The Bloody Ground

  Because it was a windless, lovely dawn beside the Antietam.

  Gunners begin most battles. The infantry will win or lose the fight, but the gunners start the killing and even before the fog had lifted the Yankee gunners across the Antietam began their bombardment. They had positioned their guns the previous evening and now, with nothing to guide their aim but the tops of trees protruding through the fog, the gunners opened fire.

  Shells screamed eerily through the vapor. The Federal guns that had been brought across the river joined the cacophony, banging their missiles over the cornfield into the whitened vacancy where the rebels waited. The rebel guns answered, aiming blind at first, but as the fog thinned they were able to fire at the diffused glare of muzzle flames that made livid patches in the mist whenever an enemy gun fired.

  Shells plowed the fields newly sown with winter wheat. Dirt vomited up from each impact and for once, Starbuck noted, it was brown dirt rather than the redder Virginian soil. The smoke of each explosion hung motionless in the windless air. A loose gun horse galloped across the field behind Starbuck's battalion. It had been struck by a shell fragment and blood was gleaming on its left hindquarter. The horse caught sight of the waiting infantry and stopped, eyes white, red flank shivering. A gunner finally caught the gelding's bridle and, patting the beast's neck, led it back toward the battery. Each time the rebel guns fired the fog shuddered.

  Starbuck paced slowly behind his men. Some were lying down, some were crouching, and some kneeling. The Yankee guns to the north were firing shells that rumbled overhead. Some of the shells whistled. Once, looking up, Starbuck saw a tiny trail of fuse-smoke in the fog, a streak of white vapor thicker than the whiteness about it. The gray light had turned white. It was thinning out.

  The gunners worked as though they believed they could win the battle by themselves. The shells plunged and cracked into the high rebel ground and the noise ricocheted about the plateau. One man in Starbuck's battalion was telling his beads. "Jesus, Mary, and Joseph," he prayed, "Jesus, Mary, and Joseph." He said the names again and again, and each time a shell exploded he would twitch. One shell struck high in a nearby tree and the crash of the explosion was followed by a slow, awful creaking as a branch slowly tore away. "Jesus, Mary, and Joseph," the man wailed desperately.

  "Where are you from?" Starbuck asked the man.

  The soldier looked up at Starbuck. His eyes were empty and scared.

  "Where are you from, soldier?"

  "Richmond, sir." He had an Irish accent. "Venable Street."

  "And before that?"

  "Derry."

  "What was your trade, lad?" "Saddler, sir."

  "I'm glad you're a soldier now." "You are?"

  "I thought the Irish were the best fighters in the world?" The man blinked at Starbuck, then smiled. "They are, sir. Had lots of practice."

  "Then I'm glad you're here. What's your name?" "Connolly, sir. John Connolly." "Then pray hard, John Connolly, and shoot low." "I will that, sir."

  Starbuck's battalion, a tiny regiment, was at the southern edge of the pastureland, a hundred paces behind the cornfield. His two left-hand companies were in the open, facing the corn, while his right companies were huddled in the East Woods. Potter's skirmishers were higher up the wood, waiting for the Yankees. The rest of Swynyard's Brigade was bent back at right angles, lining the wood's edge and then strung across the plowed field toward the family graveyard.

  Swynyard joined Starbuck. "A quarter to six," he announced, "or thereabouts. My watch stopped in the night." He glanced to the left. "They look good," he said of the neighboring brigade.

  "Georgians," Starbuck said. He had introduced himself to the colonel of the battalion next to him and the man had been cordial, but Starbuck had seen the flicker of worry when the Georgian colonel had learned that the Yellowlegs were guarding his right flank.

  Swynyard turned and stared southward across the pasture toward the Smoketown Road, which was just becoming visible in the thinning fog. "Lots of troops ready to back us up," he said.

  "Lots?" Starbuck answered wryly, knowing that Swynyard was merely trying to reassure him.

  "There are some, anyway," Swynyard admitted wryly. A new battery of rebel guns was being positioned in the pasture, its muzzles pointed ominously northward in a sign that Lee expected the first Yankee attack to come straight down the funnel between the woods. Straight across the cornfield. Straight at the waiting men who crouched beyond the corn. Some Georgian skirmishers were already up among the stalks that stood high as a standing man.

