The Battle of the Crater: A Novel (2 page)

“Five minutes.”

“I don’t give a damn if he is the colonel,” the lieutenant hissed. “I’m ready to shut his damn mouth.”

“Leave off him,” the old sergeant whispered. “You know he ain’t been right since the Wilderness.”

James looked over at the sergeant.

“We lost half the regiment, including his youngest boy. The oldest was killed the year before at Gettysburg. He ain’t been the same since, God bless him.

“Hey, it’s Father Hagan, boys,” the sergeant announced, nodding to the communications trench that James had crawled out of minutes before.

The priest was wearing an officer’s jacket, unbuttoned, revealing his collar beneath and a crucifix resting on his breast.

“How are you, my lads?” his Irish brogue rang forth and for James, who was a son of Ireland as well, it was soothing to hear.

No one spoke.

“Boys, I am giving you all general absolution. Before I do so now, lads, empty those whiskey bottles,” and he tried to force a laugh. “No devil’s drink in your pockets when you go in.”

A few laughed nervously in reply, and some men began drawing out bottles. The priest forced a good-natured smile as they passed the bottles around, draining the last of the contents and then throwing them out of the trench to shatter.

“Four minutes, me boys, four minutes.”

Father Hagan looked back at the colonel, who was visibly trembling, and sighed.

“Now kneel, boys, and be quick.”

Nearly all did so. It was a moment that James could not etch on paper but he knew would be etched into his soul. He went down on his knees and joined them, even though he would not be going into the maelstrom. The rising light of dawn arched the sky overhead with shimmering streaks of red and gold, tracing over the wisps of fog and smoke that hung in the still morning air.

“Ego te absólvo a peccátis tuis in nómine Patris, et Filii, et Spíritus Sancti.”

As he whispered the prayer, Father Hagan repeatedly made the sign of the cross; nearly all the others were doing the same. Some of the men leaned forward, picking up a pinch of earth and putting it into their mouths, an all-so-ancient gesture and acknowledgment that from dust we have come and to dust we must return.

Finished with the absolution, the priest gazed upon them.

“God be with you, boys, and those who fall, tonight you shall sup in Paradise.”

Usually such words from a chaplain would elicit a chuckle, an invite for the priest to go along with them, but all knew his post was with the surgeon. His duty was to help there; to comfort the dying that were dragged back to face the blade and the saw, to offer final words of comfort and blessing as life slipped away.

There was no joking this morning, only a nervous silence.

“I must get to the rest of the regiment, boys,” the chaplain said, his voice nearly breaking. “God be with you.”

He edged his way through the crowd and pressed on down the trench. James could hear him. “Kneel, boys, and let me give you general absolution. God bless you, my brave lads.”

“Two minutes! Fix bayonets and form up!”

There were sighs of relief from some, the tension nearly at an end. The hiss of bayonets being drawn and locked into place over the muzzles of rifles was audible above the soldiers’ rustling. Some were praying out loud. A man backed away from the forward edge of the trench, sobbing. There was no problem with the sergeant; he was ignored. Several leaned forward and vomited. A man cursed as he was splattered and then turned to offer a bracing arm to his terrified friend.

The colonel, still holding his watch, started to push down the line. James caught a glimpse of the man’s face—ashen, lips trembling. His anger toward the unnerved colonel was gone, replaced with pity. The man’s nerves were shot: one charge too many, one death too many, had at last consumed him.

Some of the men had rosary beads out, muttering Hail Marys; others were stoic, silent. The lieutenant was up by his side.

“Keep Billy here,” and he nodded back to the drummer boy, who sat slumped over against the back of the trench, crying.

James nodded.

There was a distant cry and seconds later the hum of bullets was overheard. Fifty-eight-caliber minié balls began to snap overhead. The Rebs knew what was coming. He could picture them less than two hundred yards away, rifle barrels resting on the lip of their trenches, hammers cocked. The more excitable began to lay down fire and a Rebel yell began to swell up—a taunting challenge.

“One minute. Uncase the colors! And God be with you, boys!”

