The Battle of the Crater: A Novel (19 page)

“The lead division annihilated?”

Grant did not reply verbally but finally nodded his head.

“Choose them well then,” Lincoln replied. “Please let General Meade know that the lead division of the assault must be the best possible to assure success. This scheme carries one of two things with it: either the promise of a success that just might end this war before the elections, and thus assure the survival of the Union, or a disaster that will end any chance of this administration continuing into next year. I speak not for myself, General; you should know me well enough now to know how I view myself in relationship to this. It is about saving our Union and that is the task I have entrusted to you because I totally trust you.”

Grant nodded, saying nothing.

“And you have delegated the details of this to General Meade?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Why so? From the Wilderness on through you have often taken direct command of the Army of the Potomac.”

“That was in the heat of action, sir, and frankly, at times I could not restrain myself. This, in contrast, is, what they used to call at West Point, a ‘set piece battle,’ one planned weeks in advance, something quite rare in this current war. Meade will have plenty of time to evaluate it, and besides, I cannot predict where I might be needed three weeks from now. I chose to place my headquarters in the field with the Army of the Potomac when the spring campaigns started, but circumstances might require me to decamp and move instead to Atlanta if need be.”

He fell silent. The implication was clear. Sherman was his closest friend and ally in the field; otherwise Grant would never have entrusted his old command to him when called to Washington to take command of all armies in the field. But, if there should be a reversal there, or lack of a clear indication that progress was being made on that front, Grant might find it necessary to go and take back direct command, thus leaving Meade in complete charge of the events unfolding before Petersburg.

“Well enough, then.”

Lincoln took his feet off the desk, picked the plans up, and thumbed through them once more.

He looked back at Grant.

“Please, General, no mistakes this time. No politics, jealousies, rivalries, or decisions based on blind prejudice. I know you understand me. Please ensure that General Meade knows it as well.”

“Yes, sir.”

“If we do not win the war with this one, General, I fear the backlash could be such that the country, the American people, might very well give up, and we will then lose the Union.”

CHAPTER SEVEN

PETERSBURG, VIRGINIA
JULY 7, 1864

“A
re we ready?”
C
olonel
P
leasants whispered.

His team was gathered around the observation position carefully prepared during the night. He had decided to shoot the angles precisely at dawn. The air was usually still then, and his veterans had pointed out that after midday the angle of the sun was such that light would glint off the lens of the theodolite and he might well be greeted a few seconds later by a .58 minié ball.

They had measured the first angle fifty yards to the right of the tunnel the morning before without incident. During the day he had made precise measurements down the length of the tunnel, finding that the crude instruments he had used when earlier measuring the angle and climb of the tunnel had deviated nearly three feet, which was being corrected now. This morning he would shoot the next angle fifty yards to the left of the mouth of the tunnel. Both distances had been laid out precisely with measuring rods rather than tape, so he would finally be able to report back to Burnside that they were proceeding with exactitude.

Captain Hurt would act as spotter a dozen yards to his left, watching for any hint of movement along the Rebel line, warning of any sharpshooter on the other side. With him were three enlisted men, one of them Corporal Stan Kochanski, whom Pleasants had already slated, in the back of his mind, for promotion to second lieutenant. Kochanski was diligent and had an excellent background in trigonometry, took care of the delicate instruments, and would note down his angles as he whispered them out.

Pleasants took a deep breath.

“Let’s do it,” he announced.

He ever so slowly pulled the canvas curtain, coated in red clay, away from the lens of the theodolite. He and Stan had checked and rechecked that it was absolutely level, the plumb line resting directly above the marker stake, laid out the evening before so that they were exactly 163 feet from the center of the entry to the mine, 3 extra feet having been added because of a slight rise in the trench line where a sharpshooter’s position had already been dug in.

Colonel Pleasants leaned over, sighting through the scope ever so slowly, raising the elevation on the theodolite till he was sighted at the base of the fort. Next, he slowly traversed it to align directly with the center line of Fort Pegram, locked the hold-down screw in place, and then carefully raised the elevation angle a little more than a degree. It was hard to judge—constant artillery fire had rent the grand before the fort—but he felt he had a good shot on actual ground level and not the rising ground of the parapet itself.

“Mark,” he hissed.

His assistant, kneeling by his side, noted down traverse and elevation and reconfirmed that the compass was set exactly.

He spared a look down to make sure the corporal got it right and took one more sighting just in case either of them had brushed against the delicate instrument, mounted on a heavy tripod, and had thrown the observation off.

He reached over and pulled the curtain shut. He would have preferred to take a second shot after waiting a few minutes, just to be sure, but knew that would indeed be pressing his luck.

“Captain Hurt, you can step down,” and he turned to look over to the young officer, who was spotting for him against sharpshooters.

Hurt started to turn his head, smiling with relief, when at that exact instant the side of his head shattered, blood and gray matter spraying against the opposite wall of the trench.

“Merciful God!” Pleasants cried, ducking down as a bullet pierced the canvas screen, slipping past Pleasants’s face by no more than a few inches. Tripping backward, he nearly knocked over the precious theodolite, but Kochanski reached over the tripod and, cradling it, pulled the instrument away from the canvas screen. Even as he fell, Pleasants noted the boy had made the right move, grabbing the precious instrument rather than trying to block his officer’s fall. The bullet had creased the wood on one side of the tripod, but the brass mounting and the surveying tool itself had not been hit.

Pleasants scrambled over to Hurt, but knew the man was already dead.

