Battle Flag Read online

  "Killed?"

  "You're going to meet the Yankees tomorrow, son," Truslow said, "and some of us are going to get killed, but I'll do my best to keep you from getting slaughtered. Starting now." He leaned over and ripped the bars off the Lieutenant's collar, then tossed the cloth scraps into the fire. "Sharpshooters put telescopes on their rifles, son, just look­ing for officers to kill, and the Yankees don't care that you're not full-grown. See a pair of bars like that, they shoot, and you're two feet underground with a shovelful of dirt in your eyes." Truslow spat more tobacco juice. "Or worse," he added darkly.

  "Worse?" Coffman asked nervously.

  "You could be wounded, boy, and screaming like a stuck pig while a half-drunken doctor rummages through your innards. Or sobbing like a baby while you lie out in the field with your guts being eaten by rodents and no one knowing where the hell you are. It ain't pretty, and there's only one way to keep it from being even uglier and that's to hurt the bastards before they hurt you." He looked at Coffman, recognizing how the boy was trying to hide his fear. "You'll be all right," Truslow said. "The worst bit is the waiting. Now sleep, boy. You've got a man's job to do tomorrow."

  High overhead a shooting star whipped white fire across the darkening sky. Somewhere a man sang of a love left behind while another played a sad tune on a violin. Colonel Swynyard's flogged slave tried to keep from whimpering, Truslow snored, and Coffman shivered, thinking of the morrow.

  Chapter 2

  THE YANKEE CAVALRY PATROL reached General Banks's headquarters late at night. The patrol had come under fire at the Rapidan River, and the loss of one of their horses had slowed their journey back to Culpeper Court House, as had the necessity to look after two wounded men. A New Hampshire corporal had been struck by a bullet in his lower belly and would surely die, while the patrol's commander, a captain, had suffered a glancing hit on the ribs. The Cap­tain's wound was hardly serious, but he had scratched and prodded at the graze until a satisfactory amount of blood heroically stained his shirt.

  Major General Nathaniel Banks, commander of General Pope's Second Corps, was smoking a last cigar on the veranda of his commandeered house when he heard that the patrol had returned with ominous news of enemy forces crossing the Rapidan. "Let's have the man here! Let's hear him. Lively now!" Banks was a fussy man who, despite all the contrary evidence, was convinced of his own military genius. He certainly looked the part of a successful soldier, for there were few men who wore the uniform of the United States with more assurance. He was trim, brusque, and confident, yet until the war began he had never been a soldier, merely a politician. He had risen to be Speaker of the House of Representatives, though it had taken 133 ballots to achieve that honor, and afterward Governor of Massachusetts, a state so rich in men willing to be taxed that the federal government had deemed it necessary to offer its governor the chance of immortal martial glory as a token of its thanks. Governor Banks, who was as passionate in his love for his country as in his hatred of the slave trade, had leaped at the chance.

  Now he waited, ramrod straight, as the cavalry Captain, wearing his jacket like a cloak so that his bloody shirt showed clearly, climbed the veranda steps and offered a salute, which he dramatically cut short with a wince as though the pain in his chest had suddenly struck hard.

  "Your name?" Banks demanded peremptorily.

  "Thompson, General. John Hannibal Thompson. From Ithaca, New York. Reckon you might have met my uncle, Michael Fane Thompson, when you were a congressman. He sat for New York back in—"

  "You found the enemy, Thompson?" Banks asked in a very icy voice.

  Thompson, offended at being so rudely cut off, shrugged. "We sure found someone hostile, General."

  "Who?"

  "Damned if I know. We got shot at." Thompson touched the crusted blood on his shirt, which looked brown rather than red in the lamplight.

  "You shot back?" Banks asked.

  "Hell, General, no one shoots at me without getting retaliation, and I reckon me and my boys laid a few of the bastards low."

  "Where was this?" the aide accompanying General Banks asked.

  Captain Thompson crossed to a wicker table on which the aide had spread a map of northern Virginia illuminated by two flickering candle-lanterns. Moths beat frantically around the three men's heads as they leaned over the map. Thompson used one of the lanterns to light himself a cigar, then tapped a finger on the map, "It was a ford just around there, General." He had tapped the map well west of the main road that led due south from Culpeper Court House to Gordonsville.

