Hell or Richmond (43 page)

Brooke would give a good account of himself.

The Rebs came on fast now, screaming, thousands of footfalls beating the drum of the earth. Barlow didn’t bother to look. He didn’t need to.

Leading his staff through a bad bit of greenery, he had to back up and go around a thicket. He reached Frank’s left just as the German’s brigade opened fire on the Rebels.

Too damned soon,
Barlow thought.

As he rode from the trees into another open field, a pair of Frank’s officers spotted him and lashed their horses toward him as if in a race.

They didn’t give him time to get a word out.

“Colonel Frank’s drunk,” a sweat-stained major complained.

“Drunk as an Irish priest,” a captain added.

The gunfire along the road became a steady roar. Rounds snapped past the mounted men.

“General Barlow, you have to relieve him immediately,” the major added.

“I’ll decide what I have to do, Major,” Barlow said coldly. Of course, Frank would be drunk. That was the icing on the cake, if not the cork in the bottle. His anger at Hancock surged again. Why had he reinstated the Teuton ass?

Assuming a more appropriate, if still excited, tone, the major said, “Sir, he’s so drunk he can hardly stay in the saddle. The men all see it.”

A wry smile crept over Barlow’s features. He was tempted to think that Frank might do less harm in a drunken stupor.

The damned thing was that he couldn’t muddle things further by relieving the man in the middle of a withdrawal.

“
Every
officer will be held to account,” Barlow said. “At the appropriate time. Meanwhile, I expect the regimental commanders to do their duty. For now, that duty is to defend this line. You may pass that along, Major. And look to your own responsibilities.”

Barlow rode behind the embattled regiments. Frank was not in evidence.

Probably went to ground when he saw me coming, Barlow decided.

The men began to cheer. Through the smoke, Barlow saw the gray lines withdrawing, their order broken.

Well done. But only the start.

Wounded men stumbled rearward. Where were the stretcher bearers? Barlow took a hard line when it came to the medical side of things. He knew every unguent and potion in a surgeon’s kit, had made it his business to know. And his surgeons had learned to wash their knives and saws at least once a fortnight.

Barlow believed in bayoneting cowards, but men with honest wounds deserved good care.

“Black,” he called to his aide. “Find Colonel Frank and stay with him. You know the plan. See that he follows it. And be prepared to write a report on the idiot.” Barlow thought a moment, then added, “If he questions your authority, shoot him dead.”

He took off into the grove again, stopping by Brooke’s brigade just as the Rebs came on a second time. Arnold’s battery fired from the right, doing good service but exposed to capture.

“Maynard,” he called back to a lieutenant. “Tell Arnold to find a position nearer the river. He’s to keep his limbers close, he may have to run for it.”

The Rebs spilled over a line of raw works he had ordered abandoned earlier. They came on shrieking, determined to reach the blue line north of the road, to reach their prey and slaughter it on the spot.

Again, Brooke’s men repulsed them.

The colonel rode up to Barlow’s shrinking party.

“Rebs don’t seem short of men today.”

“We’ll leave them shorter.”

“Things all right over there? With Frank?”

“As one might expect. Hold as long as you reasonably can, John. But don’t lose your brigade.”

More Confederate guns opened from south of the Po, off to the left. Their fires crisscrossed those of the batteries supporting Heth’s attack, weaving a deadly web.

Barlow spurred his horse back toward the broad field in the rear, the expanse across which Brooke’s men and most of Frank’s command would have to withdraw to reach the river and safety. Faulty shells plopped in the dirt like mighty raindrops.

Thanks be to God, Barlow told himself, for the Southern gentry’s distaste for manufacturing skills.

He stopped his party in the middle of the field. Short rounds burst overhead, not all Confederate. It was all a damned mess, but it looked as though Smyth had gotten his men clear. On the far left flank, Miles’ skirmishers remained behind to delay an attempt at envelopment by Mahone’s division.

If Rebels plunged across the Block House Bridge, Brooke and Frank would be cut off from the army.

He wanted to ride to the bridgehead to inspect the progress on the earthworks, but there was no time. Hancock would have to see to that. Better to remain with his exposed brigades. The time was approaching to pull them out in an interval between charges.