“You goddamn sons of bitches!” one of the enlisted men, who had been standing back watching their commander at work, screamed. He stepped to the place Hurt had been just seconds before, poked his rifle through, and fired a shot blindly toward the fort.

He wisely ducked back as several more rounds zipped overhead, one of them striking the dirt where Hurt had stood.

“We warned ya, Yank,” a reply came. “We un’s got orders to shoot. No truce here.” There was a pause for a moment. “Ever since we heard you got darkies with ya now.”

Pleasants was kneeling by Hurt’s side. He had seen hundreds of men die in battle, but this lad had been close to him. He had been a good adjutant, brave, had survived every action since New Bern without a scratch … and now to die like this?

Corporal Kochanski was still clutching the theodolite.
Thank heavens he grabbed it,
Pleasants thought, in spite of his grief. For even though he had finally worked out a proper measurement to the fort, he still needed it to check direction and angle of slope within the tunnel. The boy was pale faced, staring at Hurt and the pool of blood spreading onto the dirt floor of the trench from his shattered skull. He began to sway.

Pleasants jumped to his side and grabbed the instrument. Kochanski tried to mutter a thanks, then collapsed in a heap, fainting dead away.

The men around them were silent. The boy was “fresh fish,” and this was the first time he had seen someone take a head shot. All of them, long ago, had been fresh fish as well.

Pleasants knelt down, unbolting the theodolite from the tripod, carefully putting it into its velvet-lined carrying box, and snapped the lid shut.

“A couple of you boys keep an eye on our young corporal there; help him back to headquarters when he comes around. Find a stretcher detail for Captain Hurt as well.”

There were quiet nods of acceptance of his orders. He took the precious notebook, with all the calculations, out of Kochanski’s clammy hands. Crouching low, he headed to the communications trench to the rear, leaving it to others on his staff to take care of the measuring rods, compass case, and tripod.

He wanted to get the final measurements calculated immediately and then double-check them. And he had yet another letter to write to someone’s parents back home.

FORT PEGRAM

A couple of men were still chortling about Allison’s incredible shot, but he said nothing. He had actually focused his Whitworth on the target a dozen feet to the left when the man, who looked to be peering through some sort of strange telescope, had closed the canvas curtain. It had only taken a moment to swing to the second man and finally squeeze off a round after a long twenty-four hours of being told by Captain Sanders to just observe and not shoot.

He felt no joy in what he had done. Some of the sharpshooters along the line sickened him with their damn boasting about how many Yankees they had put into graves since this siege started. It was not that he minded killing Yankees, he had been doing it ever since Gaines Mills, and they damn near had killed him more than once. It was just that there was something too cold-blooded about shooting in cover against a helpless target, especially when using the precious Whitworth hexagonal bore rifle with its four-power telescopic sight. That sight allowed him to see his target as if only thirty yards away, which meant he could see the man’s eyes, whether he was young or old—a touch of his soul in a way.

Captain Sanders came up and squatted down by his side as Allison finished running a cleaning patch through the barrel, preparing for the laborious task of pushing a six-sided bullet down its tight hexagon twist.

“You got the spotter, didn’t you?” Sanders asked.

“Think so, sir. I was just about to squeeze when the man I was aiming at pulled the canvas curtain over.”

Sanders nodded.

“Could you see what he was looking through?”

“It sure weren’t no field glasses. Just a single glass. But if it was a telescope it was mighty strange. Seemed to be mounted on something or other. Couldn’t see much of it, sir, but I could see he didn’t have his hands on it, so that meant it was mounted to something. A tripod or something like that.”

“Same man we saw on our left yesterday, about a hundred yards over?”

“Can’t tell you that for sure, sir, but whatever he was looking through was the same.”

“No bother.”

Sanders stood up as far as the safety of the trench would allow him and patted Allison on the shoulder.

“Good work, Sergeant. I’ll bet, though, we don’t see them again.”

“’Cause I killed that man?” he asked quietly.

“No, because he measured at least two angles straight to here. That’s all he needed. He won’t risk it again.”

Allison simply nodded, grunting slightly as he carefully rammed the bullet down the tight-fitting barrel.

Sanders fell silent, sitting in the bottom of the trench, oblivious to the stench, with the flies swarming about them and the heat of early morning building by the minute.

This was a hellhole if ever there was one. Back a year or two the campaigns had been out in the open, and though grueling at times, there had always been the excitement and anticipation of a march ahead, and, yes, if need be, a battle to be fought in open fields and woods. Here, they were confined to holes in the earth, little better than premade graves, enduring the constant fetid stink of latrines dug into the sides of the trenches. Everyone was filthy and dirt-encrusted because water was too precious to use for bathing.

And if we feel this way, surely the Yankees do as well, and hate it as much as we do. And surely they must be plotting something to break this infuriating deadlock. His instincts told him whatever they were plotting was aimed straight at this fort. It was the shortest route to Petersburg and, in the process, would cut the one east-to-west road that linked the Army of Northern Virginia together in its tenuous hold on this redoubt. Win here and the Army of Northern Virginia is cut in two, and the war is over for all practical purposes. This fort is the fulcrum of the whole war. Of course they will try to come here.

It was going to be here, and it was going to be soon. It was time to talk to his commanding officer.

“Be careful up there,” Sanders said. “You got them riled up, and they’ll be looking for vengeance.”

“Soul of caution, sir,” Allison said, but there was no smile, just the grim look of a man about to return to a distasteful job.