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It feels like Jackson is wasted on his assigned task, but MacArthur's caution is understandable.
Examining MacArthur's orders in detail, there is an out for Jackson, though: since MacArthur is forbidding him from forcing a crossing at a fortified position, all he has to do is find an unfortified crossing and then he can send his troops across.
A very good update in that it shows that the leading lights from the Civil War are still there (well, at least the second-tier ones), but that they are no longer the leading lights - time and changes in warfare have passed them by.
Of course, I'm hoping that at least Stonewall proves to be an exception to that sweeping statement...
Examining MacArthur's orders in detail, there is an out for Jackson, though: since MacArthur is forbidding him from forcing a crossing at a fortified position, all he has to do is find an unfortified crossing and then he can send his troops across.
A very good update in that it shows that the leading lights from the Civil War are still there (well, at least the second-tier ones), but that they are no longer the leading lights - time and changes in warfare have passed them by.
Of course, I'm hoping that at least Stonewall proves to be an exception to that sweeping statement...
It was Wednesday, the 5th of October. The artillery had been roaring and booming off to the east since dawn and the sun was bloody red from the smoke. Swathes of brushy land and new-growth forest must be burning over there, and Jackson was heartily glad his men were not tramping through the cinders, smoke and ashes. Once, he would have been too caught up in his own thoughts to notice flames, or the lack of them. But now… had he not known there was a war on the march would have been pleasant enough, for the days had been sunny, crisp and cool, the sort of days that made a man think of crisp, ripe apples. That idea made Jackson pat his own pockets, which were bulging with lemons and oranges. He wanted one, which made him decide to put off the pleasure for a bit longer.
His corps was not expected to do much but passively guard the river crossings while others bled and died in the most obvious place, and Jackson chafed at the inactivity and the uselessness. In his mind, the crossings of the Choptank were an open invitation to go crashing into the flank and rear of the enemy, a chance to wreak surprise and dismay, to unbalance the minds of the generals on the other side. In Jackson’s mind, scouts should have been sent into the river bottoms a week ago or more, to plan how to move his corps through the low-growth tangle and swampy woods of the west side. But his suggestions to General MacArthur had come back unapproved, which made Jackson long for the old, easy relationship he had once had with Lee. ‘I need you to do thus and so,’ Lee would say, and Jackson would nod and sketch roads in the dirt, or trace the line of a stream on a map. Lee would smile and nod, or gently suggest a correction… Those days were gone, along with his youth, along with the Confederacy, along with his hand, for that matter. Along with his reputation, he feared – Longstreet had looked askance at him when they had met in Washington; some, it seemed, had not forgiven him for following his conscience. It had been good to hear from Lee, to know that his old commander had forgiven, and not forgotten. And it was always good to be needed. But Jackson wondered now if accepting this field command had been God’s will or only Jackson’s longing for one last redemption… Well, the decision was made, and with a briefly bowed head he turned the question over to the Almighty for later judgement. He was here, and so long as he was here he would do his best, and if he had erred in his estimation of Heavenly will, God would certainly let him know.
The sun was high now, and the reports were coming in as his brigades found their places. There would be no difficulty in securing the crossings of the Choptank River. His scouts had gone out last night and he had ridden with them, over the little stream and into the farmland beyond. If there were any British troops on the other bank, they were invisible, and MacArthur’s reported fortifications did not exist. He had sent a courier to Army headquarters to say so, without receiving any change in his instructions. Word had come an hour ago from Cleburne of a brisk firefight at Whiteleysburg, north and east of Jackson’s corps. Briefly, he toyed with crossing over and making his own way, cutting off the men attacking Cleburne’s corps. Lee would have approved, and Jackson had no doubt that he could get his men out of any scrape he could get them into. But he had his orders, and official disapproval would not only stain Jackson but also Lee, and that could not be permitted. He took out a lemon and held it in the padded glove over his bad hand while the other wielded the knife. One half of the fruit went dripping to his mouth and he sucked on the pungent juice, considering. It was not in his nature to be so undecided, and he wondered briefly how much of his former self he had lost.
Noon, and despite the chill of the morning the sun was now baking the ground. Under the shade of the trees it was still pleasant, but it would not stay so for long. His scouts were confident the enemy had moved some men up behind the river since dawn, and he had passed the word for his men to keep their heads down and not to open fire just yet. Cleburne’s last message said he was getting pounded pretty hard and had ben pushed back out of Whiteleysburg. Jackson had never served with Cleburne but knew his reputation, and had talked with him several times. Cleburne was not a man to be pushed without shoving back, hard, and if he couldn’t do that then the forces set against him were strong. Jackson turned it over in his mind. If General Gordon had wanted to move forward, or at least wished to spoil the Federal attack, then he would not launch it up the railroad at Dover. Gordon would move to his left to come around what he thought was the Union flank, and at that point he would run into Cleburne. That move made sense only if he didn’t know Jackson was posted on the Choptank, or knew now and had not had time to respond. Or thought what Jackson had was only a screen – a detached brigade or a division. In General Gordon’s place, Jackson would have gone for a wide swing to the left, but Gordon might not be as willing to divide his army as Lee had been, or might be concerned about the woods, the many creeks and streams there. So – a shallower envelopment, a hard left hook to knock out Cleburne, then drive east to trap the rest of MacArthur’s army against the Atlantic at Dover? Jackson couldn’t see it working, not given the relative strengths of the two armies, but Gordon might not know how strong his enemy really was. Or might count on the militia mass of the American army to panic. Or might only wish to spoil and paralyze MacArthur’s attack. Might… there were too many mights, and only a few facts. He turned those over in his mind as he flipped the knife end over end in his good hand.
“Sir! Courier from General Cleburne!” It was a request for help, as Jackson had thought would come, sooner or later. He could take his men north and put them in line beside Cleburne’s corps, or he could strike south-east. The decision seemed to make itself; there was only one thing Jackson could do and be true to himself. He called for his staff, then paused for a long moment with head bowed to give the Almighty a chance to make His will known. When he looked up, his officers were waiting. He could see their fear, but he misunderstood the cause. He could not see the bright, bright blue of his own eyes, brighter than mere sunlight should ever have allowed.
“Gen’ral!” Jackson was riding back past Armistead’s brigade – the son, not the father, who had been killed at Clover Garden. “Gen’ral!” A figure detached itself from the marching column and trotted over. “Boyd, sir! Harlan Boyd! I was with you in the Valley, sir – the ole Third Virginia!”
Jackson reined up and stared at him for a second, confused perhaps, or struggling to remember. The soldier was in his late thirties or early forties, with a heavy beard newly grown-in. “What’d ya reckon old Jeb Stuart'd say if he saw you in that fine blue uniform now? Or me!” Boyd laughed as if it were a great joke, but Jackson felt a stab of anger at the reminder; Stuart, the great horseman, had lost a leg in the last war and would never sit a horse again. Boyd waited for a reply with his mouth stretched in a wide grin, then seemed to realize he had said something amiss. Jackson fumbled for appropriate words and at the last instant was struck by inspiration: what would Lee have said?
