The Battle of the Crater: A Novel (39 page)

“Bill, you know I can’t talk about that,” James replied while puffing his cigar to life. It was fairly good Virginia or Carolina tobacco.

“Of course I know that, but this is madness! For Christ’s sake why didn’t you ask for a truce a day ago? A lot of these men were still alive then.”

On this question, James no longer cared if he were giving a Rebel information or not. Besides, their high command most likely knew already.

“Burnside asked for one as soon as the fighting was over. Even hoisted a white signal flag.”

He spat out the tip of the cigar and looked down at the ground.

“But then Meade fired off a telegraph message to Burnside demanding to know who authorized the truce, and stating that it was the prerogative of a commanding general only, that he had not authorized it, and to resume firing on your lines.”

“Goddamn him,” Sanders hissed. “We lost a couple of men out in the open who were giving water to the wounded between the lines. Damn him.”

James took a sip of the whiskey and handed it back.

“All right, then, I told you something. Now, you tell me something. We’ve been hearing rumors that colored troops were executed after the fight.”

It was Sanders’s turn to sigh and look at the ground.

“It was madness, all of it madness, James. Look, I’ve been in damn near every fight since the Peninsula. When men are out in the open, a hundred, two hundred yards apart, there’s room for mercy when a man is down. But here?”

He pointed back up the dark slope to the lip of the crater, to the trenches on either side.

“You come across an enemy when you turn a corner and he is only five feet away, it becomes madness. Men become like animals, kill first or be killed.”

“That was during the fight,” James replied sharply. “I was in the final charge and saw that. Yes, I saw it, from both sides. No prisoners.”

Sanders was silent for a moment.

“I was knocked cold from the blast. Think I got a cracked head, a concussion from it. It’s still hard to hear. So I was out of it for most of the fight.”

“I’m not asking about you, personally, Bill, though I am sorry to hear you were hurt.”

There was a long moment of silence.

“Yes, after our boys retook the lip of the crater, the cry went up to kill all the colored. But if you write about this, for God’s sake, report that General Lee passed specific orders that all troops, colored or white, and all officers of colored troops, were to be treated according to the rules of war.”

He took another long drink.

“As you know, I was against slavery. My family refused to own them. We hired free blacks to work the fields of our farm. So, yes, I tried to stop it, so did most of the officers. It is bastard reporters from papers like the
Richmond Examiner
who call for more blood, and I bet your paper will, too.”

“I can’t deny that,” James sighed.

“And I heard that some of your white troops turned on the blacks toward the end.”

James could only nod, too ashamed by what he had seen to speak.

“Why didn’t they send those colored boys in?” Sanders asked.

“What?”

“Why? I’m just guessing here, but the way they charged, it was like they knew what they were doing, but your white troops didn’t.”

James felt he couldn’t reply.

Sanders finally nodded.

“All right. Yes, some of the prisoners opened up, and for God’s sake, make sure someone reports that we took over two hundred colored men as prisoners, and in spite of what the Richmond papers say, or what that fool we have in Richmond as a president said, General Lee’s orders have been and will be obeyed. But yes, some of them talked and said they were supposed to go in first and if they had they would have won the battle.”

Hearing that again filled James with a cold sense of rage, but he felt he could not comment.

“I’ll tell you this,” Sanders whispered. “If they had gone in first right after the explosion, those boys might have crushed us clean through to Petersburg. Then, rather than us standing here picking up dead, I think this war would be all but over.”

He took another long drink, and James inwardly sighed, sensing that the bottle was nearly empty.

Sanders handed it back, and James could see the man actually smiled.

“Being an old newspaper man myself, Reilly, I’ll have to ask that you don’t quote me on that. I think it’d cost me my rank.”

“Agreed.” The two stood silent for a moment.

“Have you seen inside the crater yet?” Sanders asked.

“I was in it during the fight.”

Sanders looked at him appraisingly.

“I’m glad you got out alive.”

“A lot of my friends didn’t.”

Sanders turned and motioned for James to follow.

Again memories resurfaced: of Cold Harbor; of so many battlefields at night; of lanterns bobbing up and down as the bearers stopped before each prone form, looking it in the face in hopes of finding a live comrade, then moving on.

Last night had been an utter horror. Hundreds were spread over the slope separating the Union line from the crater. In the darkness they had cried out for water, for a friend, and most heartbreakingly of all, for their mothers. So very many, in their last minutes, turned back to childhood, calling their mother to come and comfort them. James had prayed and wanted to believe that indeed the spirit of more than one mother did hover over that field to embrace their dying sons and then bear them away from their nightmares.

A brave few had ventured out laden with canteens to try and bring succor, but under orders from the high command, sharpshooters were to drive them back. Most, with no stomach for such action, would just put a warning shot close to a man. However, more than a few, still filled with the mad frenzy that lingers after a bitter fight, aimed and shot to kill.

And thus, come dawn of the next day, the wounded still lay out there in the boiling heat. Some had the strength to try and crawl to safety, and rage filled both sides because too often these men were shot, rather than shown the tradition of compassion, which had so far ruled on most battlefields of this war once the fighting was over.

If this damn war does not end soon,
he had thought throughout the day,
this hatred will finally burn so deep we will never recover from it.

They walked past more prone, motionless forms—veterans of so many fields—as they approached the lip of the crater.

James was used to the stench of death, but here it was so overpowering that he stopped and gagged, fearing he would vomit.

He pulled out a bandanna, as Sanders already had, Sanders splashing a bit of the precious whiskey on his and then James’s. Tying the bandannas around their mouths and noses, they pressed forward, the whiskey blocking at least a bit of the stench.