  Swynyard dragged his maimed hand through his straggling beard, a gesture that betrayed his nervousness. He was worried about the eastern flank, the long slope that fell with ever-increasing steepness toward the creek. His fear was that the Yankees would embroil his brigade in a fight at the funnel's mouth, then attack up that slope to smash in behind his men. And once the Yankees were up on the high ground about the Smoketown Road there was nothing to stop them carving Lee's army into fragments, but so far there were no signs of Yankee activity on the creek itself. There were no reports of men trying to cross the river, no sounds of guns being dragged down to the fords and bridges, and no glimpses of blue-coated troops filing down the farm tracks toward the Antietam's eastern bank.

  A new barrage of guns sounded. These were the rebel guns positioned on the hill to the west of the turnpike and they were firing slantwise across the funnel's northern mouth. "I suspect," Swynyard said, "that our erstwhile brethren are stirring."

  "God help us," Starbuck blurted out.

  Swynyard put a hand on Starbuck's shoulder. "He does, Nate, He does." The hand on Starbuck's shoulder suddenly convulsed as the sound of rifles crackled through the morning. The skirmishers were engaged. "Not long now," Swynyard said in the unconvincing tone of a dentist trying to soothe a nervous patient. "Not long." His hand convulsed again. "Last night," he said quietly, "I had to fight the temptation for a drink. It was as bad as those first few nights. I just wanted a mouthful of whiskey."

  "But you didn't?"

  "No. God saw to that." Swynyard took his hand away. "And this morning," he went on, "Maitland searched the Legion's packs. Confiscated their liquor."

  "He did what?" Starbuck asked, laughing.

  "Took every last drop he found. Says he won't have them fighting drunk."

  "So long as they fight," Starbuck said, "why does it matter?" The neighboring battalion was fixing bayonets and some of Starbuck's men followed suit, but he shouted at them to put the blades away. "You'll need to kill a few with bullets first," he called to them. He could not see any enemy because the tall corn hid everything to the north. The field was a screen to hide a nightmare. He could hear gunfire in the woods and guessed that Potter had opened fire.

  The neighboring battalion stood ready to give fire. "Get 'em up, Nate," Swynyard said.

  "Stand!" Starbuck shouted and the two left-hand companies struggled to their feet. They were thin companies, still missing many of their stragglers, but the remaining men looked confident enough as they waited. The battalion's battle flag was at the center of the two companies, where it hung lifeless in the still air. "I wish I could see the bastards," Starbuck growled. His stomach was churning and the muscles of his right leg involuntarily twitching. He had been constipated for two days, but was suddenly scared that his bowels would void. He had been spared the worst of the cannon fire, for the East Woods served to hide his men from the Yankee guns across the creek and the guns to the north were firing overhead, but still the fear was sapping him. Somewhere ahead of him, somewhere beyond the mist-shrouded stalks of tall corn, there was a Yankee infantry attack coming and he could not see it, though now, dimly, he could hear the sound of boots and drums and men shouting. He looked for the enemy's flags, but could not see them and he guessed this opening attack had not yet reached the cornfield. The skirmishers' rifles cracked and every now and then a rifle bullet would flick a corncob aside and whistle just over the battalion's head. One such bull
et came close to Swynyard, startling the Colonel. "Ahab," Swynyard said.

  "Sir?" Starbuck asked, thinking that Swynyard had joined in Potter's fancy about Captain Ahab, the Pequod, and Moby Dick.

  "He was slain, remember, by a bow drawn at a venture. I always think it would be a pity to be killed by an unaimed bullet, but I suppose it's how most men die in battle."

  "King Ahab," Starbuck said, realizing what Swynyard meant. "I don't suppose there's much difference between an aimed and an unaimed bullet." He was forcing himself to sound calm.

  "So long as it's quick," Swynyard said, then gasped with surprise.

  New Yankee guns had opened fire. The gunners had seen the rebel skirmishers in the corn and now, before their own infantry marched into the tall stalks, the gunners tried to weed the crop of enemy riflemen. The artillery was loaded with canister that scythed through the corn. Barrel after barrel fired, and patch by patch the corn was blasted aside. Each shot bent great swathes of corn that tossed as though they were caught in a hurricane. The bullets flicked up from the hard ground to twitch skirmishers aside and some kept going right through the crop to thud into the infantry waiting in the pasture. Two of Starbuck's men reeled backward, one with brains welling out from a shattered patch of skull. The other man screamed, clutching his belly. "There's a doctor in the graveyard," Swynyard said.