“It is very kind of you to remember me,” Jackson said. “I remember the old Third very well – valiant men. But you must go back to your rank, now, for we have work to do today. I shall need your help.” Something else… “General Stuart would say he was proud of us both, Mister Boyd. He gave me this jacket.” And just like that, Boyd swung his hat and the regiment gave up three cheers for ‘Old Stonewall’, and Jackson rode away feeling warm and yet confused. Was that how Lee did it? Could it really be so simple as that? The Almighty knew that Jackson tried to care for all his creatures, that he grieved for every man who was to die today. Was it only that he must give evidence of his concern, show his men that he loved them? Did they not already know that? Lee was a man – a paragon of a man – yet Lee had always shown a father’s love for his officers and men, often wept for them as if they were his own sons. Jackson filed it away as one of the mysteries of God’s creation, and rode on.
They had pushed aside the pickets at the river with no trouble. Gossett’s Ohio division had run into an enemy to the south, dug in around the town of Hunting Creek. The Virginians had made an easy crossing near King’s Tavern and then pressed forward hard with Jackson driving them. Over Marshy Hope Creek would be Federalsburg, and not far beyond that the railroad. With Danforth’s Kentuckians deployed to hold his left and the Alabama brigades tramping along behind, Jackson was ready to plunge all the way to Salisbury and beyond. Burning Federal supplies had been a specialty, once upon a time, and he supposed that British rations would make as sweet a smoke. But before they could celebrate that barbecue, Hunting Creek and Federalsburg would have to be cleared, and that work done quickly. He knew from the last war how soon more blocking troops could come up, and how few stubborn men were needed to hold a strongpoint. What he must do now was swamp them, and for that he needed every man of this division.
“Colonel Armistead!” “General Jackson!” The boy – no, the man – was young for his rank but seemed to have his brigade in hand. “I desire you to deploy your men to the left of Perkins’ regiment, there. At my command, you will go forward to the creek, which is low but muddy. On the far side there is at least a regiment of the enemy holed up in Federalsburg, and I don’t propose to wait for more of those Hindoos to come up.” Scouts said the Imperials were dark skinned and wore turbans, but the last lot had been white-skinned artillerymen. “You’ll pass north of the town and flank them out – don’t let your men go head-on into the town until you get at least a regiment past it. Lowell Cobb’s brigade will give them fire from the front while you go around the back.” That was more detail than his old brigade commanders would have needed, but Armistead seemed grateful for it… how young these boys were.
Now the waiting while the brigade deployed. Rifles were banging, but deliberately, which meant no-one had lost their head and started pouring it on this early. Ammunition would be a problem; he made a mental note to send a rider back to find out where the ammunition wagons were and bring them forward. From farther south he could hear the deep booming of cannon, but there was no way to know if Gossett’s boys had deployed them or run into them. Whatever the case, those Ohio boys had put their head into a hornets nest for sure… Get the enemy out of Federalsburg and they’d pull back before Gossett, or be overrun… Oh, for cavalry – and for Stuart, while he was wishing for all the things he could not have. He waited, checked his watch, waited a few moments more. When he rode over to Armistead, the brigade was deployed, kneeling in the tall grass a little back from the creek bank. Armistead saw him approach and began to swing his hat. “Up, boys! Up and at them! Up, for old Virginia!”
And from a thousand throats came the old cry, the yell no-one had heard in battle for twenty years, the wolf-wail and catamount-screech that meant the sons of the old south were coming with hellhounds at their heels. To their right, Cobb’s men took it up, and then it was all around and everywhere, echoing off the trees and rising up from the ground as though the ghosts were joining in. Jackson said nothing, could say nothing, could only raise his hand and point as Lee had done so many times before, his horse moving to fall in behind the solid waves of gray – no, they were blue, it was his eyes that were misty and failing. The next rank was coming up, and he turned, rose in the stirrups, hand high to wave them on.
“Come on, boys!” The rebel yell was deafening now, loud as the hail of gunfire from across the creek, louder as each wave came forward. They were ar the creekbank now, and men were going down with the Thwack! Thwack! Thwack! of bullets pulping flesh. “Forward! You must go forward!” He rose up again, seized his hat and swung it, and they did go forward, disappearing down below the bank and reappearing, one by one, scrambling mud-coated up the wall of the far-bank, and from the fields beyond came another yell. Thousands of throats lifted in a wolf-pack song, the yell of triumph, the last hurrah, not rebels now but redeemed in victory, brothers forev…
The sky was blue. The sky was gray. The sky was blue again. It was filled with clouds, and General Lee’s white beard was one of them, and he leaned down to whisper something important, something…
His corps was not expected to do much but passively guard the river crossings while others bled and died in the most obvious place, and Jackson chafed at the inactivity and the uselessness. In his mind, the crossings of the Choptank were an open invitation to go crashing into the flank and rear of the enemy, a chance to wreak surprise and dismay, to unbalance the minds of the generals on the other side. In Jackson’s mind, scouts should have been sent into the river bottoms a week ago or more, to plan how to move his corps through the low-growth tangle and swampy woods of the west side. But his suggestions to General MacArthur had come back unapproved, which made Jackson long for the old, easy relationship he had once had with Lee. ‘I need you to do thus and so,’ Lee would say, and Jackson would nod and sketch roads in the dirt, or trace the line of a stream on a map. Lee would smile and nod, or gently suggest a correction… Those days were gone, along with his youth, along with the Confederacy, along with his hand, for that matter. Along with his reputation, he feared – Longstreet had looked askance at him when they had met in Washington; some, it seemed, had not forgiven him for following his conscience. It had been good to hear from Lee, to know that his old commander had forgiven, and not forgotten. And it was always good to be needed. But Jackson wondered now if accepting this field command had been God’s will or only Jackson’s longing for one last redemption… Well, the decision was made, and with a briefly bowed head he turned the question over to the Almighty for later judgement. He was here, and so long as he was here he would do his best, and if he had erred in his estimation of Heavenly will, God would certainly let him know.
The sun was high now, and the reports were coming in as his brigades found their places. There would be no difficulty in securing the crossings of the Choptank River. His scouts had gone out last night and he had ridden with them, over the little stream and into the farmland beyond. If there were any British troops on the other bank, they were invisible, and MacArthur’s reported fortifications did not exist. He had sent a courier to Army headquarters to say so, without receiving any change in his instructions. Word had come an hour ago from Cleburne of a brisk firefight at Whiteleysburg, north and east of Jackson’s corps. Briefly, he toyed with crossing over and making his own way, cutting off the men attacking Cleburne’s corps. Lee would have approved, and Jackson had no doubt that he could get his men out of any scrape he could get them into. But he had his orders, and official disapproval would not only stain Jackson but also Lee, and that could not be permitted. He took out a lemon and held it in the padded glove over his bad hand while the other wielded the knife. One half of the fruit went dripping to his mouth and he sucked on the pungent juice, considering. It was not in his nature to be so undecided, and he wondered briefly how much of his former self he had lost.
