Never Call Retreat - Civil War 03 (50 page)

It had taken nearly an entire day to round up the animals needed to haul the wagons, half the teams having been commandeered from an artillery battalion on direct orders from Longstreet. The gunners had been less than happy with thus being rendered immobile and had tried to pawn off the worst of their nags. It had taken several hours of screaming and threats to get the necessary teams, lead them back to the track, off-load the wagons, and hook them up.

A column of infantry, men bent double, hats pulled low against the rain, staggered by on either side of the road. In another time a mere request would have sent an entire regiment to his aid. He spotted an officer and rode up to him. The man at first actually averted his gaze at Cruickshank's approach. "Colonel, I need your help," Cruickshank said. "Sir?" .

"Your help," and pointed back to the wagon, tilting over, pontoon boat atop it leaning precariously.

"My boys are just beat," the colonel said. "Besides, we've got orders to move as fast as possible to the ferry."

"If we don't get these boats down to that ferry to make the damn bridge, you ain't going nowhere," Cruickshank replied.

The colonel sighed, turned, and called for a sergeant.

"Robinson."

The sergeant major came up without comment. The colonel pointed to the wagon and Robinson sighed. "Yes, sir."

It took several minutes for him to gather up thirty men. Some of them, once stopped, simply went to the side of the road and collapsed into a nearly instant, exhausted sleep. Cruickshank directed them around the wagon, and a couple of ropes were run out for the men to grab hold of.

Meanwhile, behind them the convoy of wagons was stalled; order of march was breaking up as troops stopped, men just going to the side of the road to lie down.

Finally, with a lot of whip cracking, cursing of men, and tragically one man having his foot broken when a wheel ran over him, the wagon was back on the road.

The infantry walked away without comment, the sergeant major shaking men awake, shaking hands with the injured soldier left behind, and the column starting back up again, rain coming down, mist rising from the creek, mules braying, an elderly captain sitting by the side of the road crying, head bowed, no one stopping to ask why.

"General Cruickshank, sir!"

He turned and looked back.

God damn! Another wagon had just stalled in the same place as the first one. He wearily turned and rode back.

Monocacy Creek 10:45 A.M.

T
he sharpshooting back and forth was constant, but Sergeant Hazner could sense it was a halfhearted effort by the other side, as much as it was halfhearted by his. Here and there a few men, the type that took a perverse delight in such things, banged away as ordered. But most of his surviving men were sitting in the bottom of the mud-filled trench, soaking wet, miserable, exhausted.

"Think I got one," a sharpshooter announced. The men to either side of him said nothing, a few looking at him with disgust.

"Ain't you had enough killing?" Hazner asked. The sharpshooter looked over at him and grinned while reloading.

The man stood up and a second later pitched over backwards, slumping down into the trench, dead, shot clean through the forehead. No one spoke for a moment. They just stared at his body.

"Someone wave a white handkerchief," Hazner said.

One of the men pulled out a dirty piece of cloth, held it up over the lip of the trench, and waved it back and forth for a minute.

"OK, push the dumb son of a bitch out," Hazner said.

Several men grabbed the body, hoisted it up, and rolled it over the rear of the trench. As they did so, Hazner risked a quick look.

The landscape below him and on the other side of the creek was blasted, like a painting of hell. The ruined bridges, the raw slashes of earth from trenches, and bodies everywhere, one of them hanging inverted from a tree that had been split in half by a shell.

The area around the Hornets Nest was a nightmare of bodies lying in the rain, heaped up around the sides of the railroad
cuts. A party carrying a white flag, and followed by several ambulances, was at work, pulling wounded out of the tangle.

A minie ball zipped high overhead, and he sensed it was nothing more than a warning shot, that the Yankees on the other side of the creek had allowed the little truce for them to get rid of the dead sharpshooter but now it was back to business. He waved and slid down to the bottom of the trench, and squatting in the mud he fell asleep.

Three Miles East of Monocacy Creek on the Baltimore and Ohio Line Noon

‘I
want the ammunition off of these trains now!" Pete Longstreet shouted. He thought they had been off-loaded during the night. Three million rounds
of
rifle ammunition and ten thousand rounds of artillery, enough to sustain the army through another pitched battle if need be.

Organization was breaking down, that was becoming obvious. Some of the boxes of rifle ammunition were stacked up beside the track, out in the rain. Eventually the water would soak through the wood
siding and ruin it. A few wag
ons and ambulances had been pressed into the service, men loading up, but there was no real effort here, no efficiency. Some batteries had sent their limber wagons back, others, especially the new batteries made up primarily of infantry volunteers, had yet to show up. They were short of horses as it was. They had organized for this battle to fight mainly in place, and now they just didn't have the transport to get their supplies up to the righting men.

Lee should have stayed here,
he thought. In one day the general of the army had gone from near victory to field commander of a battered, makeshift corps in retreat.
He should have stayed here to organize and he sent me instead.

A courier came up the line from the east, riding fast, and

Longstreet saw the man, who had just about ridden past without stopping. He stepped out into the middle of the track and waved him down.

The courier reined in.

"General Longstreet?"

"Yes, that's me."

"Sir, a report from General Armistead, sir." "Go on."

