Hell or Richmond (71 page)

“My horse went down. What word from General Russell?”

“General Russell’s been wounded. No further orders.”

“Badly?”

“I don’t think so. He’s still on the field. But everything’s confused.”

“Everything’s always confused.”

Something shifted. It took him a moment to reorder his thoughts, to grasp the meaning.

Hurrahs.
Union
hurrahs. Not Rebel screeching. Amid a great burst of firing.
Behind
the Rebel lines, if his ears were worth anything.
In
the Reb lines, and just to the right.

Truex.
Had his brigade reemerged from the underworld?

Upton grabbed the aide by the upper arm. “Find General Russell. Tell him we’re attacking. With everything. Tell him we’re in their lines.” He thought for just an instant. “First go to the Hundred and Twenty-first New York. They’re to advance on our right flank. The other regiments are to remain in reserve until I call for them. Then find Russell. Tell him to put in everything he can.”

The aide stared at him in disbelief.

“Just do as I say,” Upton commanded.
“Go!”

Upton took off himself, drawing his sword again. He had always envied Wellington’s decisive command at Waterloo. Now he had his own chance to adopt it:

“Up, men, and at ’em! We’re in their lines, we’ve broken their lines. Come on, boys, up and at ’em!”

A few men rose, then more.

There was no time to order their ranks. Seconds mattered.

Smoke drabbed the weakening daylight. But Upton saw U.S. colors behind the parapet.

“Come on, boys! It’s our turn now! Come on, let’s go!”

Men sensed things. He could not say how. His faith was of the practical, orderly, impatient-with-mysteries sort. Yet, he’d noted a magic in masses of men, an abrupt heightening of awareness, as if a greater mind had taken over. And these men, his men, grasped that their lot had changed.

They rose up and followed him, outpaced him. It was their turn now, and they knew it.

They began to hurrah.

The Reb fire from the entrenchments still killed, but had only a shadow of its former power. The Heavies crashed into the barrier of felled timbers and branches, clawing and climbing, some of them shouting obscenities ripe with hatred.

“Get inside! Get inside and fire. Then use your bayonets!”

The first of his men were at—and over—the rampart, shouting and shooting. The 2nd Connecticut’s flag came up beside Upton.

“Plant the colors on that wall!”

An artillery section blasted the men following him with canister, turning their flesh into rags of meat. But others came on, undeterred.

The Johnnies were about to get a lesson.

“You! Captain! Get your men inside and wheel left. Silence those guns!”

Climbing over the berm himself, he saw that Truex’s men were deep in the trees, sweeping leftward, southward.

“Wheel left!” Upton shouted, waving his sword. “Don’t stop! Wheel left! Charge!”

Some Johnnies were fighting hand to hand, no cowards. Others, wiser, withdrew, firing as they went. A few just plain ran.

Then more ran.

His rechristened artillerymen became furies. What they lacked in skill, they made up for in brutality, crowding around resisting Rebels to club and bayonet them beyond all need. One long-bearded, withered-looking Reb fought madly, holding his rifle by the barrel and swinging it, catching a sergeant on the side of the head. A second later, a soldier pressed a muzzle to the Johnny’s ribs and fired, blowing the man backward.

“Don’t stop! Push on! Wheel left! Come on!”

The Confederate line collapsed like a row of dominoes.

His men howled, driving all before them, seizing guns and hurtling over secondary trenches. Deep in the grove, Truex’s men thrust on.

Men wrestled for flags amid drifts of smoke.

A lean company of Johnnies tried to organize a volley, but barely half had loaded and fired before the Heavies crashed into them. Deprived of his rifle, a Reb charged into the melee, wielding a log as a lance.

Why wasn’t the rest of the division, of the corps, supporting their success?

They had pushed so far down the line of entrenchments so quickly that Upton knew his men were overextended. And he also knew what would be coming soon: a Confederate counterattack. Lee and his paladins would not let this success go uncontested.

The only question was how near the Reb reinforcements might be.

His New York veterans were fighting on the flank, not wildly, but methodically. His other veterans remained to the rear, spared, holding the ground bought with blood in the earlier evening. He wanted them there, a surprise for the Rebels, if a surprise was needed.