Noon, and despite the chill of the morning the sun was now baking the ground. Under the shade of the trees it was still pleasant, but it would not stay so for long. His scouts were confident the enemy had moved some men up behind the river since dawn, and he had passed the word for his men to keep their heads down and not to open fire just yet. Cleburne’s last message said he was getting pounded pretty hard and had ben pushed back out of Whiteleysburg. Jackson had never served with Cleburne but knew his reputation, and had talked with him several times. Cleburne was not a man to be pushed without shoving back, hard, and if he couldn’t do that then the forces set against him were strong. Jackson turned it over in his mind. If General Gordon had wanted to move forward, or at least wished to spoil the Federal attack, then he would not launch it up the railroad at Dover. Gordon would move to his left to come around what he thought was the Union flank, and at that point he would run into Cleburne. That move made sense only if he didn’t know Jackson was posted on the Choptank, or knew now and had not had time to respond. Or thought what Jackson had was only a screen – a detached brigade or a division. In General Gordon’s place, Jackson would have gone for a wide swing to the left, but Gordon might not be as willing to divide his army as Lee had been, or might be concerned about the woods, the many creeks and streams there. So – a shallower envelopment, a hard left hook to knock out Cleburne, then drive east to trap the rest of MacArthur’s army against the Atlantic at Dover? Jackson couldn’t see it working, not given the relative strengths of the two armies, but Gordon might not know how strong his enemy really was. Or might count on the militia mass of the American army to panic. Or might only wish to spoil and paralyze MacArthur’s attack. Might… there were too many mights, and only a few facts. He turned those over in his mind as he flipped the knife end over end in his good hand.
“Sir! Courier from General Cleburne!” It was a request for help, as Jackson had thought would come, sooner or later. He could take his men north and put them in line beside Cleburne’s corps, or he could strike south-east. The decision seemed to make itself; there was only one thing Jackson could do and be true to himself. He called for his staff, then paused for a long moment with head bowed to give the Almighty a chance to make His will known. When he looked up, his officers were waiting. He could see their fear, but he misunderstood the cause. He could not see the bright, bright blue of his own eyes, brighter than mere sunlight should ever have allowed.
“Gen’ral!” Jackson was riding back past Armistead’s brigade – the son, not the father, who had been killed at Clover Garden. “Gen’ral!” A figure detached itself from the marching column and trotted over. “Boyd, sir! Harlan Boyd! I was with you in the Valley, sir – the ole Third Virginia!”
Jackson reined up and stared at him for a second, confused perhaps, or struggling to remember. The soldier was in his late thirties or early forties, with a heavy beard newly grown-in. “What’d ya reckon old Jeb Stuart'd say if he saw you in that fine blue uniform now? Or me!” Boyd laughed as if it were a great joke, but Jackson felt a stab of anger at the reminder; Stuart, the great horseman, had lost a leg in the last war and would never sit a horse again. Boyd waited for a reply with his mouth stretched in a wide grin, then seemed to realize he had said something amiss. Jackson fumbled for appropriate words and at the last instant was struck by inspiration: what would Lee have said?
“It is very kind of you to remember me,” Jackson said. “I remember the old Third very well – valiant men. But you must go back to your rank, now, for we have work to do today. I shall need your help.” Something else… “General Stuart would say he was proud of us both, Mister Boyd. He gave me this jacket.” And just like that, Boyd swung his hat and the regiment gave up three cheers for ‘Old Stonewall’, and Jackson rode away feeling warm and yet confused. Was that how Lee did it? Could it really be so simple as that? The Almighty knew that Jackson tried to care for all his creatures, that he grieved for every man who was to die today. Was it only that he must give evidence of his concern, show his men that he loved them? Did they not already know that? Lee was a man – a paragon of a man – yet Lee had always shown a father’s love for his officers and men, often wept for them as if they were his own sons. Jackson filed it away as one of the mysteries of God’s creation, and rode on.
They had pushed aside the pickets at the river with no trouble. Gossett’s Ohio division had run into an enemy to the south, dug in around the town of Hunting Creek. The Virginians had made an easy crossing near King’s Tavern and then pressed forward hard with Jackson driving them. Over Marshy Hope Creek would be Federalsburg, and not far beyond that the railroad. With Danforth’s Kentuckians deployed to hold his left and the Alabama brigades tramping along behind, Jackson was ready to plunge all the way to Salisbury and beyond. Burning Federal supplies had been a specialty, once upon a time, and he supposed that British rations would make as sweet a smoke. But before they could celebrate that barbecue, Hunting Creek and Federalsburg would have to be cleared, and that work done quickly. He knew from the last war how soon more blocking troops could come up, and how few stubborn men were needed to hold a strongpoint. What he must do now was swamp them, and for that he needed every man of this division.
“Colonel Armistead!” “General Jackson!” The boy – no, the man – was young for his rank but seemed to have his brigade in hand. “I desire you to deploy your men to the left of Perkins’ regiment, there. At my command, you will go forward to the creek, which is low but muddy. On the far side there is at least a regiment of the enemy holed up in Federalsburg, and I don’t propose to wait for more of those Hindoos to come up.” Scouts said the Imperials were dark skinned and wore turbans, but the last lot had been white-skinned artillerymen. “You’ll pass north of the town and flank them out – don’t let your men go head-on into the town until you get at least a regiment past it. Lowell Cobb’s brigade will give them fire from the front while you go around the back.” That was more detail than his old brigade commanders would have needed, but Armistead seemed grateful for it… how young these boys were.
Now the waiting while the brigade deployed. Rifles were banging, but deliberately, which meant no-one had lost their head and started pouring it on this early. Ammunition would be a problem; he made a mental note to send a rider back to find out where the ammunition wagons were and bring them forward. From farther south he could hear the deep booming of cannon, but there was no way to know if Gossett’s boys had deployed them or run into them. Whatever the case, those Ohio boys had put their head into a hornets nest for sure… Get the enemy out of Federalsburg and they’d pull back before Gossett, or be overrun… Oh, for cavalry – and for Stuart, while he was wishing for all the things he could not have. He waited, checked his watch, waited a few moments more. When he rode over to Armistead, the brigade was deployed, kneeling in the tall grass a little back from the creek bank. Armistead saw him approach and began to swing his hat. “Up, boys! Up and at them! Up, for old Virginia!”
