Ewell's frontal assault on Culp's Hill and Jeb Stuart's calvary attack upon the rear had failed. The third day of fighting at Gettysburg had begun badly for Lee and the C.S.A.. Everything then depended upon Longsteet's attack at the centre of the Federal ranks on Cemetery Ridge.
Confederate Brigadier General James Longstreet had already tried to dissuade Lee and failed. Lee's blood was up and he intended to crush the Union Army no matter what, irrationally convinced that he was invincible and that God was on the side of the South. And perhaps the thing that most concerned Longsteet as morning turned to afternoon was Lee's choice of General George E. Pickett to lead his division, which had never been led into combat before, directly into the centre of the Union front line. To a seasoned soldier, the very idea of putting inexperienced troops in the front lines, directly in the heart of a battle was foolish enough, but to have them led by a dashing and perfumed dandy like Pickett seemed insane to Longstreet. He had no doubt that Pickett would be formidable when it came to the social graces of a midsummer's ball, but dancing the waltz at a beautiful Southern plantation was a very different matter from waging war on a Northern battlefield.
Longstreet wondered if the perfume that Pickett wore would block out the acrid stench of spent gunpowder and sweat, the smell of fear and death--that which seemed to be perfume to Lee's senses.
This time there were no surprises. Union General Meade saw the frontal assault coming and was ready for Longstreet and Pickett.
While Pickett's troops waited in the stifling heat, uncomfortable in the sticky humidity of Pennsylvania, hiding in the trees, in the woods west of Emmitsburg Road, the Rebel soldiers joked and made light of the tense situation. A minature mock war broke out among them, screams of pain replaced by subdued laughter as the invading southern boys pelted one another with fallen apples. And boys many of them were, not yet old enough to shave. Many of them had never even known any woman's love but their mother's. Most of them were doomed to die without having really experiened life.
The world over, throughout history, it has always been the practice to make the enemy appear to be savage and bloodthirsty--wild, insane, murdering savages without an ounce of humanity--yet in conflicts such as the War Between the States, in which men oftlen fought hand-to-hand and face-to-face, it became obvious to most of the soldiers on either side that the enemy was, after all, only a man. The enemy, whether he wore the insignia of the Confederate States of America or the United States of America, was, in the final assessment, a human being who laughed and cried, loved and hated, bled and died. He had the same experiences; the same desires in life. He had brothers and sisters, mother and father, aunts, uncles, cousins, a sweetheart if he was lucky, loved ones who would mourn his death.
The war itself and the ignorance that led to it was the real monster. Man looked into the face of the enemy and he saw only man. The blood shed by the enemy was his blood. The life of the enemy taken in war was his life. Each act of war was an act of suicide. And yet, man killed man by the thousands.
At the same time Pickett's men were waiting in the woods near Emmitsburg Road, Union soldiers were rallied and waiting for the onslaught that Meade was certain would come. At a crook in a stone wall called the Angle, Joshua and Billy along with many others waited. Grimm had promised Billy to be along soon, but he first wished to visit Patterson who was in no condition to join in this battle. The young men stood at the wall, their rifles resting on it ready to be grabbed and fired in an instant, and while some were silent, others talked amongst themselves in low hushed tones. Billy, as he overheard some of the men talking, was reminded of the chatter that he had heard at his Uncle Ebb's funeral, after the eulogy was done, during the viewing of the lifeless body.
Billy had taken the time, again upon Grimm's advice, to write a short letter to his ma and pa.
Josh stared out into the fields before them. He looked out over the deceptively calm and quiet land and on their side of the Emmitsburg Road he could see the Codori house and the Trostle farm to his left, beyond which, further south, was the Peach Orchard, the Wheat Field and the Rose House, all, despite signs of fighting done, looked sweet and charming. On the other side of the long road that led into Gettysburg he could see the Rogers house, out of sight, southwest of the quaint cottage he knew that there stood the Warfield house with its stone fireplace and chimney, and directly behind that, reaching almost to the town of Gettysburg itself, the woods whose cool green foliage hid the secret threat that was no secret.
"No siree," Josh said absently, fiddling with his revolver, his eyes fixed upon the scene before him, "I don't want to see no more fightin'."
