March Toward the Thunder (13 page)

“Then they gave our land t' their own people and pushed us into the roughest, hardest places to live, sometimes allowin' us t' work for them, for a few potatoes and a crust of bread t' survive upon. And then when they could not kill us all or force us all t' leave the land, they tried t' force us all t' speak their tongue and not the beautiful Gaelic that my sainted parents made sure I cut me eyeteeth upon.
Erin go bragh.

“Then they saw another use for us and that was in their armies, trusting we'd show the same courage we did when we fought against 'em. And we did it in spite of all that history. We did it t' prove to them the kind of men we were and to make a place in the world for us and our children to come.”

Flynn's voice caught.

Louis felt a similar lump in his own throat.

Bad as it had been and as bad as he knew it would be in the days ahead, Louis knew then that he was in the right place. It was not just a white man's battle that they were fighting. There was no place he'd rather be than in the presence of his sergeant whose words touched the heart of his heart.

They plodded along in silence for a mile or more before Fynn cleared his throat and spat.

“And here we great fools both are,” the sergeant said as they began to labor up a slope. “In this brigade, that's always called upon when there's work t' be done that is desperate, absurd, or forlorn. And what do we get in the end? A small bit of ground t' bury our bones? A handful of coin and perhaps a bit of ribbon and metal to wear on our chest? Or the right to call ourselves men?”

Flynn raised his arm.

“Column halt!” he called out.

They stopped, more or less. Some of the exhausted men who'd been walking in a half sleep kept on for a step or two before being stopped by the backs of the soldiers in front of them.

They'd reached a high hilltop. A line of lights flickered below them from the farther hills beyond a wide field. Hundreds of Southern lanterns, candles, and campfires burning behind their entrenchments.

Louis looked to their left. The rest of Hancock's Union forces were coming up, Artis Cook's company among them. The Irish Brigade and the Corcoran Legion would hold the extreme right.

Louis sighed.

“So, lad,” Flynn asked, “what do we do, the Mick and the Indian?”

Louis answered that question with spoken words.

“The best we can, sir.”

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

MARY O'SHEA

The shell that whistled by was ten feet above him. Not that close, but Louis kept his head down anyway.

Doesn't sound like a Napoleon,
he thought.
Too small.

Napoleons was what everyone on both sides called the Model 1857 twelve-pounder field guns. Favorite artillery pieces for both North and South, they were smooth-bored weapons that could throw a twelve-pound shell, solid shot, or canister 1,600 yards.

Louis crawled nearer, keeping low. The half-light before dawn and the way the land folded like the crease in a palm made it simple to stay out of sight. He reached the ridge across from the Confederate gun crews that had begun firing on E Company at 5:00 a.m.

Louis raised up, a finger's width at a time, squinted through the binoculars Flynn had lent him for his scouting mission. He focused in on trees, the back of a horse, then an artillery wagon.

Just as I figured. Six-pounders
.

It wasn't that hard to find them from his vantage point. As always, the artillery had been placed on a ridge behind and above the Rebel line. The four Southern guns and their crews were silhouetted by the near-dawn sky, a lighter blue than the dark sky to the west.

Guns had to be in plain sight for their crews to see where their shots fell and adjust their next rounds. But they were an easy target for counter-battery fire. Gun crews were often the earliest casualties. And even if the shells fired at them missed, they could still hit the nearby munitions wagons. A man with a gun crew had to just stand upright, a target for small arms fire. He had no weapon other than that big hungry gun that he kept feeding with shells and cannonballs.

Louis watched, fascinated.

The eight-man crew that moved around each gun seemed to be doing a dance. Deadly, but graceful, getting off four rounds in a minute. One crew member cleaned the bore with a long-handled rammer. Another handed the cartridge to the third man who inserted it into the muzzle where the first man could shove it in with the rammer. Behind the gun a fourth gunner cut and inserted the fuse as a fifth and sixth brought up more heavy cartridges. The chief of the gun crew checked the aim, raised his hand. The eighth man pulled the lanyard. A dense cloud of white smoke suddenly appeared at the muzzle as the cannon violently recoiled six feet to the rear. Half a second later, Louis heard the thunder-clap boom, close enough to make his ears ring.

Must be ten times louder where that gun crew stands
.

Most men in the artillery were not only easy targets, they were also deafened by their work.

I would, no way, want to be in the artillery. That work it is not just too dangerous. It is too dang noisy
.

He lowered himself down and began to crawl backward.

“Well?” Sergeant Fynn asked.

“Model 1841 six-pounders,” Louis said. “Four of them.”

“I'd thought they was not Napoleons by the sound of them,” Flynn replied. “A bit too tinny.”

In battle, the sergeant's ears were as accurate as most men's eyes. Better, in fact, when the smoke and dust blinded your vision.

“If ye don't know which way t' go, then march toward the thunder,” Flynn would say. “Ye can do that with yer eyes closed.”

The sergeant turned to the men lined up in the shadows of the pine woods behind him. A shower of needles and small branches fell on their shoulders as a shell went whistling through the treetops.

“'Tis lucky we are today,” Flynn said. “All they have up there is four little peashooters. And as ye can clearly see, our dear Rebel friends are shooting high as they always do.” The sergeant chuckled. “There's not an artillery man in the South kin hit the side of a hill. Now with the dawn coming behind 'em and the blessed dark of the west behind us, we'll be seeing 'em better. Their sharpshooters'll be cursing their bad luck at not being able to find a target. Now, with the Corcoran Legion by our side, who kin stop the boys of the Irish Brigade?”

