The Guns of the South Read online

  Caudell sniffed. Along with the familiar tang of black-powder smoke and the sharper, thinner odor of the nonsmoking powder in AK-47 cartridges, he smelled burning weeds. All that shooting in the undergrowth had set the Wilderness ablaze. He shuddered at the thought of wounded and helpless men in there, watching the little flames lick closer…

  The jingle of horses’ trappings released him from his unpleasant reverie. He glanced back over his shoulder. Where the lowly lieutenant had led the Confederates through the heavy fighting at the crossroads, now Generals Kirkland and Heth were here to see how things stood. That was the way the world worked, Caudell thought.

  “How clean the men look,” William Kirkland said, a remark seldom made about the Army of Northern Virginia, especially after some hours of combat.

  Henry Heth, quicker on the uptake, figured out why: “They haven’t been biting cartridges all day, not with these new brass ones, so they’ve no need to look as though they were in a blackface minstrel show.”

  “That’s true, by God,” Kirkland said. “I hadn’t thought about it.” Caudell hadn’t thought about it, either. After his struggle through the forest, he suspected he was quite grimy enough for any ordinary purpose.

  He used the lull in the fighting to take some cartridges out of his pockets and refill the banana clips he’d emptied. Another horse came clopping down the Orange Plank Road, a dark-maned gray—Where Caudell had sat and tended to his business in the presence of his brigade and division commanders, he scrambled to his feet for General Lee. So did most of the other soldiers close by.

  “As you were, gentlemen, please.” Lee peered north up the Brock Road toward the blue-clad bodies that corduroyed it like so many planks. “Those people are paying dearly for every acre of Wilderness they hold,” he remarked as he turned to look south. “Henry, push such forces as you can spare down along this road, if you please. General Hancock will be along shortly, unless I miss my guess.”

  “Yes, General Lee,” Heth said. “We might have been in a bad way if he’d hit us from the south at the same time as Getty was coming down from the north.”

  “So we might have,” Lee said, “but however brave its men may be, coordination of attacks has never been the Army of the Potomac’s strong suit.”

  A good thing, too, Caudell thought. A dispatch rider galloped up to Lee. He held reins in one hand, an AK-47 in the other, and his message between his teeth. Lee read it, nodded, and rode off with him.

  After reloading, Caudell lit up a cigar. He’d only taken a couple of drags on it when General Heth said, “I expect you heard what General Lee wants, boys. The sooner we get moving, the farther south we’ll get, and the better the works we’ll be able to set up before Hancock’s men hit us.”

  The Confederates at the crossroads would have obeyed some commanders only slowly and reluctantly; they’d already seen their share and more of hard fighting for the day. But Heth and Kirkland and their staff officers rode down the road in front of the infantry, as if the idea that danger might lie ahead had never entered their minds. With that example before them, the foot soldiers followed readily enough. Fresh troops coming up the Orange Plank Road took their places at the breastwork they’d built.

  A little more than a quarter of a mile south of the crossroads, the Brock Road narrowed and bent slightly to the east. Heth reined in. “This looks to be a good spot, boys,” he said. “We’ll stop ‘em right here.”

  The soldiers attacked the timber on either side of the road for the field fortifications, mixed earth and stones in with the logs. Off in the woods, Caudell heard men making even ruder works to protect themselves from Yankee bullets.

  Just as the skirmishers Heth had pushed out south of his main line began to fire, a couple of ammunition wagons brought fresh cartridges down the road. “Better not be them goddam Minié balls,” several soldiers growled, using almost identical words. This time, they weren’t. Caudell filled his pockets again, crouched behind the breastwork, and waited.

  More and more single shots from Yankee Springfields mingled with the bark of the skirmishers’ repeaters. The skirmishers crashed back through the undergrowth to Heth’s main line. “We stung ‘em,” one called, off in the woods.

  Federal skirmishers came first, trotting up the Brock Road to learn what lay ahead for their comrades. They stopped short when they spied the rebel breastwork that barred their path. One of the bluecoats raised his rifle musket to his shoulder, fired. The bullet kicked up dust a few yards short of the barricade. The Yankee dove into the bushes to reload. His companions turned and ran south to report what they’d seen.

