A Stillness at Appomattox (25 page)

There
was
a
nightmare
slowness
about
it
all.
The
Brock Road
was
no
better
than
a
narrow
lane,
bordered
closely
by all
but
impenetrable
woods—it
had
taken
Stonewall
Jackson two
mortal
hours
to
form
a
battle
line
in
this
area,
just
a
year ago—and
the
road
was
clotted
with
artillery
and
confused moving
troops
and
men
felling
trees
and
piling
up
log
barricades.
The
day
grew
old
and
the
sun
was
going
down,
the western
light
coming
all
red
and
tarnished
through
the
blowing
clouds
of
heavy
smoke,
and
Getty's
exhausted
line
was about
ready
to
fall
clear
out
of
the
war;
and
at
last
Hancock got
a
couple
of
brigades
lined
up
and
he
sent
them
in
to
the attack.

When
they
hit
they
hit
hard—they
were
veterans,
and
they believed
that
when
Hancock
told
them
to
charge
he
meant for
them
to
keep
on
going—and
as
Hancock
slid
new
troops in
behind
them
and
on
both
sides
they
swept
into
the
Uttered woods
like
a
tornado.
They
overran
Getty's
tired
men
and bent
the
Confederates
back,
and
now
it
was
the
enemy's
turn to
feel
that
they
were
outnumbered,
outflanked,
and
forsaken. But
if
the
Yankees
had
one
of
their
crack
combat
outfits
in here,
so
did
the
Confederates,
and
in
these
murky
woods
any little
knot
of
determined
men
could
cause
much
trouble,
and there
was
a
titanic
wrestle
in
the
darkening
woods,
and
it
is possible
that
in
all
the
war
the
men
of
the
North
and
the South
did
no
more
desperate
fighting
than
they
did
right
here, on
the
two
sides
of
the
Plank
Road.

The
Federals
had
had
much
close-order
drill,
and
they
were used
to
fighting
in
solid
ranks,
where
each
man
could
see
his comrades
at
his
side.
This
was
not
like
that
at
all.
It
was Braddock
and
his
British
Regulars
fighting
the
Indians
all
over again,
and
the
scrub
pines,
the
brush
piles,
and
the
massed saplings
broke
the
advancing
lines
apart,
leaving
fragments that
felt
isolated
and
alone.
As
one
veteran
recalled
it,
"the troops
were
so
scattered
and
disorganized
by
the
straggling way
they
had
got
forward
that
there
was
no
central
discipline to
bind
the
men
together."
So
this
advance
was
no
triumphal march;
it
had
wide
gaps
in
it,
and
terrible
routs
and
defeats, and
desperate
deeds
of
bravery
and
of
cowardice
which
no one
ever
knew
about.
The
veteran
1st
Massachusetts,
shock troops
if
there
ever
were
any,
was
cut
up
into
squads
and platoons,
and
the
fragments
came
up
toward
a
little
rise
of ground
and
got
a
close-range
volley
from
Rebels
lying
prone just
beyond
the
ridge,
and
broke
and
ran
for
it
in
wild
fright. Their
panic
spread
to
right
and
left,
for
cohesion
and
spirit were
gone,
and
in
a
moment
a
whole
division
was
running away—Gershom
Mott's
men,
who
had
been
Joe
Hooker's
division
long
ago,
famous
as
one
of
the
stanchest
divisions
in the
army,
shattered
and
useless
now.
²⁴

But
Hancock
had
more
men
than
Hill
had,
and
in
the
end they
made
their
weight
felt.
The
fugitives
lost
their
panic when
they
got
back
to
the
log
breastworks
by
the
Brock Road,
and
the
men
who
had
not
run
kept
on
advancing,
and the
Confederates
along
the
Plank
Road
were
on
the
edge
of final
disaster
when
night
and
sheer
breathlessness
and
muscle weariness
at
last
came
down
and
stopped
the
fighting.
The armies
did
not
draw
apart.
They
simply
stopped
where
they were,
and
regiments
and
brigades
lay
all
over
the
Wilderness,
facing
in
every
direction,
nobody
knowing
where
he
or his
neighbors
or
his
enemies
might
be.
Northerners
and
Southerners
were
all
intermingled
in
the
dreadful
night,
so
close together
that
men
were
constantly
blundering
into
the
wrong camp
and
being
made
prisoners.
Skirmishers
were
awake, firing
at
any
sound
or
movement,
and
afterward
it
seemed
to some
men
that
the
battle
really
went
on
all
night
without much
letup.
Deep
in
the
woods
many
fires
sparked
and smoldered.

There
were
horrors
in
the
night.
An
officer
from
a
New England
regiment,
out
hunting
stragglers,
groped
through
the fathomless
dark
and
somewhere
far
in
the
rear
a
wakeful
battery
sent
over
a
casual,
unaimed
shell.
It
burst
near
him,
and its
sudden
flare
lit
up
a
dogwood
tree
right
before
him,
white blossoms
waxen
and
mystically
motionless
in
the
quick
red light.
Half
blinded,
the
officer
moved
on
in
the
succeeding darkness,
missed
his
path,
stumbled,
and
kicked
a
heap
of smoldering
leaves
into
flame;
and
the
flame
caught
in
the hair
and
beard
of
a
dead
sergeant
lying
in
the
path,
lighting up
a
ghastly
face
and
wide-open
sightless
eyes.
²⁸