He remained with the Heavies, who were going to need leadership when the Rebs came screaming through the trees with the last sun at their backs.

Knots of tattered prisoners scurried rearward, outraged at their predicament, shocked, but bending forward as if from a heavy rain, determined not to catch a bullet now that they were formally out of the war.

He looked around for officers from the 2nd Connecticut. They had to regroup, get the men into some form of order that could respond to commands.

Slow and brilliant, the final shafts of sunlight stabbed through the trees. The denser patches of the grove had already succumbed to the twilight. In gilded smoke, men gasped for breath, eyes vivid and astonished to be alive.

“Company commanders! Form your men! Form up!”

Some soldiers responded purposefully. Others just meandered.

“Any man separated from his unit, join the nearest company. Officers, pass on the word. Gather ammunition from the dead. Wounded men, turn over your ammunition.” He strode among the trees, ignoring harassing shots from defiant Rebels. “They’re going to counterattack. Every man, get ready.”

He heard an irritated voice say, “We whipped them, fair and square.” As if there were rules the enemy must obey.

“Prepare for a counterattack!” Upton shouted.

Some of the new men appeared dazed, while others had lost their rifles but tagged along anyway. Most still seemed capable, if no longer eager. Upton understood that, too, the sudden deflation of energy as an attack runs out of push.

He seized upon a sergeant who seemed to have his men in decent order. “You, Sergeant. Take these soldiers back to the main entrenchments. And don’t let any of these other men pass by.” He stepped closer, raising his voice instead of lowering it. Needing each of the nearby men to hear him. “Shoot or bayonet the coward who runs.”

It was a bluff. He doubted these men would shoot their own comrades, let alone give them the bayonet. But he also knew that men, especially those new to battle, could stand only so much. And he would need to push them to the extreme.

The firing had dropped to a grudging give-and-take. Deeper in, Truex was still advancing, by the sound of it. The prospect made Upton long to renew the attack. But that would be a fool’s choice. When the Rebs hit Truex, he’d be spread too thin to hold.

Fight for every inch, he thought. Swing back, if need be, to the primary trench line they had conquered, but not a step beyond it. Hold that ground.

If you held until full night, you probably could hold until morning. And in the morning, surely, reinforcements would be up.

The luminous twilight darkened.

He sensed them even before he heard them raise their Rebel yell. Bounding through the forest, predators hungry for a kill. Veterans coming on against these tired men of his, their spirits half-disarmed by their success.

The howling began. It was always startling, even unnerving, to men who had heard it for years. A thousand unsure soldiers tensed around him.

“Here they come!” he shouted. “Men of Connecticut! We
must
hold this line!”

The surviving company officers appeared solid. That was good. On their own, they were cautioning men to hold their fire until they had a good target, to let the Rebs come close.

A shot-through man pawed at Upton’s boot, begging, “Don’t
lee
-me here, don’t
lee
-me here…”

Upton walked on.

*   *   *

They held. Bless them, they held. They had not maintained their forward-most position, but the best of them wouldn’t quit the Rebel line and they still owned a stretch of it. Most of the other Heavies had halted in the field of stumps, on the left and just to the rear, asserting a ragged line of their own, many a man lying flat, but at least not running, while their comrades fought on in the near dark.

He had needed to call up one more veteran regiment, but his brigade still had some depth. In case the Johnnies brought on reinforcements and risked a night attack.

Much of the Reb order had broken on Truex’s men, driving them back, but growing confused in the process. A line-turned-mob had struck Upton’s soldiers hard, forcing them back amid fighting that was often hand to hand—or fist to fist. He had seen a Johnny thrust a rifle muzzle under the chin of an artilleryman, literally blowing the man’s brains out when he pulled the trigger, but fatally misjudging his own action: The rifle’s recoil had slammed the butt down upon the Rebel’s knee, making him stagger in pain for the pair of seconds necessary for one of Upton’s men to catch him in the face with the tip of a gun stock, bashing him down and then bending to crush his skull.