"Sir, he reports he must abandon his movement along the railroad track. At least a brigade of Yankee cavalry has flanked him; in fact, sir, they almost got me right after I started out. They are linking up with General Sykes, whose men are advancing along the National Road. General Armistead reports, sir, that he will continue his withdrawal marching to the southwest toward Urbana and attempt to link back up with the army that way."

"Where is he now?"

"Sir, about ten miles back from here, at Marysville." "Do the Yankees have trains?"

"Yes, sir, damnedest things. Big heavy guns mounted in front of the locomotives. We were breaking up the tracks and slowing them down good yesterday, but when their cavalry started coming in, that pushed us off the tracks."

They could be here in a couple of hours
,
Pete realized and looked over at the ammunition trains.

"Did you see any of Stuart's men?"

"A few patrols, sir, along the track. I warned them as I rode past."

"Fine. Get back to Armistead, tell him to push hard to link up with us."

He didn't say anything else about the army evacuating. The courier turned about and rode off, angling southeast, away from the rail line.

I
have to get this ammunition off the train and up to the line,
Pete realized. Behind him, back toward the front line, he had passed dozens of locomotives, hundreds of cars, all frozen in place, the boilers having gone out The three ammunition trains were the last to get out, all the stalled trains now a barrier that wagons had to squeeze around to get through for a load.

There was the equiva
lent of a hundred and fifty wag
onloads
of
ammunition
on
these trains, and
so
far he had moved less than fifty
of
them. That and a hundred double-caisson loads for the artillery.

At the rate it was going, he sensed they'd never get it all off in time.

He
turned to his staff.

"One
of
you get back to headquarters. Tell Walter Taylor I need more wagons sent back here now, anything, ambulances^ anything. Another
of
you track down Alexander. Tell him
we
have enough ammunition to resupply one hundred guns..."

He
hesitated.

"And tell him to prepare to abandon any
of
his pieces that cannot get together full teams by nightfall."

The two couriers galloped
oft,
and Pete stood alone in the rain, looking east, wondering if at any minute he might
see an
armored train coming down the track.

A major was supervising the off-loading, and he called him over.

"Major, post some sentries down the track a few miles. The Yankees are coming in
on us
from that way. The
mo
ment you
see
them, blow the rest
of
this up."

"Sir?"

"You heard
me,
blow these trains up. Then
as
you pull back, set fire to every train
on
these tracks."

"Hard to do sir, nearly all the locomotives are cold, their fires out."

"Be
ingenious, son," Pete said, trying to smile. "I'm giving you the chance to put the damned
B
and O out
of
business for a long time; you can claim to be the biggest train wrecker in history."

The major smiled back.

"We
'll find a way, sir."

Pete mounted and rode
off,
weaving his way around the long strings
of
boxcars, flatcars, hoppers, and locomotives.

He passed the spot where Lee had almost been killed, wreckage still strewn across the track, and to the empty flat-cars where Cruickshank had finally managed to get the damn pontoon bridges unloaded and moving.

Ahead there was a distant thumping, occasional muffled rattling of rifle fire, just when he had assumed there was nothing serious going on. Grant was just waiting them out now.

Headquarters, Arm
y of the Susquehanna 12:15 P.M.

T
he reassuring click of the telegraph sounded behind him, the replacement crew sending out the first test signal a half hour ago, and now forwarding a full report of the battle and a coded signal by Grant, indicating his belief that Lee was moving his forces toward Hauling Ferry.

Treasury Office Washington, D.C.

12:40 PM.

The cost, merciful God," Lincoln sighed as he sat down, holding the tear sheet just handed over by the telegrapher. "The cost."

Elihu was by his side, reading over his shoulder. "Grant held, though," Elihu said. "He held." There was a touch of exuberance in Elihu's voice, but for the moment Lincoln could not react.

"Estimate our losses at twenty-five thousand or more." He kept rereading that one line.

The signal had been sent directly from Grant, to Hagerstown, from there to Harrisburg, then repeated down to Port Deposit. With the recapture of Baltimore, a victory heralded on the front pages of all new
spapers across the country, the
telegraph line had been restored directly back to Washington.

That number, twenty-five thousand, was now public knowledge. He could picture by this evening hundreds of thousands gathering at telegraphy stations across the nation, anxious parents, wives, children, all waiting for the first casualty reports to come through, names, more names, and yet more names, each one tearing a tragic hole into a family that would never heal.

"Sir?"

It was Elihu, lightly touching him on the shoulder.

Lincoln stirred from his thoughts and looked up.

"Sir, Grant held at Frederick. In fact he reports Lee is retreating, trying to flee Maryland and get across the Potomac to Virginia. That is the coded part which just came through. We have Lee on the run."

Lincoln could only shake his head and sigh.

"Yes, I know, Elihu. As we did last year after Antietam. He slipped the net then and the war continued."

Lost in gloom, Lincoln stood up and walked out of the room. A moment later Elihu heard a clamor out in the street as a cavalry detachment pushed the waiting crowd back, reporters shouting questions, as Lincoln slowly walked across Lafayette Park to return to the White House.

Elihu watched him disappear into the rain, his heart breaking at the sight of the man, who appeared, like Atlas, to be carrying an impossible burden upon his shoulders.

Elihu turned back to the telegrapher.

"A message to Hancock, coded. Inform him to expect a full attack by Lee before the day is out."