Cain at Gettysburg (55 page)

The young artilleryman at his side clearly had something weightier to say. But the words didn't come and Garnett didn't press him.

The Yankee guns held their fire. Were they low on ammunition? Sweet Jesus, let it be so. His entire brigade was in the open now, its soldiers helpless for the next three-quarters of a mile.

Behind him, his men unleashed a Rebel yell.

“Scare a Comanche and terrify a Sioux,” Garnett said. “Ain't they something?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Something chewing your tail, son? You look half-scalped.”

“Just thinking about supporting fires, sir. I'd best get along. I need to move up some guns.”

Garnett managed a not-quite smile. “Be glad of them.”

They saw the first red-orange-gold muzzle flashes. The Union guns on the round hill to the right had a fine position, perfect for enfilading fire.

Nothing to be done about it.

The shells fell short, killing dirt. But the explosions quickened the pulse.

“See how long it takes 'em to get the range,” Garnett said calmly. He steadied his horse. “Or if they mean to just let us walk into it.” Leaning as far toward his younger companion as illness let him, his tone grew earnest. “You find the time, you might pass some words with Lo Armistead, he'll be coming up. Just say how-do. Lo's got fond memories of you, stories he tells. Kindly ones. About the three of us. Out there, those endless days.” He smiled. “Never did care for the rattlesnakes, but the rest wasn't a bother. You go on back and find Lo. Give him my regards.”

It struck Dick Garnett that his long days were at an end. All that had come before had pointed him here, toward this field, on this bright afternoon.

“Go on now,” he told Alexander. “You have work to do.”

The artilleryman snapped a salute and turned his horse. Unwilling or unable to say more.

The Union guns on the round hill fired again and batteries near the center went into action. The Yankee right—Garnett's left—remained silent, though. The cemetery bristled with guns, but not a one of them opened. The range was long, but they should have been firing on the attack's left flank by now.

He rode back to have a look at things.

And Dick Garnett was shocked by what he
didn't
see: One of Hill's divisions was supposed to advance beside Pickett, on the left. But all Garnett saw were idled guns and the torn trees to their rear.

He and Kemper were hanging out like an old Apache's teats. And Lo's men were already coming on to their rear.

Nothing to be done about that, either.

As Garnett turned his horse to the front again, a shell struck close enough to sting him with dirt. A solid shot found the range and tore the first hole in his line.

Brigadier General Dick Garnett soothed his horse, breathed deeply to tame the dizzies, and went back to whistling.

*   *   *

They broke from the trees into light that was almost blinding. Blake gave no orders. None were needed. The few men remaining straightened the line on their own, proud despite all, mountain-born. For all his sly rebelliousness, Cobb marched as straight-backed as any man, rifle at right shoulder shift, lean face pointed forward like a weapon. Worried and determined, Charley Campbell's look was that of a farmer threatened with losing his land. But it was life, not land, that was at issue. Unless you counted the mile to be covered and the troop-lined ridge that rose across the fields.

Blake marched at their shoulders now. There were sergeants enough ready to hold back as line-closers. And it was more than that: He felt compelled to soldier right up front. There was no reason to it. Reason stood against it. Spite and kinship drove him, the blood brotherhood with even Cobb, with Charley Campbell, with the litter of their dead, with all the men who had marched, still marched, or would march with the regiment. Men who downright hated each other went forward side by side, this strange, iron-hard bond making kin of all.

The frail-hearted had already slipped away. The few who dropped out now were felled by the sun, by a heat so thick a man could almost grasp it and fold it over. No guns fired on them, not yet, but insects rose before their tramping feet, erupting in all directions. General Pettigrew urged them on, flirting about the lines on his dapple gray.

Their ranks parted as they engulfed the gun line—silent now, silent as death—and one cannoneer doffed his worn black hat and placed it over his chest as they passed by, the way hill folk did at buryings.

They straightened their lines again, ragged men with polished weapons, nothing between them and their enemies now but an awful stretch of emptiness and time.

“Steady, boys, steady!” The officer's admonition was unnecessary. But Blake understood the fellow's urge to speak. The sound of a man's own voice affirmed his life.

