Gettysburg, page 7
“Hardly. Storm’s about to break any second. The Rebs have Early’s division coming down on us from the northeast, I’m told. Rodes’s division is to the north, and all of A. P. Hill’s corps are hitting us on the far side of that ridge. We had a hell of a fight to the west a couple of hours ago. They drove us back at first; but that’s the Iron Brigade up there; and those boys will hold till the bitter end.”
As Hancock spoke, he pointed out the lay of the land, the town below them, the open fields beyond to the north. Henry could clearly see dense columns of Confederate troops coming down the road from the northeast, deploying into battle lines, moving through lush, green, patchwork-quilt fields, turning them dark, macabre with their presence, which implied approaching death. Smoke wreathed the hill to the west of the town, but there was little firing at the moment.
“Is this the place for the fight?” Henry asked. “This morning I looked at a place ten miles south of here. It’s even better than this. Do you think we could pull Lee down, or is this where we should fight?”
Hancock grinned.
“This is good ground right here, as everyone’s been saying, Hunt. Buford saw it, so did Reynolds. We might hold them on the far side of town; if not, we fall back to this crest, dig in, and wait for the rest of the army to come up. For once we have the right position. Put enough guns in the cemetery, and you’ll cut the Rebs down like ripened wheat.”
Henry nodded. Yes, the guns could do that; the question was, would the infantry support hold?
“Are you in command here, sir?”
Hancock leaned back in the saddle and laughed softly. “That’s what the old snapping turtle back in Taneytown said. You can find Oliver Howard over there,” and Hancock pointed to the east side of the road. Less than two hundred yards away was a knot of officers.
“We sort of agreed that he’ll handle the situation on the east flank; I’ll see to the west. Hell of a way to run a war, but the men will come to me.”
“Is that Eleventh Corps deployed north of the town?”
“Yes. Damn Dutchmen, I think they’ll break when it hits.”
Henry nodded, still surveying the ground. Even as he did so, the pace of fire to the west started to pick up, and then, with a startling roll of thunder, four or five Confederate batteries to the north and east of town opened up.
“Ah, here comes the storm,” Hancock announced.
Within minutes it was indeed a storm, a thunderous arch of fire that swept from northeast to due west, across a front of several miles. After gaining the heights west of Gettysburg, the rebels were now advancing to finish the battle off and drive the Union army from the field. Henry was tempted to go farther forward, to look over several batteries he could see north of town; but damn all, they were under the command of Eleventh Corps and he knew Howard would not tolerate any interference.
Half a dozen batteries were atop the crest of the cemetery. That was his place; dig them in, lay out the fields of fire. He had a gut feeling that Reynolds and Hancock had bitten off a bit more than they could chew. Two corps of the Union army were up, but it was evident from the volume of Confederate artillery fire, upward of a hundred guns or more, that perhaps half of Lee’s army was beginning to circle in.
If Meade decided that this was a holding operation, it was going to take one hell of a lot of holding, and the cemetery was going to be the key.
Even as he reached that conclusion, Henry could see men breaking out of the battle smoke to the north of town. Tiny, antlike figures, running hard, were zigzagging back and forth, panic-stricken men.
“Goddamn Dutchmen breaking,” Hancock snapped. “Just like at Chancellorsville. Can’t this army ever hold?”
“I’ll see to the guns atop the crest here,” Henry said. “I only have one orderly. Can you send a courier back, sir? Tell any batteries on the road to come forward at all possible speed.”
Hancock nodded, shouted the order, and a rider was off.
“Damn all to hell, Henry!” Hancock cried. “Seems like we have one hell of a battle coming down on our necks this day!”
Henry looked at him in amazement. The bastard was actually enjoying it. Thrilling to the challenge, the mastery of it, and even the fear. All he knew was that he was scared half to death at what he was seeing. The Rebs were beginning to break through, on a vast arc, all across the north side of town; and in less than an hour they’d be into his guns atop the hill.
His guns, and he’d better get them ready for it.