And from a thousand throats came the old cry, the yell no-one had heard in battle for twenty years, the wolf-wail and catamount-screech that meant the sons of the old south were coming with hellhounds at their heels. To their right, Cobb’s men took it up, and then it was all around and everywhere, echoing off the trees and rising up from the ground as though the ghosts were joining in. Jackson said nothing, could say nothing, could only raise his hand and point as Lee had done so many times before, his horse moving to fall in behind the solid waves of gray – no, they were blue, it was his eyes that were misty and failing. The next rank was coming up, and he turned, rose in the stirrups, hand high to wave them on.
“Come on, boys!” The rebel yell was deafening now, loud as the hail of gunfire from across the creek, louder as each wave came forward. They were ar the creekbank now, and men were going down with the Thwack! Thwack! Thwack! of bullets pulping flesh. “Forward! You must go forward!” He rose up again, seized his hat and swung it, and they did go forward, disappearing down below the bank and reappearing, one by one, scrambling mud-coated up the wall of the far-bank, and from the fields beyond came another yell. Thousands of throats lifted in a wolf-pack song, the yell of triumph, the last hurrah, not rebels now but redeemed in victory, brothers forev…
The sky was blue. The sky was gray. The sky was blue again. It was filled with clouds, and General Lee’s white beard was one of them, and he leaned down to whisper something important, something…
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Map of the Battle of the Peninsula, October 5th-7th, 1887
The black line running north-south is the principal railroad. North of Dover it connects to Philadelphia. Red and blue lines mark approximate positions of Empire and US forces. The pink line shows the placement of British scouts along the east bank of the Choptank River early on the morning of October 5th. The green line shows the approximate location of the front lines as of October 8th.
Gold arrows show the intended line of Gordon’s attack – a shallow envelopment from the left. The dark blue arrow outlined in white shows the line of General MacArthur’s broad push down the line of the railroad. The pale blue arrow outlined in gray shows the movement of Lieutenant General Thomas Jackson’s corps, starting from about midday.
Lacking good intelligence as to the size of the American Army of the Chesapeake, General Gordon intended to crush its right wing at Whiteleysburg and then turn east toward Dover, the railroad and the sea. The corps of Generals Stewart and Broadwood were tasked with this advance. On moving forward, General Stewart’s men ran into opposition from the 3rd Massachusetts Division, attached to General Cleburne’s corps. Having arrived on the battlefield only minutes before the British assault, Cleburne’s men were unable to entrench and were pushed back north of Whiteleysburg, the 3rd Massachusetts being roughly handled in the process. It is not clear from General Gordon’s memoirs whether this attack was meant merely to spoil the American advance or was intended to have decisive effect. Most historians believe the plan had elements of both, in that General Gordon would have settled for derailing the American attack but hoped for something greater.
Lieutenant General Arthur MacArthur’s plan was built around a broad infantry push down the railroad line south of Dover, Delaware, following a preparatory artillery barrage. According to General Gordon’s memoirs the artillery preparation was neither intense nor effective. General Buller’s written account of the day differs in this respect as he credits the American artillery with causing a number of casualties.
Around the time that General Hill’s divisions were moving forward on the American left, General Cleburne’s messages began to arrive at MacArthur’s headquarters. As General Cleburne was known for his cool nerve and soft-spoken reserve, MacArthur immediately sent orders for a brigade of the 3rd Arkansas Division to be sent from the reserve. General Jackson’s men arrived at their positions along the tidal estuary of the Choptank River and inlet at around ten o’clock. He also received reports from General Cleburne and, according to his aides, considered their information very serious. Major Ruark Holcombe noted in his diary that Jackson had called for a map and marked off the distance to Whiteleysburg, a clear indication that he was at least considering sending a division or more to Cleburne’s support.
By midday the situation was hotly contested and seriously in doubt. The divisions of Hill’s and Upton;s corps were making heavy going of it in the east, where Buller and Clough were holding or slowly edging back. In the center, Cleburne’s corps, now reinforced by all of the 3rd Arkansas and an Illinois brigade, was fighting a desperate holding action against Stewart’s and Broadwood’s men. Both Cleburne and Broadwood are reported to have told their staff officers that the rupture could come at any moment. MacArthur was now fully alive to the danger in his center and had just ordered three of Wilson’s four divisions to that spot, which effectively spelled the abandonment of his offensive.
Cleburne’s last message to Jackson was a direct plea for help, and coming as it did from an officer famous for his calm and capable battle management, Jackson decided to act. We know now that couriers from Jackson to army headquarters were not making it past the ‘goose egg’ salient in the center of the American line. Taking advantage of the fact that the far bank of the Choptank River was held by no more than a thin screen of skirmishers, most drawn from Major General Frederick Roberts’ Indian Army contingent, Jackson threw three full divisions across in a nearly simultaneous assault while the 2nd Alabama Division brought up the rear and served as his reserve. This thrust caught the dangling end of Roberts’ line, which ended somewhat abruptly just south of Federalsburg. The town itself was stoutly defended by a regiment of Sikhs.
Jackson’s right-most division was the 6th Ohio, commanded by General Ajax Gossett. His men splashed and swam the muddy Choptank only to become ensnarled in a firefight at the village of Hunting Creek. Inside the village were no more than a few companies of Bengali Rifles, and behind it, had they only known, was the tail-end of the British line. Behind that were nothing more than service and headquarters troops, all the way to the ocean. Instead of masking or enveloping the village, Gossett threw his men forward a few regiments at a time before settling into a running firefight. In the center, Jackson was in the lead of the advance of McCreary’s 1st Virginia Division. Danforth’s 1st Kentucky Division was used to screen the left, allowing the Virginians to plunge across what was essentially an undefended field. This rapid progress ended at the Marsh Hope Creek, for in the little town of Federalsburg, and along the creek-bank, were the veterans of the 11th Sikh Regiment. Against crack troops armed with modern repeating rifles, the standard solution would have been to bring up the artillery, but to keep the advance moving rapidly forward Jackson decided to bring up two-thirds of the 1st Virginia and outflank the strongpoint.
While urging his men over the little creek, Jackson was hit repeatedly by small-arms fire. Without his direction the advance degenerated into a series of firefights – Gossett’s Ohioans at Hunting Creek and the 1st Virginia at Federalsburg. As brigades of the 2nd Alabama came forward, both strongpoints were eventually reduced. By the time General Melancton Smith assumed command of the corps, the British lines were already thickening. Though the corps made a heroic assault before twilight it was sent reeling back by massed artillery and machine guns.
In the center, the first reports that something had gone wrong in their rear arrived around 2 pm. General Roberts had attempted to shift his reserves to stop Jackson but succeeded only in pinning down the Kentuckians on Jackson’s left. The confusion engendered by General Jackson’s death gained General Gordon precious time to deal with looming disaster, for at that time Gossett’s Ohioans were farther south and closer to the vital road junction of Salisbury than any of Gordon’s men.
