Never Call Retreat - Civil War 03 (55 page)

Headquarters, Army of the Susquehanna
3:45
P.M.

“Elihu Washburne?" Grant exclaimed in surprise as the secretary of war came riding up, escorted by several dozen cavalry troopers.

"General, how are
you?" Elihu exclaimed, leaning over from his horse to shake Grant's hand.

Grant could not reply at first. He had felt deathly ill all day, barely able to remain in the saddle.

The march had been tedious and frustratingly slow. His own men, to be sure, were exhausted, but then again, so were the rebels they were pursuing. The rebel cavalry, though, was still doing a masterful job of contesting every ford, every place where defendable ground could buy the retreating columns ten or fifteen minutes' respite.

Sheridan was at the fore, driving relentlessly, but for the men in column behind the advance, it was the most exhausting kind of march. Advance a few hundred yards, wait in place maybe for a minute, maybe for a half hour, then sprint forward a quarter mile, then slow down, stop, then lurch forward again.

The sides of the road for miles was littered with the castoffs of an army in retreat. Broken-down limber wagons, overturned and destroyed supply wagons, and prisoners by the hundreds, men who had given up and collapsed.

But it was littered as well with the debris of an exhausted army in pursuit, yet more cast-off equipment, gray-faced soldiers lying by the side of the road, unable to advance another step after so many hard days of marching and three days of pitched fighting.

He could so easily sense the inertia that built at such times, understand why so many generals would, at this moment, call a halt to allow their men to "rest, reorganize, and refit." Regiments were jumbled together, not just men from one regiment slowing and bleeding back into the unit behind them, but entire brigades and divisions were mixed together. All that kept them moving forward now was their own will, the will of each man who, sensing victory, would not give out, and his will as well, driving them forward even if but one man was left standing at the end.

"I have a dispatch from the president. I think it is important that you read it, sir," Elihu said.

Elihu handed the envelope over.

"Yes, sir. Is it urgent?"

"Well, sir, I think you should read it soon, but for the moment it can wait."

"I want to keep pushing," Grant said. "Ride along with me. I'll tell you what is happening and we can discuss the president's wishes when we stop for a few hours."

"Fine with me," Elihu said, and he fell in by Grant's side.

4:00 P.M.

M
en were swarming about Longstreet. Some planking had already been laid across the tops of the canal barges to form a rough walkway, not yet se-. cure enough to move wagons on, but in another hour that should be accomplished. Hundreds more were on the narrow ground between the canal and the river, dropping logs down to form a corduroy road. Down at the river's edge men with axes were dropping trees to clear an access way. A dozen men had volunteered to swim out to the island in the middle of the river and even now were hacking a path across it.

Where are the damn bridges?

And, as if in answer to a prayer, he saw the first of them coming down the road, Cruickshank in the lead.

"My God," Longstreet sighed, "we just
might pull this off after all."

J
im Bartlett paced back and forth along the line, his men digging furiously. Down by the canal more boats were coming up, off-loading infantry, and more of his own men. Along the towpath an artillery battery was coming up fast, an officer directing them to swing off the path and up the slope to where positions were being dug.

Ahead there was a constant rattle of musketry, drawing closer. Walking up the slope Jim saw Hancock atop the rise, astride a horse, field glasses raised. Jim went to his side.

"You can presently see them down there," Hancock said, and pointed.

Jim looked in the direction Hancock was pointing and just under a mile, perhaps three quarters of a mile away he could see a swarm of men at work, tearing the siding off a mill. Closer, far closer, a line of infantry was advancing in open order, some mounted troopers joined in. A harassing fire buzzed across the field, cutting down stalks of grass around them.

The rough entrenchment, after barely an hour's work, was not much more than knee to thigh deep, but it offered protection enough with the sod and dirt piled up in front, fence railing and logs atop that.

Hancock turned and rode back, shouting for his men to drop their tools, pick up rifles, and get to work.

All up and down the line men fell into place, and within a few minutes fire rippled along the line. Jim stood and watched.

Several men around Jim dropped, some screaming, some just collapsing silently.

"Get down, you damn fool!" someone shouted.

He knelt down inside the trench but continued to watch. He was strangely fascinated by what was happening. His vague memories of 1814, the years in the White House, the memory of watching Lincoln reading the latest casualty reports and walking the corridors alone in the middle of the night.
So this is what it is like,
he thought.
This is battle in all its horror.

He could see the men who were supposed to be his enemy not a hundred fifty yards away, lined up, all of them moving as if in some nightmare, men aiming rifles, apparently straight at him, disappearing from view behind a flash of fire and then smoke, others reloading, others falling. The Union soldiers around him, secure behind the low entrenchment, stood firm. Men tore open cartridges, pouring powder down barrels, one was shot even as he poured, the cartridge flying into the air as he tumbled over a man turning to grab his fallen comrade. The battle continued to rage on, while overhead the skies darkened.

Fioe Miles We
st of Seneca Crossing 4:05 P.M.

T
he thunder of battle was close, damn close to his right as he led the column down a farm lane, the wagons behind him barely squeezing through between the trees, and then he saw it, the Potomac.

"I’ll
be damned." He spurred forward, heading across an open field, riding past a small mill which troops were struggling to tear apart, some with their bare hands. Down at the canal he saw Pete and rode up, saluting. "General Longstreet."

"Cruickshank, it's about time you showed up."

Pete glared at him for a second, and Cruickshank began to bristle. After all that he had been through, if this was the reception, then the hell with him.

Pete smiled and leaned over to shake his hand.

