Crossing (37 page)

Peyton asked his old VMI roommates, Yancy and Chuckins and Sandy Owens, to share his tent with him. Yancy and Chuckins gladly did, though Sandy had to tent with the artillery. Still, whenever he got a chance he came and stayed with them.

But on Monday, June 16, 1862, all of that finery had been packed away on the brigade wagon train, and the four of them were as humbly bivouacked as though they weren’t Stonewall’s Boys, which they called themselves though they kept it a supreme secret. They had built a campfire and were lying in a circle around it. On the ground was an oilcloth. They lay on that and covered themselves with one blanket and an oilcloth on top of that to guard against the dew.

Sandy and Chuckins were asleep, but both Peyton and Yancy lay awake, hands behind their heads, staring up at the night sky. Yancy was thinking forlornly that he hadn’t seen Lorena for almost eight months. He was surprised at how deeply he missed her.

“Can’t believe we’re marching tomorrow,” Peyton said, interrupting Yancy’s melancholy musings. “After the last few months we’ve had. And the battle in Port Republic was just what—yesterday?”

“Feels like it,” Yancy answered, “but it was a week ago. And no wonder we don’t know what day it is or what month it is or what time it is. You and I both have made two runs to Richmond in the last week, haven’t we?”

“Guess so,” Peyton said. “Yancy? Do you know where we’re going and what we’re gonna do?”

As usual, Jackson had kept his orders and plans a strict secret from everyone, even the field commanders, which drove them utterly insane. Yancy was quiet for a while. He generally did know more than almost anyone else in the command, except for maybe Jim. It was because Jackson relaxed a little more with Yancy and even held conversations with him, which was unusual for the taciturn general. Yancy knew him and understood him, and so it gave him some advantage in reading him. He had never said anything else to anyone, and he hesitated now, though he knew Peyton would never let on.

“You do know, don’t you?” Peyton asked quietly. “Well, I don’t know. It’s not like he tells me anything.”

“But you know. Can’t you just tell me if it’s north, south, east, or west?”

Finally Yancy lifted his arm and pointed. “That way.” He pointed southeast, toward Richmond.

General Lee was planning a counterattack on the Army of the Potomac, led by General McClellan, and he needed Stonewall Jackson’s Army of the Valley desperately. Jackson planned to march them double-quick to Lee’s aid.

They left at dawn, a bleak foggy morning that made it difficult to even see the man, or the horse, in front of them. Yancy, Peyton, and Chuckins rode in the general’s train, behind the general staff. Even Midnight and Peyton’s great stallion, Senator, seemed sluggish and bleary. Only Chuckins’s plump mare, Brownie, seemed to plod along cheerfully as she usually did. But then, Brownie was not a Stonewall Jackson courier’s horse, and in the Valley Campaign she had not ridden many reckless miles, day after day.

Midmorning the fog lifted and the day became pleasant. Some of the staff officers ranged up and down the lines of marching men, checking with the regimental officers and trying to discourage the men from straggling, for they were riding through orchard country. Yancy, Peyton, and Chuckins found themselves just behind General Jackson and had the good fortune to witness a delightful little scene.

General Jackson had given strict orders that no soldier was to say, in any manner whatsoever, anything about the plans of the army. This afforded the army a lot of mirth, for they had no clue about the plans of the army anyway, but it amused them when General Jackson showed his penchant for mystery.

Now they came upon a soldier that had stepped off the side of the road, for a cherry tree was temptingly close to it. He had climbed the tree, where he was sitting contentedly, gobbling.

Jackson stopped and stared up at him. “Where are you going, soldier?” he asked.

“I don’t know.”

“What command are you in?”

“I don’t know.”

“Well, what state are you from?”

“I don’t know.”

With some exasperation, Jackson demanded, “What’s the meaning of this?”

He answered, chewing thoughtfully, “Well, Old Jack and Old Hood passed orders yesterday that we didn’t know a thing till after the next fight, and we’re keeping our mouths shut.”

