Grant Comes East - Civil War 02 (57 page)

"Forward, keep moving! Forward!"

As they crested the hill, they began to emerge out of the valley of smoke and death.

He could see them now, a broken, pitiful-looking remnant, not a line really, just clusters of men clumped under blue flags of Virginia and the red St. Andrew's crosses of the Army of Northern Virginia, falling back on the double, men struggling to reload, groups of them turning to fire, then falling back yet again.

The Vermont regiments halted, again without his orders. He would have just pushed. But the men were too exercised now that their foe was finally in sight.

'Take aim!"

A thousand muskets were leveled.

"Fire!"

The volley swept the front; in the split second before smoke obscured everything, he saw rebels dropping by the dozens.

"Reload!"

Ramrods were drawn, charges pushed home in gun barrels that were still clean, the metallic rattle of ramrods in barrels echoing along the line.

"Hold boys, now hold!"

Rifles came up, were shouldered.

"Charge bayonets!"

With a wild shout, a thousand rifles were brought down from shoulder arms, poised now level at the waist, bayonet points gleaming in the late-afternoon sun.

"On the double, quick! Charge!"

A wild, hysterical shout rose up. The line surged forward, men screaming incoherently, the lust of battle upon them, the lust of revenge, of pent-up rage, of all that they had suffered and endured; a chance to restore the honor of the Army of the Potomac was here at last.

5.55pm

An
y hope of controlling his brigade was gone, and for the first time in his life on a battlefield, Lo Armistead ran for his life. He did not know where he could gain one more ounce of reserve to move one step farther. He weaved like a drunken man.

The old man who had lost his son was down, shot in the back of his head, his brains staining Lo's jacket, the impact of that round nearly pushing Lo into panic.

He wanted to shout for his men to hold, to rally, but he could no longer find voice for it.

Out of the smoke of the battle line he could see the survivors of Pickett's division streaming back, running across meadows, pushing through cornfields, climbing over fences, men collapsing from exhaustion and wounds. A knot of men were gathered around a barn, leaning against the building, which was beginning to burn. They fired away, then turned to run.

He caught a glimpse of Pickett, staff trailing, riding across the front of the retreat, waving his sword, crying for the men to hold fast
.
But after more than three hours they had been pushed beyond all endurance. Longstreet was nowhere to be seen. Beyond all caring, Armistead staggered up to an abandoned farmhouse. Wounded were sprawled on the porch. From a shattered ground-floor window, he saw several men peering out, one of them raising his rifle to fire. A man came bursting out the front door and then just collapsed, shot in the back.

Lo looked back. The Yankees were charging less than a hundred yards away, bayonets flashing, a terrifying wall, coming on remorselessly, overrunning a battery position, the gunners breaking away from their pieces and fleeing before them.

"Come on, General, let's get the hell out of here!" An arm came under his shoulder, a burly corporal, a giant of a man at over six feet by his side, lifting him up. "Come on, sir, time
we got the hell out of here." "I’
m all right, leave me." The corporal laughed.

"Can't say I left my brigadier behind. Just promote me to captain when this is over. Now let's get the hell out of here!"

6:05
p.m.

‘F
orm
here!" Longstreet roared. "God damn it get into line here!" General Robertson, leading Hood's old division, saluted and galloped off along the edge of the woodlot. A battery of guns, Rowan's North Carolina, were already into the woods, barrels of their pieces projecting out over the low split-rail fence, infantry swarming in to either side of the guns.

Behind him he could hear hundreds of men running through the woods, pouring off the main road coming up from Baltimore, shaking out from column to line, the men panting with exhaustion, officers shouting for men to load, to get ready, to keep inside the woods.

Already the first of Pickett's division were coming in, staggering out of the cornfield to their front, their passage marked by the swaying of the head-high corn. Raising his field glasses, he could see to the far side of the cornfield a quarter mile away, where the relentless advance of the Army of the Potomac was pushing forward, driving the stragglers of Pickett before them.

Pickett's boys had been routed by this last charge, but he could not blame them. They had faced off against a corps and a half for three hours under a killing sun, inflicted thousands of casualties, and had baited the trap, which was beginning to unfold. But it would only be a trap if their panic did not envelop the exhausted reinforcements now coming up.

Robertson's division was filing into position. Behind them, a mile away, Hood's entire corps was advancing and deploying out as well. It was possible, just possible, that after more than forty miles of marching with thousands— perhaps ten thousand or more stragglers dropping out on the road, the rumors sweeping back of defeat—even these hardened men might break and run. On such things, on such moments, battles often turned.

He rode along the edge of the woods, eyes blazing, watching intently as division broke into brigades, brigades into regiments, regiments into companies, falling in along the fence at the edge of the woods, men hunkering down, loading, sliding rifles over the top of fence rails, staring blindly now into a cornfield where the enemy would not be visible until he was only thirty feet away.

Robertson's division waited for the impact of the charge.

6.10pm

‘H
old them back!" Warren shouted.

The Vermonters were already into the cornfield. The men were panting from the heat, the pursuit of the last mile that had carried them across pastures, fields

of winter wheat, corn, orchards, and farm lanes. They had swept up hundreds of prisoners, all Confederate resistance collapsing. But in the cornfield ahead, there was something that was triggering in him a sense of foreboding. "Holdback!"

His cry went unanswered. He turned, riding across the front of the reserve brigade, the boys from the First Corps, shouting for them to halt, but only those directly to his front followed orders. The battle front was nearly a half mile wide, and one lone voice at such a moment could not be heard.

The charge plunged into the cornfield, trampling the crop under as it advanced.

He caught a glimpse of Sickles coming up, army commander banner held high, staff trailing behind him. Warren raced back.

Sickles was exulting, swept up in the moment of glory, of victory.

