crew of diggers, stackers, and crawlers were now ready to go in.

“Sergeant Rothenberg, we’ve angled over about four to six inches to the right,” Pleasants said to the replacement crew. “Carefully work it back, keep an eye on your alignment.”

Rothenberg nodded, bent low, leading his team in, the last of them pulling the door shut. Seconds later there was a burst of white smoke from the chimney sticking up out of the sod as someone opened the firebox and tossed more wood in.

“You men did good work today,” Pleasants announced. “Just keep a sharper eye on your angle of deviation.”

“Yes, sir,” all chorused.

Burnside made the gesture of shaking their hands and patting them on the shoulders.

“My boys, you have no idea how much is riding on this,” he announced and, ducking back down, he followed Pleasants into the communications trench that led to the rear.

“A gentleman he is,” Michael said, reaching over to try and take the bottle from Kochanski, who stuck it in his pocket and grinned.

“Tonight, boys, tonight.”

ACROSS FROM THE MINE ENTRANCE

“Cap’n Sanders!”

Sergeant Joshua Allison, Company D, 25th North Carolina, looked back from his lair, a beautiful concealed sharpshooter’s position carefully dug in under a fallen oak where the front line jutted out slightly from Fort Pegram. Men who occupied this post were under the strictest orders not to shoot, which would reveal its position, unless the target was truly special. Otherwise, they were to remain quiet and use it to keep an eye on the Yankee line.

Captain Bill Sanders, moving low, came up to the lip of the trench, where Allison was perched in a shallow depression dug under the fallen oak.

“I swear I just seen him,” Allison announced.

“Who?”

“General Burnside.”

“You certain?”

Allison did not remove his gaze from the narrow observation slit, eyes still glued to his field glasses.

“Sir, like I told ya a hundred times. I served with him out in New Mexico chasing Apaches back in ’49. I’d know that man anywhere, and we all know it’s Ninth Corps over there.”

“You get a good bead on him?”

Allison hesitated, eyes still glued to the field glasses.

Could he have shot the man?
Actually, he thought rather highly of him, not like most of his officers. And when he took that arrow he showed grit, staying in the fight, and helping to pull Allison out after he took an arrow in his leg, which still left him with a bit of a limp.

“I’d of tried,” he lied. “His head was up for only a few seconds. But I’d know that man anywhere. Then caught a glimpse of him again, right there through that little culvert where you can see into their trench to the rear that they don’t know we can see. I’m certain it was him.”

Sanders took it in and nodded thoughtfully.

“Good spotting, Allison. Keep at it.”

He started to turn away.

“Would you have shot him if you had the chance?”

Allison was purportedly the best shot of the regiment and at times would be loaned one of the precious Whitworth rifles for long-distance shots. He had claimed more than once to be able to spot Burnside a half mile back at their main lines, and had even lobbed a few shots at him more out of fun than with a real desire to hit him, though all laughed when he apparently had gotten real close, sending the knot of Union officers scrambling.

Allison took his eyes off the field glasses and looked back at his captain.

“No, sir. I owe him one.”

And then he smiled.

“But I’d of scared him a bit for the fun of it.”

Sanders smiled and turned away.

“Keep a damn close watch on that spot.”

He hesitated and then decided something was up. Allison had picked up on it. Why a cooking fire, up in the front line, going day and night? Glimpses of men moving back and forth, more than was usual in their forward trench. And now a corps commander literally up on the front line.

Sanders ducked into the communications trench leading to his regimental reserve area and the headquarters of Colonel Ransom.

JULY 1, 1864
TWO MILES BEHIND THE UNION LINES BESIEGING PETERSBURG

“My name is Captain Vincent, of General Burnside’s staff. And this is Sergeant Major Kevin Malady.”

The men of the Fourth Division Ninth Corps were drawn up in a huge semicircle, without arms, around the captain and sergeant major, standing at ease.

“What you see there before you,” and he pointed over his shoulder, “was, until six weeks ago, the outer works of the Confederate lines defending Petersburg. These fortifications have been under construction since the beginning of the war, and I will say much of them were built by the labor of slaves.”

There was a muttering of voices around Garland, and he looked around sharply to still the chatter.

“The works you see before you are similar in size and position to the inner line, which the Rebels now hold just short of Petersburg.”

Vincent paused for a moment.

“The task of Sergeant Malady and me will be to train you men in how to storm those works and take them. Because, men, that is precisely what you shall do.”