Extricating Broadwood’s corps was difficult; pulling Stewart’s corps back was almost impossible. Roused to new efforts by the fresh formations now filing into the ranks, Cleburne hurled his weary men forward and nearly – nearly – drove Stewart’s lines into rout. The record of the following two days is a continuation of the same story, with Gordon forced to withdraw south in order to parry American thrusts at his vulnerable left flank.
At the close of the three-day slugfest, the British army lay in a semicircle around Salisbury. All thought of resuming the offensive was gone, as stocks of artillery ammunition were judged inadequate. The infantry of both sides were fought out; with casualties, stragglers and the inevitable confusion of battle some regiments had lost three-quarters of their strength. A postwar commission affixed the toll of dead, wounded, captured and missing at thirty-five thousand, making the Peninsula the bloodiest battle ever fought on American soil.
Although I'm certain Jackson wouldn't appreciate this sentiment, he's certainly set his table at Valhalla. What a way to go.
Vann
Vann
Very well written. I'm not sure I could have done as good a job of describing a series of Victoria battles.
What did you use for your map?
What did you use for your map?
I think this was an excellent sendoff for Stonewall - none of this 'being-blasted-by-some-nervous-sentry' stuff this time round. As you yourself said it, whether in victory or defeat, he gave it all he had. The episode shows both his strength (great army builder, quick to grasp initiative, aggressive) and his weakness (not familiar enough with modern warfare).
From a character perspective, I enjoyed the portrayal of Jackson's struggle between fighting the way he wanted to fight (against MacArthur's orders) and making sure he honored Lee's faith in him. Also the scene where Jackson realized how showing the troops that he cared for them made all the difference, made him a better commander.
Even though he died in the assault (because he foolishly exposed himself to modern rifle fire) and, as a result, the assault floundered, I think it was a good end for him. Not only did he redeem himself in his own eyes, he felt like he lived up to Lee's hopes and he appears to have been quite instrumental in forging together Northern and Southern Army units. Oh, and his assault was the deciding factor in at least giving the Americans a tactical victory.
It was also good to see that, after initial denial, he allowed himself that one last lemon.
From a character perspective, I enjoyed the portrayal of Jackson's struggle between fighting the way he wanted to fight (against MacArthur's orders) and making sure he honored Lee's faith in him. Also the scene where Jackson realized how showing the troops that he cared for them made all the difference, made him a better commander.
Even though he died in the assault (because he foolishly exposed himself to modern rifle fire) and, as a result, the assault floundered, I think it was a good end for him. Not only did he redeem himself in his own eyes, he felt like he lived up to Lee's hopes and he appears to have been quite instrumental in forging together Northern and Southern Army units.
Oh, and his assault was the deciding factor in at least giving the Americans a tactical victory.It was also good to see that, after initial denial, he allowed himself that one last lemon.
So Fate finally caught up with Stonewall Jackson, but maybe he killed off some ghosts from the Civil War.
I think I like the character pieces more than the battle descriptions - especially since the result is a foregone conclusion - but you do a great job of turning two duelling sets of numbers into a plausible historical account.
I felt for MacArthur at his council of war - stuck with a bunch of big-name subordinates he doesn't know (and some of whom are were winning battles - against the US Army! - when he was barely out of his teens) an undertrained army and orders to go bash a brick wall.
I think I like the character pieces more than the battle descriptions - especially since the result is a foregone conclusion - but you do a great job of turning two duelling sets of numbers into a plausible historical account.
I felt for MacArthur at his council of war - stuck with a bunch of big-name subordinates he doesn't know (and some of whom are were winning battles - against the US Army! - when he was barely out of his teens) an undertrained army and orders to go bash a brick wall.
Do you subscribe to the theory that Jackson had Asperger's syndrome? He is one of the men where I find a post facto diagnosis plausible. Either way it was quite pleasant to watch him go to his death in one of the better ways a general can go.
To all - first the good news: after four months of un-gainful non-employment I am going back to work. For the same company that I just worked for, but in a better position. So it's a funny old world. But I'll be gone from Sunday through Saturday, so updates will be scant for a bit.
About Stonewall:
First, I plead that I had no intention of killing the poor man. I was just writing away the battle as it happened - it is a psychosis of mine that I can believe vividly in things that never happened, which explains my somewhat, um, closed circle of friends - and then he was dead. I was as shocked as any of you, but there it was: this one did not lend itself to a rewrite, though I did try. I've never been a fan of pulling someone back on-stage just so they can die. But 'catch-a-bullet-at-your-moment-of-triumph' has a long and dare I say heroic history. Anyway, that's what happened.
Some things of note: all of the senior generals on the Union side were real people. On the British side, Gordon, Buller, Stewart, Broadwood and Frederick (Bobs) Roberts were all real people - and good generals, many of them.
The part where the troops rest under the shade of the trees is a direct shout-out to Jackson's famous last words: 'Let us cross over the river and rest in the shade of the trees.' Here they rest and then cross the river... In the italicized footnote, the colors of the sky (blue/gray/blue) recapitulate Jackson's service career. Lee's presence is significant because no-one at that time knew that Lee had passed away the day before. Another shout-out is his channeling of Lee in an awkward social situation. WhatWouldLeeDo will never replace WWJD, but Lee's character is in many ways a standard I'd be proud to try to live up to.
Vann the Red - there is one post yet to go, so I can't give away much. Modern command style emphasizes handling a corps from the rear, where communications are less interrupted and where the staff aren't in peril of bullets. There is something grand about the old man going up to lead from the front, though.
Enewald - The British army can't supply itself because the Royal Navy no longer controls the Atlantic, and it doesn't have the strength to fight its way north to a port. So I agree that, barring a miracle, Gordon and his men are lost.
Iain Wilson - Thank you! Some posts are easy and some are killingly hard. These last few literally wrote themselves; I remember being surprised when I went back and read through them. And when Jackson went down, I thought, Oh, boy, they're going to hate me for this.
The map was a screenshot from Google Earth, painted up in PaintShop. It didn't turn out too badly. You can get great results by panning the shot down at a low angle - it is like looking at the field from a high point overhead, plus you get a faux 3-D look.
King of Men - I am glad you liked it; I agree it was melancholy. In fact I cried when I wrote it - I'm such a softie.
Stonewall - I know, I know... Look, I just write down what happens. I did try to go back and change his ending just didn't work. I even tried writing it as another wounding, which didn't read well at all. He did live twenty years longer and had a happy life. So, I'm sorry - but it just had to go that way.
Stuyvesant - There was a lot crammed into those few posts - probably too much. As coz1 and I have conversed we have agreed that were this a novel, all of that would have been fleshed out a lot more. But the channeling of Lee shows Jackson has aged and learned, while his simple faith and love for citrus lets us see the essential man is unchanged.