  A minute or so later, the head of the main Federal line came into view. Caudell’s stomach churned. Lee might remark that the Yankees had trouble putting their attacks together, but every one they made was fierce. “Fire at will!” a Confederate officer shouted.

  “Which one’s Will?” some army wit shouted back. That stupid joke got made on every firing line, Yankee or rebel. Somehow it helped Caudell relax.

  The front rank of Federals suddenly dropped to one knee. The second rank took aim over their heads. A couple of Yankees fell over or reeled back out of line—the Confederates had already begun to shoot: But then the Northerners’ muskets, all in a row, belched flame and great curls of greasy black smoke.

  Caudell thought the rebel beside him at the breastwork had tapped him on the left shoulder. He automatically glanced down. Neat as a tailor’s scissors, a bullet had clipped his uniform without touching him. He shuddered. He could not help it. Lower by only a couple of fingers’ breadth, and his precious arm would have ended up on the slaughterhouse pile outside a surgeon’s tent…if he’d managed to make it back to a surgeon’s tent at all.

  The fellow beside him, who he thought had tapped him, would never need a surgeon again. A Minié ball had clipped him, and clipped off the top of his head. Blood and shattered brains poured from the wound as he slowly toppled over backwards.

  Caudell looked away, tried not to hear the cries of other men who had been wounded close by. Gettysburg had hardened him to horror. And if he did not help slay the Yankees rushing up the Brock Road toward the barricade behind which he crouched, he and all his fellows, hale and wounded alike, would surely perish.

  The Yankees were reloading as they ran; most of them had to stop to use their ramrods. Caudell and everyone else on the breastwork who could still handle a rifle fired again and again and again. Men in blue coats began to drop and kept on falling, faster and faster. A few managed to fire again, but only a few. After that. first volley, the rebels had it all their own way.

  Miraculously, every bullet missed one Federal corporal. His face set and grim, he charged on alone toward the breastwork. “Don’t kill him!”—call ran up and down the line. The Confederates could still admire gallantry, even in a foe.

  Firing slackened for a moment. “Go back, you damned fool!” Caudell shouted to the Yankee. “Look behind you!”

  The corporal’s double-quick faltered as the words reached him. Caudell could see him leave the exalted state in which he’d rushed toward certain death. He knew that state himself; it was all that had sustained him as he advanced on the Union guns up in Pennsylvania. Its ebbing came hard, hard. When it left a man, he felt more drained than after a week of forced marches, and rightly so for with it, he lost spirit as well as strength.

  The Federal did look around. His shoulders sagged as he took in the carnage on the Brock Road, the ruin of his regiment. Some of his comrades were crawling or creeping or dragging themselves away from the dreadful fire of the Confederate repeaters. Others would not move again until the Last Trump sounded.

  The corporal slowly turned back toward the barricade. “You rebs don’t fight fair!” he shouted. Now his exaltation was gone, leaving only (ear behind. He fled into a pine thicket off to one side of the road.

  He was none too soon, for more Federals tramped up the Brock Road a few minutes later. The crossfire would have chewed him to pieces. The bluec
oats came to a ragged halt when they saw what had happened to the first attacking party, but then moved ahead all the same. The South had gone into the war doubting Yankee courage. After three years of fighting, few in the Army of Northern Virginia doubted it anymore.

  This group of Union men attacked more cleverly than had the previous one. Instead of forming a neat firing line—and a target that could not be missed—they advanced in rushes, a few men pausing to shoot while others moved up, then the men who had gained ground ducking into the bushes and providing covering fire for their companions to push ahead.

  Caudell shot, missed, shot again, missed again. A Minié ball buzzed past his head. He involuntarily ducked—only men with no nerves whatever could keep from dodging when bullets zipped by. He fired again, at a Yankee less than two hundred yards away. The fellow threw down his Springfield and grabbed at his shoulder. He lurched away from the front line of fighting. A lot of Confederates were behind the breastwork. Even though Caudell had aimed at the Northerner, he couldn’t be sure his was the round that had wounded him.

