Never Call Retreat - Civil War 03 (37 page)

Hurt ordered the detail to drop canteens and pull the poor wretches out. The men set to work, some of the wounded so badly injured that as they were pulled out they screamed with pain, one of them a man scorched black from the waist up.

Hazner, still in shock, said nothing.

The men, having finished their task of pulling the drowning back, were not sure what to do next. Hurt looked at Hazner, as if expecting the experienced sergeant major to resume control.

"Nothing we can do for these boys now," Hurt said. "I'll tell Colonel Brown when we get back and he can get Scales to send ambulances down."

He said it loud, as if offering an excuse to the injured and the dying around them.

"Come on, boys. Let's get above the pond."

Hazner picked up a dozen of the canteens and said nothing, following along woodenly. They reached the ground above the pond, and all along the banks of the stream hundreds of men were at work at the same task, so that by the time Hurt found a spot for the men to start filling, there was barely a trickle of water.

After twenty minutes the last of the canteens was filled, and Hurt motioned for them to start heading back. Hazner brought up the rear, the detachment crossing over the railroad tracks up the slope and tumbling into the trench. Moving down the line Hazner just walked along tall, while his comrades moved bent double until they reached their regiment

Hazner leaned against the side of the trench, still standing, saying nothing as the men around him greedily took canteens, tilted their heads back, and drank deeply.

"Sergeant?"

He focused his gaze. It was Colonel Brown. "Yes, sir."

"Maybe you should get down, Sergeant."

"Sir." Hazner looked around, suddenly aware that he was still standing erect, his men gazing up at him. He slid down to the bottom of the trench.

"Lieutenant Hurt told me what happened back there, Sergeant. How are you?"

"Me, sir?" Hazner said, forcing a smile. "Just fine, sir. Just fine."

Brown patted him on the shoulder and crept off, calling for the men to save a little water to pour down their barrels so they could swab their guns clean.

Someone offered Hazner a canteen. He tried to drink the water, but to his utter shame, seconds later, he vomited it up.

No one spoke.

Can I ever drink a drop of water again without seeing him?
he wondered.

Hauling Ferry 6:30 P.M.

J
im
thought he knew what labor was, but the long years of life in the White Hous
e, the formal protocol, the softl
y spoken and ever-so-polite conversations, even between the servants, had never quite braced him for this.

For hours he had stood out in the sun, until someone, surprisingly, a young white officer, had brought over a chair and pointed out that an awning had been set up for him, complete with desk.

He had gladly taken this position, along with the offer of a half dozen colored men who were fairly well dressed, most of them clerks who said they could write with a good hand, and were now his staff.

The makeshift bedsheet banner
Washington colored volunteers
hung limp from one side of the awning, now fluttering slightly with the evening breeze that carried with it the scent of rain.

Thus he had worked through the day, struggling to keep things organized. As ordered by the general, he had first assigned fifty men, largely chosen at random, to be captains, told them to pick ten sergeants each, and then for the sergeants to pick ten men as workers.

Within an hour that had all but threatened to fall apart as some men started coming in complaining, declaring their captain was drunk, or they would be damned if they would take orders from a dockyard roustabout while they had actually taught school or owned a barbershop.

At first he tried to reason with them, but within minutes was overwhelmed, until finally one of Winfield's staff officers settled the bombardment of complaints with a drawn pistol fired into the air. That had silenced the gathering crowd.

"Either take orders or get the hell out," the officer had said, pointing back to the towpath.

Several dozen, to Jim's shame, actually threw down their tools and walked off.

"Best to be rid of them anyhow," the officer had said. "Every unit has its whiners and malingerers."

Before leaving, the officer had hesitated, handed the revolver over to Jim, and told him to feel free to use it if need be, and no questions asked.

He actually had threatened to use it twice. Once on a "sergeant" who was dragged in after beating the hell out of his captain, the second time, on of all things, a white corporal, drunk, who came up and started taunting Jim and the men in the cookhouse, saying he'd be damned if he'd ever fight alongside of "goddamn niggers."

After so many years' experience in the White House, dealing with all kinds of guests, some of them downright hateful of the colored race, Jim at first tried to speak quietly and politely in reply, until the drunken corporal, with the. foulest of oaths, raised a foot, slapped it into Jim's lap, and ordered him to polish his shoe.

The startled corporal was greeted with the revolver, cocked and aimed straight into his face.

"You son of a bitch," Jim snapped, amazed at the words coming out of him, but no longer caring. "Now kindly remove your foot from my lap. President Lincoln would never have done anything like this, and I sure as hell will not take it from trash like you."

Jim shouted for a white officer, and then started to shake, not sure of the reaction that was about to unfold over a black man waving a pistol at a white man, as the officer came running up.

When Jim told the officer what happened, there were a nervous few seconds, the corporal swearing that "no nigger is gonna talk to me like that," even though the cocked revolver was still aimed at his face.

The officer, grinning, then drew his own revolver and suggested that the corporal "comply with Mr. Bartlett's orders," placing an emphasis on the word "mister."

The world was indeed changing this day, Jim realized.

The corporal and the black "sergeant" were "bucked and gagged," the object of ridicule by all who passed. That support from the white officer seemed to have settled things down significantly, and there was little backtalk to Jim as he checked off work schedules, reassigned some men who obviously were not working out as leaders, and detailed off new crews to work as men continued to swarm in throughout the day.

So many were now at work that Jim had assigned his six assistants to be "colonels," each responsible for fifteen work crews, and yet still more were coming in.

