Part 69 (1/2)

”They're runnin' now?” the pious one asked.

”It isn't war--it's a ma.s.sacre!” Ned sighed.

The man of prayer leaped on the ditch bank suddenly and shook his fist defiantly.

”Come back here, you d.a.m.ned cowards!” he yelled. ”Come back and we'll whip h.e.l.l out o' you!”

Slowly the shattered regiment fell back down the b.l.o.o.d.y slope, stumbling over their dead and wounded. The dim smoke-bound valley was a slaughter pen. Where magnificent lines of blue had marched with flas.h.i.+ng bayonets and streaming banners at eight o'clock, the dead lay in mangled heaps, and the wounded huddled among them slowly freezing to death.

John saw a magnificent gun a heap of junk with four dead horses and every cannoneer on the ground dead or freezing where they fell. A single sh.e.l.l had done the work. Riderless horses galloped wildly over the field, shying at the grim piles of dark blue bodies, sniffing the blood and neighing pitifully.

Twelve hundred men in his regiment had charged up that hill. But two hundred and fifty came down.

From the steeple of the Court House in Fredericksburg General Couch, in command of the Second Corps, stood with his gla.s.ses on this frightful scene. He whispered to Howard by his side:

”The whole plain is covered with our men fallen and falling--I've never seen anything like it!”

He paused, his lips quivering as he gasped:

”O my G.o.d! see them falling--poor fellows, falling--falling!”

He signalled Burnside for reinforcements.

General Sumner's division on the Union right had charged into the deadliest trap of all.

Down the road toward the foot of Marye's Heights his magnificent army swept at double quick. The Confederate batteries had been specially trained to rake this road from three directions, right, and left flank and centre.

Steadily, stoically the men in blue pressed into this narrow way in silence and met the flaming torrent from three directions. Rus.h.i.+ng on over the bodies of their fallen comrades the thinning ranks reached the old stone wall at the foot of the hill. General Cobb lay concealed behind it with three thousand infantry. The low quick order ran along his line:

”Fire!”

Straight into the faces of the heroic Union soldiers flashed a level blinding flame from three thousand muskets, slaying, crus.h.i.+ng, tearing to pieces the proud army of an hour ago. A thousand men in blue fell in five minutes. The ground was piled with their bodies until it was impossible to charge over them effectively.

For a moment a cloud of smoke pitifully drew a soft grey veil over the awful scene while the men who were left fell back in straggling broken groups.

Five times the Union hosts had charged those terrible brown hills and five times they had been rolled back in red waves of blood.

Late in the day a fierce bitter wind was blowing from the north. There was yet time to turn defeat into victory. The desperate Union Commander ordered the sixth charge.

The men in blue pulled their hats down low as if to shut out the pelting hail of lead and iron and without a murmur charged once more into the mouth of h.e.l.l. The winds had frozen stiff the bodies of their dead. The advancing blue lines s.n.a.t.c.hed these dead men from the ground, carried them in front, stacked them in long piles for bulwarks, and fought behind them with the desperation of madmen. There was no escape. The keen eyes of the Confederate Commanders had planted their right and left flanking lines to pour death into these ranks no matter how high their corpses were piled. The crescent hill blazed and roared with unceasing fury. Only the darkness was kind at last.

And then the men in blue planted the frozen bodies of their comrades along the outer battle line as dummy sentinels, and under cover of the night began to slip back through Fredericksburg and across the silver mirror of the Rappahannock to their old camp, shattered, broken, crushed.

It was four o'clock in the morning before John Vaughan's regiment would give up the search for their desperately wounded. Only the strongest could endure that bitter cold. Through the long, desolate hours the pitiful cries of the wounded men rang through the black, freezing night, and few hands stirred to save them. A great army was fighting to save its flags and guns and reach the shelter beyond the river.

Amid the few flickering lanterns could be heard the greetings of friends in subdued tones as they clasped hands:

”Is that you, old boy?”