Billy looked at the young tow-haired boy but had no words to offer in reply to the statement. He agreed, of course. He was fed up with the killing--the fear of possibly being killed and the disgust with having to kill others. He remembered all of those penny dreadfuls he had read about how men in the West walked around carrying guns, the shoot outs in the streets and saloons, the daring do of the shootists and how they killed dozens of men, staring each one in the eyes before blowing holes in them, and for the first time in his life he wondered how true those stories could have been. He had himself now killed many men, and too many of them he had seen and exchanged looks with just before he fired the fatal shot or drove his sabre home, and the eyes of each one of the men he had killed still haunted him. He was sure that there were men who could kill again and again without giving it a thought, he probably stood in that thick blue line with some of them at that moment, but for the most part he felt sure that men were generally little different than himself, and he knew that if the war ended this day he could go back to his normal life and no matter what the situation he could never kill another man again.
The waiting was tense. The minutes crawled by. When the sun was directly overhead, men began to take out their rations, mostly hardtack and jerked beef. MacCleary came along, a soldier behind him with a wheelbarrow full of shiny silver airtights.
"Perk up, boys!" MacCleary tossed a can to Josh and then to Billy.
"What's this?" Billy asked, catching the unlabelled can.
"Tomatoes," the Irishman answered, tossing out a few more airtights, "canned love apples!"
"Love apples in a tin is like a lady of easy virtue," Billy laughed, "easy to pluck and had real cheap!"
Some of the boys laughed immediately, but Josh scowled at the reference to the sin of fornication before he too broke into laughter.
"Now what would you be knowin' of women?" MacCleary teased.
And the men laughed even harder as Billy's face turned as red as one of the canned tomatoes.
William J. Patterson was not doing very well. Despite the care Sergeant MacCleary had given him, he had lost a lot of blood during the battle with Stuart's calvary and the field surgeons figured that if that did not kill him the infection that was sure to set in would. They did not think it was helping matters for him to be so close to the front line either, but Patterson insisted that he be there and with his cot propped up and facing the fields. "My men are out there, damn it!" he said, choking on his own blood, "and if I can't be with them at least I can watch over them!" He kicked up such a fuss that the physician in charge figured it was better to give him his way rather than to let him die faster by throwing fits.
"Sir."
"Grimm." Patterson's voice was growing weak. "MacCleary was just here. For a moment I thought he was bringing me flowers. He had that look about him. You know...like he was visiting a grave site rather than a sick bed." Grimm stood beside Patterson's uptilted cot and did his best to smile. "I'm going to miss Orrin. He's made me look good for a long time now. So how come you're not jumping in here to tell me to stop talking like that and that I'm going to live to be a hundred?" Grimm was not sure how to answer the man who obviously believed in an afterlife that he would soon experience. "I know. I always knew that I could count on you to be straight with me." Patterson was silent for a moment, looking down at his covered body. "They took my leg, almost all of it. Said it was necessary if I was to have a chance." He coughed again, blood spraying lightly on the white sheet he was partially covered with. "Left arm is dead. If I lived it would just hang there lifeless for the rest of my life. Of course, being a lawyer I really don't need two arms and legs anyway, and the 'war wounds' might get me enough sympathy in court to help me win my cases." Patterson coughed again, just a little. "Then again, you and I and every damn doctor here knows that I'll be in only one more courtroom before this day's done, and it'll be God himself presiding while I'll be acting as my own defense."
"Open and shut case," Grimm replied. "Your client is innocent."
Patterson chuckled, then coughed.
"Innocent as any damn fool can be!"
"Anything you want me to do?"
"I'd be obliged if you went to my tent and got me my pen and a half finished letter you'll find there." Grimm nodded. "You'd like Emily and I think she'd like you...hell...I know she would. Mind you, that hard face of yours might put her off a mite at first, but I'm sure she'd see past it soon enough the way I do. You might be fooling a lot of people, Grimm, but you're not fooling me. Man like you has more heart than most. That's why you have to try extra hard to protect it. And I'll tell you something else I know about you, Grimm."
"What's that...Bill?"
Patterson almost blushed when Grimm spoke to him with such familiarity, stepping out from behind his aloofness.