Surprisingly, in the last several hours, the chaos had given way to a fair semblance of order. Crews worked four hours on, then were given an hour off to go down to the makeshift cookhouse, where salt pork, hardtack, and coffee were being served out. There were few plates or cups available, the men passing around a bucket with the hot coffee, taking the hot slabs of salt pork, slapping them onto pieces of hardtack, and wolfing them down, then lying down in the shade until called back to work.

At mid
-
aftemoon he was offered a horse. A Yankee cavalry trooper came leading an old swaybacked nag.

"She ain't much, sir," the trooper said, "but me and the boys figure that with you in command it was only proper you should have a horse. We took her from a nearby farm."

Jim smiled with delight, especially over two facts. One that the young trooper had called him sir. The other was the fact that this was not some sad foolish prank to humiliate him; it was a dead-serious gesture of thanks and respect.

He gladly took the horse, though he would never admit it had been years since he had been astride one.

Now mounted, he rode along the line with his six colonels following along, several of them mounted now as well. It gave him the chance to see the progress, and with his makeshift staff he inspected the line. Major Siemens rode over to join him.

"Your men are a wonder, Mr. Barlett," Siemens said as they traveled the line. The preliminary trench had already been dug to shoulder depth and now the rectangular bastions, spaced at regular intervals so as to provide interlocking fields of fire, were going up, too. Men worked on the moats that would surround each, tossing up the dirt to form the fortress walls, which were reinforced with the woven baskets filled with dirt. Clear 'fields of fire were being opened up, entire woodlots disappearing to saws and axes, the lumber being dragged up to pile into the bastions. Smaller logs were being hammered into the ground at a forty-five-degree angle and then the exposed end sharpened. Brush was being stripped of leaves, tied into bundles, and then staked to the ground to provide barriers that would slow and even break up an advancing charge.

Other men were setting to work digging potholes, just eighteen inches deep and eighteen inches wide, a hundred yards or so out from the trench line. A few branch
es and then brush would be laid
over each hole. A man stepping into one at the run, at best, would have a sprained ankle and perhaps even a broken leg. It only took fifteen minutes or so for a good man to dig one and then conceal it, but thousands of such holes could help to shatter a charge, and the men at such work chuckled about how many Johnny Rebs they were going to trip up. A few took the extra effort to drive a sharpened stake into the bottom of the hole, but others said that was unfair, a broken leg was injury enough.

The really hard labor was moving the giant hundred-pounder guns. Each tube weighed over twenty tons, the iron carriage another five tons. No wagons were capable of handling the weight, and the crews had resorted to something that looked like it was out of stories from the Bible. A hundred to two hundred men would be roped to each gun, a few mules added in, if available, greased logs were laid underneath the rough-cut lumber frame the gun rested on, the entire crew then straining to pull the dead weight up the slope and into the half-built bastions. Other crews labored at lugging up the heavy hundred-pound shells, one giant of a man making a display of his attempt to carry two at a time. At most places black laborers and white troops were mingled together, digging side by side.

That, too, thrilled Jim. There had been some hesitation at first by the soldiers to do menial labor next to black men
, but Winfield had laid that to
rest, hobbling up and down the line, shouting, "Boys, it's either dig or eat bullets, so I'm telling you, start digging! I tried eating one of those bullets, and by God they don't digest very well."

A day of labor, the way their black comrades worked on without complaint while many a white soldier was near to collapse, was making them one. Black laborers too tired to walk down to the kitchen areas suddenly found themselves handed a piece of hardtack and salt pork out of the haversack of a soldier who sat down beside him during a break and then offered a canteen to wash it down.

Jim had also organized watering crews, mostly young boys carrying a couple of buckets, moving up and down the line; when the buckets were empty, they'd run down to the river and refill them.

The dangerous job of moving up the bagged gunpowder Jim was more than happy to leave to the white gun crews. Too many of his men were fond of cigars and pipes.

The first of the thirty-pounder Parrotts had come up just after midday, but these arrived with full limbers and one horse-team for every three guns, so they could easily be moved into place.

They rode as far as Nolands Ferry, where the line finally curved back down to the river. A dozen barges were moving up the canal, heading toward the farthermost work site at the upper Point of Rocks.

"Once it gets dark," Siemens said, "have your men stand down, get some food and rest. They've put in one hell of a day."

"Thank you, sir."

"No, it is I thanking you," Jeremiah said with a smile, leaning over to offer his hand.

Headquarters, Army of Northern Virginia 7:00 P.M.

L
ee slowly walked under the awning and sat down, taking off his hat and wiping his brow. Longstreet, Beauregard, Stuart, and Hood were all present, as were Jed Hotchkiss and Walter. Judah Benjamin, who had just arrived from Baltimore, sat slumped over in his chair, nursing a glass of wine.

"A hard day, gentlemen," Lee said, looking about at the gathering illuminated by the glow of coal oil lamps. No one spoke for a moment.

He knew he had to brace them up. They had anticipated a full-out frontal assault, as at Fredericksburg, and instead there had only been the one limited, but very bloody, attack on the left, while all across the day the rest of the line had been engaged in a long-distance firefight of an intensity they had never seen before.

"If only they had come on," Beauregard said, "we would've mowed them down and be in Frederick tonight."

"But they didn't," Lee retorted. "Grant, it seems, is no Burnside."

"They most certainly did on my front," Hood replied sharply. "Jubal Early's Division is a wreck and out of this fight."

"We lost well over eight thousand today," Lee said, "six thousand with Jubal, two thousand at least from the firing along the line, and, frankly, I do not see any permanent results from that loss."