Talons of Eagles (17 page)

—Major Samuel Alroy Jones

Jamie and Longstreet arrived just in time to take part in the bloodiest fighting along the Chickamauga, and during the late afternoon, the stream did run red with the blood of the Blue and the Gray.

Even though it was not yet true fall, somebody forgot to tell Mother Nature, and the weather took a turn for the worse. Neither side was dressed for the cold, and both sides suffered during the near freezing night.

With the addition of Longstreet, the Rebels now outnumbered the Yankees, but just by the barest of margins. Longstreet wanted to attack at first light, for his men were spoiling for a fight, and Bragg agreed and gave the order for the division on the Rebel right to charge at dawn, the rest would follow in waves.

But dawn came and went and nothing happened. Jamie sent Little Ben Pardee racing back to find out what was wrong.

“How the hell should I know?” General Bragg yelled, waving his arms in anger and frustration. “Go find that goddamn Polk. His division is supposed to open this dance.”

When Ben Pardee reported back to Jamie, there was a very puzzled look on his young face. “What's the matter?” Jamie asked. “What's the delay?”

“General Polk is waiting for his breakfast.”

“Somebody get me a bowl of mush and I'll ride over and hand feed the son of a bitch!” Longstreet said.

No one dared to bring the fiery general any mush, for Longstreet would have done just what he threatened to do.

Both armies waited for the other to make a move. Any element of surprise the Confederates might have had was now long gone. At about eight-thirty, Jamie sent Little Ben riding over to once more check on Polk.

Little Ben reported back. “His aide said he was in the woods, takin' his mornin' constitutional.”

“The whole damn war waits for him to take a crap,” Sergeant Major Huske said, then spat.

The battle finally got under way just after ten that morning. History did not record whether General Polk's constitutional was to his liking.

When a Union general made a terrible mistake in tactics and shifted his full division, leaving a gap in Yankee lines, Longstreet shifted Jamie and his Marauders around to beef up Forrest's men, fighting at the extreme north end of the Rebel lines, about four miles away from the heaviest fighting. Then Longstreet plunged his entire command straight into the gaping hole and broke the Union lines.

Miles to the north, Huske listened to the faint sounds of battle and remarked, “What's that sayin' about always a bridesmaid but never a bride?”

“Yeah, that's us, all right,” Captain Jennrette said.

“Hey!” Captain Sparks yelled across the road to where the Union troops were dug in. “You Yankees gonna fight or not?”

“Try this on for size!” came the shout from the Union lines, and that was followed by a hail of rifle fire that hit nothing but air.

“Well, at least we know they're over there,” Jamie said. He turned to Little Ben. “Find Forrest and ask him what we're supposed to be doing.”

Little Ben returned and said, “His orders are to harass the enemy and hold.”

“A man could interpret those orders in a lot of ways, Colonel,” Captain Malone said.

Then the faint sounds of a bugler blowing “Charge” came to the men.

“Somebody is gettin' right into the thick of things,” Captain Dupree remarked. He listened for a moment. “Hell, Colonel. That's comin' from the north of us. Whose command is way up there?”

“There isn't supposed to be anyone up there,” Jamie said. “We're the northernmost unit.”

Suddenly there was wild cheering from the Union troops across the road.

“Now what the hell is all that about?” Lieutenant Lenoir tossed the question out.

“Ben!” Jamie called. “Where did you find Forrest?”

“ 'Bout three-quarters of mile south of us, sir. Down yonder on the road.”

The firing from across the road grew very intense just as the woods to the north of Jamie's position suddenly filled with blue-coated cavalrymen as they burst out into the clearing, waving sabers and pistols in the classic mounted charge.

“Companies three and four wheel to face the infantry dug in!” Jamie shouted. “Companies one and two, follow me!”

Colonel Layfield had been briefed that Jamie and the Marauders did not like to face the taste of cold steel in a cavalry charge; he had been told they would cut and run. The south-hater had been badly misinformed.