The colonel—sword drawn, a foot resting on a short trench ladder, hand poised on the top rung—was still holding his watch. Behind him, the regimental flag-bearers pulled the coverings off their tattered colors—the National Flag and the dark blue flag of New York. Emblazoned on them were the names of past glory, from Fair Oaks to Gettysburg. They had not bothered to note the half-dozen fights of the past month; there was no time to do so … and no desire. For no one had yet determined if the battles had been victories, defeats, or just senseless bloodlettings with no winners or losers. James looked at the flags as they were held up high. Within seconds the silken folds were struck a dozen times, tattering them into barely recognizable shreds.

What caught James’s eye, what he could not tear his gaze away from now that they were poised and ready, were the slips of paper pinned to the men’s backs, every single one of them. Men who had braved the cornfield of Antietam, had swept forward at Fredericksburg, had covered the retreat at Chancellorsville, and already, as the stuff of legends, had stood against Pickett’s Charge. This was now their Pickett’s Charge, but they would not go forward with a cheer and a deep belief in victory, as did the boys of Virginia and North Carolina on that sunlit field in Pennsylvania a year ago. Three years had taught them much. It had taught them that this morning they would die.

Cannon fire, a battery firing to the east, back at the secondary line, was followed seconds later by the roar of a hundred more guns up and down the Union line. There would be no preparatory bombardment. The single massed salvo was the signal to begin the charge for miles along the entire front. There was a time when such charges had a purpose and a hope, when this war had been fought out in the open, volley lines facing volley lines. But a battle had not been fought like that since Gettysburg.

Perhaps Gettysburg had indeed been the last battle of a different age. It was now a war of digging, of trenches, revetments, moats, and deadfalls. Give the enemy two days, and they would construct two or three lines of trenches in depth. No artillery could dislodge that, and in reality no charge or bayonet could dislodge it, either, if the men behind the barricades held their nerve. Facing them were the veterans of the Army of Northern Virginia. They had nerve aplenty.

It seemed that only the high command in their tents behind the line still believed in the bayonet. But the men around James had lived the last year of warfare and knew far better about the new reality.

“71st! Charge, boys, charge!”

The colonel, his voice strangled, mounted the ladder. Before his foot even reached the top rung he was already pitching over backward, forehead shattered, his agony ended.

“Charge!”

Some went up the ladders, others vaulted up onto the lip of the trench.

The lieutenant looked back at James.

“Draw the truth, artist. Draw the truth!”

He went up the ladder.

A thunderous roar erupted. The sky overhead came alive with bullets clipping the air overhead, along with canister rounds hissing, mingled with the horrid sound of bullets striking flesh. Men were collapsing, falling back into the trench, or tumbling back to the earth like insects caught in a burst of flame. Men were screaming; a sergeant reaching out to pull the lieutenant up doubled over, collapsing; the lieutenant, letting go of the sergeant’s grasp, held high his own sword.

“Come on, boys! Come on!” The charge swept forward.

James had to look even though he already knew what he would see. But he had to tell his friend the truth, what he had actually seen. Swallowing hard, he mounted the ladder, climbing halfway out of the trench, crouching low. The lip of the trench was a writhing mass of dead and wounded. The charge was going forward; no lines, just a mass of men. In the dawn light, their ragged blue uniforms looked black with shades of dark brown and gray. And on each back was a piece of paper. He focused on a man for an instant, the paper fluttering—blown off as a bullet exploded out of his back, the man collapsing. They were not falling by ones and twos—they were collapsing by the dozens with each step of the advance. They were falling all up and down the line as far as he could see, until the vast stage was concealed by morning mist and smoke. The charge was going forward.

No cheers. This sound was different, sending a shiver of anger through him. The men were not cheering, some were braying like sheep. They were going forward as ordered but now voicing a final contempt for those who had ordered this … brave men, three-year veterans of the Union Army of the Potomac
baa
-ing like sheep even as they charged.

The original flag-bearers for the regiment were down. Others picked up the colors, advanced a few paces, and then collapsed as well.

The charge was barely fifty yards from the trenches and already disintegrating. The Rebel lines were concealed in roiling clouds of yellow-gray smoke, illuminated with hundreds of flashes of light. There was a continuous roar punctuated by blasts of artillery from their reserve line, which was higher up and a hundred yards back.

And then it was over. The lieutenant holding the national colors went down on his knees, struggling to hold the flag aloft. He was hit several more times and fell; the flag lay in the dust. There was no one left to pick it up.

