The Confederates worked like men possessed. Attacking the Federals’ fixed positions at Gettysburg had taught them the value of field fortifications, no matter how quickly improvised. Caudell dragged fallen logs across the roadway to help seal it off. On the other side of the junction with the Orange Plank Road, more soldiers ran up breastworks facing south. Still others started building barricades along the Orange Plank Road east from the Brock Road.
The first lieutenant seemed to be the highest-ranking officer around. “Run ‘em back west, too,” he said. “If the Yankees can’t go through us, they’ll try to go around. They have to reconnect, or we chew ‘em up in detail.” He grabbed two men by their jackets. “Go back and tell ‘em to fetch us all the cartridges they can. We’re going to need ‘em.”
The privates sprinted off. In a way, Caudell envied them. He’d already seen his share of fighting this morning. If he stayed here, he would see a lot more than his share. He hunkered down behind the thickest log he could find and settled himself to wait.
He did not wait long. A party of Yankee horsemen came trotting down the Brock Road toward the breastworks. They pulled up in obvious dismay as soon as they saw them.
The first lieutenant whooped. “Too late, Yankees! Too late!”
The horsemen—officers, some of them, by their fancy trappings—rode forward again, more slowly now, to see just what sort of barrier the Confederates had built and how many of them crouched behind it. Caudell took careful aim at the lead man, whose gray hair said he might be of high rank. The range was long, close to a quarter mile, but worth a try. He rested the barrel of the rifle on the log in front of him, took a deep breath, let it out, pulled the trigger.
The Yankee tilted in the saddle, as if he’d had too much to drink before he mounted. He slid off his horse and crashed to the dirt of the Brock Road. “Good shot!” shouted one of the men by Caudell. He and several others started firing at the men who had leaped down to help their stricken comrade. The Federals heaved him over the back of the horse. They all galloped away, though a couple of them reeled as if they were hit.
“Skirmishers forward!” the lieutenant said. “There’ll be more where those came from.”
Men hurried up the road and north through the woods. An ammunition wagon reached the crossroads. Its horses were lathered and blowing. Caudell and several other soldiers helped the driver unload crate after crate of cartridges. The wagon also carried hatchets and shovels. The driver passed those out, too, so the men could strengthen the breastworks in whatever time was left before the enemy descended on them.
A corporal pried the lid off an ammunition crate. He started to reach down for a handful of cartridges, stopped and stared in disbelieving disgust. “What the hell goddam bucket-headed jackass sent us up a load of Minié balls?” The whole crate was full of paper cartridges for the rifle muskets the Army of Northern Virginia no longer carried.
By the howls of rage that rose from several other soldiers, they’d made the same unwelcome discovery. Caudell ground his teeth in fear and fury. A big part of the Army of the Potomac was bearing down on him. He and his comrades would need every possible round, and here were boxes and boxes of cartridges they couldn’t use. “I just brung ‘em up here,” the wagon driver protested when the angry Confederates rounded on him. “I didn’t load ‘em in.”
A few hundred yards to the north, the skirmishers began a brisk fire. A couple of them let go on full automatic. Caudell scowled and worked his jaws harder. Either they were overeager or a whole lot of Yankees were on the way, all packed together. He suspected he knew which.
“Here’s the right ones!” somebody shouted, his voice rising in relief. Caudell hurried over, grabbed a couple of magazines, and stuffed them into his pockets. The firing was getting closer in a hurry, not just AK-47s but also the familiar deep roar of Springfields. Under the gunfire came the tramp of marching men.
The Confederate skirmishers dashed back toward the breastworks. Some turned to fire last shots. Others just scrambled over the barricade or off into the concealing woods.
“Yankees!” The shout came from a dozen throats at once, Caudell’s among them. A thick blue column appeared on the Brock Road, a sword-swinging officer at its head. He pointed his sword at the Confederates’ makeshift works. The Northern men, their bayonets gleaming even in the uncertain light, upped their pace to double-quick. They cheered as they charged, not the wild rebel yell but a more studied, rhythmic “Hurrah! Hurrah!”
Caudell thumbed his change lever to full automatic. His rifle spat flame. He used up what was left of his first banana clip in the twinkling of an eye. He rammed in another, fired it off at full automatic, too. He knew he would never find a better, more massed target.
When, a few seconds later, the second magazine was also gone, he stuck on a third banana clip and glanced down to switch the change lever back to single shots. He looked up over his sights at the head of the oncoming Federal column. The lead ranks were all down, some writhing, some still and obviously dead—he was far from the only rebel to have hosed the Yankees with a stream of thirty bullets, or more than one.
The Northern officer, incredibly, still stood, still waved his men on. Even as Caudell took aim at him, he spun backwards and fell, clutching at his right side. But the Federals, stumbling over the wounded and slain men in front of them, advanced without him. Through the unending rattle of gunfire came a bugle’s high, thin cry, urging them forward.
The bluecoats in the lead fired at the Confederates who were slaughtering them. Two men over from Caudell, a rebel sagged to the dirt, the back of his head blown out. One or two others at the breastwork screamed as they were hit. But then the Yankees had either to stop and reload or keep on charging and trust they would live long enough to use bayonets or clubbed rifles.
Even against a firing line of single-shot Springfields, both choices would have been evil. Caudell had not been at the battle of Fredericksburg, where Lee’s men on Marye’s Heights smashed wave after wave of attacking Yankees; the 47th North Carolina had not yet joined the Army of Northern Virginia, but was further south in that state, on provost guard duty at Petersburg. Now, though, he knew what the defenders must have felt then, with men too brave to run away coming at them again and again, rushing headlong toward annihilation.
The Federals on the Brock Road were brave men too, as brave as any Caudell had ever seen. They kept trying to rush the long barricade. None of them got within a hundred yards of it; no man in the open roadway could push farther than that in the face of the withering fire the Confederate repeaters put out. Wounded soldiers reached out and grabbed at the legs of men pushing past, trying to hold them back from the deadly stutter of the AK-47s. But the fresh troops shook off those hands and advanced—until they were wounded or killed themselves.
At last even their courage could bear no more. The Federals stopped hurrying forward into the meat grinder. Even then, they did not break and run. They ducked into the woods and huddled behind the dead bodies of their mates and kept up as strong a fire as they could.
Off the Brock Road to either side, the crackle of rifle muskets crept closer to the Orange Plank Road. Caudell gnawed nervously on his lip. The Yankees had cover in the thickets and tangles of the Wilderness. That let their numbers count for more against the repeaters than was possible on the road itself. If they forced their way around the crossroads, they might yet link up with the corps trapped to the south.
A whistling through the air, a crash—Caudell threw himself flat, all strategic considerations driven from his mind by pure and simple terror. The Wilderness was such a jungle that artillery could find few jobs. Firing straight down the Brock Road at the Confederate breastwork, unfortunately, was one of them.