A Stillness at Appomattox (93 page)

The
gunner
who
asked
the
question
went
to
the
rear
shortly after
this
with
a
caisson
to
get
more
ammunition.
He
got
his load
and
on
his
return
he
noticed
that
the
road
led
over
an open
hill
in
such
a
way
that
he
and
his
wagonload
of
explosives
would
be
in
clear
view
of
a
distant
Confederate
battery.
While
he
was
reflecting
that
he
would
undoubtedly
draw
Confederate
fire,
he
noticed
that
in
a
field
on
the
reverse slope
of
the
hill
several
hundred
stragglers
were
lounging about
little
campfires,
boiling
coffee
and
enjoying
themselves. He
mused
that
these
were
the
worthless
bounty
men
and
conscripts
who
had
fled
from
the
firing
line,
and
whose
mere presence
in
uniform
weakened
the
entire
corps,
and
he
wished earnestly
that
something
bad
would
happen
to
them:
and
just then
the
Rebel
gunners
caught
sight
of
him,
swung
their
guns in
his
direction,
and
let
fly
with
a
salvo.

The
range
was
long
and
their
aim
was
imperfect,
and
the shells
missed
the
caisson
and
skimmed
down
into
the
very middle
of
the
coffee
boilers,
where
they
exploded
and
sent campfires
and
coffee
pots
up
in
flying
dust
and
sparks
and smoke.
On
the
ground
were
screaming
men,
fearfully wounded,
and
those
who
had
not
been
hurt
were
mnning desperately
for
the
woods;
and
the
gunner
reined
in
to
enjoy the
scene,
and
hugged
his
knees
and
rocked
in
wild
laughter, and
when
he
got
back
to
his
battery
he
told
his
mates
it
was "the
most
refreshing
sight
I
had
seen
for
weeks."
²⁵

The
afternoon's
attacks
came
to
nothing
at
all.
Warren
and Burnside
finally
sent
their
men
forward
at
three
o'clock—the morning's
opportunity
gone
with
the
morning's
mists—and
the Army
of
Northern
Virginia
was
waiting
for
them
in
secure trenches,
and
the
men
were
repulsed
with
heavy
loss.
The day
ended,
finally,
and
Meade
wired
Grant
that
nothing
more could
be
done.
He
added
piously
that
"our
men
are
tired
and the
attacks
have
not
been
made
with
the
vigor
and
force which
characterized
our
fighting
in
the
Wilderness;
if
they had
been,
I
think
we
should
have
been
more
successful."

Grant
replied
that
they
would
make
no
more
assaults: "Now
we
will
rest
the
men
and
use
the
spade
for
their
protection
until
a
new
vein
has
been
cut."
²⁶

So
the
men
huddled
in
their
trenches,
and
after
dark
they could
hear
the
mocking
sound
of
the
belfry
clocks
in
Petersburg
striking
the
hours,
and
a
man
in
a
Connecticut
regiment wrote
that
"this
was
the
most
intolerable
position
the
regiment
was
ever
required
to
hold."
²⁷

The
men
were
used
to
occupying
trenches
under
fire,
and

in
that
respect
the
situation
here
was
no
worse
than
it
had been
at
Cold
Harbor
or
half
a
dozen
other
places.
What
made it
truly
intolerable
was
the
realization,
running
from
end
to end
of
a
tired,
heartsick
army,
that
the
greatest
chance
of
the war
had
been
missed—and
that,
as
a
military
critic
expressed it
years
afterward,
"the
blame
of
the
failure
to
take
Petersburg must
rest
with
our
generals,
not
with
our
army."
²⁸

CHAPTER IV

White
Iron
on
the
Anvil

1. Changing the Guard

The
trenches
ran
south
from
the
Appomattox
for
five
miles, following
the
tops
of
the
low
ridges,
and
for
all
anyone
could see
the
armies
might
stay
there
forever.
There
had
been
no rain
for
two
weeks
(nobody
knew
it,
but
another
month would
pass
before
there
was
as
much
as
a
light
shower)
and the
dust
was
inches
deep:
a
fine,
powdery
dust,
like
soiled flour,
so
light
that
every
footstep
sent
up
a
cloud
of
it,
and half
a
dozen
men
walking
together
along
a
trench
or
on
open ground
in
the
rear
moved,
invisible,
in
a
choking
mist
of
their own
creation.

Sometimes
the
dust
seemed
to
be
the
chief
enemy.
A
Connecticut
man
wrote
that
taking
a
stroll
was
like
walking
in
an ash
heap,
and
he
said
that
after
a
short
time
"one's
mouth will
be
so
full
of
dust
that
you
do
not
want
your
teeth
to touch
each
other."
A
gunner
said
that
whenever
a
grasshopper hopped
it
raised
so
much
dust
that
Rebel
lookouts
reported the
Yankee
army
on
the
move,
a
New
Yorker
found
the
combination
of
110-degree
heat
and
4-inch
dust
"is
killing
more men
than
the
Johnnies,"
and
a
private
from
Michigan—remembering
the
cool
pines
and
clear
streams
of
his
homeland —wrote
despondently:
"I
think
of
the
hottest
days,
in
harvest time,
away
north
in
Michigan,
and
oh!
how
cool,
compared
with
these."
Every
day
men
toppled
over
with
sunstroke
and were
carried
to
the
rear.
Uniforms,
faces,
trees,
shrubs,
and grass
were
all
a
dull,
ugly
yellow
gray.
The
air
was
heavy with
the
odor
of
unburied
bodies,
and
the
sun
beat
down
day after
day
on
men
who
cowered
in
deep
slits
in
the
earth.
¹