Hell or Richmond (54 page)

“Sir, there was firing, bunch of it. Then it calmed down and—”

“No doubt, our usual morning skirmishing.” Then the brigadier softened. “It’s all right, Bartlett. We’re all tired.”

Gordon tensed. “Bob, I
do
hear something.”

Another rider appeared, trailed by a private who came up at a run—a man well-known to be fleet of foot and a popular courier from Gordon’s old brigade.

The rider saluted without dismounting and called, “Sir, the lines have been breached. All over the Mule Shoe, the salient.”

His breath a gale, the soldier on foot added, “Yankees are everywhere.”

Gordon’s cup of coffee went forgotten. He shouted for his horse and for his officers. “Bob, ride with me. We need to get in the fight.”

“Shouldn’t we see what General Ewell—”

“No time. Wasted too much time already.”

Johnston commandeered the lieutenant’s horse. Gordon’s aide led up the division commander’s wet black mount and his own dapple gray.

Leaping into the saddle, Gordon patted the animal and whispered, “Don’t you misstep now. You must be as Bucephalus.”

Bob Johnston overheard. “Lord almighty, John! You think your horse speaks Latin?”

“Greek,” Gordon told him. He kicked with his spurs.

They rode with rain biting their faces. It wasn’t far to Johnston’s Brigade. His regimental colonels had already formed up the men: The sound of fighting was clear now, and all too close. Gordon sent a rider to tell Clem Evans and John Hoffman to organize their brigades for battle by the Harrison house, but suspected that at least some of their troops were already heavily engaged. The afternoon before, they’d been positioned as reserves for the corps and the salient.

“Let’s go, Bob,” Gordon said. “Get them moving.”

Johnston ordered his nearest regiment, the 5th North Carolina, to lead the column into the depths of the Mule Shoe. The morning remained dark, and fog wreathed the trees. A man could not see twenty yards ahead. Gordon tried to judge the shape of the battle by the noise, but the weather played tricks with sound as well as sight. All he could do was to press on and seek the enemy.

Only a few lengths back from the head of the column, he and Johnston rode beside the soldiers. The first smoke of battle reinforced the fog.

“Sounds like they’re more to the right,” Johnston said.

As he spoke, rifle fire erupted just to the column’s front. Men fell. Others halted to fire into the mist. The men to the rear bunched up, in need of orders.

The Yankees called out, impolitely, for them to surrender.

Johnston said: “I’ll show those damned—”

Droplets of the brigadier’s blood sprayed Gordon’s cheek and eye. He caught Johnston, who struggled to right himself after nearly falling from his horse. There was just light enough to see he’d been shot in the head.

“Get him to the rear!” Gordon shouted. He held Johnston’s reins until an aide rushed up. Then he called to the commander of the leading regiment, “Colonel Garrett! Take command, you have the brigade.”

The firing had grown wild, mad. Garrett rode up and saluted Gordon, only to recoil from a bullet’s impact.

The colonel jerked at a second wound and tumbled to the ground.

Who was the brigade’s senior officer now? Toon? He’d been sick as a dog for days, but Gordon had glimpsed him minutes before, gamely leading his 20th North Carolina. After ordering the 5th to deploy on line—an action the veterans had begun to take on their own—he rode back and found Toon rushing forward for orders.

“Tom, can you command this brigade? You well enough?”

“Well enough to kill some goddamned Yankees.”

In the bad light, Toon looked as pale as a widow’s cadaver.

“All right. You listen here. We’re going to pull the brigade back a hundred yards. Yankees can’t see any better than we can, they’ll spend a few minutes feeling their way forward, now they’ve been stung. And we’re going to form a skirmish line back there. Right across the salient. As far as we can reach. Don’t look at me like I’m crazy, just listen now. Only chance is to bluff them. So you’re going to form this brigade into a skirmish line and then you’re going to charge straight forward with a howl to rattle the devil. You understand me?”

“Yes, sir, but—”

“Tom, I know. We’re going to lose this brigade. But we’re going to save the army. You buy me a quarter hour, and you damned well might save the Confederacy.”

Toon saluted. And turned his horse to the challenge.