"We all wonder about it from time to time, and like me we usually find that we are in the wrong place doing the wrong things, that we have some other purpose for being. But you, more than most men I have met, think about it. Who are you? Why are you? You know that you exist for a purpose, but you do not know what that purpose is and not knowing while wanting desperately to fulfill that purpose eats you up day and night. So I'm going to give you a gift, Grimm. It might not mean much to you now, but I think it will later. When a man's close to death, as both you and I know I am, some things become crystal clear. I don't know if you realize this or not, but I think pretty highly of you. I have a lot of friends back in New York, but you and Orrin are my closest friends. I think about both of you a lot. And you, Grimm, you make me think about life...and death...more than anyone I know. 'Civilized' folks in New York babble on for hours about something as if they know what they're talking about, but after all those words it turns out they've really said next to nothing. Then you come along, put together a short and not always gramatically correct sentence, and damned if you don't say volumes in those few brief words."
"So my purpose is to be a teacher?" Grimm chuckled.
Patterson thought about it for a moment with more seriousness than Grimm had expected.
"In a way, maybe so...but one thing I can tell you, Grimm: you are where you are supposed to be and you are doing what needs to be done. Back in New York I'm a lawyer, yet I have very seldom seen justice served by the law. I have to admit that there have been times when, for the sake of my client, my bank account and my reputation, I too cheated justice by abusing the very laws that are supposed to serve it.
"Things can get pretty rough in New York, but out here...," Patterson weakly pointed in a westerly direction, "out there things are really rough. If our so-called civilized laws aren't working well in New York, they are not going to tame the frontier. I have always believed in the law, Grimm, still do I guess, but sometimes books and words are not enough and Lady Justice needs a champion who is willing to go a whole lot further. You are an avenger, Grimm. Pure and simple. And when vengeance is handed out by a man like you, justice is served." Patterson coughed again, the pain in his stomach etching furrows on his face. "I think you'd better get me that pen and paper now."
Grimm silently nodded.
"And, Grimm," having turned away, the dark man turned back to regard Patterson as he again spoke, "there isn't much justice out here on the battlefield, so don't be looking for any. Consider this your training ground...for your heart as well as your hand."
Grimm took the half finished letter and pen to Patterson, then walking over to the wall to join Billy he passed MacCleary as the sergeant was on his way to once again check on their commander. They exchanged glances in passing, hesitating for a moment before continuing on their separate ways. Neither had to say a word as they both understood how the other felt about the fact that Patterson was not expected to last through the day.
"Today's going to be hell."
Grimm halted on his way to the wall and turned in the direction of the all too familiar voice. Captain Harrison rode up to the dark man and looked down at him from the saddle, his dead eyes seeming especially lifeless. Grimm's eyes locked on Harrison's as he stood there in silence, his right hand unconsciously balled into a fist.
"Are you ready to die, soldier?"
The smile on Harrison's face as he uttered those words was anything but friendly, but Grimm refrained from speaking. As the double dealing captain nudged his mount's flanks with his heels and rode off, Grimm studied Harrison's back as the words echoed in his mind.
Are you ready to die, soldier?
"Grimm!" Billy, not far off at the wall, was glad to see his personal guardian angel and called out to him, dispelling the ill-omened words just spoken by Captain Harrison.
"Gosh, I'm glad to see you!" Billy exclaimed as his friend joined him. The expression on Grimm's face looked a bit more severe than usual, although only someone like Billy might have noticed it. "Commander Patterson?"
The dark man wordlessly shook his head in the negative to indicate that the situation was hopeless.
The men were quiet as Grimm took his position, checking the Henry and his Colt. The talking all down the line had given way to tense, silent waiting as the sun seemed to move overhead to mark the first hour after noon. In the distance Josh and others thought that they could hear orders being shouted. Grimm was certain of it.
"'And when Joshua heard the noise of the peoples as they shouted,'" quoted Josh from the Bible, staring straight ahead, into the open field, "'he said unto Moses, There is a noise of war in the camp.'"
Then the deceptive peace was shattered abruptly as the Confederates launched an incredible artillery barrage to soften the Union ranks before Pickett's charge.
The air was suddenly full of explosive sound and from what appeared to be clouds of white smoke clinging to the ground beyond the Emmitsburg Road hundreds of deadly projectiles tore through the hot air to explode in and beyond the Union line.