They reached the crest.

“Oh, merciful God and all the saints have pity,” James whispered.

With the truce, the Rebels who had reoccupied the crater had finally had the chance to “clean it out.”

The lip of the vast crater, which covered nearly an acre of ground, was rimmed with torches. Several hundred men were at work, and the image was frightful, as if the men lining the crest were literally mining for the dead.

Ropes were tossed down to the bottom, where men laboring like the damned in some Dante’s hell were looping the ropes around bodies, then shouting for the men above to haul away. Most of those who worked on the bottom were prisoners, black prisoners, armed guards standing and just watching. The bodies being hauled up the sides of the crater had been there for more than a day and a half in 100-degree heat.

Like all the dead he had seen on so many battlefields, after a day under the summer sun of Virginia, Maryland, or Pennsylvania, their bodies had so bloated up that their uniforms looked small, tight, constricting; in some cases jacket buttons and flies on pants had burst.

But this was worse, far worse. For these dead, hundreds of them, had been trapped inside a cauldron that held in the heat. Some of the bodies literally burst asunder as they were being hauled out, overwhelming the living men laboring to drag them out. The universal sound around James was one of gagging, vomiting. Men gasped for air. Some, in spite of orders or the threat of a bayonet prod, were breaking down, staggering away, or just collapsing into sobs.

Along the far rim of the crater, wagons were drawn up in a row, and as the bodies were finally dragged out, they were hoisted up and dumped unceremoniously into the back of the wagons until, fully loaded, the driver could set off with his load.

“We’re burying them all in a mass grave up by Blandford Church.”

Sanders hesitated.

“It’s consecrated ground at least.”

“Got another live one down here!” a cry came up from below. “Yanks, it’s another one of your black boys.”

On the near rim of the crater, James saw that Garland was again at work. He and one of the stretcher bearers were sliding down into the hellhole. James watched anxiously, for what was to distinguish them from the prisoners?

Sanders seemed to read his mind.

“They’ll be all right. Your prisoners are wearing white armbands. As long as they keep them on, they’ll be treated fairly. Again, orders of General Lee. But if any try to sneak off, they’ll be shot.”

James said nothing, taking in the Stygian nightmare, knowing he had to sketch it later, and knowing as well that no newspaper would ever print it.

Garland grabbed hold of the wounded man, called for a rope to be tossed down, and set to work.

“I’ve been in a dozen pitched battles,” Sanders whispered. “My regiment was all but annihilated at Sharpsburg, but I’ve never seen anything like this.”

James could only nod in reply, moving the bandanna aside to take a deep puff on his cigar and then regretting it. The smell had overwhelmed him; he dropped the cigar, turned away, and vomited.

He was stunned when Sanders actually patted him on the back and offered him the bottle so he could rinse the sour taste out of his mouth with another drink. It was the last of the bottle, which he let fall to the ground.

“Damn, I’m still not drunk enough,” Sanders sighed.

“Nor I.”

“So what next?”

“It continues,” was all James said.

He looked over at Sanders.

“You know you can’t win. We will just keep wearing you down.”

“You call this wearing us down?” Sanders snapped, pointing to the crater. “If every one of you damn Yankees could be brought here, to see this, that bastard in the White House would be driven out tomorrow, and we could all go home.”

“What about the bastard in your White House?” James retorted angrily. “He was the one screaming about no prisoners and selling these men back into slavery. Bill, I have to fight against that.”

“Then I will see you on the next battlefield, if we survive.”

The two glared at each other for a moment, as if about to fight the war on a very personal level, then James just lowered his head sadly.

“Sorry, James,” Sanders whispered.

“We’re all infected with it,” James replied.

Sanders fetched two more cigars out of his pocket and handed them to James.

“Keep your head down, James.”

“You, too, Bill.”

There was a moment’s hesitation, then James reached out and, rather than grasp his old friend’s burned hands, he just patted him on the shoulder.

“Maybe, after this war is over, we’ll see each other again.”

“Doubt it,” Sanders replied. “We’ll keep fighting. You know I have nothing against the colored, but using them in battle like this … First of all, it was murder the way they were thrown into this fight. Second, there’s many a boy in the ranks here who was not fighting for slavery, but will be damned if any colored troops are going to beat him down.”

James sighed, watching as Garland continued to labor to hoist yet another comrade out of the crater.

“They’re only men, just like us,” James replied. “And that, I think, is worth fighting for.”

He patted Sanders again, regretting as he did so because the man winced. By the torchlight he could see that his head was heavily bandaged and burns had swollen his face. In another world this man would be in a hospital, but not this world.

“After the war, I’ll buy you a drink.”

“A gallon at least,” Bill whispered. “Maybe with enough of it, we can forget.”

He turned and walked away into the darkness.

James moved along the rim of the crater to where the rescue party was laboring, lending a hand as they finally hoisted the wounded soldier out of the hell pit. His leg was gone below the right knee, the tourniquet which someone had put on over a day and a half ago still bound tight. By torchlight he could see that the shattered stump was already swollen to twice the normal size. The poor man would have to endure another amputation, most likely at mid-thigh, to stop the spread of gangrene.

James extended a hand to Garland, who, gasping for breath, reached up to him for help getting out, triggering a flash memory of the assault, the two helping each other up out of the trench, which was supposed to have been spanned with footbridges.

“Thank you,” was all Garland could say. It was obvious he was on the point of getting sick to his stomach as well, but his attention was focused solely on the wounded man, now being gently laid on a stretcher.