Battle Flag

  Starbuck limped round his men's bivouac. He wanted to make certain that they had water to drink, but most had already fallen asleep. They had simply lain down on the grass and closed their eyes, so that now they lay like the dead collected for burial at battle's end. A few walked to the stream to fill their canteens, a few smoked, a few gnawed at hardtack, but most of the men just lay sprawled in the moonlight.

  Starbuck stayed awake with the pickets. To the south the moon shone on yet more men tramping up the road, but one by one the regiments turned into the fields to snatch their brief rest. The regiments were still coming when Starbuck woke Medlicott to relieve him, and still marching when he lay down to sleep. He dreamed of marching, of pain, of a sun-bitten day spent sweating northward on a stone-hard road that led, not to whores on white sheets in a fattened city, but to battle.

  On the morning that Jackson's army marched west Major Galloway received orders to report to General McDowell, whose troops formed the right wing of Pope's army. An odd and disquieting report had come from that western flank. One of General Banks's staff officers had been spying the enemy positions from a hill north of the Rappahannock and had spotted a distant column of mixed infantry and artillery marching westward on the river's far bank. The road the rebels were following snaked up and down through hilly country, so that the staff officer could only glimpse scattered parts of the column, but he had estimated the number of regiments by counting their flags and reported that the rebel force must have numbered at least twenty thousand men. The column had eventually disappeared in the heat haze that shimmered over the distant farmland and woods.

  General Banks forwarded the report to General McDowell, who in turn sent it on to General Pope with an added comment that the column was probably aiming to cross the Blue Ridge Mountains and then advance north through the Shenandoah Valley. Maybe, McDowell sur­mised, the rebel force planned to attack the Federal garrison at Harpers Ferry, then cross the river and threaten Washington?

  Pope added the report to all the other disquieting evi­dence of rebel activity. Jeb Stuart's horsemen had raided one of the army's forward supply depots at Catlett's Station. The rebel horse had swarmed out of a rainswept night like fiends from hell, and though the raid had done little real damage, it had made everyone nervous. There were more reports of rebel activity on Pope's eastward flank near Fredericksburg, while other observers saw clear signs that the rebels were planning a direct assault across the Rappahannock River. General Pope felt like a juggler given one Indian club too many, and so he sent a stream of peremptory telegrams to the War Department in Washington demanding to know when he might expect McClellan's forces to join his own, then rattled off a series of orders designed to repel all the threatened attacks at once. Union troops marched and countermarched under the hot sun, none of them knowing quite what they were doing or where the enemy was supposed to be.

  It was the cavalry's job to determine the enemy's position, and so Major Galloway was ordered to report to General McDowell, who in turn instructed him to lead his men into the swathe of empty country that lay between the Northern army and the Blue Ridge Mountains. It was into that hazy spread of land that the mysterious enemy column had been seen marching, and McDowell wanted Galloway to find it, but just as Galloway was ready to leave, a new order arrived from General Pope's headquarters. It seemed a party of rebel horsemen had recently crossed Kelly's Ford, and Galloway was ordered to find out where that enemy was headed.

  The Major demanded a map. It took him a long time to discover Kelly's Ford. He had somehow expected it to be near Warrenton, where McDowell's forces were anchored, but instead he found it to be fifteen miles away on the army's eastern flank. He protested the stupidity of one cavalry regi­ment being required to be in two places at once, but was told that most of the army's cavalry was either immobilized through lack of fodder or else was busy. Galloway stared down at the map. "Which job's the most important?" he asked.

  Pope's staff officer, a Colonel, scratched in his beard. "I reckon that if the Johnnies are crossing Kelly's Ford, then they'll be planning to cut us off from McClellan's boys." He ran a nicotine-stained finger up from the ford to show how a rebel force could cut Pope's men off from Aquia Creek, where McClellan's army was coming ashore. "They'd split us up. And that'd be bad. Real bad."

  "And this other column?" Galloway asked, gesturing toward the western landscape.