Jackson threw back his head and laughed, a rare sight indeed, and rode on.

Jackson marched them a roundabout way, instead of the straightaway that the couriers took, for he and General Lee hoped to deceive McClellan into thinking that Jackson was still in the valley. In fact, General Lee had even sent General Winder and his 10,000 men, ostensibly, to Jackson in Winchester. General Winder had made it there, camped a couple of nights, then had turned around and was now following Jackson back.

But this deception was hard, for the country was not made for brigades of men walking through. There were enemy pickets, skirmishes, impenetrable thickets, and creeks sometimes six feet deep to be forded. Moving the cannons was like a nightmare for man and beast alike. No trails were marked, of course, and their maps were very poor indeed. Jackson had two new guides he didn’t know.

On Tuesday the twenty-fourth it rained, long and heavily. They had been passing through one of the thick woods with almost impossible thickets, and now they found that the enemy had cut so many new roads in the tangle that one of the new guides lost his way and led them astray.

But finally on the twenty-sixth the exhausted army had reached their goal, a small crossroads call Old Cold Harbor, just above Gaines’ Mill, where Lee planned to concentrate his forces and attack the Federals massed there. On the twenty-seventh they moved in. Jackson was on the Confederate left, Longstreet’s army on the Confederate right. There were 88,000 Confederates in the field.

Yancy had asked General Jackson to fight with his old unit from his days of training in Richmond when he was still a VMI cadet, Raphine Company.

Jackson had shaken his head wearily. “We’ve got more than two dozen outfits out there, with three Army headquarters—me, Longstreet, and General Lee. I’m going to need every courier I’ve got. I especially need you and Sergeant Stevens, for you two have the best horses. You two stick close by me.”

“Yes, sir,” Yancy said.

And so they followed him, from the swampy bog below Old Cold Harbor to the little hills and wooded fields around Gaines’ Mill. Lee had opened fire at daybreak, but it was afternoon before Jackson reached his command post, a knoll just northeast of the Confederate center. The fighting was, and already had been, savage. General A. P. Hill in the center had attacked too soon, before he could be reinforced, and the Confederates had taken heavy casualties. The Confederates charged and would gain ground; then the Federals would countercharge, and the Confederates were forced back again. The lines stubbornly stayed stagnant, with very little ground gained nor lost for either side, but with both sides losing dozens of men by the hour.

Almost as soon as they arrived at Jackson’s command post, he called for Peyton. “Ride to General D. H. Hill’s command and instruct him to send in Rodes, Anderson, and Garland, and to keep Ripley and Colquitt in reserve,” he ordered brusquely. Stonewall Jackson wasted no words in battle.

General A. P. Hill was badly beaten down, but the brigades that had arrived with Jackson’s command were fully engaged. Finally, at about four thirty that afternoon, three of his trailing brigades under General Richard Ewell topped the hill at Old Cold Harbor. Jackson sighted them immediately and sent orders to them by Peyton.

He then turned to Yancy. “You’ve got to go down to General A. P. Hill, down on the battle line. He must be made aware that General Ewell is on the way to support him with three brigades. And then ride to General Lee’s headquarters and assure him that we can relieve General Hill.”

“Yes, sir!” Yancy said then started to turn away.

But Jackson pulled Little Sorrel up close to Midnight and Yancy stopped. Jackson said in a low voice, “You’re the fastest. It’s going to be hot and heavy down there, Sergeant. Ride hard, as fast as you can, and no need to linger on the line. It’s just as important for you to notify General Lee as it is for you to notify General Hill. Understood?”

“Understood, sir.”

“Good, good.” Jackson turned away, and Yancy galloped off at Midnight’s top speed, which was fast indeed.

Midnight had been around battles, of course, and had been in the line of fire before, but neither he nor Yancy had seen the savagery at the line of the Battle of Gaines’ Mill. General A. P. Hill, a redheaded, brave, hot-tempered, experienced soldier was on his third horse of the day only about fifty yards back from the front lines. He wore his bright red flannel shirt, as he always did in battle, thumbing his nose to enemy sharpshooters. As Yancy approached, even over the thunderous din of battle, he could hear General Hill’s scratchy voice screeching orders at the top of his lungs, liberally laced with curses.