  No matter how cleverly, no matter how boldly they attacked the rebel barricade, the Federals on the Brock Road could not drive the defenders from it. The fire from the Confederates, repeaters swept the roadway clean of life. Men fell, killed or wounded, but more replaced them. Teamsters and other soldiers fetched crates of cartridges to the breastwork. Ironic cheers rang out every time the crates proved to contain the proper ammunition. Once or twice they didn’t, and the cartridge-bearers retreated, scorched by curses from the fighting men.

  In the Wilderness proper, especially east of the Brock Road, the Federals were able to come to closer quarters with their foes. Their hurrahs and the boom of their Springfields crept ever nearer the line the Confederates held south of the Orange Plank Road.

  Off to the north, a huge racket of riflery and cannons broke out. Lee had said the Federals had trouble putting their attacks together. They’d managed now. Had they done it sooner, the rebel lines between them would have been thin. The Confederates had won a critical couple of hours to bring more men forward and widen the stretch they held along either side of the Orange Plank Road. The Yankees were hitting them with everything they had now. They had more men. The Confederates had better rifles. Caudell hoped that would do the job.

  Between assaults up the roadway, he filled banana clips, chewed on corn bread and salt pork, and drank from his canteen. The water was warm and turbid. It went down like champagne even so. He and his companions smoked and listened to the gunfire all around and tried to guess how the fighting was going away from their little piece of it.

  “I think we got ‘em,” a beardless soldier declared.

  “Didn’t notice you come up, uh, Melvin,” Caudell said. “Hope you’re right, but I wouldn’t bet on anything yet. They’re putting a lot of their people into the fight this time. We’re holding so far, but—”

  Mollie Bean interrupted him: “Holy Jesus.” She was looking over the breastwork; Caudell sprawled with his back against it. He whirled around. The Federals had given up on subtlety. A deep column of bluecoats, their bayonets fixed, stormed up the Brock Road at the double-quick. Officers trotted ahead of them, urging them on.

  “All or nothin’ this time, boys,” somebody not far from Caudell said. “Them bluebellies is gonna run over us or die tryin’.”

  Caudell vastly preferred the second alternative. He aimed at a color-bearer in front of the first rank. As soon as the advancing Yankees reached the first men lying in the road—some of the wounded, as before to the north, tried to hold their fellows back, but others cheered them on—he started shooting. He did not know if his bullet struck home, but the color-bearer stumbled and fell. Another Yankee caught the regimental flag before it touched the ground, bore it forward a dozen paces more before he, too, was hit. Yet another Federal grabbed it and carried it on. Three more fell before the banner drew close enough for Caudell to read it: SIXTEENTH MASSACHUSETTS. Then still another color-bearer went down and the banner fell in the dust. No one picked it up.

  No one was left to pick it up. Like the corporal before him, that last brave and lucky—at least lucky up to a point—color-bearer pushed far beyond his comrades. The Southerners’ repeaters had worked a fearful slaughter. There was a limit beyond which flesh and blood could not be made to go. Caudell had met that limit on the third day at Gettysburg. Now he and the soldiers crouching to either side of him acquainted the Federals with it.

  But another regiment came in right behind the slaughtered Sixteenth Massachusetts. The Federals leaned forward as they advanced, as if moving into a heavy rain. So they were, but the rain was of lead.

  “This ain’t war!” Mollie Bean yelled in Caudell’s ear. “This here’s murder.”

  “I reckon you’re right.” he answered, “but if we don’t keep shooting them, they’ll surely shoot us.” She kept firing, so he supposed she agreed with him.

  After that second Federal regiment wrecked itself assaulting the barricade, the rebels behind it had another brief respite. They used it to strengthen their protection. “If the Yankees are pushing this hard, they’ll try us again before long,” Caudell said as he set another log in place. By the way the rest of the soldiers worked alongside him, they thought as he did. More ammunition came up. He filled his pockets again. He wondered how many rounds he’d fired. He’d lost track. Far more than on any day with his old Enfield, he was certain. So had everyone else here. The drifts of Yankee corpses in front of the barricade, sometimes two and three men high, testified to that.