"Call it off!" Warren cried. Sickles slowed, looked at him.

"For God's sake, we've driven them. It's enough for now."

"I know. God damn them, we're driving them. Your boys are magnificent!" Sickles cried.

"No, sir. Halt now!"

Sickles looked at him, incredulous.

Warren gasped. "We don't know what's waiting ahead. Stop this charge!"

Sickles, eyes blazing, said nothing, and then rode past, following the charge; Warren, knowing not where to go at this moment, falling in behind him.

6:15
p.m.

‘H
old your fire, boys, hold it!"

Longstreet rode back along the line concealed in the woods. Hundreds of Pickett's men were still passing through. He caught a glimpse of Pickett, face ashen, riding past, then Lo Armistead, limping, helped along by a huge enlisted man who pushed him up over the fence, the two collapsing on the other side. "Steady!"

From the slight rise within the woods he could see them coming, a relentless wall, corn being knocked down by their advance, bayonet points sticking up, flags rising above the corn. To his left a volley erupted where one of Robertson's brigades, on the far side of the woods, was engaging. In the woods all was strangely quiet for a moment, officers hissing commands, a gunner screwing up the rear screw of a field piece, dropping the muzzle lower, loaders already standing ready with double canister alongside the muzzles of the guns, a few officers looking north, a man up in a tree shouting that the Yankees were only fifty yards off, then jumping down. Rifles were leveled over the fence, hammers back, here and there a man firing, foul oaths shouted at the nervous to hold fire, hold fire, hold fire!

Blue legs appeared in the cornfield, bayonets above the corn, a last few stragglers running, heaving themselves over the fence, some still in the com seeing what was directly ahead, knowing they would not reach safety in time, flinging themselves to the ground.

The surging wall of blue appeared, shouldering the corn aside, shouts echoing, huzzahs, officers waving swords, someone on horseback shouting.

"Fire!"

He did not give the order, he did not need to. Regimental commanders did it on their own, judging the moment. In those last few seconds the advancing Yankees, so exuberant, had slowed, seeing something, seeing the fence, the dark forms hunkered behind it, the muzzles of Napoleons and ten-pounders, rifles poised as if each was aimed straight at them.

There was a moment, a second or two, of shouted and confused orders, to halt, to take aim, to charge, to keep moving.

"Fire!"

The volley burst from the wood line, a thousand or more rifles at point-blank range, bursts of double canister from six guns. Five hundred or more dropped; it was impossible to miss, so dense was the Union line. The frightful canister, nearly a thousand iron balls, tore into the corn, shredding stalks high into the air in the split second it took from when the burst of canister left the barrel and traversed the twenty to thirty yards into the advancing line, mowing the corn down as if someone had worked with maniacal speed to cut every stalk off inches above the ground.

A groan cut through the cacophony of noise, the screams of hundreds of men, wounded, men who would die in a few seconds as hearts beat out a last pulse. Shattered rifles, body parts, blood literally rose into the air and tumbled back in a blizzard of destruction.

"Reload!"

The rebel infantry stood up, ramrods already drawn and stuck into the ground, cartridges laid out along fence rails; gunners leapt to their pieces, swabbing out bores, then ramming in yet another charge of double canister.

The men of Vermont, staggered by the blow, could barely respond. Here and there a desperate few leveled their rifles, men who but seconds before were pursuing a defeated foe now were out in the open being slaughtered. But some would still die game, would fire back.

'Take aim!"

Again the mechanical-like motion, a thousand rifles raised then lowered, the men behind them now standing. "Fire!"

Another volley swept into the cornfield, hundreds more fell, and seconds later a second blast of canister tore in from the battery, some of the rounds crashing into the reserve brigade, struggling to get forward over their own dead and wounded Vermont neighbors.

Again reload, even as the reserve brigade, among them survivors of the old Iron Brigade, pushed into the confusion, men screaming, cursing, some from Vermont already falling back, comrades to their rear pushing forward.

'Take aim! "Fire!"

Another volley.

The sheer momentum of the reserve brigade of the Second Division, Sixth Corps, actually pushed the charge forward to within ten yards of the fence. These hardened veterans, filled with rage, would not break in spite of the surprise, the terror that had met them in this cornfield. It was Antietam again, and as one of them had once said, after Antietam, nothing would frighten them ever again.

In turn, without orders, they leveled rifles, took aim impossible to miss, and fired. A hundred or more Confederates tumbled back from the fence, most of the gunners down.

"Charge!"

The reserve brigade pushed the last ten yards into the fence, even as their opponents prepared to deliver yet another volley, and what ensued was the nightmare of hell, the unleashing of all that this war had created. Boys from Indiana and Wisconsin slammed into boys from Texas, jabbing, thrusting, clubbed muskets raised.

For the first time in the war, Pete actually drew his own revolver, leveled it, and dropped a man who came over the fence, bayonet poised, racing straight at him. He lost sight of the battle as his staff pushed around him and then forcibly drove him back from the line, Venable cursing as he took a bayonet thrust to the leg.

A sickening, mad melee unfolded, the split-rail fence collapsing under the weight of Union troops. Hood's men staggered backward, giving ground a foot at a time, thrusting, parrying, those with a few seconds reloading and firing at point-blank range.

A desperate hand-to-hand fight erupted around a flag of the old Iron Brigade, the flag bearer pushing forward, then cut off, a wild cry going up from his comrades—"Our flag, our flag!"—and by the dozens they dropped as they fought to retrieve their colors. A Texan flag bearer, a red-bearded giant, Sergeant Robinson, the same man who had stopped General Lee from his suicidal gesture to lead a charge at Taneytown, waded into the melee holding his own flag aloft, clubbing the Union flag bearer with his staff, then snatched the colors of the Nineteenth Indiana from the dying man's hands.