Barefoot or badly shod, they surged across the hot earth, breaking stocks of barley underfoot. And still the Union guns refused to open on them. The shelling that could be heard on the right did not reach their lines and belonged to the fates of others.

The land—which looked flat, but wasn't—reshaped itself. The front rank climbed out of a swale and Blake spotted double lines of soldiers—brown, gray, dirty white—well ahead and far off to the right. Pettigrew's unease back in the woods made more sense now. They'd gotten a late start, for whatever neglectful reason, whatever sheer damned Southernness, and had to come up on line with the other attackers.

Couldn't order double-quick and exhaust the men before they got to the fight, either. All the officers could do was to keep the men moving steadily, hoping they could negotiate the fences and ditches ahead without too much delay.

It was hard to see past Fry's front rank, but there looked to be a senseless gap as well, extending from Pettigrew's right flank hundreds of yards to the troops who had gone on ahead.

Cobb saw it, too.

“Goddamned nigger barn dance, that's what this is,” he said.

The gap was officers' business, Blake decided.

A rail fence loomed. Skirmishing fire pecked. A man toppled, hurling his rifle.

“Push down that damned fence,” Knock Jones hollered. “Just go right at it.”

They did. Becoming one great, many-legged beast, the soldiers quickened their pace nearly to a run, slamming into the fence rails with bodies and the stocks and butts of rifles. The successful act of destruction raised spirits to an even higher pitch. They realigned their ranks without losing momentum and surged toward the retreating Yankee skirmishers.

Ahead and just to the left, farm buildings smoldered. Stubborn flames played peekaboo, taunting the men with the distance still to cover before they could reach the marker of those ruins, still not halfway to the Union lines.

The rhythmic swish of thousands of men advancing through the grain put Blake in mind of a scythe wielded by a giant.

A terrible harvest was coming, that was sure.

Yet, the sky remained a magnificent blue, not yet marred by fresh smoke. The only unkind color on the earth was that of the Yankees lined up on the ridge.

Nudged rightward by their officers, the men began to crowd and their lines to ripple. Maintaining parade-ground ranks was a hopeless chore while striding to overtake men with a good head start. Knock Jones and his handful of officers kept their regiment mostly in hand, but its strength was little more than a brace of companies. The Tar Heels to right and left bulged forward or lagged.

They knew what was coming, all of them did, and they wanted to get it done with. Despite the heat, they would have liked to run, knowing full well it would play them out before their time had come. Knowing a thing in the head was no longer enough. Body and soul had their own special ways of figuring.

And still the Union guns didn't open on them. Shelling lashed the brigades up ahead on the right, beyond that infernal gap, but Pettigrew's command felt nothing worse than the sting of withdrawing skirmishers.

Spontaneously, the men raised a Rebel yell. Earlier than was their habit. The purpose now was not to terrify the distant Yankees, but to bolster themselves. Every man, barefoot or shod, walked on needles now, on coals, on blades. Not one of them had ever made such a long attack, across fields that refused to end and against an enemy who never seemed to get any closer.

“Why ain't the damned Yankees shooting?” Charley Campbell asked the world. “All them goddamned guns they got up there.”

In answer, the Union artillery opened fire.

TWENTY-TWO

July 3, After 2:00
P.M.

Lieutenant Colonel Freeman McGilvery waited. Rittenhouse opened first, firing from Little Round Top, exploiting his view of the battlefield and the long range of his rifled cannon. General Hunt rode off to guide arriving reserve batteries to the center and McGilvery cantered to higher ground to have a look at the Rebel advance for himself. His line of guns could have opened long before the attackers could see them. But he waited.

Batteries began firing from the First Corps and Second Corps sections of the line, hurling shot and shell westward.

McGilvery waited.

Through the unsullied corridor fronting his own batteries, he witnessed a thrilling spectacle: Advancing by brigades, at least a full Confederate division of ten thousand men or more marched relentlessly over the sun-swept fields, ranks dressed smartly and red flags catching the breeze. The attackers ignored the shells tormenting them, as if their lives were things of little consequence. Bayonets shimmered like scales on just-caught fish.