  While he worked, Caudell kept an ear cocked to try to gauge how the rest of the battle was going. To the north, Federals and rebels still went at it hammer and tongs; by the sound of things, the line hadn’t moved there, which was all to the good as far as he was concerned. The Yankees also kept trying to break through east of the Brock Road. A sudden flurry of hurrahs said they were close to doing it, too. Rebel yells and the wild snarl of AK-47s fired on full automatic answered them. The hurrahs ebbed.

  “Knocked ‘em back,” Caudell guessed.

  “They just keep comin’,” a soldier said. “Dang fools don’t know when they’s licked.” Remembering Pickett’s charge, Caudell thought that a failing of which both sides were guilty. Just then, the soldier dropped the fence rail he was carrying and snatched up his repeater. “Oh, sweet Jesus, here they is again.”

  The new Federal attacking column marched up the Brock Road in perfect order, fining the roadway from edge to edge, each bluecoat a regulation thirteen inches from the man on either side of him. The Yankees hesitated when they saw ahead of them the ruins of the two regiments that had gone in before them; a few men in the first ranks took half steps instead of fun marching paces. But shouts and curses from officers and sergeants quickly got their lines dressed once more, and they bore down on the breastwork with a hurrah.

  The Confederates broke them. Mollie Bean had the right of it, Caudell thought as he fired again and again—using repeaters against such a bunched target was murder. But he had been right, too, for it was necessary murder if he was to live himself. The Northerners went down like ninepins. But more and more pushed forward to take their places until, at last, they would advance into the face of death no more, but turned and ran for the rear.

  Caudell and his companions on the firing line raised a tired cheer to see them go. Dead and wounded men were thick on the ground behind the barricade, too, even if the Yankees had never come close to reaching it. The soldiers gave what rough first aid they could, and sent to the rear men who could walk. Hospital stewards, some wearing green sashes as their Federal counterparts did, came forward to haul off on stretchers men too badly hurt to travel on their own.

  A small brushfire reached the roadway a couple of hundred yards south of the breastwork. It caught in the clothes of a Federal lying there. A few seconds later, his cartridges began exploding, pop-pop-pop, almost as if they were kernels from an ear of popping corn. Wounded men writhed frant
ically, trying to escape the flames.

  Several Confederates started to scramble over their piled logs and rails and stones to go to rescue the Yankees from the fire. But they scrambled back a moment later, for yet another regiment of Federals appeared, battle flags flying, to hurl their bodies at the barricade.

  Caudell’s repeater was hot in his hands. He’d been shooting at bluecoats the whole day long—forever, it seemed. He glanced through leaves and drifting smoke at the sun. It was getting low in the west. Before too long, night would halt combat if nothing else did.

  After three regiments had tried the barricade and failed, the Brock Road in front of it was clogged with bodies. More than one shot had come from behind them, as lightly wounded men used their comrades’ corpses as barricades of their own. Now dead and wounded alike broke up the neat ranks of the oncoming Federals. They came on all the same. Caudell and his fellows began the grisly task of educating them about what repeaters could do.

  The Federals had sufficient horrid examples right before their eyes. They did not rush with the same élan their predecessors had shown. When men at the head of the column began dropping, the bluecoats behind them hesitated. Through the cries of the wounded, Caudell heard officers screaming at their men, trying to get them to advance in spite of the scourging fire that lay ahead.

  Then, drowning cries and screams alike, a great new eruption of gunfire broke out to the south. The Federals on the Brock Road looked back over their shoulders in surprise and alarm. Even their officers stopped urging them forward for a moment.

  Caudell frowned. As he tiredly wondered what the new fighting was about, Mollie Bean pounded him on the shoulder and yelled, “Longstreet!”

  “Longstreet.” He said the name once with no particular feeling. Then the lightning flashed inside his head. He yelled too; “Longstreet!” If Lee’s war horse had pitched into this Federal corps from —the south while A.P. Hill kept it from going north, the Yankees hereabouts were in more trouble than you could shake a stick at.