  "Peel!" Starbuck shouted. "Get these men back!" He would use men from the two right-hand companies to take the casualties back to the graveyard. "Make certain your men come back here!" he called to Peel, then he cupped his hands and shouted at the two left-hand companies to kneel again. The corn was thrashing and whipping, and patches of it were being slung high into the mist that looked thicker to the north, but that thickness was just gunsmoke clogging the air. More canister slapped and slashed the corn, the bullets whistling as they ricocheted on overhead. The surviving rebel skirmishers were retreating. One man crawled on bloody hands through the stalks, another limped, a third collapsed at the field's edge. Still more canister poured into the bloody field, the worst of the fire going into the center, and so sparing Starbuck's companies the full force of the cannonade. Two rebel howitzers were lobbing shells over the com, trying to find the enemy batteries, while the rebel cannon on the western hill scorched shells down into the pasture where the Yankees advanced. It was still an artillery fight, a complicated mesh of trajectories under which the infantry moved forward to death.

  Then, as suddenly as it had begun, the Yankee canister ended.

  The corn was still. The day almost seemed silent. Scores of guns were firing, and men were shouting, but it seemed silent. The corn stood thick in patches arid lay crushed in swathes. Small flames flickered among the fallen stalks where the wadding from the skirmishers' rifles had started fires. And, at last, there were flags visible above the standing corn. Tall flags hanging limp from staffs that bobbed up and down as the color bearers marched through the cornfield.

  Some of Starbuck's men aimed their rifles. "Wait!" he called. "Wait!"

  The Yankees were at last visible through the remnants of standing corn.

  They were a dark line in the cornfield's mist. They were a horde of men advancing beneath their brilliant flags. They were death in blue. There were thousands of them, a mass of men, a drum-driven multitude with bayonets on their rifles.

  "Two brigades, I'd guess," Swynyard said calmly.

  "Wait!" Starbuck called to his men again. The Yankee attack was wide enough to overlap the cornfield, which meant that the eastern end of the blue line was now in the woods. "Tumlin!" he shouted.

  "Starbuck?" Tumlin appeared at the wood's edge. The trees above him had been made ragged by Yankee sheik that had stripped some branches of leaves and ripped other branches away.

  "Take Dennison's company and support Potter!"

  Starbuck shouted. "The sons of bitches are coming through the trees!" Tumlin ducked out of sight without acknowledging the order and Starbuck knew he should go and make certain Dennison's company did move up through the wood, but the sight of the Yankees coming through the shattered cornfield was holding him rooted to the pastureland. The nervousness had ebbed, displaced by the need to hold his men taut.

  "Coffman," Swynyard called the young Lieutenant. "Tell Colonel Maitland to advance in support here. He knows what to do. Go on, lad." Coffman ran.

  "I'll put Truslow's company into the woods," Swynyard said, sensing Starbuck's nervousness about the battalion's right flank. A crash of exploding shells drowned the Colonel's next words. Some rebel staff officers had ridden to the Smoketown Road, from where they were staring north through big field glasses, and the Yankee gunners across the Antietam were doing their best to kill the mounted men. The salvo of shells gouged the road and its verges with craters. Smoke screened the horsemen. Somewhere a bugle was playing, its notes brazen and rousing. The Yankee drummers were rattling away.

  Rebel guns fired from the woods to the west of the cornfield. They used solid shot that plowed into the Yankee lines. A flag went down, and was immediately snatched up. Starbuck had found one of the limestone ribs that hunched its way through the soil and was standing on it for a better view. He could hear hard and solid rifle fire in the woods, but none of his men was running out of the trees, so the fight there had to be under control. Truslow's company from the Legion came running up the edge of the wood and Swynyard went to divert them into the trees. If Truslow was there, Starbuck knew, then he could forget the wood.

  "Wait!" Starbuck called to his men. The Yankees were at the center of the cornfield now and it was their turn to be hit by canister. The strike of the bundled shot cut down swathes of corn and drove up spurts of dust from the dry ground. Huge gaps were being torn from the Yankee ranks, but every time the dreadful scythe cut down a handful of men there were others who jumped over the fallen bodies to fill the hole. The Yankees had fixed bayonets. Their flags hung as limp as the rebel battle flags. One brave man waved his banner to and fro so that the Stars and Stripes made a fine show, but his gallantry was rewarded with a blast of canister that snatched him and the flag backward. The flag flew over the heads of the advancing men. Starbuck could hear the boots trampling the corn. He could hear the Northern sergeants shouting harshly at their men to stay in line, to close up, to keep marching. He could hear the drummer boys frantically trying to win the war with the speed of their sticks.

