Cain at Gettysburg by Ralph Peters Read Free Book Online Page A

of guns and limbers. It was only their brigade commander, Krzyzanowski, creating the uproar behind them. Lean and almost comically elegant, he sat, straight of spine and smiling, on a white horse that pranced even in the depths of mud.
    But Schwertlein remembered Krzyzanowski at Chancellorsville, riding just as erectly amid the madness, wielding his saber to direct men where to aim their fire or halt for another volley, a knight strayed into the wrong century, a hero out of Schiller. Colonel Kriz, too, had felt the sting of injustice, after he and two of his regiments had held the line for the better part of an hour, letting the artillerymen save their guns, as an entire corps collapsed around them.
    As the colonel neared, some men in his path took up a song in Krzyzanowski’s honor:
    Was gestern recht war … für den Rhein …
    ist’s Heute nicht auch … recht für Polen?
    Other voices took it up, organizing themselves in song. Despite the slaughter at Chancellorsville, they still had men in the ranks from a number of singing clubs back in Milwaukee. Schwertlein sang, too, in a baritone honed on Schubert’s Lieder in his family’s parlor in Mainz.
    What once was justice … for the Rhine …
    is it not just … today for Poland?
    Should Poland not be … theirs, but mine …
    a country we have … merely stolen?
    Have you forgotten … our own plight …
    All you profound … thinkers so hallowed …
    Should Poland not … be free by right …
    And free of Prussians … with their gallows?
    The colonel acknowledged the song with a grin that lifted the wings of his mustache. Riding along, he paid a succession of salutes to the men he soon would lead back into battle. His war was theirs, theirs his, a struggle not only against Confederates or Prussians, but against all the world’s princely houses and potentates, Russian, Austrian, Ottoman … Their fight was waged to break the chains that bound men oceans apart. The difference now was that they had a genuine army, not just a rabble with shotguns, scythes, and rusty swords from attics. They had an army, and a free land worth defending.
    When the colonel had passed from sight, though, all the high emotions vanished with him. The men went back to the muck and the murderous heat.
    â€œWar is shit,” Bettelman said.
    *   *   *
    He rode into the confusion in a rage. Rain pounded. Headed in conflicting directions, the wagons and their teams blocked all the streets. Officers barked, but the teamsters only shrugged, waiting for someone else to put things right. The guns, the infantry, all the rest of Slocum’s Twelfth Corps could not get through the infernal muddle. Everything was falling behind schedule.
    â€œ You, damn you,” Meade barked at a private hunched on a wagon with the reins slack in his hand. “Who do you belong to?”
    The soldier was little impressed with the drenched old man before him. He just shrugged. Meade wanted to have him arrested, but retained the presence of mind to grasp that the teamster’s removal would mean an abandoned wagon.
    â€œI asked you which unit you’re assigned to, you sonofabitch,” Meade barked.
    The boy shrugged a second time, but said, “Third Corps, I guess.”
    Sickles. That whoremonger bastard. His trains had no business in Middleburg, or anywhere near it. The last of them should have passed through hours before.
    Meade yanked his mount around and worked his way back to the captain in charge of his escort.
    â€œYou,” Meade said. “Have your men open these streets. Whip man and beast, if you have to.”
    The captain saluted, but looked dazed by the maelstrom. Everyone in sight appeared half-drowned, and the crawling chaos around them stank of wet wool, wet horses, and waste. The captain went to work, though, waving the leading men of his