And McGilvery waited.

The Union fires bit, erasing bodies from existence and hurling others upward like spurned dolls. Immediately, soldiers from a following rank rushed forward to fill the gaps. Flags fell, only to rise again.

He glimpsed the flags of still more Confederate brigades off to the north, trailing the initial wave. At least ten thousand men were in that field, perhaps far more.

And he waited.

McGilvery had learned patience. The sea had taught him. Captaining vessels out of Maine, destined for splendor and squalor in southern climes, he had grown accustomed to doing every thing in its proper order and at its proper time. As an elder seaman had warned him years before, “No matter how badly you want the land to come out to meet you sooner, it just plain won't.”

His guns were about to become the reef on which the Rebels splintered. He had only to wait a little longer now.

With a whopping roar, Osborn's guns opened from the apex of the line, up in the cemetery. Osborn knew his trade, he did. Every one of his cannon would have been carefully aimed and ranged to devastate the brigades on the Rebel left.

McGilvery watched the Confederate right advance.

The Union line barked and billowed smoke. Except in front of McGilvery's hidden guns. He watched the Rebels dying bit by bit, unaware of how much death awaited them. Even their forward skirmishers appeared oblivious, their attention fixed on their counterparts in blue. He welcomed their ignorance, their confidence, and almost pitied them. Fine, brave soldiers they were, he gave them that: fine men led by fools.

After galloping back down to his gun line, he positioned himself at its center to see exactly what his batteries saw, waiting for the Confederates to crest the swell of ground that would expose them.

Their banners reported first to his waiting eye, followed quickly by a line of bayonets.

And they still didn't see him. Riveted by the blue lines to their front, the Johnnies just kept marching.

McGilvery held back for a last few seconds, until it became impossible to miss.

“By battery! Fire!”
he shouted.

His subordinates repeated the order and the ground shook mightily. Even on horseback, McGilvery felt the tremors.

A combination of solid shot and spherical case gashed the Rebel lines at an angle, ripping through the front rank to the second, leaving oblique gaps as wide as roadbeds. Johnnies from the rear rushed forward to fill the holes again. The nearest brigade's line of advance was about to bring it within canister range.

The Rebs dipped into the trough of the creek at the bottom of the swale, presenting his guns with densely clustered targets. His batteries massed their fires into the funnel, scouring the low ground. The result was a slaughter.

“Left batteries! Load case! Right batteries! Canister! Fire at will!”

Firing swiftly was no waste of ammunition now. The combination of targets, terrain, and range was a gunner's dream.

Anxious to judge his effect through the building smoke, McGilvery rode a few yards forward, advancing through the seam between two batteries.

His own rounds tore past him, savaging the air.

He saw his tormented enemies through a bright mist. Crowding together, they began to turn, herding away from his guns, unwilling to take the punishment. Their movement made no tactical sense at all: They were wheeling northward toward the Union center, executing the movement so close to the First Corps lines that regiments hastened into the fields to unleash volleys into their exposed flank. The Confederate maneuver appeared suicidal.

McGilvery was convinced that his guns had deflected the Rebels from their intended target, upsetting whatever plan they might have had.

Nor was he finished.

*   *   *

From his vantage point amid the headstones, Major Thomas Ward Osborn watched the Confederates advance. Calculating finely, he delayed calling his gun crews back to work for as long as he could: The men were blown from their labors in the heat and lay on the ground like corpses. And he had time, a little more of it. On his flank, the Rebels were either poorly coordinated or up to something odd, since they had emerged into the fields hundreds of yards behind the foremost brigades. Then there was that bizarre gap between the attack's two wings.

Osborn watched as the guns on Little Round Top opened at long range, followed by some of the batteries down in Hancock's stretch of the line. The effects were slight, a waste of powder that only encouraged the Rebels. The brown-dappled gray ranks advanced as smartly as grenadiers. Punched by the Union artillery, they closed ranks again without breaking their pace. He noted, too, that most of their officers were on foot, a sign that they understood the odds they faced: Those who remained on horseback were no more than targets.