Certainly he gave his all, in a battle bloody and horrible even by Civil War standards. When you think that Gettysburg had 45-50,000 casualties, the 35-40,000 of the Battle of the Peninsula don't seem so bad, but in this history it is a record-setter.
Jackson's death will be a push toward keeping the top brass farther back, not from lack of courage but because the attack fell apart when the corps commander was doing a divisional commander's job.
merrick - the bit after the map was intended to be four or five lines to explain how the battle went, since even Jackson didn't know what was going on in other parts of the battlefield. And then *sigh* it grew. I couldn't post that map in the middle of a narrative written from Jackson's viewpoint, but if this were a true novel I would have left it out and expanded the battle narrative.
I hope I gave due credit to the British commanders, who were doing their best in a very bad situation. My sympathy is with Stewart and Broadwood, who found themselves mousetrapped like the French in 1914. Like Joffre, they managed to retreat quickly and get in a spoiling counter-attack - enough to save their army - but had to give up a huge chunk of territory in the process.
I also felt for MacArthur, who only wants to 'give a good show' without getting his men killed and his army wrecked. Fate gives Jackson an opening, and being Jackson he cannot help but take it. Had Jackson lived, the post-battle command situation would have been very difficult, and Jackson wouldn't have had the social skills to know why his victory was so awkward. If you look over the battle you will see that absolutely nothing went according to plan - every action mis-fired and every plan collapsed under events. The side with reserves - the US - won.
J. Passepartout - I am always a little leery of people who pronounce Lincoln gay, or say Alexander the Great wasn't, or make mental health diagnoses at long distance. That aside, I would say that Jackson would merit analysis if he lived today, and probably treatment. No doubt he was of two personalities- cold, abrupt and forbidding to most people but warm and even humorous with people he liked and knew well. He had no tolerance for dissent, believed most issues were purely black and white, was difficult to work for and yet childishly eager to please with Stuart and Lee. I'd say the evidence points that way but is not conclusive - the century is full of crippled, mis-shapen personalities. After a hundred and fifty years still no-one understands anything about McClellan.
About Stonewall:
First, I plead that I had no intention of killing the poor man. I was just writing away the battle as it happened - it is a psychosis of mine that I can believe vividly in things that never happened, which explains my somewhat, um, closed circle of friends - and then he was dead. I was as shocked as any of you, but there it was: this one did not lend itself to a rewrite, though I did try. I've never been a fan of pulling someone back on-stage just so they can die. But 'catch-a-bullet-at-your-moment-of-triumph' has a long and dare I say heroic history. Anyway, that's what happened.
Some things of note: all of the senior generals on the Union side were real people. On the British side, Gordon, Buller, Stewart, Broadwood and Frederick (Bobs) Roberts were all real people - and good generals, many of them.
The part where the troops rest under the shade of the trees is a direct shout-out to Jackson's famous last words: 'Let us cross over the river and rest in the shade of the trees.' Here they rest and then cross the river... In the italicized footnote, the colors of the sky (blue/gray/blue) recapitulate Jackson's service career. Lee's presence is significant because no-one at that time knew that Lee had passed away the day before. Another shout-out is his channeling of Lee in an awkward social situation. WhatWouldLeeDo will never replace WWJD, but Lee's character is in many ways a standard I'd be proud to try to live up to.
Vann the Red - there is one post yet to go, so I can't give away much. Modern command style emphasizes handling a corps from the rear, where communications are less interrupted and where the staff aren't in peril of bullets. There is something grand about the old man going up to lead from the front, though.
Enewald - The British army can't supply itself because the Royal Navy no longer controls the Atlantic, and it doesn't have the strength to fight its way north to a port. So I agree that, barring a miracle, Gordon and his men are lost.
Iain Wilson - Thank you! Some posts are easy and some are killingly hard. These last few literally wrote themselves; I remember being surprised when I went back and read through them. And when Jackson went down, I thought, Oh, boy, they're going to hate me for this.
The map was a screenshot from Google Earth, painted up in PaintShop. It didn't turn out too badly. You can get great results by panning the shot down at a low angle - it is like looking at the field from a high point overhead, plus you get a faux 3-D look.
King of Men - I am glad you liked it; I agree it was melancholy. In fact I cried when I wrote it - I'm such a softie.
Stonewall - I know, I know...
Look, I just write down what happens. I did try to go back and change his ending just didn't work. I even tried writing it as another wounding, which didn't read well at all. He did live twenty years longer and had a happy life. So, I'm sorry - but it just had to go that way.Stuyvesant - There was a lot crammed into those few posts - probably too much. As coz1 and I have conversed we have agreed that were this a novel, all of that would have been fleshed out a lot more. But the channeling of Lee shows Jackson has aged and learned, while his simple faith and love for citrus lets us see the essential man is unchanged.
Certainly he gave his all, in a battle bloody and horrible even by Civil War standards. When you think that Gettysburg had 45-50,000 casualties, the 35-40,000 of the Battle of the Peninsula don't seem so bad, but in this history it is a record-setter.
Jackson's death will be a push toward keeping the top brass farther back, not from lack of courage but because the attack fell apart when the corps commander was doing a divisional commander's job.
merrick - the bit after the map was intended to be four or five lines to explain how the battle went, since even Jackson didn't know what was going on in other parts of the battlefield. And then *sigh* it grew. I couldn't post that map in the middle of a narrative written from Jackson's viewpoint, but if this were a true novel I would have left it out and expanded the battle narrative.
I hope I gave due credit to the British commanders, who were doing their best in a very bad situation. My sympathy is with Stewart and Broadwood, who found themselves mousetrapped like the French in 1914. Like Joffre, they managed to retreat quickly and get in a spoiling counter-attack - enough to save their army - but had to give up a huge chunk of territory in the process.
I also felt for MacArthur, who only wants to 'give a good show' without getting his men killed and his army wrecked. Fate gives Jackson an opening, and being Jackson he cannot help but take it. Had Jackson lived, the post-battle command situation would have been very difficult, and Jackson wouldn't have had the social skills to know why his victory was so awkward. If you look over the battle you will see that absolutely nothing went according to plan - every action mis-fired and every plan collapsed under events. The side with reserves - the US - won.
J. Passepartout - I am always a little leery of people who pronounce Lincoln gay, or say Alexander the Great wasn't, or make mental health diagnoses at long distance. That aside, I would say that Jackson would merit analysis if he lived today, and probably treatment. No doubt he was of two personalities- cold, abrupt and forbidding to most people but warm and even humorous with people he liked and knew well. He had no tolerance for dissent, believed most issues were purely black and white, was difficult to work for and yet childishly eager to please with Stuart and Lee. I'd say the evidence points that way but is not conclusive - the century is full of crippled, mis-shapen personalities. After a hundred and fifty years still no-one understands anything about McClellan.