"Get the damn bridges down there and start laying them."

"What?"

"You heard me."

"Sir,
I
thought my job was just to get them here. Where are the engineering troops? That's their job." "Scattered to hell and gone."

"Oh, God damn," Cruickshank sighed, and knew there was no sense in arguing.

"Venable will stay with you. Tell him what you need and he'll see that you get it."

"Yes, sir," Cruickshank said as he turned about. The first of the wagons was coming out of the woods, cutting across the open field, driver hunched low since shot was dropping into the field from the fighting going on to the west.

Venable came up and saluted.

"He said you can get me what I need."

"Yes."

"There must be some engineering troops mixed into this mess. Have someone ask around for anybody who's built one of these damn bridges before and get them down to me."

"I've already done that. We have fifty or so who claimed to have worked on the bridge across the Potomac when the campaign started."

"Fine, then. Also a bottle of whiskey."

Venable reached into his haversack and pulled one out.

"The general said you can have one good slug now, the rest when the bridge is done."

Cruickshank made sure it was a damn big slug before he handed the bottle back.

The first wagon passed, crossing over the roughly made pontoon bridge across the canal, the boats underneath bobbing and swaying. The hard part now was getting down the side of the canal embankment, the driver lashing hard, the wagon skidding sideways and nearly lurching over. Then across the muddy flats and finally to the edge of the river.

Cruickshank rode alongside the wagon till it reached the river, and he dismounted, looking around.

Now what in hell do I do?
Men were standing about. He eyeballed the crossing point. Maybe a couple hundred yards to the island where he could see men already at
work, cutting a path. Hard to
tell how far from the other side to the Virginia shore, maybe a hundred yards.
We should have enough.

"Get the wagon into the river, back it in, and float the boat off. The stringers and cross ties, off-load here on shore first."

Men set to work pulling off the heavy lumber and stacking it up, the driver then urging the team to turn in a half circle, the wagon sinking deep into the mud as soon as it ran off the corduroy approach. There it stalled, sinking halfway to its axles.

"God damn it," Cruickshank cried. "Alright, get men to push the damn thing off, gently now, and into the water. I want fifty of you to start building a corduroy turnaround here so we can swing the wagons around."

The second wagon was coming down the canal embankment, barely making it, and Cruickshank ran back to it, yelling for them to stop and wait. The work crew around the first wagon, with much pushing and cursing, finally slid the pontoon boat off the back of the wagon. Cruickshank winced as they pushed it across the rough corduroy of logs, half expecting the bottom would be torn out. At last, the forward end was in the water, the load lightened, and the boat floated.

"Anchor lines should be in the boat," a sergeant announced and he waded out to the boat and jumped in.

The sergeant seemed to know what he was doing, so Cruickshank left him to his work as the sergeant tossed out two cables, anchors on the end of them, and directed men to wade upstream and set them in place. The boat was jockeyed parallel to the shore about twenty feet out, and two more anchor lines were run out downstream and dropped into place.

The sergeant jumped out of the boat and waded back to shore, shaking his head, coming up to Cruickshank.

"Assume you're in charge here, sir?" the sergeant asked.

'That's what they tell me."

"Ever lay a bridge before."

"No."

"Well, sir, the setup here is all wrong. You have just this one approach down to the river. You need a second one alongside it and upstream. That's where the boats should be hauled up to, backed around, and then pushed in. Once we get three or four boats out, it's gonna get tricky with this current maneuvering the following boats in place. You just can't run the following boats onto the bridge and dump them off the end."

Cruickshank nodded. This man knew the job; he didn't, and he realized he had better listen.

"Sir, let me go back and get my regiment. Some of us helped with the pontoon crossing back in the spring. We'll need at least two hundred men to cut the second approach."

"Go get them."

Venable, who was still by Cruickshank's side, rode off, the sergeant jogging alongside him.

The first stringers were laid in place and run out to the anchored boat. Within a couple of minutes he saw another problem. The stringers had been set into the mud on the bank, and, as the crosspieces were laid atop them, the whole thing started to sink.

"God damn it, take it apart," Cruickshank shouted. "We need supports, gravel, logs, something under here. Take it apart!"

He heard shouting and cursing behind him and then a rendering crash, Turning, he looked back. The third wagon had tried to negotiate the steep drop-off from the canal and rolled over on its side, mules tangled up in the mess, kicking and thrashing.

He struggled through the mud, men running toward the wreck. The driver, damn him, was dead, tangled up with his mules and kicked to death. The pontoon was completely staved in on one side.

"Get this wreck cleared," Cruickshank shouted, and then looked at the embankment.

They couldn't cut it down to level it, that would breech the canal. Men would have to be set to work. There wasn't enough time to extend the grade out, that would take hours and hundreds of men with shovels. He'd have to post a hundred here, rig up some cables with men hanging onto them to ease the load as it slid down the embankment.

Venable was coming back, Longstreet by his side. He could see that a regiment was moving behind them, the men obviously not too happy with their sergeant volunteering them for heavy labor.

Longstreet crossed the short bridge over the canal and nearly lost his mount sliding down the embankment slope.

"You've got to straighten this out," Longstreet snapped angrily.

"I'm trying, sir."

"The entire army will start passing through here tonight. This embankment, the grade has to be extended out, paved over with logs, better yet, gravel. We'll lose every artillery piece trying to negotiate it. We need a good approach to the bridge, well paved as well, otherwise the entire army will just flounder into this mud. Now get to it. I don't know how long we can hold this position, so get to it, Cruickshank."