As he rode back toward Brooke’s entrenchments, he saw with a start that patches of trees to the rear had taken fire. The grove was only middling thick, but with memories of the Wilderness fresh and raw, the prospect of burning woods might panic the men. Still worse, the pattern of shelling told him that Arnold’s battery remained in its old position.

Bravery was one thing, folly another. He had sent Arnold clear orders to remove his guns. The situation called for an accounting, once the fight was done.

He dispatched another rider to tell the captain to withdraw immediately.

The third Rebel charge announced itself with another Rebel yell. It sounded as though the attackers had been reinforced.

Frank’s brigade front would be the point of crisis now. Skirting Brooke’s position, Barlow led his staff into the grove, counting on speed to get them past the stretches of fire. But burning trees blocked the way. Turning his party again, he hastened to the rear of Brooke’s line. Just in time to witness a mighty charge.

This time, the Rebs came on at a full run. As men fell to Brooke’s volleys, others filled their places. Red flags waved, fell, and rose again. The men in gray and homespun screamed their lungs out as they leapt over empty entrenchments and their own dead.

Before he could reach Brooke, the foremost Rebs surged over the dirt wall. Brooke’s men stood their ground. The fight grew demonic.

A captain clutched his ribs and fell from his horse at Barlow’s side. Barlow kept riding. Yards away, a riot of men went at each other with rifle butts and bayonets, breaking the unspoken rule that, pressed to a certain degree, men would retreat. There was a new viciousness now, an anger that thickened the air. Gore splashed from crushed skulls and guts ripped wide, from bones smashed out through flesh.

He found Brooke firing his revolver into the melee.

“Do what you can, John. Pull for the river, do what you can to keep the men together. I’ll see to Frank’s brigade.”

Instead of trying to thread through the grove, Barlow kicked hard with his spurs and raced between the fighting and the trees. He drew his saber.

Men on foot, in blue and gray, leapt from his path.

Frank’s left regiments stood their ground as well as John Brooke’s boys, fighting as brutally. As he rode the line, Barlow ordered each successive regiment to withdraw fighting and move to the river. One lieutenant colonel looked over Barlow’s shoulder, eyes filled with doubt. When Barlow turned, he saw the woods ablaze. The pockets of fire had become a conflagration.

And Arnold’s battery
still
had not withdrawn.

More officers complained about Frank’s drunken state, but Barlow had not laid eyes on the man since the morning. There was nothing he could do but give orders himself, and he gave them crisply.

Riding his horse as if he meant to kill it, he plunged through a breaking regiment. He cursed the men, but he spared them blows from his saber. They’d fought as well as any man could expect. The Confederate numbers had reached overwhelming levels.

“Form back in the trees and go to the river,” he shouted.

In the burning trees.

By the time he reached Arnold’s guns, he was in a fury.

“Why don’t you get out of here, you fool!”

Arnold looked up, surprised. “No orders,” he shouted.

“I’ve sent courier after courier. Save your guns, damn it. Pull back to the high ground above the river. Support the withdrawal, but no last stands.” Then he added, “I’m going to need you, Arnold.”

The Rhode Islander took that as a splendid compliment. He began barking orders to limber up the guns.

As Barlow cantered back over the field, he found one of the most confused spectacles he’d yet witnessed in the war. Pockets of men grappled to the death. On one side of a brawl, prisoners and the wounded hurried rearward, while on the other side, men just ran. Everywhere, blue and gray uniforms intermingled. Rebs stopped to loot haversacks, while his own retreating soldiers tore their blankets from their knapsacks, yanking them free of the straps to swing them over heads and shoulders as they dashed under flaming limbs in their flight to the rear.

The spreading fires made some Rebels hesitate to continue the pursuit. Their officers railed at them. One fired his pistol at Barlow.

Barlow galloped back to a farm track along the last high ground, beyond the reach of the flames, and made his way to the long field his men had to pass. Much of Brooke’s brigade had held together, withdrawing in impressively good order, but the Reb cannoneers were merciless.

As for Paul Frank, he seemed to have disappeared from the face of the earth, along with his staff. With any luck, Barlow thought, Heth’s men had grabbed him.

He turned to gauge the Reb advance and saw a lone blue regiment leveling volleys, alone and too close to the enemy, stalwart unto madness. He thought he could make out a Pennsylvania banner through the smoke.

