March Toward the Thunder Part 23

Louis had been so overwhelmed by the sheer size of City Point, the thousand new sights, that he hadn't noticed what else was truly different about this place. The presence of the fairer s.e.x.

Mon Dieu, there's females everywhere.

It wasn't that he'd not been seeing women over the past four months. Women dressed like women, that is, and not disguised like a man as Mary had been. There'd always been some women around Petersburg or any of the places the Army of the Potomac pitched their tents for more than a night. Some were wives and daughters of sutlers, some were laundresses plying their trade. Others were daughters of Eve earning a living in a less respectable way.

Louis's face grew red as he thought about them. He had no experience with those fallen angels, but he'd heard other older soldiers speak of those women with their forward ways and extravagant clothes.

Fallen angels, Cyprians, ladies of the evening. Those were some of the names he'd heard them called.

These women here at City Point, though, didn't look like the ladies of the night. Their demeanor and dress were modest. They walked with purpose as if on their way to accomplish worthy tasks.

Louis tried not to stare.

"True angels of mercy," Flynn said in a surprisingly tender voice, putting a meaty hand on Louis's shoulder. "Nurses come t' care for our sick and injured. They make me think of me own sweet, modest Lizzy back home in Boston."

Louis turned to look at Flynn. Lizzy? He'd never thought of his sergeant as being anything but a soldier, not a man with someone waiting for him back home. Was that a tear in the corner of Flynn's eye?

Flynn patted Louis's shoulder once more and then turned to walk down the pier.

Louis looked again at the purposeful women around them.

Women nurses. I've read about them.

The Women's Nursing Corps. Another new thing brought into being by this war. Louis took note of the plain brown or black dresses that marked those women as nurses. Standard uniforms for those allowed to join the organization founded by a woman named Dorothea Dix early on in the war.

What was it I saw in the New York Herald about them?

"If a woman is too fond of adorning herself with finery or her face is pretty, she shall be judged unsuitable to join."

Modest and plain, that was how a nurse was supposed to be.

"Let's get us some of that fruit," Artis said.

"Huh?" Louis said. "Oh." His friend was pointing with his chin toward the commissary workers with the baskets of apples and pears.

Joker, Songbird, and Bull joined them. The five made their way over to the edge of the pier where the fruit had been unloaded. Fifty yards downriver from them were broken and blackened timbers-signs of the recent catastrophe.

"Guess you had some fun here last week," Kirk said to an old man with a thick gray beard handing out apples from a basket.

The old man jerked his head toward the right. "Y' wanta hear 'bout that," he said, "y'ought spen' some time with them fellas over there what seen it firsthand."

Louis and Joker looked in the direction the man indicated. A wide field spread with hundreds of tents stretched off into the distance.

"Depot Field Hospital," the old man said proudly. "Two hunnerd acres 'n' ten thousand beds. Makes it 'bout the biggest hospital in the world, don't it? A right popular place. Men's jest dying t' get in there." He guffawed at his own joke.

The five of them took their food to sit in the shade of a tree. As the breeze from the river washed over him, an unfamiliar feeling of contentment came to Louis.

I wouldn't mind spending some time here.

A shadow fell across his feet.

"Don't get too comfortable, men."

The five men looked up at Corporal Hayes, pointing up the river with a hand that held a half-eaten apple.

"Re-forming the company over there. Boarding that barge in ten minutes."

Louis looked up and his eyes met those of their corporal.

Here we go again, the look on Hayes's face said.

As soon as the last man had tromped across the planks, the transport barges began to steam away, heading east from City Point. Joker elbowed his way next to Louis, who stood leaning over the rail.

"A fine rumor's being spread," Kirk said, putting an arm around Louis's shoulders. "If we go downriver they'll be sending us to Was.h.i.+ngton so as we can help recruit and train more men to fill in the gaps. And wouldn't that be fine?"

"Better," Louis said. "Too good to be true."

Downriver. Out of the fighting?

At Wilson's Landing, twelve miles below the point, they anch.o.r.ed for the evening. At midnight, though, the anchors were weighed and the engines reversed. Back upriver they went until the light of dawn showed their true destination. They pulled in to sh.o.r.e by a familiar-looking pontoon bridge.

"Deep Bottom," Corporal Hayes said in a sepulchral tone.

We've been here before.

"Lads," Flynn intoned, his voice heavy with irony, "once again our orders are easy ones. Our simple task is t' break through the Rebel lines and take Richmond."

CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO.

REAMS STATION.

Wednesday, August 24, 1864

Louis sat back to back with Artis as they refilled their cap boxes from the new supply of s.h.i.+ny copper percussion caps, each shaped like a little top hat.

More than a week had pa.s.sed since they'd disembarked from the transport barges and made their first two-hour march. Under the blazing sun of midday, it had been so hot that two men fell dead out of the line of march from heatstroke. And that had just been the start of their trial by fire.

A few yards away from them, Songbird was recounting the latest battle at Deep Bottom to an awed circle of recruits- brand-new arrivals about to be pressed into service for the first time in this campaign.

You can almost read the word green on their foreheads. No need to learn their names. They won't last long enough.

Meanwhile, Songbird's words were coming close to a martial hymn.