Turning away from Hancock, Henry rode through the gate of the cemetery, past the graves, and up to where the guns were digging in.
Chapter Four
4:00 PM, July 1, 1863
Mcpherson’s Ridge
Gettysburg, Pennsylvania
The shell burst knocked him to the ground. Maj. John Williamson, of the Fourteenth South Carolina, felt as if he were floating, not sure if he was alive or already drifting into death. He came back up to his knees. Someone was helping him. He could feel hands on his shoulders, pulling him up.
No pain, just the numbness. The thought triggered a momentary panic. He had seen men eviscerated, entrails looping out onto the ground, stand back up and try to go forward, momentarily unaware that they were dead, until finally the dark hand stilled their heart and they fell.
He started to fumble, feeling his chest, stomach. Where am I hit?
“Sir! Sir!”
Sound was returning. The hazy mist behind his eyes was clearing. It was Sergeant Hazner who was speaking, holding him by the shoulders, turning him around. “Are you all right, sir?”
He tried to speak, but the words wouldn’t come.
Someone else came up to his side, Private Jenson, his orderly, eyes wide with fear. “You’re alright, sir, just stunned!”
Hazner was shouting, and John looked around. The noise, the noise was returning, a wild roar, the swirling insane thunder of musketry, artillery, men screaming, cursing, crying.
He looked past Hazner. The charge was losing force. The regiment was staggering to a halt, men now crouching in the middle of the open field.
“All right. I’m all right. Keep moving!”
He broke free from Hazner’s grasp, and at that instant another shell detonated…and Jenson seemed to disappear into pulpy mist, what was left of him spraying over them.
Hazner staggered back, stunned, face covered with Jenson’s blood.
John turned away, struggling not to vomit.
“John!”
He looked up; the voice was clear and recognizable, Lt. Colonel Brown, commander of the regiment.
“Goddamn it, John, move these men!” Brown screamed. “We’ve got to move!”
The sense of what he was supposed to do, why he was here, returned. He saluted as Brown turned about and disappeared back into the smoke.
John looked down the length of their line. Only minutes before (or was it hours?) they had stepped off, moving past the wreckage of Harry Heth’s division, which had fought itself out. Heth’s boys had shouted that they were facing that damned Black Hat Brigade of the Yankees’ First Corps.
The ridge ahead was wreathed in a dirty yellow-gray cloud of smoke, the only thing visible the pinpoint flashes from muskets and artillery. Above the smoke he caught occasional glimpses of a cupola crowning a large brick building.
“Come on, boys!” It was Brown, stepping in front of the line, waving his sword. “We can’t stay out here! Come on!”
The battle line started to surge forward. He heard Brown screaming, urging the men on.
He spared a quick glance for Hazner. The sergeant, face covered with Jenson’s blood, pushed back into the line, screaming for the men to keep moving.
“Go, goddamn it, go!” John screamed, adding in his own voice, pushing through the battle line, urging his men forward.
The momentum of the charge began to build again, and he felt swept up in it, driven forward like a leaf, one of thousands of leaves flung into the mouth of a hurricane.
Men were screaming, a wild terrible wolflike cry, the rebel yell.
“Go! Go! Go!”
He kept screaming the single word over and over, urging his men on. Some were ahead of him, running forward, heads down, shoulders hunched, staggering as if into the blast from the open door of a furnace.
He caught a glimpse of the colors. Then the flag bearer spun around, going down in a heap. An instant later he was back up, like a sprinter who had lost his stride but for a second. Disbelieving, John saw that the boy had lost his right arm, blown off at the shoulder. The boy was holding the colors aloft with his left hand, waving them defiantly, screaming for the regiment to press in and kill the bastards.
They were at the bottom of the swale, the ground flattening out, then rising up less than a hundred yards to the crest.
No fire from up forward. Were they running?
The smoke was drifting up, rising in thick, tangled coils.
“Go! Go! Go!”