  The Colonel squashed a louse between two nicotine-stained thumbnails. In truth he had no idea which threat was the greater, but nor did he want to consult his master, who was already in a furious mood because of the constant stream of conflicting intelligence reports that were confusing all his careful plans. "My guess," the Colonel ventured, "and it is only a guess, mark you, is that the seceshers are dragging a false trail. They probably want us to weaken ourselves by sending men to the Shenandoah Valley. But the war isn't going to be won in the Shenandoah, but here, on the river lines." He slapped the map across the band of rivers that barred the roads between Washington and Richmond. "But on the other hand, Major"—the Colonel was too canny not to qualify his judgment—"we sure would like to know just what in tarnation those twenty thousand Johnnies are doing. And everyone says your boys are the best for that kind of job. They say you can ride behind the enemy lines, isn't that right?"

  So Galloway had no choice but to split his small force. If the threat at Kelly's Ford was the more dangerous, then that justified using two troops of men, and so Galloway decided to go there himself and to take Adam's troop with him, while Billy Blythe would take his men and investigate the mysterious western column. "You ain't to get in a fight, Billy," Galloway warned Blythe. "Just find out where in hell the rebs are headed and then get word back to McDowell."

  Blythe seemed happy with his orders. His horses were tired and hungry, but he did not have so far to ride as Galloway, and once in the saddle, his men rode slowly. They headed into an empty countryside that was parched by an afternoon sun that burned like a furnace. Blythe led his troop a few miles west of the last Union pickets and then stopped at the summit of a small hill to stare into the empty landscape. "So just what in hell are we doing, Billy?" Sergeant Kelley asked Blythe.

  "Chasin' our tails, Seth. Just chasin' our born-again tails." Sergeant Kelley spat in disgust. "So what if the enemy are out here? Hell, Billy, our horses ain't been fed proper in three days and they ain't been rested proper neither. You reckon we can outrun Jeb Stuart's boys on these nags?" The men murmured their agreement.

  Blythe waved at the serene, heat-hazed countryside. "What enemy, Sergeant? Do you see an enemy?"

  Kelley frowned. There was a smear of dust way off to the northwest, but that was so far beyond the Rappahannock that it was surely being kicked up by Northern troops, while to the west, where the mysterious column had supposedly disappeared, there was nothing but trees and sun-glossed fields and gentle hills. "So what the hell are we doing here?" the Sergeant asked again.

  Blythe smiled. "Like I told you, Seth, chasin' our tails. So why in hell's name don't we do something more useful instead? Like give our horses a proper feed." He tugged at his reins, turning his horse's head south. "I seem to remember a farm not so far away. A den of rebel vipers, it was, but there was fodder there and maybe it didn't all burn up to hell and I reckon you and I have got unfinished business there."

  Kelley grinned. "You mean that Rothwell woman and her children?"

  "I hate children," Blythe said, "I do so hate young chil­dren. But their mothers?" Blythe smiled. "Ah, I do so love a ripe young mother."

  Twenty miles to the east Major Galloway found Kelly's Ford guarded by a strong rebel garrison on the southern bank. That garrison sniped ineffectually at Galloway's horse­men as they explored the northern side of the river, where they discovered no hoofprints nor any other evidence of a rebel force across the river. The local black population, always the best source of information for Northern scouts, said that no Confederates had crossed the river in two days, and those men had only
come across to get fodder for their horses. Galloway dutifully searched the riverbank for five miles east and west, but neither he nor Adam found any rebels. The rumor had been false, and Galloway, knowing his day had been wasted, rode slowly home.

  A dozen miles north of the ford was Warrenton Junction, where the branch rails from Warrenton joined the main Orange and Alexandria line. Confusion besieged the junc­tion. Two trains loaded with guns and ammunition were trying to pass south to the Bealeton depot, while another was trying to haul twenty-four boxcars loaded with hard­tack, uniforms, percussion caps, and artillery shells down to Warrenton. Meanwhile three empty trains and a hospital train waited in the pitiless sun for clearance northward. The sweet smell of pinewood lay over the depot, coming from the log stacks that waited to feed the locomotive furnaces.

