"Tell your men to stop, to pull back to here, form a salient around the ford."
"Thank you, sir."
Ord saluted, bowed his head, and rode forward.
Near McCausland Farm 5:30 PM.
The gunfire beyond McCausland Farm was rippling down, slowing in volume and pace. Lee rode along the line, watching as Beauregard's men slowly pushed forward, the Yankees giving ground. What had once been a cornfield was now as flat as the one at Sharpsburg. Every stalk cut down, the ripening corn replaced by a grim harvest of blue and gray.
In a significant way, this fight had indeed been like Sharpsburg and the cornfield. Charge and countercharge had swept the field repeatedly until all semblance of order, of meaning too, perhaps even why they were fighting for this ground, was forgotten. It had simply devolved into a murder match by both sides.
Jubal Early was limping across the field toward him, and for once even this tough old fighter seemed shaken.
"My boys," Jubal said, coming to Lee's side and looking up. "Sir, my boys. That's my entire division out there." He gestured across the cornfield toward the farm.
Lee could not reply, leaned down, patted him on the shoulder, and turned back to ride to his headquarters.
If this was the way Grant intended to fight it out, it was time to turn the tables.
Sergeant Hazner slipped back down in his trench. In the last few minutes it just seemed that a terrible exhaustion had set in oh both sides. Almost all firing had ceased. Colonel Brown crept past, patting men on the shoulder, telling them to stand down, to clean their weapons, and watering parties would be formed. Hazner was not at all surprised when Brown called on him to form that detail.
He looked around at his men. The regiment had not taken too many casualties this day, twenty dead and wounded, more dead than wounded actually, mostly head shots, and one section of men knocked down when a shell detonated directly above their trench.
The blockhouse, just to their-right, had been a favorite target of sharpshooters all day, its front and flank absolutely shredded by hundreds of bullets.
"Man could take that thing down and open a blacksmith shop with what he found in that wood," someone quipped, but no one laughed; they were all too damn tired and thirsty.
Hazner pointed to a dozen men.
"Get canteens," he said, voice so hoarse he could barely speak.
The men spread out, bent double, moving down the entrenchment, picking up canteens as they moved. Hazner ventured to stand up, taking off his cap, peeking over the lip of the trench.
What a damned nightmare, he thought What little vegetation there had been in front of his position, clear down to the river, was beaten to pulp. The tops of trees along the riverbank were shredded. The Yankee entrenchments on the far side were again becoming visible, the smoke from the long day's fusillade starting to lift on a building westerly breeze. At the edge of the railroad cut, held by the Yankees, he saw stretcher teams, bent low, climbing out the back of the position and sprinting up the slope to the rear. The understanding that both sides had always held fire for stretcher details continued to hold; no shots were deliberately aimed at them, but random shots could still take them out, and more than one man carrying a stretcher suddenly collapsed.
The more aggressive on both sides began to resume fire now that the smoke was clearing enough to see the other side, and Hazner ducked down after one round zipped by a bit too closely.
The water detail gathered around him, men with ten, fifteen canteens slung around their necks.
"Let's go," Hazner said. He led the way down the trench. They passed through the next regiment to the left, the entrenchment curving back to the southwest, following the bend of the hill. Their dead were piled out on the far side of their stronghold, the bottom of the trench carpeted with tens of thousands of pieces of paper, torn cartridges. The men looked as if they had come from a minstrel show, faces blackened by smoke and powder, rivulets of sweat streaking their faces.
"Fired a hundred fifty rounds, I did," he heard one of them boasting wearily. "Know for sure I got three of 'em. Boy, what a shooting gallery we had today."
Even as he spoke the man rubbed his shoulder.
He passed through another regiment and then another and then finally the trench just ended. Directly below was the railroad track leading to the bridge, but they were now a good four hundred yards back from the front.
"Be careful there," said a sergeant posted at the end of the entrenchment. "They got a few real good shooters over there."
Hazner nodded his thanks, took a deep breath, and climbed out of the trench and slid down the slope to the railroad track. Men were scurrying back and forth, bent on the same duty, carrying canteens for Scales's Division posted up on the slope looking down on the center of the line.
Long-distance harassing fire was indeed coming from the railroad cut on the other side of the Monocacy, nothing accurate, but an unaimed ball at six hundred yards could kill just as quickly as an aimed one.
"Come on, boys," Hazner said, and he slid down off the track and into an open field. A mill was directly before him, at least what was left of it, the building having caught fire during the day. Behind the mill was a small pond, all but concealed in the drifted banks of smoke. In spite of his exhaustion he ran down to it. Scores of men were lying along the bank around the pond, and he slipped down between two of them, the man to his left a Yankee, but he didn't care.
Brushing the water back with his hand he stuck his head in, delighting in the tepid water, and drank deeply.
"Ah, thank God," he whispered. Splashing water up over his neck, he was half-tempted to just take off his cartridge box and jump in.
"Ah, Sergeant, maybe we better go someplace else," one of his men said softly, tugging him on the shoulder.
"Why?"
"Most of these boys is dead."
Hazner half-sat up, looked at the Yankee lying next to him, head buried in the water, and shook him.
The man's head turned slightly and Hazner recoiled with horror. He had no face, the jawbone and nose completely blown off. He had been drinking right next to him, only inches away.
Before he quite realized what he was doing, Hazner got to his knees, bent double, and vomited.
Gasping, he leaned over, ashamed of the fact that he had vomited on the dead soldier.
"It's all right there, Sergeant," one of his men said. He looked up. It was young Lieutenant Hurt, the boy he had braced up before the assault on Fort Stephens. Hurt put his hand out and pulled Hazner up to his feet.
"We thought you seen it," Hurt said, and he pointed to bodies around the small pond, not just on the banks but floating in the middle of it, one of the bodies having jammed in the millwheel. The water was actually tinted pink. Some of the men were still alive, but so weak that after having collapsed into the water they were now drowning.
Hurt ordered the detail to drop canteens and pull the poor wretches out. The men set to work, some of the wounded so badly injured that as they were pulled out they screamed with pain, one of them a man scorched black from the waist up.
Hazner, still in shock, said nothing.
The men, having finished their task of pulling the drowning back, were not sure what to do next. Hurt looked at Hazner, as if expecting the experienced sergeant major to resume control.
"Nothing we can do for these boys now," Hurt said. "I'll tell Colonel Brown when we get back and he can get Scales to send ambulances down."
He said it loud, as if offering an excuse to the injured and the dying around them.
"Come on, boys. Let's get above the pond."
Hazner picked up a dozen of the canteens and said nothing, following along woodenly. They reached the ground above the pond, and all along the banks of the stream hundreds of men were at work at the same task, so that by the time Hurt found a spot for the men to start filling, there was barely a trickle of water.