John caught a glimpse of their line. “Merciful Jesus!” The cry escaped him. The Yankees weren’t running. They had always run when the charge came in. Not this time. They were standing up, preparing to deliver a volley, bright musket barrels rising up, coming down in unison.
A thousand voices all mingled together as one, screams of terror, rage, defiance…calls to press on, to charge, to halt, to run. Momentum carried them forward, inexorably forward into the waiting death.
He saw the rippling flash, the explosion of the volley. It swept over them, through them, tearing gaping holes in the line. Men spun around, screaming. The entire line staggered, dozens dropping. Bodies went down in bloody heaps, punched by two, three, even half a dozen rounds.
The line staggered to a halt. Those who were left were raising their rifles, ready to return fire.
“No! Now, charge them now!” The words exploded out of him, and he continued forward, sword raised high.
The mad spine-tingling yell, which had nearly been extinguished by the volley, now redoubled. Men came up around him, shouldering him aside, pressing forward.
The Yankees were so close now John could see their faces, so blackened by powder they looked like badly made-up actors in a minstrel show. Some were frantically working to reload; others were lowering rifles, bayonets poised, others swinging guns around, grabbing the barrels. Yet others were backing up, starting to turn, to run.
The sight of them unleashed a maddened frenzy, his men screaming, coming forward, shouting foul obscenities, roaring like wolves at the scent of blood. They hit the low barricade of fence rails in front of the seminary and went up over it. A musket exploded in his face, burning his check. Clumsily he cut down with his sword, the blade striking thin air, the man before him disappearing.
The melee poured over and around him. They were into the line, breaking it apart. The Yankees were falling back, some running, most giving ground grudgingly, as if they were misers not willing to give a single inch without payment. It was the Black Hats, the Iron Brigade; after their stand at Second Manassas and their valiant charge at Antietam they were the most feared brigade in the Army of the Potomac.
His men surged forward, pressing them across a narrow killing ground, the two lines sometimes touching and exploding into a flurry of kicks, jabs, punches, and clubbed rifles, then parting, firing into each other across a space of less than a dozen yards.
They pushed around the brick building, crossing over the top of the crest. As the land dropped away, what was left of the Yankee formation broke apart, the last of them turning, running.
John caught a glimpse of men leaping out of the open windows of the seminary, one man dropping from the second floor, his legs snapping as he hit the hard ground. A Yankee officer was by the entryway, wearing a bloody apron, waving a hospital flag.
“Major Williamson! Secure that building! Round up the captives.”
He caught a glimpse of Brown in the press, the one-armed flag bearer beside him, still waving the colors.
“Hazner!”
The sergeant was by his side, rounding up a mix of men as John sprinted for the steps. The Yankee officer was still in the doorway; he caught a glimpse of green shoulder straps, a surgeon.
“This is a hospital!” the Yankee shouted.
“Hazner, check the building.”
The sergeant shouldered past the Yankee surgeon and cautiously stepped through the door. He hesitated for a second and then plunged into the gloom.
John, the hysteria of the charge still on him, panting for breath, kept his sword pointed at the surgeon.
“I surrender, sir.”
“You’re damn right you surrender,” John gasped.
The surgeon stared, gaze drifting down to the sword that John held poised, aimed at the man’s chest.
John suddenly felt embarrassed; the mad frenzy was clearing. The man was a surgeon, a noncombatant. He lowered the sword. “Sorry, sir,” he said woodenly.
The surgeon nodded.
“I need help in here,” and the surgeon gestured into the building.
The stench was drifting out through the open doors…blood, excrement, open wounds, ether; a steady, nerve-tingling hum, groans, cries for water, air, engulfed John as he went inside. He stepped over the body of a Yankee gunner, both legs gone just above the knees, a sticky pool of blood congealing on the floor. The corridor was packed with wounded, men cradling shattered limbs, gasping for air. Frothy bubbles of blood mushroomed from chest wounds. A boy still clutching his fife was crying; a grizzled old sergeant, left foot shot away, sat cradling the lad in his lap.
