“I hope you don’t need it, that’s all, Alsie,” Caudell said. He’d written names and home towns or counties for several soldies already tonight. If they died assaulting the fortifications ahead—which seemed only too likely—their loved ones might eventually learn they had fallen. For that matter, he’d had Edwin Powell pin his own name on the back of his shirt.
He saw Mollie Bean checking her rifle by firelight. He knew she had trouble with her letters; he’d taught her a little out of a primer every so often. But when he asked her if she wanted him to write her name for her, she shook her head. “Only people who care a damn whether I live or die are right here in the company with me.”
Captain Lewis strode from fire to fire. “Into formation,” he said quietly. “It’s time.” No drums or bugles announced the rebels’ assembly, the better to keep the Federals from learning what Lee intended.
The sky was gray and overcast as Caudell came to the edge of the strip the Yankees had denuded of standing trees. The Federal forts and trenches that lay on the high ground ahead were deeper darknesses against the night. Caudell was grateful no moonlight betrayed his comrades to the bluecoats with field glasses and telescopes who were surely peering out at their foes.
“We advance in skirmisher order,” Captain Lewis said. “They’ll hurt us less with their artillery that way, and the repeaters should let us fight through their trenches once we get up to them. God bless every one of you, and may you all come through safe.”
“You too, Cap’n,” several soldiers called to him. Caudell said nothing aloud, but the thought was in his mind.
Lewis held his watch close to his face, waited, swung his arm forward. Caudell and the company’s other proper skirmishers moved out ahead of the rest of the men. He felt horribly exposed to the Yankee guns, as if he were going into battle naked. He quivered every time he stepped on a dry leaf or broke a twig with his foot.
Like flowing shadows, the Confederates moved forward all along the line. It seemed impossible the Federals could not see them, could not hear the beat of their feet against the soil, the jingle of cartridges in their pockets. But stride after cautious stride brought Caudell closer to the enemy works without the slightest sign the men inside them guessed he and his fellows were coming.
The ground was so bad a tight battle line could not have held together in any case, not even in daylight. The Federals had left on the ground most of the trees they’d felled. Caudell was constantly on the dodge and fell several times when branches he hadn’t seen tripped him.
He’d advanced perhaps a third of the way when the Federals woke up. Drums began to pound within their lines, beating out the same long roll that called the Confederates to action. A flash of light from an opening in the embrasure of Fort Stevens, a boom—a louder, deeper boom than any he’d heard from a cannon before—and a shell screamed through the night to crash down somewhere behind Caudell. Men screamed back there. Another blast came, and another, and another, as all the fort’s eight-inch howitzers and thirty-pounder Parrott rifles opened up.
Sparks of light blinked on and off in the rifle pits in front of the main Federal trench. They reminded Caudell of the fireflies he’d always loved. He would not think of fireflies in the same way again. Still, pickets shooting into the night at the range of a mile could hit someone only by luck.
More explosions came from Fort Stevens. Not all of them, though, seemed to accompany shots from the big siege guns—some sounded more like shells landing than cannon going off. But Lee’s field artillery was only now starting to go into action. It had had to move up with the infantry so its guns could reach the forts.
Whatever the explosions were, they disrupted the smooth firing Caudell had seen from the Federal artillerymen outside Bealeton. That was a blessing—every Northern shell not fired meant Southern men not dead.
Some of the flashes from the Yankee rifle pits were not aimed at the oncoming Confederates, but at each other, or perhaps at a space between two of them. No sooner had Caudell made that guess than a chatter of AK-47 fire confirmed it. Somehow, Lee had snuck somebody up close to the Federal line before the main attack got rolling. Caudell wondered if those advance scouts were somehow responsible for the troubles the Federal cannoneers were having. He hoped so.
He tramped on toward the waiting Federals. Here and there, soldiers in the rebels’ leading ranks began to shoot. He knew those bullets were probably wasted, but sometimes a man had to answer the enemies who were trying to lay him low.
He was within a couple of hundred yards of the abatis of downed trees that protected the trenches ahead when one of the guns from Fort Stevens let go with a blast of canister. He threw himself flat when he heard the deadly hiss of the lead balls. Canister fire from a Napoleon was dreadful enough. Canister fire from an eight-inch gun…When he turned his head, he saw that a gap had been blown in the line to his right, as neatly and thoroughly as if the men had been swept away by a broom.
By then the Yankees were shooting from their main line. Caudell stayed low, trying to find a swell of ground behind which to shelter before he scuttled forward again. The abatis loomed ahead. Already rebels were pulling saplings out of the way to make paths for their comrades to reach the trenches. The bluecoats shot them down as they worked. More men took their places.
Others answered the Federal fire. Had they had only rifle muskets, their task would have been hopeless, for they were exposed while their enemies enjoyed good shelter. But the AK-47s fired enough faster than Springfields to redress the balance. As more and more Confederates got up to and through the abatis, they began to beat down the defenders’ fire.
Sharp branches tore at Caudell’s clothes as he pushed toward the trench line. For a moment, he thought he was back in the Wilderness; some of the undergrowth there had been about as thick as this deliberately made obstruction. The Federal fire was worse here, though. He saw the glint of a rifle barrel as it swung to point straight at him. He fired first, then ducked low—the muzzle flash would have drawn Yankees’ notice to him. Sure enough, two bullets cracked through the space where he had been standing a moment before.
He crawled forward. There was already fighting in the trenches, Confederates and Federals shooting and shouting and cursing as hard and fast as they could. He recognized Springfields by their reports. and by the clouds of smoke that rose like swirling fog when they were fired. He shot into the fogbank once, twice, heard a man cry out. He thought the cry carried a Northern accent. He hoped it did. He slid down into the trench on his backside.
“Keep moving!” a Southern voice cried, authority behind it. “We don’t want to stay stuck in these damned trenches. It’s the city we want, Washington City. Keep moving!”
That was easier said than done. The Federals fought desperately. Their numbers made their single-shot muzzle-loaders almost a match for the rebels’ repeaters. Every new corner in the earthworks brought deadly danger. In hand-to-hand combat, the bayonets that tipped Yankee Springfields were actually of use.
A shell landed in a Federal-held section of trench. Caudell yowled like a catamount. Then another shell exploded, and another, and another, the blasts spaced much too close together to come from even the quickest-firing gun. “What the hell is that?” somebody shouted.
“I don’t rightly know, but I think it’s on our side,” Caudell shouted back. Anything less than a shout went unnoticed in the din. He howled out a rebel yell, as much to tell himself he was still alive and fighting as for any other reason.
Yet another of those mysterious shells crashed down among the Yankees. Behind Caudell, somebody yelled, “Go on, you lazy buggers. I’ve put the fear of God in them for you.” The shouter did not sound like a Southern man, but Caudell recognized his voice all the same: it was Benny Lang.