At one P.M. exactly it started, just as Meade, finishing his lunch, was leaving his commanders. An orderly serving butter to the Federal officers was unexpectedly torn in two by a shell from a Rebel cannon, effectively spoiling the officers' appetites. The artillery attack was devastating and it took the Union by surprise. Soldiers were torn apart by the hurtling missles and flying shrapnal.
General Winfield Scott Hancock rode up and down the lines during the barrage, ignoring the murder and mayhem all around him, the death that could strike him down from the air at any moment, urging the soldiers to hold their ground and stay firm. Grimm noticed a brigadier urging Hancock to take cover, and the general merely shouted down from his horse, "There are times when a corps commander's life doesn't count!"
Ambulances were being pulled up and down the Taneytown Road by wild-eyed horses on their way to and from tents and houses that had been converted into field hospitals.
Soon after the Confederate's big guns let loose, the Union guns answered with volley after volley of their own in an effort to zero in on the enemy cannons and take them out. One day before the fourth of July, the air was filled with the sounds and devastation of cannon fire, punctuated by the screams of wounded and dying men.
William J. Patterson saw and heard the death and destruction all around him as he laid on his upraised cot, pen in hand, resting upon the unfinished letter that he had not yet found the strength to continue. A few drops of blood fell upon the paper as if it were beginning to rain blood, but it was in fact the blood of one of the doctors nearby who had been literally blown apart when a shell struck him square in the chest.
All around Patterson it seemed as if the very earth itself were being blown apart, exploding from within as if God were tired of man's foolishness and had decided to finish it once and for all.
He looked around him at the carnage. Not far from his cot he saw the hand of the physician whose blood had stained his letter. Just his hand, torn off of the arm and oozing that precious red fluid, some of the white bone showing through the torn muscle and flesh.
Patterson was transfixed for a moment by the sight of that severed hand as it laid in the grass, still twitching as if consciously controlled, then he looked up and out into the fields of destruction before him.
"My God," he barely whispered, "it's the end of the world..."
And then he died.
Abruptly the Union guns fell silent. Upon orders, the artillery men ceased fire to conserve ammunition. The Federal commanders also hoped that the Rebels would believe them to be out of ammunition so as to lure the enemy troops out into the open fields.
And it worked.
At about two P.M. Pickett's men advanced. When the order was given, Longstreet acknowledged it silently with a doleful nod of his head, convinced that it was a mistake, and that he was sending his own troops forward into certain death.
By three P.M. three divisions, about thirteen thousand Confederate soldiers, started out of the woods and marched towards the stone wall which marked the Union line a mile and a half away, travelling at a steady, brisk pace. They covered about one hundred yards a minute, moving forward as silently as possible, forbidden by their commanders to fire their weapons or even give the Rebel yell until they were on top of the enemy Union forces.
The Confederate front extended for more than half a mile, men bumping against men on either side, rank pressing against rank. A solid wall of soldiers in grey and brown, moving relentlessly forward, the Stars and Bars waving proudly in the hot July air.
The Union Army remained silent and still, maintaining their orderly lines, waiting, watching the ocean of armed men move forward, wave upon wave.
Josh crossed himself.
Billy, in an awe inspired whisper, used the Lord's name in vain, but Josh did not seem to notice--or care.
Grimm merely slitted his eyes against the bright sunlight, studying the situation. It was stupid. The enemy ranks were so close, so tightly packed, moving at such a steady pace, that one needed only fire at will when they were within range and surely the shot fired would hit some poor damned soldier. At least the Federal boys had the good sense to be positioned behind a stone wall or otherwise entrenched for some protection against enemy fire.
General John Gibbon rode down the lines, cool and calm, a stolid man who appeared to have ice water in his veins, advising his men of the Iron Brigade to remain relaxed and when the order was given to make every shot count.
When the artillery men were given the order to commence firing, as many as ten Confederate soldiers were killed at a time. As the cannonade continued, taking Rebels out by the dozens, some of the cannoneers actually joked about how it was like shooting fish in a barrel.
Then it started, a cry that went up all along the Union lines.
"Fredericksburg! Fredericksburg! Fredericksburg!"