  "You crossed to the south bank of the river?" Banks asked.

  "Couldn't rightly do that, General, on account of there being a pack of rebs already occupying the ford."

  "There's no ford marked there," the aide interjected. Sweat dripped from his face to stain the Blue Ridge Mountains, which lay well to the west of the rivers. The night had brought no relief from the sweltering heat.

  "A local nigger guided us," Thompson explained. "He said the ford weren't well known, being nothing but a summer back road to a gristmill, and some of us reckoned he just might be lying to us, but there sure was a ford after all. Seems the nigger was truthful."

  "The word, Thompson, is Negro," Banks said very coldly, then looked down at the map again. Other patrols had spoken of rebel infantry marching north on the Gordonsville road, and this new report suggested that the Confederates were advancing on a broad front and in con­siderable strength. What were they doing? A reconnaissance in force, or a full-scale attack aimed at destroying his corps?

  "So how many men fired at you?" Banks resumed his questioning of the flippant Thompson.

  "Wasn't exactly counting the minny balls, General, on account of being too busy firing back. But I reckon there was at least one regiment north of the river and more of the devils coming on."

  Banks stared at the cavalryman, wondering just why responsibility always seemed to devolve onto fools. "Did you try to take a prisoner?"

  "I guess I was too busy making sure I didn't end up six feet underground, General." Thompson laughed. "Hell, there were only a dozen of us and more than a thousand of them. Maybe two thousand."

  "Did you ascertain the identity of the regiment which fired on you?" Banks asked with an icy pedantry.

  "I sure ascertained that it was a rebel regiment, General," Thompson answered. "They were carrying that new flag, the one with the cross on it."

  Banks shuddered at the man's obtuse stupidity and won­dered why the North's horsemen were so inept at gathering intelligence. Probably, he thought, because they had none themselves. So who were these rebels marching north? There was a rumor that Stonewall Jackson had come to Gordonsville, and Banks winced at the thought of that bearded, ragged man whose troops marched at the speed of wildfire and fought like fiends.

  Banks dismissed the cavalryman. "Useless," he said as the man paced off down Culpeper Court House's main street, where sentries stood guard on the taverns. In the town's small wooden houses yellow lights burned behind the muslin curtains used as insect screens. An undertaker's wagon, its shafts tilted up to the sky, stood outside a church where, Banks remembered, the famous Boston preacher Elial Starbuck was due to speak on Sunday morning. The town's population was not anticipating the abolitionist's sermon with any pleasure, but Banks, an old friend of the preacher, was looking forward to Starbuck's peroration and had demanded that as many of his officers as possible should be present. Nathaniel Banks had a noble vision of God and country marching hand in hand to victory.

  Now, with a frown on his face, Banks looked back to the 'map, on which his sweat dripped monotonously. Suppose the enemy move was a bluff? Suppose that a handful of rebels were merely trying to frighten him? The rebels had surely guessed that he had his eyes on Gordonsville, because if he captured that town, then he would cut the railroad that connected Richmond with the rich farmland in the Shenandoah Valley. Sever those rails, and the enemy's armies would starve, and that thought reignited the glimmer
of promised martial glory in Nathaniel Banks's mind. He saw a statue in Boston, envisaged streets and towns all across New England named after him, and even dreamed that a whole new state might be fashioned from the savage western territories and given his name. Banks Street

  , Banksville, the state of Banks.

  Those inspired visions were fed by more than mere ambi­tion. They were fed by a burning need for revenge. Earlier in the year Nathaniel Banks had led a fine army down the Shenandoah Valley, where he had been tricked and trounced by Thomas Jackson. Even the Northern news­papers had admitted that Jackson had cut Banks to pieces— . indeed, the rebels had taken so many guns and supplies from Banks that they had nicknamed him "Commissary Banks." They had mocked him, ridiculed him, and their scorn still hurt Nathaniel Banks. He wanted revenge.