Excited voices now rose up, many of them jubilant.

“Quiet in the ranks, by God!”

It was barrel-chested Malady, stepping a few feet forward, his voice sounding nearly inhuman with its power and strength. He did not seem to care that he was addressing commissioned officers as well as enlisted men.

Vincent did not seem to mind the interruption by Malady. Garland gave a sidelong glance to Colonel Russell, wondering if he was offended, but the colonel, so long ago an enlisted man, actually had a slight grin.

Malady nodded to his captain and stepped back.

“We will do this training one step at a time. As you master each step, we shall move on to the next. You men shall be kept in isolation while doing this. Provost guards will ring your campsite behind the lines. I will be frank. I want the curious to think that it is because you are colored troops, and therefore you are being kept separate from the rest of the army.”

A few muttered and fell silent.

“Secrecy and surprise are the keys to this attack. One leak could destroy it. You are to keep your mouths shut. You are not to say a word about this training to anyone other than your own immediate comrades. If anyone asks you what you are doing and you do not know the man, you are to collar him and find the nearest officer or provost. And by heavens, if any of you slip from your camp and speak but a single word of what you are doing…”

Vincent hesitated, as if what he was about to say was distasteful.

“By orders of General Burnside you will be shipped to the Dry Tortugas for the remainder of the war.”

Some muttered against this, that they were not helpless slaves to be beaten, but others hushed them down, hissing that anyone who disobeyed the order deserved to be hanged and not just sent to the most distant, noisome point of exile in America.

“Have I made myself clear?”

There were nods of agreement.

“I want the Second Brigade to form to your right, by column of regiments in column by company. First Brigade over there, where the white marker flag is, two hundred yards away. Form as well in column of regiments in column by company.”

No one moved for a moment. And Vincent nodded to the leather-lunged Malady.

“You heard the officer! Fall out and form up as ordered!”

Close to four thousand stood for a moment as if riveted. So much had just been imparted. Since their arrival to the encampment behind the lines, a few regiments had been allowed brief stints along quiet sectors of the front in the reserve line, but otherwise they were kept isolated. Rumors had been rampant that regardless of the promise of their officers, they would, in the end, be marched down to City Point, mountains of boxes pointed out to them, and instructed to get to work moving them.

But this?

Garland tagged behind Colonel Russell, who trotted up to Colonel Thomas, commander of their brigade; the other four regimental commanders gathered round as well.

Thomas looked at them, grinning; he had obviously been in on the secret.

“Colonel Russell, the 28th is to form the lead. I want the 29th behind them!”

Russell turned away before Thomas had even finished.

“28th column by companies, form on me!” he shouted, racing over to where a white flag atop a high pole had been set.

Garland broke away from his side, moving among his men, guiding them into place. They had, of course, drilled this way scores of times back at Camp Morton in Indiana, but this was different. For the first time it felt truly real.

“Uncase the colors!”

Color guards pulled the canvas sheaths off the National Flag and the sky-blue flag of the USCT, holding them aloft as a guide. Helping to chivvy the last of the companies into place, Garland went back to the very front of the column.

The front of the column,
Garland thought, beaming with pride.
They would lead the charge!

Malady, who had been standing with arms folded and equidistant between the two columns forming up, trotted over to where the Second Brigade was forming, stopped at one side, leaned over with an exaggerated gesture, closing one eye as if squinting to sight along a rifle, then straightened up.

“Now you bastards listen to me for I will only say it once. I might, someday, like you. Someday, you might like me. All I ask is that we get along. Do any of you have a problem with that?”

He gazed across the ranks and centered in on a corporal gazing at him angrily.

“Corporal, I don’t think you like me.”

The man stood silent.

“Speak up, or did your master geld you and cut out your tongue for good measure? What is it you want to say, you dark African son of a bitch?”

The corporal, a man with Company B, muttered under his breath.

“Think you can take me, boy?”

The corporal stood silent, but his anger was evident.

“Well, if you think you can take me, now is your chance.”

The corporal looked around at his comrades, more than a few grinning at the thought of their burly leader beating the tar out of an arrogant mick sergeant.

“Come on, Corporal. What is it?”

The corporal looked over at Colonel Russell, who was making it a point to gaze in the other direction, as if not hearing a word of the exchange.

“Well, what is it?”

The corporal finally lowered his gaze at the sight of the burly Irish sergeant, built like a brick wall, fist half raised in anticipation.