Remember the defeat of the Union at Fredericksburg and avenge your fallen brothers!
Never again Fredericksburg!
More deafening than the cannons was the cry of "Fredericksburg!" as it smote the air and assaulted the eardrums of the oncoming Rebel soldiers. Every blue coated man there joined in on the spontaneous chant. Grimm himself got caught up in it, so emotionally charged was the moment that even he did not stop to think about the devastating effect it had upon the Rebels' morale while it seemed to give strength to every Yankee there.
"Fredericksburg! Fredericksburg!" the Federal boys chanted. It was like a magic word that at once pummelled the enemy while infusing new strength and vigour into the Union ranks.
No one knows who started it, nor why that man thought to do it, but it was pure magic.
"Fredericksburg! Fredericksburg! Fredericksburg!"
It thundered. It rolled. The monotonous, emotionally charged passionate chant beat against the wall of grey.
"Fredericksburg!"
Then the first Confederates came within two hundred yards of the Union line, and when General Alexander Hays of the Union Army gave the order to again fire, eleven cannons and one thousand and seven hundred muskets and rifles went off at once. Entire Rebel regiments disappeared in the volley after volley directed at the approaching army. The air was filled with choking smoke and dust. Still the Confederate troops came on, relentless in their advance upon the Union line.
"Armageddon," Joshua was heard to have said, and that indeed it seemed to be to the men who fought there.
At one point and one point only did the Rebels actually breach the Union line, and that was at the crook in the stone wall called the Angle. There men fought one another in hand to hand combat. Soldiers were literally discharging their weapons into the faces of their enemy. Bayonets were thrust through chests and stomachs. Grimm caught sight of Billy as he drove his bayonet, gripped tightly in his fist, straight through the head of one Rebel. The Rebel's shot went wild, hitting another Confederate. Billy had difficulty dislodging his weapon and did not notice the man to his right about to set the barrel of his pistol to Billy's head and shoot. Grimm, cutting a man nearly in two before him with his sabre in his left hand, shot the Rebel about to kill Billy with the Colt in his right. Only then, when the man stood there with an extra orifice between his eyes, did Billy look up and realize how close he had come to being killed.
Stepping over the stone wall, his hat idiotically perched atop his upraised sabre, was Confederate General Lewis A. Armistead. Grimm through gritted teeth cursed the man for being a "Damn fool" and then shot him dead.
As he fought, the ground now littered with dead or dying men laying in pools of red blood--Yankee blood indistinguishable from Rebel blood--Grimm noticed that Jessup and Burke and some of the other Raiders were near at hand fighting on foot. But where, he wondered, was Captain Harrison?
In the midst of that chaos the next series of events happened too quickly for Grimm to comprehend. It was not until later that he could put it all into understandable order.
There was an unusual explosion. A cartridge had misfired and a revolver blew up. Not only did the misfired Colt take the soldier's hand, but the exploding pistol was far too close to his face, Joshua's face, and the young man suddenly fell back, remaining hand and bloody stump held up to his blackened features, screaming in pain: "My eyes! My eyes!"
At the same moment, unbeknownst to Grimm, Harrison seemed to just appear behind him. It was as if he had been suddenly transported there and was invisible to all. No one made a move towards him. No one tried to harm him. No one so much as even bumped into Harrison as he slowly, ever so slowly, raised his revolver, his arm fully extended, and carefully, very carefully, aimed it, not at a Confederate, but at Grimm's back.
The moment dragged on as he began to squeeze the trigger.
Billy had lost his rifle and spent the last round in his pistol when he turned about and saw Harrison taking careful aim at Grimm's back. The boy was too far away to tackle the captain or use his sabre.
And Harrison's intention was painfully clear.
"Grimm!" Billy cried out. "Behind you! Behind you!" But the cacophony of war drowned out his voice.
Everything seemed to be happening very slowly for the young man. Even his cry of warning seemed to be an unintelligible low drone to his battle beaten ears.
Harrison's finger tightened on the trigger, slowly pulling it back.
Billy leaped forward.
The hammer of the pistol fell against the cartridge's percussion cap.
There was an explosion as the lead projectile was driven from the barrel of the Army Colt.
Billy leaped into the air, almost seeming to fly over the fallen bodies of slain soldiers.