"New earthworks had been thrown up near the New Market Road since our previous battles. Impregnable, they seemed, perched high as hawks on the steep hill above us," Devlin intoned. "But the brave remnants of our brigade pushed forward, bent double from the effort, holding our fire, whilst ball and sh.e.l.l buzzed above us like great evil bees. Brigadier General Francis Barlow of the First Division-brave soldier but a petty man-had doubted from the start we could prevail. He was sure that we'd be broken, but we did not fail. With a great-throated shout that near drowned out even the roar of shot and sh.e.l.l, we rushed like a sweeping tempest through the foe. 'Twas a grand victory."

Louis fastened the cap box shut at the exact same moment as Artis.

The two exchanged a nod and a glance, then began filling their cartridge boxes with .58-caliber ammunition at the same rapid clip.

Victory. You might call it that if you don't count the cost.

Reinforcements had come up against them, their advance had been halted. Under a flag of truce the two sides had spent the better part of the next day retrieving and burying their dead.

Their job now was to move on Reams Station to destroy the Weldon railroad. Only lightly defended-or so they were told.

So few of us veterans left, it had better be that. New fish trying to swim against the tide? Draftees, not worth the powder to blow them to Kingdom Come.

Men forced into the army would as often run as fight. Not like the friends who'd been by his side and, by the grace of Ktsi Nwaskw, still remained there. Somehow, those closest to him since Merry's departure had survived. Devlin and Kirk, Belaney, Corporal Hayes, Sergeant Flynn and Artis. The six of them, himself making it a lucky seven. All there was of a platoon that had once numbered twenty in an Irish Regiment of a thousand that was now fewer than five hundred men.

What odds does that set against any of us getting through another fight? Our luck is due to run out. Overdue.

He finished filling the cartridge box, raised his hands, and looked over at Artis-who had finished a moment ahead of him and wore a small satisfied smile.

"That makes two apples you owe me," Artis drawled.

"If I ever see one again," Louis said.

They glanced over at one of the groups of new men sitting together fifty feet away from Artis and him. Confused farm boys who'd been forced into the army like cattle being driven to the stockyard. One of them, who was having a hard time fumbling his caps into the box, lifted his head to smile at them. Louis quickly turned away.

No. I don't want to make any more friends and see them get killed.

He turned his eyes toward the sky, listening for a rumble of thunder. Back home they'd be harvesting the green corn now. How long had it been since he'd had any thoughts in his mind of working the land rather than fighting to take it? It seemed forever. But in terms of days and weeks, in truth, not that long.

August 25th tomorrow. May 4th when we crossed the Rapidan. Three months and eleven days.

As planned, they moved out at dawn. Their position was to the left of the Fifth Corps. But as they began to tear up the rails, they were attacked from the flank and the rear. In no time at all, the twelve pieces of artillery they'd brought to the battle were taken by the Confederate soldiers and turned on them. No support from the new recruits. Once the fighting began, the entire division refused to move forward or discharge their weapons. The Irish Brigade was on its own.

Louis heard the sick thud of a minie ball striking flesh. He looked to his left. Belaney lay on the ground beside him, his face pale and blood pouring from a great wound in his shoulder.

Louis reached toward Bull. Someone grabbed at his coat. Sergeant Flynn.

"There," Flynn shouted, pus.h.i.+ng him back, pointing to a line of partially dug trench near the station. Other members of the Brigade were already taking cover there.

"Behind them breastworks."

Sergeant Flynn's hat flew off. He clutched at his temple. He took two slow steps and toppled like a great oak tree.

Someone else pulling at Louis's arm. Artis.

Artis's lips moved. Louis couldn't hear the words. There was a roaring in his ears like a storm wind.

Move! Artis was mouthing. Move.

Louis willed his feet forward, found himself kneeling behind the wall of earth Flynn had pointed to before being hit.

Corporal Hayes was shouting orders, tears streaming down his face, dripping off the ends of his mustache.

Keep it up! Pour it on.

The charge came at them.

They fired and loaded, fired and loaded. The Rebels fell back.

Another charge. Fire and load. Fire and load. One wave of Rebel attackers after another.

Such desperate courage in those grayback boys who refused to quit.

Handle. Tear. Charge. Draw. Ram. Prime. Shoulder. Aim. Fire!

I wish there was some other way.

Another wave of enemy soldiers. .h.i.t the entrenchment. Corporal Hayes grappled with a Southerner whose bearded face and dark-stained uniform made him look more like a bear than a man. They fell over the breastworks and were lost from Louis's sight.

More cannons firing on them. A Union officer with the insignia of a lieutenant shouting.

Abandon the works.

Crouching, moving back. Joker lurching as if struck in his side by a great hammer. No time to stop. Load and fire.

In the woods now. Trees giving some cover, not enough. A great splinter of wood flying from the pine next to him. A mist of red springing up from Songbird's neck, his finger pulling the trigger of his Springfield that fired one last time as he crumpled.

All of them but Artis and me.

He tried to raise his rifle to his shoulder. To his surprise there was no strength in his arms. Not only that, he was no longer standing. For some reason he was on his back. A warm wet feeling on his side. His left leg was splayed out at a strange angle. His blue trousers turning bright red at his lower thigh. Red. Crimson red, the color of a cardinal's wing spreading wider.

No pain. Hard to speak or breathe. No sounds of thunder. No sound at all.

The sky. There, up through gaps in the trees where exploding sh.e.l.ls knocked out the tops of the forest. Clouds in the sky, white cotton on blue cloth.

Not dark yet.

"Nigawes," he whispered.

Then his voice would no longer work. So, in his mind he called, called with all his heart.