  "The prudent course, sir, would be a withdrawal behind the Rappahannock," the aide murmured. The aide was a graduate of West Point and supposed to provide the politician-general with sound military advice.

  "It may be nothing but a reconnaissance," Banks said, thinking of vengeance.

  "Maybe so, sir," the aide said suavely, "but what do we gain by fighting? Why hold ground we can easily retake in a week's time? Why not just let the enemy wear himself out by marching?"

  Banks brushed cigar ash off the map. Retreat now? In a week when Boston's most famous preacher was coming to visit the army? What would Massachusetts say if they heard that Commissary Banks had run away from a few rebels?

  "We stay," Banks said. He stabbed his finger down at the contours of a ridge that barred the road just south of the Culpeper Court House. If Jackson was marching north in the hope of resupplying his army at the expense of Commissary Banks, then he would have to cross that ridge that lay behind the small protection of a stream. The stream was called Cedar Run, and it lay at the foot of Cedar Mountain. "We'll meet him there," Banks said, "and beat him there."

  The aide said nothing. He was a handsome, clever young man who thought he deserved better than to be harnessed to this stubborn bantam-cock. The aide was trying to frame a response, some persuasive words that would deflect Banks from rashness, but the words would not come. Instead, from the lamplit street, there sounded men's voices singing about loved ones left behind, of sweethearts waiting, of home.

  "We'll meet him there," Banks said again, ramming his finger onto the sweat-stained map, "and beat him there."

  At Cedar Mountain.

  The Legion did not march far on the day they crossed the Rapidan. There was a curious lack of urgency about the expedition, almost as though they were merely changing base rather than advancing on the Northerners who had invaded Virginia. And next morning, though they were woken long before dawn and were ready to march even before the sun had risen above the tall eastern trees, they still waited three hours while a succession of other regiments trailed slowly by on the dusty road. A battery of small six-pounders and short-barreled howitzers was dragged past, followed by a column of Virginia infantry, who good-naturedly jeered the Faulconer Legion for its pretentious name. The day was hot and promised to get hotter still, yet still they waited as the sun climbed higher. More troops passed until, just short of midday, the Legion at last led the Faulconer Brigade out onto the dusty road.

  Just moments later the guns started to sound. The noise came from far ahead, a grumble that could have been mis­taken for thunder if the sky had not been cloudless. The air was sullen, moist, and windless, and the faces of Starbuck's men were pale with road dust through which their sweat ran in dark lines. Soon, Starbuck thought, some of those rivulets would be blood red, fly-coated, and twitching, and that pre­monition of battle turned his belly sour and caused the muscles in his right thigh to tremble. He tried to anticipate the sound of bullets as he coached himself to display courage and not the fear that was liquefying his bowels, and all the while the distant cannons hammered their flat, soulless noise across the land. "Goddamned artillery," Truslow said in a sour tone. "Some poor bastards are catching hell."

  Lieutenant Coffman seemed about to say something, then decided to keep quiet. One of the conscripts broke ranks to pull down his pants and squat beside the road. Normally he would have been good-naturedly jeered, but the muffled thump of the guns made every man nervous.

  In the early afternoon the Legion halted in a shallow valley. The road ahead was blocked by a Georgia battalion beyond which lay a ridgeline crested by dark trees beneath a sky whitened by gunsmoke. Some of the Georgians lay asleep on the road, looking like corpses. Others were pencil­ing their names and hometowns on scraps of paper that they either pinned to their coats or stuck into buttonholes so that, should they die, their bodies would be recognized and their families informed. Some of Starbuck's men began to take the same gloomy precaution, using the blank end pages of Bibles as their labels.

  "Culpeper Court House," George Finney announced suddenly.

  Starbuck, sitting beside the road, glanced at him, waiting.

  "Billy Sutton says this is the road to Culpeper Court House," George Finney explained. "Says his daddy brought him on this road two years back."

  "We came to bury my grandmother, Captain," Billy Sutton intervened. Sutton was a corporal in G Company. He had once been in J Company, but a year of battles had shrunk the Faulconer Legion from ten to eight companies, and even those companies were now understrength. At the war's beginning the Legion had marched to battle as one of the biggest regiments in the rebel army, but after a year of battle it would scarcely have filled the pews of a backcountry church.

