The Battle of the Crater: A Novel (40 page)

Garland uncorked his canteen. The injured man was barely conscious. Garland offered him a drink, which he finally took, replying with whispered thanks.

“What regiment are you?” asked Garland.

“31st,” was all he could whisper. “I’m a soldier of the 31st by God.”

“Yes you are,” Garland replied, and reaching into his haversack he pulled out a pocket Bible. The haversack was bulging with them.

“This is the good book, son,” he said, pressing it into the wounded man’s hands.

“Remember the Twenty-eighth Psalm?” Garland whispered. “‘The Lord my strength and my shield; my heart trusted in him, and I am helped.’”

The wounded soldier could only nod.

“Hold the good book tight, it will make you feel good, son.”

Garland could barely contain his tears. The man he was comforting was obviously old enough to be his father, and yet he called him “son.”

Garland looked up at the stretcher team.

“Run. Run!” he cried. “Get him to help now!”

The stretcher team set off as ordered.

Garland stood back up, taking James’s proffered hand.

“James Reilly, do I smell whiskey on you?” he asked.

“Just to cover over the smell,” James replied.

Garland looked straight into his eyes and James, to his own surprise, felt a power and with it nearly a sense of guilt.

Garland finally relented and put a hand on his shoulder.

“For the first time in years, I wish I had a drink,” he finally said.

He looked back down into the crater.

“God, how can we keep doing this to each other?”

He turned his gaze back to James.

“Remember this. Draw it. Tell the world of it and never let them forget. Never!”

His voice was filled with anger.

“Hey, we got another live one down here,” a voice rose from below. “At least this one’s white; I think he’s one of ours.”

Without comment Garland slid back down into hell to offer a hand.

HEADQUARTERS, NINTH CORPS
AUGUST 2, 1864
12:15
A.M.

“Colonel Pleasants, thank you for coming. Sorry if I disturbed your rest.”

Henry Pleasants stepped down into the command bunker. It was empty except for General Burnside, who sat alone, in a corner. A tin cup, from the smell of it filled with coffee and whiskey, was sitting in front of him.

“No problem, sir; I couldn’t sleep anyhow,” Pleasants offered a bit woodenly. In fact, for the first time since the battle, he had finally drifted off into exhausted sleep a few hours ago.

“Take a cup of coffee, it’s over in the corner there. Open the desk drawer and you’ll find something stronger to put in it.”

Pleasants took the cup and filled it to the brim with what was now, at best, a tepid brew, but ignored the suggestion to pour some sour mash in. When summoned by a corps commander, even one might have had a few drinks himself, it was best to keep a clear head.

Burnside motioned for him to sit down.

“First off, Henry, I want to commend you and your men for the job they did. It was exceptional, courageous, and I only wish it had achieved the effect originally intended.”

Pleasants could only nod his thanks, taking a long sip of coffee in hopes it would clear some of the cobwebs in his mind from being awakened after not sleeping for nearly three days.

Burnside sighed and looked off.

“Originally intended … intended…” and his voice trailed off.

Pleasants took another long sip and as he gazed at the general he felt a surge of conflict. Burnside was a corps commander whom he had followed into battle for years, and whom he respected in spite of the scoffing of men from other units. Nearly all the men of the Ninth felt this loyalty and saw a side to him that others did not.

But after this fiasco? This nightmare?

Burnside was silent for a moment, and then stirred, as if snapping out of a dream as he drifted asleep. In front of him was a pile of papers, and he shuffled them nervously.

“After-action reports. I am supposed to forward them to General Meade; actually they were expected more than six hours ago, though I tried to explain that the demand was nearly impossible so soon after such an action.”

He sighed.

“I was told they are expected anyhow.”

“Sir, I sent mine in by one of my adjutants before six this evening,” Pleasants replied, wondering if that was why he had been summoned.

Burnside smiled and shook his head. To one side of the stack were several sheets of paper. Even glimpsing it upside down, Pleasants recognized the handwriting as his own, shaky as it was, since he had barely been able to keep awake while filling it out.

“That was part of the reason I called you in, Henry,” Burnside replied, and he picked up the report.

“Is there a problem with it, sir?”

“Yes.”

Pleasants did not know what to say, and then was shocked to full awareness when Burnside tore the report in half and then in half again, tossing the papers to one side of the table.

“Sir? What was wrong with my report?”

Burnside smiled.

“Henry, don’t you understand what is about to happen?”

“Sir?”

“Ever seen a man hanged?”

“Yes, sir.”

Serve in the army long enough and of course you would see at least one. The punishment was meted out to men for crimes so heinous that they did not even deserve the honor of a firing squad. Before the war he had seen more than one hanging back in Pottsville. Miners were a tough lot, and on a fairly regular basis there would be a murder, a quick trial, and a public hanging.

“Well, Henry, there is about to be a hanging.”

“Who, sir?”

“Me.”

Pleasants did not know how to react, hiding his confusion by taking another long sip of coffee.

Burnside chuckled and shook his head.

“Oh, metaphorically of course. We only hang privates in this army, never officers, and especially not generals. If anything, when you make enough of a mess of things, you can get a promotion at times. Either that or you are sent off to a nice safe posting, say commanding a depot or prison camp in New York, where you can safely sit out the war and be forgotten.”

“Sir, by God, we know where the truth lies,” Pleasants replied, and now his voice was tinged with anger. “If the colored troops had been sent in first, as you planned, we wouldn’t be having this conversation now. Tonight we’d be in Petersburg, maybe even Richmond, celebrating the approaching end of the war.”