But Upton sensed that the Heavies were nearly used up. The men holding in the shelter of the trench still fired into the smoke-bruised glow that was giving way to night, but more and more of those scattered among the stumps and trees just lay there, letting other men decide the battle.

If the Rebs, who had stopped a mere fifty yards away, caught their breath and came on again, these men were going to run … or quit and surrender. It was just the way men were, taking so much, but no more. God had made them so, for his own purposes.

You couldn’t let them lie there cuddling their fears, that was the thing. They had to be active, too busy to think, whatever the action you squeezed from them might be.

“You!” Upton snapped at a soldier tucked behind a stump. “Load your rifle and give it to me. Now!” Other soldiers had alerted, lifting their faces a few inches from the earth in expectation, though they knew not of what. “You, too. And you. All of you. Load your rifles and pass them here to me. And keep reloading. We’re going to hold this line, we’re not going one step back.”

Ill-aimed bullets hissed through the settling night. A slash of moon above the groves and random firing lit the world enough for men to see each other’s forms and blue ivory faces.

A soldier held up a rifle. Upton took it.

He steadied his elbow on a stump and fired toward the opposing muzzle flashes. For a second time, he nearly pronounced a profane word. He had not fired a rifle in many months and had forgotten to pull the stock tight against his shoulder. The kick hurt.

He passed back the rifle and chose from the others extended toward him.

“Don’t point it
at
me!” He took the proffered arm.

Shifting deeper into the pack of men strewn over the ground, he chose a surviving tree for his position. It wasn’t much of a tree, but it concealed his silhouette from the enemy. He was not afraid of being shot, but knew that if he was hit, these men would flee.

Again, he fired toward the shadowy Johnnies. They were almost close enough to duel with rocks. But they had stopped. That was the thing that mattered. As long as they didn’t rally for one more charge.

He fired. Took another rifle and fired that. And he kept firing, shoulder hurting like the dickens. A man forgot so much of what his soldiers felt.…

Around him, first one man, then more of the Heavies, fired in the direction of the enemy. Upton knew it would be pure chance if any shot hit a Reb, but that didn’t matter. What mattered was the belief of these men that they were fighting back.

It was always belief that mattered.

The sword of the Lord, and of Gideon.

Each muzzle flash was a tiny hint of hellfire.

And he smote them hip and thigh with a great slaughter …

With enough men firing now to warn off the Rebs, Upton shouted, “This ground belongs to us. Every man not firing, start digging in.”

That was a command the men were glad to follow. They scraped with bayonets and their bare hands.

Upton chose a soldier who seemed reliable, waited until the fellow got off a last shot, and tapped him on the shoulder. “Go to the rear. Find any officer at the rank of major or higher. And tell him General Upton”—he almost said “needs,” but caught himself—“wants ammunition brought forward immediately. Tell him we’re holding a lodgment in the Rebel entrenchments.” He considered. “If you can’t remember those words, just tell him we’ve taken a good bite out of the Rebel line and mean to keep it.” He gripped the man’s arm. “Understand?”

“Yes, sir. Sure do.”

Upton looked at him hard, at the pale eyes in the night, trying to judge whether this man would do as told, or run away the moment he had the chance.

“Don’t know if I’ll find my way any good,” the man volunteered. “Coming back, I mean. It’s dark, General.”

“Just come toward the firing. Now
go
.”

The soldier scuttled off, clutching his rifle.

A few dozen voices raised a Rebel yell. Blurs rushed off to the right, toward the stretch of entrenchments his men still held. Rifles blazed from the ditch. The foray disintegrated.

If they didn’t come on in force, these men would hold. He moved along until he found a captain.

“Name?”

“Archibald, sir.” Or that was what Upton believed he had heard. The name didn’t matter, really. What mattered was that the man had spoken his name and assumed Upton had heard it.

“I’m putting you in command of this stretch of the line. See that these men dig proper entrenchments. If I can, I’ll have spades brought forward, but they’ll construct a proper line if they have to use their fingernails and teeth. Do you understand me?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Organize a rotation of the men, one-third firing, one-third digging, one-third resting in place, but ready to repel a rush by the enemy. Do you understand?”