The sergeant looked up at John, eyes smoldering. John looked away, unable to say anything. He caught a glimpse into a classroom, desks pushed together, a door torn off from its hinges laid across the desks, now serving as a surgeon’s table. They were working on a boy, stripped naked from the waist down, taking his leg off, the meat of the thigh laid open. It reminded John of butchering day, the way the meat of the leg was cut away. He averted his gaze.
“Gave you hell, we did.”
He looked down; a lieutenant, pale, sweat beading his face, cradling a shattered arm, holding it tight against his chest, looked up at him defiantly.
“Gave you damn Rebs hell, we did.”
John nodded, looking away, trying to find Hazner.
“Reb.”
John looked back down.
“A drink. Got anything.”
Caught by surprise, John reached around to his canteen and unslung it, handing it down.
The lieutenant tried to reach up, grimacing as he let go of the arm. John could see the white of the bone, arterial blood spurting. The lieutenant groaned, grabbed the arm again.
“Here, let me help,” John whispered, as he knelt down, uncorking the canteen, holding it up.
“Whiskey mixed in there; take it slow.”
The lieutenant tilted his head back, took a long gulp, choked for a moment, then nodded for more. John held the canteen, let him drink again.
The lieutenant sighed, leaned back. “Ah, that’s good, thanks, Reb.”
He started to cork the canteen and saw the pleading eyes of a man lying next to the lieutenant, shot through both cheeks, bits of bone and teeth still in the wound. The man couldn’t speak, but his desire was clear.
“Major Williamson?”
It was Hazner. The sergeant was standing in the corridor, looking at him.
John handed the canteen to the man shot in the face.
“Take it slow, rinse your mouth out first.”
The Yankee nodded, eyes shiny, unable to speak.
“Where you from, Reb?” It was the lieutenant.
“South Carolina.” He hesitated, then the question spilled out, “And you?”
“Indiana. Lafayette. Nineteenth Indiana.”
“Iron Brigade?”
The lieutenant’s eyes brightened. “Yes, by God, and we gave it to you today.”
John had a flash memory of the final volley, the way the muskets had caught the sunlight sifting through the smoke, the flashing barrels lowering as if guided by a single hand, the shattering volley at near point-blank range.
“You did well, Lieutenant.”
“You won’t win this one, Major.”
John said nothing.
“We’ll keep fighting. Keep fighting, we’ll never give up.”
“Nor will we,” John said quietly.
“Lieutenant, you’re next.”
Two orderlies stepped to either side of John and reached out with blood-caked hands, helping the lieutenant up. John stood up, motioning for the man next to him to keep the canteen. Inwardly he regretted the decision. It was hot. The day was still long, but he didn’t have the heart to take it back as the man raised it up and vainly struggled to rinse his mouth out so he could get a drink, blood, watered whiskey, bits of teeth, and saliva dribbling down his jacket.
John stood, heading toward Hazner. The lieutenant was going through the door into the operating room. The boy on the table before him was dead, two orderlies lifting the body off, clearing the way for the next customer for the knife. John caught the lieutenant’s eyes for a second.
“Good luck.”
“You too, Reb.”
“Major, you gotta see this.”
Hazner was by his side, pointing.
John followed as Hazner reached the staircase and started up.
Damn strange war, John thought. Ten minutes earlier I would have killed him, killed everyone in here; now I leave my canteen with them.
Hazner took the steps two and three at a time, shouldering aside the Yankees who cluttered the way. Surprisingly, some of them were still armed, but he could see the fight was out of them as they leaned against the blood-splattered walls or sat in dejected silence.
Reaching the top floor, Hazner pointed the way to a ladder that ascended into the cupola. One of his men stood with lowered musket, pointing it casually at several officers. One of them made the gesture of offering his sword; John waved him aside.
He followed Hazner up the ladder, and as they emerged through the hatchway, the relative silence inside gave way to a thunderous roar.
John stepped up onto the platform. “My God.”