“But we are not,” Burnside said sharply. “And someone will shoulder the blame and that will be me.”

He seemed so calm as he said the words, as if talking about some impending reward or promotion rather than disgrace.

“I will shoulder the blame.”

Pleasants was silent at that. At this moment he did not have the willpower to argue that, indeed, there were points of blame. Rumors were sweeping through the encampments about the now infamous “drawing of straws.” Surviving veterans of all four divisions were declaring that if they could but set eyes on their division commanders, they would shoot them dead on the spot, especially the unfortunates who served under Ledlie, and the black soldiers of Ferrero’s command. Word was already out that, while men were falling by the thousands, those two had been safely behind the lines, a thousand yards off, already drunk.

For that, Burnside was responsible. But at this moment, Pleasants did not have the heart or stomach to tell him to his face that, on that score at least, he had utterly failed.

Those who had escaped the crater spoke with admiration, some with tears in their eyes, of the courage of Brigadier General Bartlett, his cork leg blown off, trying to take command of the fiasco, to organize the fight while several of his men carried him around. In the end, Bartlett had refused to be carried out, saying that come what might, he would stay until the last soldier, white or black, escaped. If necessary he would go into captivity with them, and if captured he would try to ensure fair treatment for the prisoners.

A brigade commander had been doing the job of a division commander. With some corps, such as that of Winfield Scott Hancock, the corps commander would have been in there with them as well.

“As to your report, Henry,” and Burnside motioned to the torn-up paper, “I am not submitting it.”

“I think I have a right to ask why, sir.”

“Because I have too much respect for you, Colonel, to see you throw yourself on your sword.”

“What?”

Burnside chuckled and leaned back in his chair. He was a man known for mood swings that could be confusing at times. Often he was cheerful, encouraging, ready with a joke, always quick to praise, but then suddenly he would sink into a black funk. He would become withdrawn, morose, all but paralyzed when it came to a decision. That had been abundantly clear when the plan had unraveled and straws had to been drawn. Rumor was, as well, that throughout the battle he just stood at the parapet of the reserve line, bombarded by telegrams from Meade.

You should have gone forward,
Pleasants thought inwardly.
Gone forward; to hell with Meade and the damn telegraph. You could have seized control, sent the colored troops in immediately, and led them yourself. You could have won the war by doing so. History never casts blame on a winner of wars.

“Your report, Henry, I will not submit. You can write something else out later tonight, after you have had some sleep, but not a word about Meade. Your observations of how the change in order of battle affected the outcome will be removed. Just a straightforward narrative of your digging the tunnel is all that is needed.”

Burnside paused and lowered his head, then looked up again with that curious smile.

“No recriminations about Meade’s engineers saying it was impossible, about the lack of equipment, or the faulty fuses and the cutting of the powder charge down to forty percent of what we requested.”

Burnside stood up, went to the coffee pot, poured more out, opened up the desk drawer and poured a fair amount of sour mash in, and returned to sit across from Pleasants.

“But, sir, I wrote the truth,” the colonel protested.

Burnside smiled as he sipped his drink.

“The truth? What is the truth now? What you saw? Maybe, what I saw?” he hesitated. “God forgive me, but I should have gone forward and not allowed myself to be pinned down by that damn telegraph.”

Pleasants did not reply.

“Did you know that Meade arrested my telegraphy operators today?”

“What?”

“Said they had been privy to private correspondence now related to the court of inquiry and therefore would be held incommunicado until after the trial.”

“What correspondence, sir?”

“It will come out in the hearing,” he paused. “I hope.”

Burnside took another sip.

“And thus, to you, Colonel Henry Pleasants, the court of inquiry starts…” he paused, opening his pocket watch and then snapping it shut. “In one day and eight hours from now General Winfield Hancock will preside. Winfield is a fair man, but after what happened at Deep Bottom last week, I don’t think he is quite the man I once knew.”

Pleasants did not dare to reply. This was in the realm of one corps commander commenting on another. All in this army knew that Hancock was the most daring of all corps commanders, at least of those still alive after three years of war. His performance at Chancellorsville as a division commander, holding the rear while being attacked from three directions, and at Gettysburg confronting Pickett’s Charge, was the stuff of legends. But he had taken a debilitating, near fatal wound back at Gettysburg and returned a shadow of the robust man he had once been.

Veterans often commented that even the bravest man, after being badly wounded, lost some of his innate courage and impulsiveness upon his return. It was rumored that when his command broke and ran the week before, Winfield had wept. That in the charges at Cold Harbor and Petersburg, he had stood silent, stunned by the slaughter of his gallant Second Corps. Was he still the same man all knew from a year before?

“The others on the board of inquiry, Generals Ayres and Miles, are fairly good men, but they are Army of the Potomac men.”

Burnside fell silent and Pleasants knew the clear implication. They were Meade’s men. The Ninth always had been something of a stepchild after falling under his command.

“But I never held much truck with Colonel Shriver as inspector general of the Army,” Burnside continued. “Too much the lawyer.”

He looked off, sipping his drink.

“And so, Colonel Henry Pleasants, I will not accept your after-action report.”

“Sir, it is the truth.”

Burnside just smiled.

“Rewrite it as ordered and make no reference to anything other than the digging of the tunnel and that you were in reserve when the attack went forward. That is it.”

Pleasants started to protest.

“That is an order, Colonel.”

“Why, sir?”

Burnside chuckled sadly.

“Because I do not like group hangings. You and your men came up with a plan—of course you wish to defend it—but it was not your plan that failed, it was the army…” he sighed. “And me.”