Two companies of Marauders, led by Jamie, smashed into Layfield's as yet to be battle-tested Revengers. Jamie's bugler was blowing “Dixie” with everything he had as the Blue and the Gray clashed in the time-honored tradition of the cavalry charge.

The Marauders were badly outnumbered; but they were, to a man, experienced fighters, having been tested in the heat of battle in almost two years of bloody fighting. Jamie's bugler, a young man named Gibson, tore the fancy new bugle out of the hands of Layfield's bugler and conked him over the head with it, his hat the only thing saving the man from a fractured skull.

Jamie's horse, Satan, was trained to respond to knee commands, and Jamie rode right into the midst of things, both hands filled with Colts. Union saddles were being emptied at an alarming rate under the fury of the Marauders.

Layfield looked around for his bugler; he could not be found. It wouldn't have made any difference, for the young man didn't have anything to toot on.

Layfield was wild with hatred as the sounds of “Dixie” filled his head. Layfield rose up in the stirrups and shouted for his men to fall back and regroup just as Little Ben Pardee triggered off a round from his pistol. The bullet ricochetted off the back of Layfield's saddle and took a small piece of his pompous ass with it before sailing off.

Roaring in rage and pain, waving his saber and cussing, Layfield managed to get his message across, and the Revengers got the hell gone from the clearing.

“Sound recall!” Jamie yelled. “No pursuit. Recall, Gibson.”

Forrest had heard the heavy firing and came galloping up, his command right behind him. But while Layfield's attack had failed miserably, the Union troops across the road had been beefed up. For Forrest to charge across the road would have been suicide. All he could do was hold. He jumped off his horse and walked up to Jamie, who was bleeding from a slight head wound.

“Who the hell was that attacked us?” Jamie looked up, as one of the doctor's aides was cleaning up the wound.

“I just received word that a brigade called the Revengers was moving into place north of here. Had to have been them.”

“Layfield's bunch.”

“You and your boys put them on the rout, Jamie.”

“I shot a colonel in the ass,” Little Ben Pardee said proudly, a wide grin on his gunsmoke-grimed face.

That tickled the funny bone of both commanders, and they burst out laughing.

“And I got me a brand-new bugle!” Gibson added, holding up the shiny horn.

That set Forrest and Jamie off again. “Well, play, boy!” Forrest said, wiping his eyes.

Gibson lifted the bugle to his lips, and the strains of “Bonnie Blue Flag” drifted out over the dead and the wounded.

* * *

The next day the Rebels put the Yankees into full retreat, but while it could be called a Confederate victory, the cost in human life was terribly high. Bragg had lost more than nineteen thousand men, killed, wounded, or taken prisoner. The Union army had lost more than seventeen thousand men, killed, wounded, or taken prisoner. Chickamauga proved to be the bloodiest battle of the war.

Jamie's men had seized a train of supply wagons on the third day, during the Union's retreat. And it was a boon. The wagons were filled with the new Colt revolving rifles and the new Spencer repeating rifles.

Jamie's Marauders became the most heavily armed cavalry unit in the Confederate army, now being able to wheel, dismount, and lay down an awesome field of fire. Jamie didn't know it, but he was revolutionizing cavalry tactics by having his men dismount and fight as infantry. That tactic would soon be adopted by both sides.

Layfield, meanwhile, was unable to ride due to the wound suffered in the right cheek of his buttocks. He found that the greatest balm for the pain in his ass was his ever-growing hatred of and for Jamie Ian MacCallister.

But the siege of Chattanooga was under way, and it was to be a miserable time for civilian and soldier alike. The soldiers had little to eat and the civilians had less. The Union supply lines were being constantly harassed by the Rebels, and before it was all over, some civilians and soldiers would starve to death.

During the first couple of months after the battle of Chickamauga, many drastic changes took place within both the Union and the Confederate armies. Grant became the commanding general of all three armies operating in Tennessee, and he pulled them all under a single military force. He replaced Rosecrans and sent him home to Ohio. On the Rebel side, Davis still refused to replace Bragg; instead, he shifted several ranking generals around and left Bragg in command, much to the disgust of all.

