March Toward the Thunder Part 20

Good ground to hunt in for a man who knows it. Bad for keeping an army together.

Within a hundred yards Wright's corps lost contact with Birney's.

Louis drew a third arrow coming from the west.

And here comes Rebel General A. P. Hill and his men. Hitting right in between our two separated Union commanders, holding off Wright with one division and mauling us with the other.

The only thing they'd been able to do was retreat. And even that had been bungled. Not that many killed or wounded, but so many cut off and caught. A whole Union battery-six cannons and all their crew. Hundreds and hundreds of soldiers so beat down by weeks of battle that they just threw down their rifles and raised up their hands.

Louis thanked his lucky stars for his good night vision and always being able to remember ground he'd crossed. He'd helped E Company get back through the woods in a fighting retreat, kept their battle flag from being taken.

That, at least, is something we can be proud about.

No flag of the 69th had ever been lost to the enemy, right on down to this last battle. According to Flynn, no other regiment of men in blue could make that claim.

Louis thought about those who had been taken along with their flags. Seventeen hundred of the Second Corps now on their way to Andersonville, the Rebel prison that was one step lower than Hades.

I don't think I could stand that.

Being captured worried him more than being a casualty. According to last week's newspapers, that prison camp down in Georgia held more than thirty thousand men penned like hogs. The only two ways out were escape or death. Lots of ways to die there, too-starvation, sickness, getting beaten to death or shot by the guards.

Back at the start of this war, Louis knew, when one side captured a man from the other side, they'd just ask him to promise not to do any more fighting and then let him go. That hadn't worked so well, seeing as how the Union found itself capturing the same men again and again. Then they tried prisoner exchanges. That meant if you got caught, you'd be treated pretty well, since you could be used to get back some of the other side's own boys.

Now those days are long past.

No more prisoner exchanges.

The North can afford to lose more men than the South. By keeping those Rebel boys in our own prison camps-like the one in Elmira-we're slowly draining them dry. No matter that our boys are rotting in Andersonville. Plus it's different now that we're throwing the Colored Troops against them. That's really made the Rebs mad. They catch a black soldier, the usual thing that they do is just kill him outright.

Louis sc.r.a.ped the point of his stick across the ground, wiping out the lines and arrows he'd drawn. No sense to it. No matter how many diagrams you drew, war was just plain crazy and nothing in it would ever be simple. Louis sighed. Too much thinking about it was just making it worse. All you could do was try your best and help the men closest to you.

Louis studied the position of the sun. A good hour left before they'd have to a.s.semble for roll call. He could crawl back into the tent next to Songbird. But even that seemed like too much of an effort right now. He leaned his arms and head forward on his knees and closed his eyes.

Hope I don't dream.

And in what seemed no more than the time it took to close his eyes, a hand was shaking him. He looked up at Corporal Hayes. One of the corporal's eyes was closed, the ends of his mustache were singed, and the left side of his face was swollen and scratched.

That big tree limb that was knocked loose by a sh.e.l.l and fell on him during the retreat.

Despite the bruises, the impa.s.sive look on the corporal's face was gone.

"The sergeant wants to have a word with us all," Hayes said, pulling Louis to his feet. "And thanks again, Chief," the corporal added in a softer voice, patting him on the shoulder, "for lifting up that heavy tree limb. I would have been caught for sure by those Rebs who were on our tails."

"Wasn't nothing," Louis said, "sir."

"Lads," Sergeant Flynn said, "I'm glad t' see ye hale and hearty. But as ye know, the rest of our lads were not so lucky. There's so few of us left that our three New York Regiments, the Sixty-third, the Sixty-eighth, and our own Fightin' Sixty-ninth are bein' consolidated."

Flynn paused and as he did so Joker raised a bandaged hand.

"Sergeant, can you tell me what it means to be consolly-dated? Will it hurt much?"

It was a weak joke, but a few men still laughed. The laughter, though, quickly died away as the serious look stayed on their master sergeant's face.