  "Aim low!" he told his men. "Aim low. Don't waste your shots! But wait! Wait!" He wanted the first volley to be a killer.

  The misted air was full of noise. Shells rumbled overhead, bullets whistled, the boots splintered the corn. Rifles cracked in the woods. The rebel line looked a perilously thin thing to withstand the Yankee hammer blow. "Wait!" Starbuck called, "wait!" Yankee skirmishers were deep in the corn, sniping at his men. A corporal came out of the line with a bloody shoulder, another man choked on his own blood.

  The Yankees were two hundred paces away. They looked fresh, well-clothed, and confident. Starbuck could see their mouths open as they shouted their war cries, but he could hear nothing. He stared at them and he suddenly thought that this was how the makers of America had seen the Redcoats. The rebels then had been just as ragged, and the enemy just as well armed and smartly uniformed, and his fear was abruptly swamped by a fierce desire to shatter this overweening enemy. "Fire!" he shouted, "and kill the bastards!" He screamed the last three words and his two companies opened fire a second before the rest of the rebel line fired to blanket the pasture with rifle smoke. "Kill them!" Starbuck was shouting as he walked up and down behind the line. "Kill them!" He pushed through the files and fired his own rifle, then immediately dropped the butt to the ground to begin reloading. His pulse was racing, the fire was in his veins, the madness of battle was beginning its magic. Perfect hate casts away fear. He rammed the bullet down.

  "Fire!" Captain Cartwright encouraged his men. It was a straight infantry fight now. The Yankee gunners were unsighted and so the blue-coated riflemen had to fight and kill and endure th
e bullets coming back. The rebel guns drenched the attackers in canister, blasting new gaps in the surviving corn. A spray of blood misted the air and somewhere a man screamed terribly until his screams were cut short by the meaty thump of a bullet burying itself in flesh. Starbuck smelled the horrid stink of burned powder, he heard the whistle of a minie bullet whip past his ear, then the rifle was back in his shoulder, and he aimed low into the corn and fired.

  The gunsmoke was hanging in the still air like a layer of fog. Some men, in order to see beneath the smoke, lay down to aim. Starbuck ducked and could see Yankee legs among the corn. He fired, then backed out through the files to see how his men were faring.

  The Yellowlegs were sticking to the fight. They were ramming their bullets, priming the guns, pulling their triggers, but some were falling. Some were dead. The noise was obliterating sense; it was a deafening sky of fire, a numbing rattle laced with screams. More men fell. Starbuck's line was thinning, but suddenly Davies's company from the Legion was pushing into their ranks to add their fire. Davies grinned at Starbuck. "Christ," he said in awe.

  "Fire!" Starbuck shouted. Survival now depended simply on outfiring the enemy. "Captain Peel!" He ran toward the trees to summon the last of his shrinking battalion. "Peel! Bring your men!" Peel's company still had the old-fashioned Richmond muskets that were loaded with buck and ball and Starbuck reckoned the smoothbore volleys might work a wicked slaughter in this close-range battle. "Into line! Anywhere!" He pushed men helter-skelter into the ranks, no longer caring whether the companies kept their cohesion. "And fire! Fire! Just kill them!" He screamed the words as he emptied his revolver chamber by chamber into the shroud of smoke. "Kill them!"

  Bullets whipped back from the Yankees. Stabs of flame showed where they fired, and Starbuck saw that the flame lances were getting closer as the attackers advanced, their progress fed by the rear ranks, who moved up to take the place of the dead. The rebels were backing away, not in panicked retreat, but step by step, keeping their line, firing and firing at the blue horde that slowly, inexorably, like men wading against an outflowing tide, was forcing its way to the cornfield's southern edge. It was there that they stopped, not because the rebel fire grew worse, but simply because the field's margin served as a natural boundary. Behind them was the illusory cover of what corn remained standing, while ahead of the cornfield were open pastures and rebel batteries, and the Yankee officers could not persuade their men to march into that smoky, death-swept vacancy. The rebel line had also checked, aligned now on its guns, and there the two sides stayed and traded shot for shot and death for death. The wounded hobbled back from their line, but the rebels could spare no men now to carry the injured back to the surgeons. The rebel wounded must bleed to death or else crawl on hands and knees beneath the bruising noise of the big guns.