Grant now turned all his attentions toward clearing East Tennessee of all Rebels, and during the last week of October, he put that plan into action. Jamie and his Marauders had been ordered up close to Knoxville, where the Union general, Burnside, was headquartered. Jamie did not know it, but Bragg had learned that Jamie had some fairly strong opinions of Bragg's ability to command and this was Bragg's way of getting rid of Jamie. Two days later, he would order Longstreet and his force to hit the trail for Knoxville. Finally, Bragg would be rid of Longstreet and Joe Wheeler and his cavalry—Wheeler was attached to Longstreet—the two generals who were the most outspoken against him.

Burnside was ordered to hold Knoxville at all costs.

“Stupid,” Jamie fumed on the ride north. “Knoxville is pro-Union. We'll get no support from the citizens there.”

Indeed, when Burnside had arrived in Knoxville, he had been wildly greeted by throngs of cheering people.

Pausing for the night, Jamie's wire-tapper hooked into the lines and scurried back down with the news.

“Longstreet and Wheeler have been ordered up to Knoxville, Colonel. They're comin' up by train. 'Bout a week behind us.”

“Now I know Bragg is a damned fool,” Jamie said. “We'll never be able to hold Knoxville, even if we take it, with such a small force, and Bragg will never beat back the Federals at Chattanooga after cutting his force. What the hell is the man trying to do, lose the war single-handedly?”

That was an opinion shared by many.

Jamie and his men waited for Longstreet and joined the man's forces in the middle of November. He was assigned to Wheeler's cavalry and immediately began harassing the Union forces stationed along the river and stealing their food and equipment, for the supplies that Bragg promised to send never came and winter was covering the land.

Longstreet never admitted openly that he felt all was lost in Tennessee, but Jamie could read sign better than most and could often see it in the man's stance and in the timbre of his voice. Longstreet's men lacked proper winter clothing, and the shoes and boots of many were falling apart, the men having to tie rags around their feet.

Still, no one suggested they give up the fight.

Inside the city, many Union troops were faring no better than the Confederates, for Jamie and his Marauders were raising hell with the supply boats on the Holston River, managing to seize about one out of every three. But even those supplies barely kept body and soul alive. Longstreet's men were forced to fish the dead carcasses of horses and mules from the river and eat them.

Longstreet called for a meeting of his commanders during the last week of November, 1863. It had turned bitterly cold and the rain had changed to sleet. Longstreet's face was grim under his heavy beard. “I have just received word that Chattanooga is about to fall—it may have fallen by this time. I don't know where Bragg is and I have no orders. Telegraph lines have been cut, and as far as I know, we are alone.”

Jamie sat quietly as some of Longstreet's officers urged him to give up the fight and retreat over to Virginia. But Longstreet would not even consider that.

“The last order I received was to fight,” Longstreet said. “And fight we shall. We strike at the city tomorrow morning.”

That was one of the worst decisions Longstreet ever made.

* * *

In less than thirty minutes' time, Longstreet lost a thousand men. He called off the attack and, after a brief pause, ordered his soldiers to begin an orderly retreat. The terrain was unsuitable for cavalry tactics, so Jamie squatted on a ridge and watched the massacre through field glasses, his Marauders packed up and ready to go, waiting some yards behind him.

When Longstreet had been informed that Jamie and his men were packed and ready to pull out, he said, “He probably has the right idea, but I have no choice in the matter.”

Jamie had seen similar sights outside the walls of the Alamo and viewed the carnage without change of expression. Telegraph wires had been repaired, and he had heard only moments before the brief battle began that Chattanooga had indeed fallen and Bragg's men were now retreating into Georgia.

“Is it over,” Captain Jennrette asked, walking up behind Jamie.

“In more ways than one,” Jamie replied, standing up. “Let's go.”

“Where to, Colonel?”

“Georgia.”