"T' be consolidated means that our poor regiments have been so shot into pieces that"-he held up three fingers on his right hand and then grasped them with his left-"we'll all three be combined into one. Now, that's not such a bad thing, for our own Captain Richard Moroney of the Sixty-ninth is to be the man in command of the consolidated regiment. But that's not the whole of it. As you know, we lost Colonel Kelly, our commanding officer of the Second Corps, last Sat.u.r.day. And we'll not see his like again for that cool courage and gentle manners and modesty and honesty of his that made us love him."

Flynn took off his cap and held it over his heart for a moment of silence. There'd been no irony in his words, even though Louis knew that the sergeant shared their opinions about the foolishness of the orders that had led to the suicidal charge the day before.

"So," Flynn said, "to reward us for all our sacrificin', the army will not be replacing him. Instead, our own dear brigade is itself to be consolidated into the Third Brigade of the Second Division under the command of Colonel Thomas Carroll. 'Tis an ungracious and ungenerous measure, but it's not for us to decide. The Irish Brigade as it once was is no more, though the name will still be used for our command unit."

Flynn's face looked so dark and dismal that Louis wished he could think of some words to say to encourage him. Seeing their st.u.r.dy sergeant so cast down lowered their weary spirits even more.

Louis began to count them up in his head.

The Wilderness.

The b.l.o.o.d.y Angle where Possum had died.

Then Scarecrow and Happy right after.

That awful fight where Captain Blake had fallen at his feet.

They'd lost Merry then too. But in a way that brought no hurt to his heart. The little private was safe at home. Louis had read aloud the letter Mary sent to him and the other men in their mess. She missed them and thought them-next to her husband-to be the finest men on all of G.o.d's green earth. She would always regard them as brothers. Her husband, though he'd walk with a cane all his life, had survived in good enough shape. She was nursing him back to health. The door to the O'Shea home would always be open for any and all of them. She'd always keep an extra place set at their table. Even Kirk had grown misty-eyed.

Then, after Mary left them, had come the crossing of the river.

Cold Harbor.

Petersburg. Those Maine innocents marching to their deaths.

Louis looked down at his boots. And who'll be next?

"Excuse me, sir," a voice said.

It was Devlin breaking the silence as usual-though with a question and not a song.

"I heard a rumor that we've a colonel or two forwarding the draft back in New York," Devlin said. "Won't that swell our ranks back up again?"

Flynn laughed, but the laugh was a bitter one. "And who do ye think they'll find to send us?" he said. "The best and the bravest have all volunteered by now and far too many of them are but faces beneath the sod. We'll be sent a batch of laggards and left-behinds who've finally joined up for nothing but the bounty."

Louis looked over at Bull Belaney, who raised an eyebrow back at him.

"Not all of us who signed for the money have turned out that bad," Louis said, surprising himself and Flynn.

Flynn took off his cap and dusted it with his meaty hand.

"Begorrah," he said in a softer voice as he looked around all that remained of his company, "I'm not meanin' t' speak ill of any man here. Ye've been fine lads, every one of ye. I know that among ye are men who signed for the bounty and turned out to be tigers. What worries me now is that the ones they'll be getting through their draft-forced to join up whether they like it or no-will be as green as the gra.s.s and just as witless. And when the first shots are fired, where do ye suppose they'll go?"

CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT.

THE MINE.

Thursday, July 28, 1864

Louis stood ramrod straight as he handed the thick sheaf of papers to the officer.

Courier duty. A sight better to carry paper than a rifle and a pack. Even if the papers end up weighing more.

Observing how the rough plank table was piled high with white pages, he had to hold back a smile.

You could build a barricade five feet high around this camp with all the paper used every week by this Grand Army of the Potomac.

At least three copies of every order and everything else under the sun put down on paper.

Muster sheets listing how many men were in each company and regiment.

Requisition sheets for anything from blankets to ammunition. Quartermaster reports, making careful note of everything in the way of supplies that went in and out, not counting what was stolen or sold on the side.

Maneuver orders-more hopeful guesses than accurate predictions.

General reports-what the officers said happened, as opposed to what really took place.

Promotions and rea.s.signments-some political, some deserved, some too late for men already rea.s.signed to the grave.

And thinking of paper . . .