Between them, they got the brigade spread out on line, specters in the fog. Gordon figured that each of the soldiers faced dozens of Yankees. But he’d already sensed that the Yankees were more than a touch confused, stumbling about, overconfident, unsuspecting.

And he knew, for damned sure, that what he was doing defied every Army manual and even common sense. If he failed, the West Point officers would laugh over his grave. But he did not see what else could be done, and his belly told him to go ahead and do it.

Wasn’t much of a line, and he could hardly imagine what the spread-out soldiers felt. But when he nodded to Toon and the colonel gave the order, they went to their fates with a Rebel yell that would have put to shame a legion of demons.

Gordon turned his own horse to rally his other brigades, still trying to figure out just where the Yankees were, how deeply they’d penetrated elsewhere in the salient. As he rode rearward, a bullet ripped through his coat, to Tom Jones’ alarm, but Gordon made light of it: This was a day that could not accommodate fear.

Nearing the Harrison house and reading the world by the first hint of real light, he encountered General Ewell, who waved to him with a lunatic’s enthusiasm.

The corps commander spouted gibberish in his high-pitched voice, confusing all around him. He appeared to have outrun, or just lost, his staff, and he asked Gordon for an officer. Gordon left him an aide and moved on. Before Ewell could give him an order he didn’t want.

If today would be his last day on earth, he wasn’t going to be the plaything of the gods in the form of Dick Ewell.

“Clem!” he called to Colonel Evans, who had taken his old brigade. Evans steered his horse closer. “How many regiments have you got?”

“Only three. The others are already in, supporting Daniel.”

“Then three will have to do. Three hundred Spartans blocked the might of Persia.” Gordon did not add: “And they died for it.”

John Hoffman left his forming men and joined them. “Had to pull back from the fight to get ’em organized. But they’re ready. Rounded up a few of Alleghany Johnson’s boys and folded them in, too. Just a handful, but they’re riled.”

Both of the brigade commanders snapped their attention away from Gordon.

He whipped about, expecting to see Yankees. But it was Lee, with a few members of his staff and young Bob Hunter, Alleghany Johnson’s aide. It was light enough for Lee to see the formed-up regiments, and for the men waiting silently to see him.

The air sparked like an electrical experiment.

Lee stopped Traveller and, facing the soldiers, took off his hat and held it over his heart. Stray shots nicked the air, but the old man was imperturbable.

They won’t have to cast a statue of him, Gordon thought. He’s already a statue.

Gordon ordered his brigade commanders back to their men. Every officer who had a horse was to remain mounted today. The men must be properly led, visibly led, no matter the cost.

But as Gordon cantered to the center of his line, where Lee waited in silence, the army commander pulled Traveller around to face the Yankees.

In that moment, Gordon seemed to see down to the man’s depths. And what he saw was human, desperate, and dreadful.

He galloped up to Lee, reined in, and seized Traveller’s bridle.

“General Gordon,” Lee said. As if waking from a trance.

Gordon needed to turn the situation to his advantage. He raised his voice to its grandest oratorical level and announced, “General Lee! You shall not lead my men in a charge!” He swept his hand wide. “Another is here for that purpose!” He dared to look away from Lee, sweeping his eyes over the breathless ranks. “These men behind you are Georgians and Virginians. They have never failed you on any field. And they will not fail you today!” Gordon levered his ramrod spine a few inches from the saddle. “Will you, boys?”

The response was a sprinkle of cries that became a roar:
“No! We won’t fail you … we won’t fail him … danged if we will … no, no…”

Gordon sensed he needed to drive the challenge home. Before Lee lost them everything by throwing away his life. He had heard the rumors of Lee’s near suicidal behavior in the Wilderness and sensed the old man’s desperation now.

He’d rather die than lose,
Gordon understood.

As the soldiers’ cries faded and the sound of battle swelled, Gordon called up the deep reserves of his voice and lungs, speaking to Lee, but really to his soldiers:

“You
must
go to the rear, sir!”

At that, the soldiers broke ranks, rushing to surround Lee, shouting, “Lee to the rear! Lee to the rear!” They pressed against him, grasping his bridle, pushing against the horse’s flanks the way a fool boy might press the rump of a mule, ready, if need be, to lift horse and rider and bear them to the rear.