Over the protests of his staff, Barlow kicked his horse forward.

It was the 148th Pennsylvania, Jim Beaver’s regiment. The colonel sat his horse with perfect aplomb amid the chaos. His men fired by four successive ranks, a tactic Barlow recognized from his plunge into history early in the war. Marshal Turenne had used the technique to great effect two centuries before, but no one had thought to apply it to modern war.

More to Beaver than he’d realized. He’d always thought the fellow dull, if brave.

When Barlow came up, the colonel flashed his anger.

“We never got the damned order to withdraw.”

“You’re doing well enough, Beaver.”

The Pennsylvanian growled. “Somebody had to form a rear guard. Since everybody else was off to the races.”

“Good work. Slow the buggers down, but get your men back.”

He turned his horse again. Most of Frank’s soldiers appeared to have gone
sauve qui peut
for the river west of the bridges, but Brooke still had his brigade roughly in hand. His last men, save Beaver’s, were passing the crest that dropped to the pontoons.

Reaching the river overlook, Barlow found a regiment of Smyth’s Irishmen, the 116th Pennsylvania, positioned to cover the last of the withdrawal. Growing confident that he’d have some semblance of a division left at the end of the day, he made his way east to Miles’ position, where entrenchments had been thrown up with remarkable speed. Two of Miles’ regiments had not fully withdrawn from their forward positions, though.

Flaring, Barlow said, “Get them back, Miles. Or you’ll answer for it.”

Friendship was for the rear.

He paused by Miles’ side long enough to look down the long field and watch a full division of Confederates advance with battle flags flying. From the higher north bank, tiers of Union artillery opened on them.

“Just get those regiments back,” Barlow repeated, and he rode westward again to see if any other crises needed attention.

He soon found Captain Arnold with his little artillery column, close enough to the crossing site to make it over to safety. Arnold was weeping as if he had just learned of his mother’s death.

“I lost a gun, sir,” he said. “It got stuck in the trees, in the flames. We cut the others free, but I lost a gun.”

“Be glad you didn’t lose your whole damned battery,” Barlow said. He had no time for the artilleryman’s romanticism. Never did have, really. Guns could be replaced. He had even heard complaints about the artillery reserve clogging the roads with an excess of guns.

“It’s the first piece the Second Corps has ever lost,” the captain said.

“We’ve got more cannon than we know what to do with,” Barlow told him. “Straighten up, and get your battery over that goddamned bridge.”

It all went madly fast thereafter, with Nellie Miles giving the Rebs a splendid blast of musketry before scooting over the last pontoons to safety under the massed guns of the corps. Barlow was among the last to cross, and he found a number of Brooke’s officers laughing like Bedlam lunatics on the other side. They tightened their expressions as Barlow approached.

“Well,” he said, “what’s so funny, gentlemen? Your survival, or mine?” Suddenly, he couldn’t help it. He grinned, too. “Hoping you’d seen the last of me, you dogs? Go on, tell me. What’s so funny?”

A brave major stepped closer, volunteering as spokesman for the rest.

“It’s Colonel Beaver, sir. Of the Hundred Forty-eighth.”

“I know which regiment Beaver has.”

“Yes, sir. Well, you know he never touches a drop of spirits. Hasn’t had a drink the entire war.”

“And?”

“Well, I suppose you had to see it. To get the full flavor. Old Beaver gets himself cut off from the bridges, so he has to leave his horse and lead his men down that tangled-up bank and across that marsh a ways up. And the Rebs are shooting down at them as they’re running and splashing along for all they’re worth, but damn if Beaver doesn’t go back to fetch some wounded officer and lug him across. The Johnnies stopped shooting, they just let him go.”

“And that’s comical?”

“No, sir. But … you really had to see it. Old Beaver drops the wounded fellow down and collapses like he’s given up the ghost. And this Irish gunner, this sergeant, who’s been watching the whole thing, he offers Beaver a drink of whiskey from a bottle he’s got in his blouse. And Beaver looks at it, starts to wave it off, then takes it and drinks it down to the last drop. The poor mick like to fainted.” The men who had witnessed the doings laughed again. “And Colonel Beaver, he gets up on his feet with a roar and starts giving orders like it’s the end of the world.”