Midnight was in tearing high spirits, foaming at the mouth, eyes wild. He wasn’t spooked; he was battle ready. As Yancy tore up to the general, Midnight lowered his backside and skidded to a stop on his back legs, reared, threw his head up, and screamed.

Even General Hill turned to see this magnificent spectacle, and he recognized Midnight and Yancy. “Ho, you, boy! Looks like that crazy beast is ready to down a few Yankees himself!” he shouted.

Yancy grinned and Midnight skittered up to the general. “He would, sir, but General Jackson gave Midnight his orders along with mine.”

“Orders from Stonewall, huh? What? Attack the North Pole?”

Even with bullets whistling by him and shells exploding all around him, Yancy was feeling the irrational exuberance of battle, and he laughed. “Better news than that, sir. General Jackson sends his compliments and wants to make you aware that General Ewell is on his way to support you with three brigades.”

General Hill let loose with a string of happy profanity. He finished with, “Good news from Stonewall, good news. Now you and your big black monster better be running along, little boy.”

Yancy saluted. “Yes, sir, I am ordered to General Lee. Not the North Pole.”

He pulled Midnight’s reins to the left and felt a curious thumping blow on his right arm. Puzzled, he looked down. There was a slowly spreading red stain on his gray sleeve. He looked back up at General Hill, who was looking down at Yancy’s arm. “Sir…?” Yancy began.

He felt his head whip to the side, as if he had been struck sharply on his right forehead. And then, curiously, slowly, his vision faded to black, and he knew no more.

M
atthews, give him more chloroform. He’s stirring a bit and I need about two more minutes to close this up,” Dr. Jesse Hayden ordered the steward assisting him. Dr. Hayden waited for Matthews to apply another two drops of chloroform to the cloth covering the patient’s face then resumed stitching up the stump of the man’s right leg. As he bent over, his back and shoulders burned with an ache that felt like it went right down to his bones. It was the nineteenth amputation Dr. Hayden had done that day.

He finished stitching and slowly straightened up. His whole back felt like it was on fire. “Done.” He looked at the tag on the soldier’s clothes that were neatly folded at the foot of the operating table. “He’s Thirteenth Virginia. Check with Matron to see which building we’re putting them in,” he told the two orderlies who were transporting men to the buildings where they would receive nursing care. Chimborazo Hospital had forty buildings. Even when receiving patients in a steady stream after a battle, the efficient and compassionate administrator, Dr. James McCaw, stipulated that every effort be made to keep the soldiers together with others in their units.

In this, one of two buildings set up to receive the soldiers coming in from the battles raging just to the east of them, ten operating tables had been set up, with a team of anesthetist and surgical assistant assigned to each table, though they had only eighteen doctors in all, rotating as they could. In both buildings, doctors performed surgery after surgery. In the building next to them was the non-emergency care receiving, and the orderlies were steadily stitching, medicating, and treating wounds—and sicknesses—as quickly as possible.

Two ambulance attendants brought a stretcher up to Dr. Hayden’s operating table, a groaning man with severe shrapnel injuries on the right side of his body. He was groaning, his eyes wide and frightened and unseeing, his left hand clenching and unclenching spasmodically. Wearily Dr. Hayden saw that most likely both his right arm and right leg would require amputation.

Just then Dr. McCaw came up to Dr. Hayden and laid his hand on his arm. Dr. McCaw was a man of medium stature, with light brown hair and a mustache that was turning prematurely gray. His features were nondescript, except for the warmth and kindness of his expression. Now he said firmly, “Dr. Hayden, I believe I must insist that you stop and rest for a bit. You have been working steadily for hours on end, and I know that last month you were unwell. I don’t want you to fall ill, please. We need you too much.”