Walter Williams - No Spot of Ground

Moses’s eyes widened. “My God,” he said.

“Take that cap to General Anderson with my compliments! Tell him I will need his support!”

Moses picked up the cap. “Yes, sir.”

Poe lunged among the prisoners, snatching off caps, throwing them to his aides. “Take that to General Lee! And that to Ewell! And that to A.P. Hill! Say I must have their support! Say that Wright is here!”

As Moses and Poe’s aides galloped away, the firing died down to almost nothing. One side or another had given way.

Poe returned to his seat and waited to see which side it had been.

*

It was Poe’s division that had given way in the woods, but not by much. Messengers panting back from his brigades reported that they’d pushed the Yanks as far as possible, then fallen back when they could push no more. The various units were trying to reestablish contact with one another in the woods and form a line. They knew the Yankee assault was coming.

Pull them back? Poe wondered. He’d made his case to his superiors? maybe he’d better get his men back into their trenches before the Yanks got organized and smashed them.

Action, he thought, and reaction. The two fundamental principles of the operating Universe, as he had demonstrated in Eureka . His attack had been an action; the Yankee reaction had yet to come.

He tapped gloved fingers on the arm of his chair while he made careful calculations. The Yankees had been struck in the right flank as they were marching south along narrow forest roads. Due to surprise and their tactical disadvantage, they had been driven in, then, as the rebel attack dissipated its force, turned and fought. This reaction, then, had been instinctive- they had not fought as units, which must have been shattered, but as uncoordinated masses of individuals. The heavy forest had broken up the rebel formation in much the same manner, contributing to their loss of momentum.

The Yankees would react, but in order to do so in any coordinated way they would have to reassemble their units, get them in line of battle, and push them forward through trees that would tend to disperse their cohesion. Wright had three divisions; normally it would take a division about an hour, maybe more, to deploy to the right front from a column of march. The woods would delay any action. The bluecoats’ own confusion would worsen things even more. Say two hours, then.

Any attack made before then would be uncoordinated, just local commanders pushing people forward to the point of contact. Poe’s men could handle that. But in two hours a coordinated attack would come, and Poe’s division would be swamped by odds of at least three to one, probably more.

Poe looked at his watch. He would keep his men in the woods another ninety minutes, then draw them back. Their presence in the woods might serve to make the Yanks cautious, when what Grant really wanted to do was drive straight forward with everything he had.

His thoughts were interrupted by a message from Evander Law on his left flank. He and Gregg had about completed their preparations to advance, the messenger reported, when they discovered that Hancock’s men across the woods were leaving their trenches and preparing to attack them . Gregg and Law had therefore returned to their trenches to ready themselves for the attack.

Poe bit back on his temper. It might be true. He would have to see in person. He told one of his aides to remain there and direct any messages to the left of the line, then told Sextus to ready his buggy.

Sextus looked at him in a sullen, provoking way. He was cradling the arm Poe had struck with his cane.

“You’ll have to drive yourself, massa,” he said. “You broke my arm with that stick.”

Annoyance warmed Poe’s nerves. “Don’t be ridiculous! I did not hit you with sufficient force. Any schoolboy-”

“I’m sorry, massa. It’s broke. I broke an arm before, I know what it’s like.”

Poe was tempted to hit Sextus again and break the arm for certain; but instead he lurched for his buggy, hopped inside, and took the reins. He didn’t have the time to reason with the darky now. Sextus heaved himself up into the seat beside Poe, and Poe snapped the reins. His staff, on horseback, followed.

The battle broke on the left as he drove, a searing, ripping sound bounding up from the damp, dead ground. Poe seized the whip and labored his horse; the light buggy bounded over the turf, threatened to turn over, righted itself.

The first attack was over by the time Poe’s buggy rolled behind Law’s entrenchments, and the wall of sound had died down to the lively crackle of sharpshooters’ rifles and the continual boom of smoothbore artillery. It took Poe a while to locate Law- he was in the first line of works- and by the time Poe found him, the second Yankee attack was beginning, a constant hammering roar spreading across the field.

Law stood in the trench, gnawing his lip, his field glasses in his hand. There was a streak of powder residue across his forehead and great patches of sweat under the arms of his fine gray jacket. Law jumped up on the firing step, jostling his riflemen who were constantly popping up with newly loaded muskets, and pointed. “Gibbon’s men, sir! The Black Hats! Look!”

Poe swung himself up behind the brigadier, peered out beneath the head log, and saw, through rolling walls of gunsmoke and the tangle of abatis, lines of blue figures rolling toward him. He heard the low moaning sound made by Northern men in attack, like a choir of advancing bears. The ones coming for him were wearing black felt hats instead of their usual forage caps, which marked them as the Iron Brigade of Gibbon’s division, the most hard-hitting unit of the hardest-hitting corps in the Yankee army.

We’ve got two brigades here , Poe thought frantically, and we’ve got an entire corps coming at us .

A Yankee Minie whacked solidly into the head log above him. Poe jerked his head back and turned to Law. The smell of powder was sharp in his nostrils. The air filled with the whistling sound of cannon firing canister at close range.

“You must hold, sir! No going back!”

Law grinned. “Do you think the Yankees’ll let us go back?”

“Hold to the last! I will bring up support!”

Law only looked at him as if he were mad. And then the Yankees were there, their presence at first marked by a swarm of gray soldiers surging back from the firing step, almost knocking Poe from his feet as he was carried to the muddy back of the trench, the soldiers pointing their muskets upward, groping in their belts for bayonets.

Poe reached automatically for one of his Le Mat revolvers and then realized he’d left them in his headquarters tent- they were just too heavy to carry all the time. His only weapon was his stick. He stiffened and took a firmer grip on the ivory handle. His mind reeled at the suddenness of it all.

The sky darkened as bluecoats swarmed up on the head log, rifles trained on the packed Confederates.

The Stars and Stripes, heavy with battle honors, rose above the parapet, waved by an energetic sergeant with a bushy red beard and a tattered black hat. Musketry crackled along the trench as men fired into one another’s faces. “Look at ’em all!” Law screamed. “Look at ’em all!” He shoved a big Joslyn revolver toward the Yankees and pulled the trigger repeatedly. People were falling all over. Screams and roars of defiance and outrage echoed in Poe’s ears.

He stood, the sound battering at his nerves. All he could do here, he thought bitterly, was get shot. He was amazed at his own perfect objectivity and calm.

And then the Union standard-bearer was alone, and grayback infantry were pointing their rifles at him.