Louis felt his pocket. The latest letter from his mother was still there.

Come home soon.

He would write his mother-and, yes, Azonis-later that day. He would tell them that he was healthy and whole. But he would not say anything about being home soon.

This war is going to last a while. Unless maybe the mine works.

He took out a kerchief and stopped to wipe his forehead. All around him people were either moving about listlessly or seeking the shade. The only spot where hard work went on without cease was in the little valley below the abandoned railroad cut. That was where Louis was headed.

Louis squeezed some of the moisture out of his kerchief and watched as the drops of sweat were quickly absorbed into the dry red dirt. Hot as June had been, July was hotter. If Old Jeff Davis was the devil, as his friend Jeff said, then the head of the Rebels had to be pleased as all get out about this summer. All you needed was the smell of brimstone to think you were in that fiery place where Pere Andre said the unrepentant sinners ended up. Even at midnight, heat still rose up from the Southern soil. Hot as blazes.

It wasn't just this heat that might make the Rebel president and his generals grin like demons. The months just past had been one disaster after another for the Union. Louis wiped his head again with the kerchief and made his way around a line of unhitched wagons. Some of the men from the Ninth were behind the wagons, laughing and joking as they played cards.

Louis raised his hand in a friendly wave.

They smiled and waved back. None of them seemed to be sweating.

Why is it that those fellows aren't bothered so much by the heat? Is it because their ancestors came from Africa? Or is it just that they were born down here?

"Louis," one of the men yelled, "y'all wanta play?"

"Maybe later," Louis called back.

Since Jeff had introduced Louis to some of his friends in the Ninth Corps, those men knew Louis by sight and always said howdy. Jeff's own Eighteenth Corps wasn't part of the big plan, but the black men of the Ninth were mightily involved.

The Ninth had been drilling, practicing maneuvers they'd soon be called upon to undertake. Pour through the breach blasted in the Rebel lines to take the rail hub of Petersburg in one quick thrust.

Providing the thing works.

Louis had his doubts that the explosion would do more than shake the earth under the Southerners' feet.

One of the colored soldiers farther back from the card players made eye contact with Louis. He nodded at the skillet he held over a fire and then touched his lips.

Eat with me?

Gabriel, one of Jeff's cousins. They'd belonged to the same white master and worked together building this section of the Dimmock Line. Gabriel's skin was a lighter brown than Louis's. He was slightly built and short and looked younger than Louis's own fifteen years. Louis had asked him how old he was. But Gabriel's answer had been the one many black soldiers gave to such a question.

"My ole ma.s.sah didn't keep record of such things. Ole nuff t' work is all."

Louis held up his right hand, palm out, pointed with his chin in the direction he was going, then nodded back toward Gabriel.

Got somewhere to go, maybe later?

Gabriel's answering smile and nod showed he understood. Like Indians, former slaves knew how to get things across to each other without using words.

Louis started down the slope to the hole in the bank out of sight of the Southern fortifications 150 yards uphill. Different today down near the mouth of the mine. Before there'd been two long lines of men at work. One line lugging away buckets of earth or pus.h.i.+ng wheelbarrows cobbled together from hardtack boxes. The other line bringing in timbers and planks salvaged from an abandoned sawmill to use for shoring.

Today, though, there was only one line. Nervous-looking men unloading and carrying in kegs of black powder.

Oh my!

Louis sat down under the thin shade of a small scrub pine to watch.

The rail-thin sergeant standing down by the wagons and supervising had explained the operation to Louis. His name was Harry Reese. Like others of the 48th Pennsylvania he'd been a hard coal miner before the war. Like so many other sergeants in the Union Army, he was a friend of Flynn's. That was how Louis had come to meet Reese three weeks ago near the start of July, when things had settled in to a blessedly quiet stand-off between the two armies.

"Louis, m'lad," Sergeant Flynn had said, "come t' me here. I've a wee errand for ye. Run this pouch of tobaccy over t' me friend Sergeant Reese in the Forty-eighth. Take yer time. With that inquirin' mind of yers, ye might find it interestin' to see what those boys are up to."

Interesting hardly describes it.