  The Reverend Elial Starbuck's passenger car was attached to the hospital train. The preacher escaped the heat in the car's stifling interior by walking up and down in the train's long shadow, where he was forced to watch as a succession of newly dead men were carried from the red-flagged cars. The men were not dying from their wounds but from heat pros­tration, and their fate angered the Reverend Elial Starbuck. These were good, decent young Americans who had gone to fight for their country, and their reward was to be dumped beside a rail track where their corpses crawled with flies. If the hospital train did not move soon, then every sick man in the cars would be dead, and so the Reverend Starbuck dis­covered an engineer colonel who appeared to possess some authority over the railroad and of whom he demanded to know when the trains would be cleared north. "In Boston," the Reverend Starbuck assured the Colonel, "we have such things as timetables. We find them useful."

  "In Boston, sir," the Colonel retorted, "you don't have Jeb Stuart." The delay on the railroad was caused by the raid Stuart had made on Catlett's Station, the next depot on the line, where the rebel cavalry had taken scores of prisoners, captured a paychest, and even snaffled up General Pope's best uniform coat. A teeming rain had prevented the raiders from burning the bridge that carried the rails over Cedar Run, yet even with the bridge intact the raid had inflicted chaos on the rail schedule. "But your train will be the first one north tomorrow afternoon," the Colonel promised the Reverend Starbuck. "You'll be in Washington by Wednesday, sir."

  "I had hoped to be in Richmond by then," the Reverend said caustically.

  The Colonel bit back any retort, and instead arranged for the hospital cars to be moved into the shade of a warehouse and for water to be brought to the surviving wounded. Some fugitive slaves who were now employed as laborers on the railroad were ordered to dig graves for the dead.

  The Reverend Starbuck wondered if he should witness for Christ to the laboring blacks but decided his mood was too bleak for effective evangelism. His opinion of the army had slipped all week but now reached fulminating bottom. In all his born days he had never witnessed any organization so chaotic, so incapable, or so sluggish. The smallest Boston grocery shop displayed more managerial acumen than these uniformed incompetents, and it was no wonder that the lumpen-skulled rebels were making such fools of the North's generals. The preacher sat on the open platform at one end of his passenger car, and as the sun sank huge in the west, he wiped the sweat from his forehead and took on the pleasur­able chore of making notes in his diary for a pungent letter he planned to send to the Massachusetts congressional delegation.

  Five miles away, in Warrenton itself, Major Galloway reported to the army headquarters. He found the same Colonel who had dispatched him that morning and who now seemed disappointed that no enemy had crossed Kelly's Ford. "You're sure," the Colonel asked.

  "Certain. Absolutely certain."

  The Colonel scratched at his beard, found a louse, and squashed it between his thumbnails. "What about the twenty thousand Johnnies in the west?" the Colonel asked.

  "I sent my second-in-command that way, but he hasn't reported yet."

  The Colonel yawned, then stretched his arms. "No news is good news, eh? If your fellow had found anything he'd have doubtless sent word. And no one else is squealing about twenty thousand rebels, so it's probably all moon­shine, pure moonshine. Which reminds me." He turned in his chair and reached for two glasses and a whiskey bottle.

  "You'll join me? Good." He poured the whiskey. "But even if there are twenty thousand Johnnies loose, what damage can they do?" He paused, thinking about his question, then laughed at the very thought of the whole United States Army being frightened of such a tiny force. "Twenty thou­sand men," he said disparagingly, "what harm can they do?"

  Captain Davies woke Starbuck. "Reveille, sir."

  Starbuck thought he had to be dreaming. No, worse, he thought he was not dreaming. His muscles were strips of pain, his bones were set solid.

  "Starbuck! Up!" Davies said.

  Starbuck groaned. "It's dark."

  "They want us marching in twenty minutes."

  "Oh, no, Jesus no," Starbuck muttered. He groaned again, then turned onto one side. The mere effort of rolling over hurt. Everything hurt. He could not bear to think of trying to stand on his blistered feet.

  "Water." Davies, who had taken over picket duty from Medlicott, offered Starbuck a canteen. Starbuck drank, then felt for a cigar. He had two left, both preserved from harm by being wrapped in his hat. He borrowed Davies's cigar to light one of his own, then coughed some life into his lungs.

  "Jesus," he said again, then remembered he had to set an example, and so he struggled to his feet. He blasphemed again.

  "Stiff?" Davies asked.