More great updates. Particularly enjoyed the Senator's visit to disuade the british from stirring up the South.
Felicitations on the employment! Are you still in Baton Rouge or have you moved back to Mobile?
Couldn't agree more on McClellan.
Vann
Couldn't agree more on McClellan.
Vann
Good that you are employed once more. I did wonder if something had happened when you changed your location from Louisiana back to Mobile, but I didn't imagine it had anything to do with job loss.
I thought the blue/grey/blue sky had something to do with the uniforms, but I didn't nail it down to the specifics. And the shade under the trees passed me by completely... As a mitigating circumstance, I'll say that I was fully caught up in the episode as it unrolled.
Well, whenever you are in a position to post again, we'll be ready to read it. Good luck with starting the new job.
I thought the blue/grey/blue sky had something to do with the uniforms, but I didn't nail it down to the specifics. And the shade under the trees passed me by completely... As a mitigating circumstance, I'll say that I was fully caught up in the episode as it unrolled.
Well, whenever you are in a position to post again, we'll be ready to read it. Good luck with starting the new job.
Alfredian - I fear there are some painful chapters coming, but perhaps some daylight after the storm.
Vann the Red - I've been rooming with friends in Mobile since June. Now I'm traveling 4-5 days a week, so my writing time will be limited. Next week I'm supposed to get laptop etc so I'll be closer in touch after that.
I've best understood McClellan by studying the French generals of the period. He'd have been a middling corps commander in the Crimea and a better-than-average army commander in the Franco-Prussian War (my opinion only). Unfortunately, French tactical and operational art were not able to cope with the Prussians. But the hesitancy, the lack of good interpretation of available intelligence, the defensive mind-set, the refusal to risk or to make a co-ordinated assault... all there.
Stuyvesant - I haven't talked about the job loss here much, mainly because it was such a shock. I'm healthy again, back in Mobile and employed again. Two of those are good things.
New posts coming up now.
Vann the Red - I've been rooming with friends in Mobile since June. Now I'm traveling 4-5 days a week, so my writing time will be limited. Next week I'm supposed to get laptop etc so I'll be closer in touch after that.
I've best understood McClellan by studying the French generals of the period. He'd have been a middling corps commander in the Crimea and a better-than-average army commander in the Franco-Prussian War (my opinion only). Unfortunately, French tactical and operational art were not able to cope with the Prussians. But the hesitancy, the lack of good interpretation of available intelligence, the defensive mind-set, the refusal to risk or to make a co-ordinated assault... all there.
Stuyvesant - I haven't talked about the job loss here much, mainly because it was such a shock. I'm healthy again, back in Mobile and employed again. Two of those are good things.
New posts coming up now.
The red rock made red gravel and coarse, gritty red sand. The broad olive-green stripe of the Orange River cut through rock, wasteland covered in low, weary brush that left only the thinnest rim of green around the river’s edge. Overhead the sky was milky blue with heat haze, and the sun was the yellow of hot butter, giving a landscape whose effect was that of a primary-school painting made by a homicidal child. A few feet away from the river, a man might as well have been on the Moon for all the life the desert showed. The sun had been hot, blazing hot, and was only growing more fierce as spring in the southern hemisphere gave way to summer. For the Army of the Cape Colony the march north from Capetown had begun in pain and stretched to agony, as civilization and then plantlife were left behind. Without the railroad line and the blessed absence of any American naval presence the march would have been utterly impossible. As it was the trek was merely a desperate nightmare from which it seemed the army would never awaken. Horses died like flies. Men died in heaps, some from their first exposure to African diseases, others from heat exhaustion, dehydration and strain. Others simply disappeared, and whether they deserted or only wandered away in delirium no-one would ever know. Despite the heat, the rough terrain and the lack of supplies the army struggled on, passing from one river to the next as ancient mariners left their familiar shores: fearfully, and with great sacrifice. The battered column that arrived outside the settlement of Alexander Bay on the Orange River was a very different one from the proud force that had paraded in the streets of Capetown six weeks before. Gone were the gleaming brass, the crisp, fresh uniforms, the careful attention to hair and beard. These men were ragged, coated in dust and baked to jerky by the sun, by the blazing, omni-present sun, a sun unavoidable for there were no clouds, no trees, no rock-outcrops, no shade save that brought and created by man – and damned little of that.
Then they arrived on banks of the Orange River and saw the size of the task before them. The Americans had come across the Orange in the earliest days of the war and occupied the little port of Alexander Bay. Then they had brought up a division of Malagasy troops, and another of Hispaniolan Creoles, and set those men to digging. Sprouting from the rock, scree, gravel and sand had grown a mammoth sand-castle whose out-works ran down to the river-bank and vanished north past the American settlement of Orangeburg. With American patrols slipping through the back-country and landing on the coast from small boats, General Dedham had been forced to leave large garrisons along the railway in his rear. To abandon the railroad would have been suicidal; every necessity of life, even forage and firewood had to be brought overland, for the scanty foliage along the Orange River could not have sustained the army for a week. North of the American position the bare, bleached white sands of the Skeleton Coast rolled away to a seemingly-infinite horizon. Before long the Imperials were making long-distance raids into that desert against the American railroad while the rest of the army dug approaches to the American fortress. All the while, the hellish, inescapable sun pounded down upon attacker and defender alike, beat down as though the god of war were hammering them on his red-hot anvil.
The siege had lasted a solid month, then five weeks, then six. American outworks had been driven in but at a terrible cost in dead and wounded on both sides. The wounded could rarely be helped or the dead retrieved; usually, the corpses were covered over by the spoil from new trenches, or had their bodies incorporated into a new wall so as to fend off disease. Over the siege works hung a terrible, reeking miasma of rotting corpses, diarrhea, baked mud and sulphurous gunpowder. The American colonial divisions were not long on artillery but they had been liberally supplied with repeating rifles, Gatling guns and man-portable mortars. Imperial troops had soon begun to hate the shoomp! shoomp! shoomp! sounds those weapons made, and captured ones were highly prized – until the captured ammunition ran out, after which they were so much scrap metal. So the light forces sparred over the railroads – infantry only; for the horses and mules of both armies were long since dead – while the main armies grappled in the stinking, sandy rubble. Had either managed to dislocate the other’s steel-ribboned lifeline, or had any British assault produced a gain of more than yards, the battle for the Diamond Coast would have been over. But as it was the issue remained in doubt, with just enough damage being done to the railroads to leave both armies slowly starving while they bled each other to death.