“No one at all, sir,” Devlin's voice called out from the crowd of men whose faces were hidden by the darkness.

“No Johnny Reb,” Kirk said.

“Not even the divvil hisself,” Belaney affirmed.

Despite all they'd been through in the past days, no matter that they had seen so many friends fall, the spirit of the 69th that day was high.

Yet Louis felt his own spirits raise and his heart pound in pride.

“On the double quickstep then. When they see our green flag and realize who's coming at them, they'll run.”

Two hundred yards to cross. Shots whistled overhead.

A hundred yards. Shells began to fall among them.

Fifty yards. Despite the poor light, sharpshooters behind their breastworks were now picking out targets. Grapeshot and rifle balls were reaping a deadly harvest.

As he trotted forward, Louis saw men fall to either side of him. But their own rifles and the Union cannon were taking a toll on the Rebel ranks. Minié balls whistled over his head. Shells burst to either side, but he was untouched. As he neared the first entrenched position, the shots were fewer, the cannons silent. Louis leaped up, grabbed at a branch that was thrust out of the parapet, and pulled himself over.

The rifle pit on the other side was almost empty. Only three wounded men in gray with their rifles on the ground and their hands in the air. The main body of the Rebels had abandoned the position and were retreating through the pines.

“After them!” a man with a captain's bars on his uniform shouted as he ran. Louis recognized him as one of the officers of the 69th. Captain Blake.

Louis and all those of the Legion and the Brigade who could still run or hobble or limp followed Blake. Their line was ragged, but they crossed the uneven ground and picked their way through the pines.

Another line of fortifications, larger than the first they'd just taken, rose up ahead. The Rebels had fallen back behind it. A withering fire burst forth at them. Bark flew from tree trunks, blood misted the air.

“Re-form!”
Captain Blake shouted.

“Re-form ranks,” Sergeant Flynn repeated, his words echoed down the blue mass of men.

Louis quickly looked around. All the faces were strange to him. The soldiers from several regiments were rallying together behind the captain and sergeant at their head, unmindful of the tempest of bullets, the shells falling like driving rain.

A flag bearer next to Louis grabbed at his hip and fell. Louis's left hand closed around the pole before their green flag with its Irish harp struck the soil. It was the only color on their part of the line. You needed a flag to rally the regiment.

I'm a target now for every Rebel sharpshooter
.

Louis started to lift the flag higher.

Captain Blake was too quick for him. “I'll take that, soldier,” Blake said with a smile.

Grasping the pole of the flag with both hands, Blake climbed to the highest point on the work and waved it back and forth.

“Come on, boys, and I will show you how to fight!” he called out in a clear voice that carried like a song.

Another sergeant, not Flynn, but a noncom from B Company, stepped forward to take the flag from the captain's hands as Blake made his way to the front, leading them toward the mass of gray-clad soldiers gathering before the entrenchments for a counterattack.

But as Louis thought those words, Captain Blake dropped down to one knee. Or rather he fell to the place where a knee had once been. A minié ball had struck, leaving a great wound that showed splintered bone for a heartbeat before it was covered by the gush of blood. A lieutenant leaped to Blake's side, tried to stop the bleeding with a tourniquet. A carrying party formed, but as they lifted the wounded captain onto a stretcher, one and then another of the bearers were struck down by the fire from the oncoming counterattack.

Blake propped himself up on the stretcher to wave one arm. “Save yourselves,” he shouted, teeth gritted against the pain, face pale from loss of blood. “The enemy's upon us!”

As so often happens in battle, the rush of men, the sound of guns, and the clouds of smoke washed over Louis then. Time passed. Whether minutes or hours, no one could say. They drove back not just one counterattack, but too many to count. A field of fallen men lay between them and the Confederate ranks gathered behind the next line of trees, showing no sign of another assault.

Somehow, the sun had leaped across the sky. It was well past midday. A hand rose up in the no-man's-land between the two armies.

“Water,” a voice called out from among the dead and wounded.

“I know that voice,” someone who was standing next to Louis said.

He turned to look. It was Merry. He and Devlin, Kirk, and Belaney had all found their way to this same spot in the line where their sergeant stood, solid as an oak. Somehow, Flynn had gathered them the way a mother hen does her chicks.

“Water,” the man called again in a voice weakened by wounds. “Will no one bring me a drink of water before I die?” The man lifted himself up on one elbow. His uniform showed him to be a Union captain.

"Tom O'Shea,” Merry called, his voice more high and shrill than Louis had heard before. “Tom! Is it you?”

Merry grabbed the canteen that hung by Louis's side and pulled it free. Then, before anyone else could move or speak, Merry was over the embankment, down into the rifle pit, and then up and out of it as quickly as a young deer bounding through the forest. Rebel shots were being fired as Merry ran, but the little private paid them no mind and none struck home.

Louis tried to follow. Devlin and Kirk held him back.

“It's a fine heroic thing the lad is doing,” Devlin said, not letting go of Louis's arm, “and it's worthy of a song. But there's no place for you in this ballad, Chief.”

“Tom,” Merry called. “Tom.”

“Whose voice is that?” the injured man answered.

Somehow, though their words were not loud, a trick of the way the land lay or the clarity of the air made the two voices carry to all ears. There was pride on the one side for the bravery the young soldier was showing and respect on the other side for that same courage. Rebel marksmen were grounding their weapons and standing up to watch.

“Who are you?” the wounded captain said as Merry reached him. “Am I dreaming?”

Merry dropped down on one knee, placing one hand behind the wounded captain's shoulders and holding the canteen to his lips with the other.

“It's me, Tom, drink this.”