  "Why didn't I join the cavalry?" Starbuck asked, then tot­tered a few steps. It was night-dark still, without even a hint of dawn in the eastern sky. Stars were bright overhead, while the moon hung low above the Blue Ridge to mark its forested draws deep black and starkest white. He sat to pull on his boots. It hurt just to tug them over his raw feet. "Awake?" Colonel Swynyard's voice asked.

  "I think I died and went to hell," Starbuck said as he forced himself to stand again. "Maybe that's it, Colonel. Maybe none of this is real. We're all in hell."

  "Nonsense! We're heavenbound, praise Him."

  "Then I wish He'd hurry," Starbuck complained. Around him the field heaved and groaned as waking men realized the ordeal that waited for them. Starbuck scratched at a louse, transferred the one remaining cigar to his pocket, pulled the hat onto his head, slung his rolled blanket over his left shoulder and the rifle on his right, and thus was ready to start.

  Breakfast was taken on the march. For Starbuck it was a slate-hard slab of hardtack that gnawed at his aching tooth. He tried to remember when he had last had a decent meal. His uniform trousers were belted with rope that gathered in at least five inches of material that had been well stretched before the war's first battle. Then the blisters on his feet began hurting again and the sore spot on his right shoulder began to chafe, and he forgot about food and just concen­trated on walking through the pain.

  The column still marched north. Once, when the road rose to offer a view of the moonlit western hills, Starbuck saw the notch that marked where the Manassas Gap carried the railroad through the Blue Ridge and into the fertile Shenandoah Valley. In the moonlight the gap looked a far way off, and Starbuck's spirits fell at the thought of marching all that long way. His muscles were slowly unknotting, but only to hurt even more. The Legion passed between two rows of houses, their windows dimly lit with candlelight. A tethered dog barked at the passing soldiers, and an unseen woman called from a window to offer the soldiers her blessings.

  Then, abruptly, the road climbed a steep few feet, and Starbuck almost tripped on a steel rail. He recovered his footing and stepped safely over the metal to realize that the Legion had at last reached the Manassas Gap Railroad. The road divided here, one branch climbing west toward the Blue Ridge and the other going east toward the Yankees. A mounted staff officer dominated the junction, and he was pointing the troops east. So they were not going to the Shenandoah Valley after all but were instead to
march toward the rising sun that climbed through the vast smear of smoke marking where a waking army's cooking fires burned. They were to march east toward battle.

  The sun rose like hellfire in their eyes. It dazzled them and cast their shambling shadows long on the dusty road behind. Every now and then Starbuck would see the rails of the Manassas Gap Railroad lying alongside the road like twin streaks of reflected fire, but no trains ran on those strips of molten steel. All the locomotives and stock had been taken south or else commandeered by the Yankees to shuttle their supplies from Alexandria through Manassas Junction to their forces on the Rappahannock.

  And now, Starbuck realized, Stonewall Jackson was behind those forces. And maybe, Starbuck thought, the Yankees knew he was coming, for how could twenty-four thousand men hope to avoid a hostile army's scouts? Ahead of the marching column lay a low range of hills, so low that in peacetime the hills would scarcely have been noticeable, but Starbuck could see that the apparently innocuous slopes were more than steep enough to check an infantry attack. And if the Federals had put guns in the dark trees at the crest of those hills, then Jackson's long march must end in bloody defeat.

  The road and the empty railroad arrowed side by side toward a pass through the low hills. Jackson's cavalry advanced either side of the rail embankment, their carbines cocked as they nervously watched every fence and wood and house. The passage through the unregarded hills was called Thoroughfare Gap, and if the Yankees had been shadowing Jackson's march, then Thoroughfare Gap was the place to put their ambush, and as the steep walls of the pass narrowed, the horsemen advanced ever more slowly and cautiously. They tried not to think of hidden gunners wait­ing with taut lanyards or of lines of concealed infantry poised with loaded rifles. Every creak of a saddle or rustle of wind or clatter of a horseshoe on stone startled the scouting horsemen's nerves; then suddenly they reached the pass's summit and the whole eastern countryside lay open before them, and it was empty. There were no limbers, no guns, no caissons, no Federals at all. There was nothing but low hills and thick woods stretching into the long blue distance. Stonewall Jackson had hooked his small army clean and undetected into the Yankees' unprotected belly.