Grimm began to turn around, having finally heard and understood the warning Billy had shouted.
Harrison's eyes met Grimm's.
"Billy, no!" Grimm shouted.
The bullet sliced through the air and only a few feet from Grimm its progress was suddenly halted as Billy threw himself between Grimm and the flying lead.
There was a heavy thud as the small but deadly missle slammed into the boy's chest.
Billy grunted involuntarily, his body kicked back about a foot, and he fell hard right at Grimm's feet.
The dark man looked up with an expression of utter surprise and horror upon his face which quickly changed to one of pure hatred. His grey eyes burned with an ungodly cold fire and he bared his strong white teeth and growled low in his throat.
Harrison cocked his single-action revolver for a second shot, taken by surprise when Billy hurtled himself in the way of his first.
Grimm raised his Colt, cocked the hammer back, and squeezed the trigger.
Click.
He cocked and fired again.
Once more the hammer fell upon a spent cartridge.
Harrison's face was split from ear to ear with an evil grin as he realized that Grimm's gun was empty. He began to again put pressure on the trigger of his revolver.
There was an explosion.
Harrison's arm suddenly jerked up, he squeezed the trigger, but the shot flew wildly into the sky.
Blood began to soak through Harrison's dusty blue uniform as he, wild-eyed with shock, first gave Grimm a quizzical look and then staggered back when he saw Orrin MacCleary stepping out of a cloud of smoke, his revolver in his hand. The sergeant cocked his pistol again as Grimm turned his eyes upon him, and squeezed the trigger once more.
Another missle of hot lead screeched through the air and hit Harrison somewhere in the torso, kicking his left shoulder back.
The traitorous captain tried to aim his weapon at the sergeant and fire, but the spell had been broken and a sudden rush of men knocked him down and out of sight, and before either Grimm or MacCleary could think, they found themselves embroiled in another fight for their lives against the men who had been properly designated as the enemy.
Pickett's charge failed. Every Confederate who breached the wall had been either killed or captured. It was to be the closest Lee ever came to penetrating Union territory.
When the remaining Rebels staggered back, the Yankees let out a cheer that thundered throughout the hills and valleys of Pennsylvania.
As the Confederates made their way back across the field, the only sound behind them being the cheers of the Union Army, General Robert E. Lee, looking like a hundred-year-old-man, rode out on his grey stallion Traveller to meet his beaten troops and all that he could say to them, over and over again, with perfect sincerity, was "It is all my fault."
Later he would try to resign, but Confederate President Jefferson Davis would refuse to accept his resignation.
George Pickett, the scent of his perfume obliterated by that of spent gunpowder, sweat and blood, was ordered to rally his division for the Union counter attack which Lee expected and which never came, but Pickett replied with tears in his eyes that he no longer had a division. Lee was silent for a moment before riding off, a mere grey ghost of a man on a grey horse, and to his back Pickett said to the men standing near him, "That old man had my division slaughtered."
On that third day of the Battle of Gettysburg, the third day of July 1863, fifteen thousand Confederate soldiers assaulted Cemetery Ridge which was held by about ten thousand Union infantrymen and unhorsed calvary soldiers. The Confederates managed to penetrate the Union line only a little, but in retreating they left behind nineteen battle flags and hundreds of prisoners.
About six thousand and five hundred Confederates had fallen in battle or been captured, nearly half the men who marched out of the woods. All fifteen regimental commanders had been hit, as well as nearly every officer, three brigadier generals and eight colonels.
Longstreet, like many of the Rebels, was shattered by the battle and he would later say that Gettysburg was "ground of no value". Certainly it proved to have been without value to the Confederacy.
Almost a third of those engaged, fifty-one thousand men, as some later reported, were lost. It would be said that there had been a total of twenty-three thousand casulties for the North, and twenty-eight thousand for the South, and that the two thousand and four hundred inhabitants of Gettysburg had ten times that many wounded to care for after the three day battle was fought.
Houses used to care for the wounded later had to burn their carpets as they were completely soaked with blood. Books were used for pillows and were also ruined by the rich red fluid that had flowed from the hearts of noble blue-clad soldiers.
For the Confederacy, all hope of invading the North had ended.