  Three horsemen galloped southward through the brittle stubble of a harvested cornfield, their horses' hooves kicking up puffs of dust from the parched dirt. Starbuck guessed they were staff officers bringing orders. Truslow glanced at the three men, then shook his head. "Goddam Yankees in Culpeper Court House," Truslow said, affronted. "Got no damned business in Culpeper Court House."

  "If it is Culpeper Court House," Starbuck said dubiously. Culpeper County had to be at least sixty miles from the Legion's home in Faulconer County, and few of the men in the Legion had traveled more than twenty miles from home in all their lives. Or not until this war had marched them up to Manassas and across to Richmond to kill Yankees. They had become good at that. They had become good at dying, too.

  The gunfire suddenly swelled into one of those frenetic passages when, for no apparent reason, every cannon on a battlefield spoke at once. Starbuck cocked an ear, listening for the slighter crackle of musketry, but he could hear nothing except the unending thunder of artillery. "Poor bastards," he said.

  "Our turn soon," Truslow answered unhelpfully.

  "This rate they'll run out of ammunition," Starbuck said hopefully.

  Truslow spat in comment on his Captain's optimism, then turned as hoofbeats sounded. "God damn Swynyard," he said tonelessly.

  Every man in the company now either feigned sleep or kept his eyes fixed on the dusty road. Colonel Griffin Swynyard was a professional soldier whose talents had long been dissolved by alcohol but whose career had been rescued by General Washington Faulconer. Swynyard's cousin edited Richmond's most influential newspaper, and Washington Faulconer, well aware that reputation was more easily bought than won, was paying for the support of the Richmond Examiner by employing Swynyard. For a second Starbuck wondered if Swynyard was coming to see him, but the Colonel, closely followed by Captain Moxey, galloped past H Company and on up the slope toward the sound of battle. Starbuck's heart gave an acid beat as he guessed Swynyard was going to mark the place where the Legion would deploy, which meant that at any second the orders would come to advance into the guns.

  Ahead, where the road vanished across the shallow ridge, the Georgian troops were already struggling to their feet and pulling on bedrolls and weapons. The cannon fire had momentarily abated, but the snapping sound of rifle cartridges now crackled across the dry landscape. The sound increased Starbuck's nervousness. It had been a month since the Legion last fought, but a single month was not nearly long enou
gh to allay the terrors of the battlefield. Starbuck had been secretly hoping that the Legion might sit this skirmish out, but the Georgia battal­ion was already trudging north to leave a haze of dust over the road.

  "Up, Nate!" Captain Murphy relayed Bird's orders to Starbuck.

  Truslow bellowed at H Company to stand up. The men hitched their bedrolls over their shoulders and dusted off their rifles. Behind H Company the men of Captain Medlicott's G Company stood slowly, their lapels and belt loops dotted with the scraps of white paper on which they had written their names.

  "Look for Swynyard on the road," Captain Murphy told Starbuck.

  Starbuck wondered where Washington Faulconer was, then assumed the General would be leading his Brigade from behind. Swynyard, whatever his other faults, was no coward. "Forward!" Starbuck shouted; then, rifle and bedroll slung, he took his place at the head of the column. Dust thrown up by the boots of the Georgians stung his throat and eyes. The road was daubed with dark stains of tobacco juice that looked uncannily like blood spattered from wounds. The sound of rifle fire was more intense.

  That sound swelled even further as Starbuck led the Legion through the woods at the crest of the ridge that had served to disguise and diminish the sound of fighting, which now spread across Starbuck's front in a furious cacophony. For a mile beyond the trees there was nothing but gun-smoke, flame, and chaos. The fields to the left of the road were filled with wounded men and surgeons hacking at broken flesh, to the right was a hill rimmed with artillery smoke, while ahead lay a second belt of woodland that con­cealed the actual fighting but could not hide the pall of smoke that boiled up either side of the road nor disguise the sound of the guns.

  "By golly," Coffman said. He was excited and nervous.