Lee’s eyes clouded. When they met Gordon’s calculated gaze, the old man looked away, raising his face to the sky, determined that only the Lord would see him so moved.

A sergeant tugged the horse around and Lee did not resist.

“To your posts!” Gordon shouted. He could tell with certainty that the Yankees were almost upon them. Cantering along the line, he ordered, “No yelling, boys. Not until we hit them. We’re going to give those blue-bellies a taste of Georgia and Virginia for their breakfast!”

The instant he saw that the ranks were ready, Gordon spurred his horse to Clem Evans’ color party and seized the red battle flag in his right hand.

His horse pranced as he held the banner high.

“Virginia! Georgia! Forward!”

Six a.m.

As Barlow struggled to reorganize his division, a fresh Union brigade drove into the rear of his men, confusing things further and throwing away the value of the new troops. He went after them in a white rage and found Lewis Grant pushing his Vermonters forward.

“Grant, what the devil is this? What are you doing?”

“Doing as ordered,” the bearded brigadier said. His voice was annoyingly calm.

“For God’s sake,
whose
orders? What’s a Sixth Corps brigade doing over here?”

“General Hancock’s orders. General Wright sent us over to reinforce you.”

“Does it look like I need reinforcement? There must be twenty thousand men squeezed into this … this hellhole.”

The Vermonter refused to be riled. “Followed my orders. To the letter. Didn’t expect such a mess.”

Barlow wanted to give him the flat of his saber. Instead, he snapped, “Well, make yourself useful, if you can. I’ll take this up with Hancock.”

The attack needed reinforcements, all right, but on the flanks, to firm up and expand the shrinking breakthrough. After the first shock, the Rebs had recovered with spirit, launching one screaming attack after another. And they paid for it, the carnage was unspeakable. But his men were little more than a confused mob, if still a bloodthirsty one. In the grimmest close-quarters combat Barlow had witnessed, his soldiers, intermingled with Birney’s and Gibbon’s—and now the Vermont Brigade—fought with rifles, bayonets, swords, pistols, fists, and fallen limbs as they and the Johnnies literally pulped each other. Lacking cohesion, his men had been forced to give ground in fits and starts. Now some portions of his line—of the brawl that passed for a line—had been driven back to the main Rebel entrenchments.

Careless of the combat raging around him, he strode back to the spot where he’d left his aide to receive messages. Yanking him along, he told the captain, “I’m going back to try to talk sense to Hancock. We’re throwing it all away.”

“Sir, General Hancock’s very pleased, I told you—”

“I know what you told me. ‘Compliments, splendid work.’ Hancock hasn’t a clue what it’s like in here.”

“Sir…”

Barlow smiled. Bitterly. “I know, John. I’m to be recommended for major general. And Brooke and Miles will have their stars.” With bullets flirting around them, he looked into the aide’s laughably earnest face. “And you don’t want me to ruin it for myself. But Hancock shouldn’t be passing out cakes till we’re done with the meat.”

He found the orderly minding his horse tucked into a swale beyond the salient. The animal bled slightly from its hindquarters, grazed by a bullet.

“Sir,” the orderly began, “there was nothing I could—”

“I’m not a fool, man. I can see what happened.”

He swung up into the saddle, landing hard. Only when seated did it strike him how utterly drained he was. And he had far less reason for it, he knew, than the men in the scrambled fighting, clubbing each other’s brains out.

He galloped across the field, through human wreckage, hundreds of wounded men stumbling along between the last trickles of captives in gray rags. That phenomenon, too, had turned around: Brown, the brigade commander he had put in Paul Frank’s stead the day before, had been reported captured along with dozens of his men.

Shortest term of command on the books, Barlow thought wryly. There was no pity or compassion in him now. He just didn’t want another potential victory squandered by flaccid generalship. Nothing else mattered. And Hancock, of all people, had let him down.

Galloping over the intervening ridge, he spurred his horse with a cruelty he had long reserved for men. For men who failed him.

At last, he saw the meadow where they had formed in the light of day. Batteries waited in perfect order and staff men walked their horses, as if in search of a stirrup cup before setting off on a hunt.

He spotted Hancock, standing on the porch of the wretched shanty, chatting with his chief of staff.

Barlow spurred the horse again, only to rein in next to the porch, close enough to splash mud.