Hundreds were down on the field, not a single man still standing. Some had gone to ground and by ones and twos, crouched low, tried to run back toward their trench. A burst of fire and they, too, collapsed.

To his right came a flare of thunder; another regiment, come up from the reserve trench, was trying to go forward. The Rebels to James’s front shifted their aim, pouring enfilading fire into the flank of the charge. It broke apart in a matter of seconds, the survivors turning about, diving back into the trench for protection.

Fire slackened. A Rebel yell erupted but somehow it was muted, no roar of triumph like he had heard when they swept the field at Chancellorsville and Second Manassas.

“For Christ’s sake!” came a cry. “This is murder! For Christ’s sake you damn Yankees, go back. Go back!”

Not everyone felt the same compassion. Those with colder hearts gunned down wounded soldiers who stood and tried to hobble back. Three years of war had left an indelible hole in such things as chivalry and pity for far too many.

A bullet slapped close to James’s face, and he realized that for some time he had been crouching atop the lip of the trench. A plume of dirt snapped up by his bent knee. He tumbled over, falling back into the trench, landing on the body of man who had been hit in the chest, driving out the last gasp of air from the bloody corpse.

Young Billy stood, looking up at the lip of the trench, sobbing, while trying to take hold of the ladder with the hope of going up.

“I’m not a coward, I’m not a coward,” he babbled. James grabbed hold of him, pulling him back. The boy was shaking like a leaf. He pushed him back and set him against the opposite wall.

“You are not a coward, son. The wounded need your help.”

The boy looked at him wide-eyed. The front of his trousers were soaked. In his terror he had wet himself.

The boy saw him gaze down, realized his humiliation, and, collapsing, he curled up and continued to sob.

“I absolve you in the name of the Father…”

He turned away from Billy. Father Hagan was making his way up the trench, kneeling by each of the fallen, bending low to kiss a forehead, making the sign of the cross, crawling a few feet to the next man to do the same … and the same yet again.

“Merciful God, what have we done?”

James looked up. It was General Horace Porter, trusted friend and adjutant of General Ulysses Grant. Emerging from the communications trench he stood in silence, obviously overwhelmed.

James stood, the general coming toward him, shuffling as if stricken.

“My God, what have we done?”

“You’ve killed an army, that’s what you’ve done,” James hissed.

Porter focused on him for a moment; there was a flash of recognition for the artist from
Harper’s Weekly
.

“I told Grant, I told him and Meade…” and then his voice trailed off.

He knew Porter to be a good man, one who would stay loyal to his general.

“I told him…” and again his voice dropped.

“Told him what?”

Porter stood silent.

He sighed and lowered his head.

“This war will go on forever,” and his voice was choked.

“No,” James sighed. “We will lose if it goes on like this; then it will end.”

He started back toward the trench leading to the rear, but a column of men were emerging, heads bent low, blocking his way.

“What is this?” James cried.

“The next wave,” was all Porter could say.

“May God forgive you.” It was Father Hagan, glaring at Porter, eyes cold.

“Yes, Father. May he forgive us all.”

The last of the regiment, another veteran unit—colors of the 12th New Jersey as tattered as those of the 23rd New York—emerged from the communications trench, filing to their right, away from James. On the back of each was pinned a slip of paper:
FRANK SMITH, 43 BROAD ST., NEWARK NEW JERSEY, 12TH NEW JERSEY, MOTHER: RACHEL; CHARLES ANDREWS, NO FAMILY BURY ME WITH MY COMRADES …

A procession of the walking dead.

James forced himself to remember one of the two reasons he was there that day. Lifting up his sketch board and using a blunt pencil—the one the now-dead lieutenant had handed back—he drew a few quick lines. Jotting down notes and a numbered code he and other artists at the front used to indicate where to put the enemy line, how many men were in the charge, where to put the colors … all to be turned into rigid steel engravings, churned out by his employers in New York; rigid steel engravings, of rigid men, in lockstep, going forward to yet another victory. The engravers, turning out a dozen etchings a week for the public, could never possibly capture the impossible contours of the dead or the hollow eyes of a priest—and besides, the paper was anti-Catholic and did not show priests favorably. It could not capture the urine-stained drummer boy, curled up, sobbing, nor would it ever show a general in shocked grief, or a colonel who had lost his nerve and yet still tried to lead. In his newspaper, generals were wise and heroic; colonels poised with swords raised.