By the end of October the American divisions were spent. The brutal attrition of trench warfare had reduced them to a fraction of their former numbers, and if the British Army of the Cape was little better off it was still much stronger in absolute terms. General Dedham and his staff had determined that this was the moment for an all-out assault to be made, and if their men were less than enthusiastic about their prospects they were ready enough to make the effort if only to settle the issue, one way or another. Artillery shells were carefully hoarded and nightly patrols increased, scouts probing for weak places in the massive sand and rubble berms of the American forts. Morale was not good on either side, for the little news that found its way to the front was generally bad: the Royal Navy defeated in the Channel, British armies encamped in Maryland and Massachusetts, Canada overrun. On both sides there was a willingness, a need, to make one final effort and let that decide the campaign.
But the climactic battle that would release both sides from the burning hell of the desert was never to come to pass. On the twelfth of October, clouds of black smoke were seen far out to sea, heralding the arrival of General Wesley Merritt and two divisions of regulars from Spain. Their escorts were eight American cruisers, who shelled the British positions to cover the landing of Merritt’s men. The infusion of so many fresh, well-equipped men made a British assault impossible and forced Dedham to make preparations for a retreat. Despite his garrisons, the Capetown railroad was now perilously exposed to American landing parties. Slowly the remnants of proud regiments were extracted from the entrenchments and put in motion for the weary march south. Merritt’s men made no effort to stop or harass them, and the reason for that was soon appallingly clear: shielded by half the American cruisers, three more divisions had landed at Capetown, cutting the vital railroad at its root. With that, the nerve of the Cape army finally failed; mere flesh and blood could do no more. On October 25th, General Reginald Dedham surrendered his surviving forces, the railway garrisons and the Cape Colony.
There is a point to all the make-work of military spit-and-polish, of drill and standing at attention, in fact there is more than one. These things have no obvious application to combat, and in modern times may even be detrimental; the term for a soldier who goes up against automatic weapons with his uniform creased and his metalwork brightly polished is casualty in any language. But these seemingly time-wasting activities are in fact a vital part of soldiering, of the making of men into soldiers. For one, they fill time, and spare time is an enemy more destructive to an army than any other disease. Idleness breeds sloppiness, and disrespect, and a casual contempt for the right way of doing things. Neatening, polishing and making everything spruce and proper gives a man a feeling of belonging to something finer and more special than the merely ordinary. He sees the respect shining in the eyes of civilians and the curled-lip envy of other soldiers and he knows himself to be a better man than ever he was before. With drill comes obedience to orders – immediate and instinctive, for if a man is well trained he will do his duty despite the horrors going on around him, and without regard to the awfulness of the task. When he has learned to do his work well he gets respect from his fellows and a slight but noticeable decrease in the invective of his sergeant, and then – and only then – is he fit to be a soldier.
All of these martial make-works give the soldier something to hang his sanity on when the mess drops in the pot and shells are bursting all about. When there are worse things than death or wounds to be encountered, his pride in himself, in his regiment and in his nation will carry him forward to endure what would otherwise be unendurable. A rational army, as Montesquieu said, would run away, so the purpose of military discipline is to turn men into irrational creatures who will do the unspeakable and bear that which cannot be borne. By this we mean not only combat, with all its terrors and vast, impersonal forces, but other things – other woundings, not physical but of the soul, and no less terrible for that. The worst of these indignities is not death or wounds but surrender. The loss of control over one’s fate, the symbolic emasculation involved in the surrender of weapons, the pervasive, shaming knowledge of failure are all painfully difficult for a soldier to endure. Only pride and discipline will carry soldiers through the loss that surrender entails.
After the dreadful slaughter of the Battle of the Peninsula both the American and British armies worked frantically to regroup, entrench and prepare for the next round. For the Americans, casualties could be replaced and ammunition and supplies restocked. For General Gordon’s men, the prospect was much grimmer. Every day meant fewer rations on hand, and if there were less men each day to eat those rations there were also fewer to fill the ranks. Like sand tricking down an hourglass the manpower and resources of the army were running out, and only a heroic effort by the Royal Navy could save them. Unbeknown to them that heroic effort had been mounted weeks before the Peninsular battle was fought, but it gave no relief to General Gordon’s weary men. While they were fighting and dying in the Peninsular woods, eighty thousand British soldiers were landed between Fall River and New Bedford in Massachusetts. But the Americans were fully mobilized now, and this new invasion proved no more capable of a rapid breakout than Gordon’s army had been. By the time General Helton’s men were ready to march on Boston they were ringed around by two hundred thousand American bayonets. Each American assault grew in strength while British power of resistance faded; long gone was any chance to achieve any objective beyond mere survival.
Two days after the Battle of the Peninsula, an American delegation under flag of truce formally presented a request for Gordon to surrender his army. Enclosed was a note from General Helton stating that his position in Massachusetts was untenable and evacuation impossible. General Gordon had already received a message smuggled ashore via a small boat from the cruiser Phalarope: there would be no reinforcements or supplies until the New Year, and there was no possibility of evacuation. Under the circumstances, Gordon thought it prudent to bring his officers together for a council. He found them universally opposed to surrender but unable to offer any practical alternative. Under the most stringent rationing the men could be fed for at most another thirty days, and stocks of ammunition were perilously low. Before them was the vastly more numerous American army, drawing itself up for another attack rather as a crossbow winches its quarrel into place, and behind them was only sand and the sea.
“To prevent needless effusion of blood,” General Gordon’s address to the army read, “and to spare the lives of men who have shown such valor and devotion, it is determined that this Army will surrender its arms upon the twelfth of October…” The terms were most generous. Officers and men were to give their oaths not to serve in any capacity for the duration of the present hostilities, and in exchange for their parole would be shipped to Britain in specially-marked American transports. The ceremony was somber; General MacArthur had given strict orders against any unseemly display of emotion, but the American soldiers seemed not to need a reminder other than the long British columns marching slowly forward to lay down their arms. Sousa’s Marine Band joined the massed pipers of Highlander and Pennsylvanian regiments while immaculate lines of soldiers of the 1st Virginia formed a corridor down which marched all the varied troops of the Empire. The ceremony was interrupted only once, and that at the very beginning. The 35th Royal Suffolk Regiment was at the head of the Imperial column, led by their colors. As they marched past, General Armistead barked an order and the 1st Virginia snapped into a salute, which the officers of the Suffolks answered. As they reached the point at which arms would be stacked and the colors surrendered, Major General Emory Upton came forward. The general had been charged with overseeing the ceremony, but had now decided to change a small but significant detail.
“You have done nothing dishonorable or unbecoming your regiment,” he said. “Keep your colors, that your honor remain intact and our friendship be renewed.” On the dais, General Gordon turned to General MacArthur and commented, loud enough for all to hear, “That is very handsome, sir, and is most sincerely appreciated.” To which General MacArthur only replied, “Honor responds to honor, sir. As General Upton has said, may we soon be friends again.”
Then they arrived on banks of the Orange River and saw the size of the task before them. The Americans had come across the Orange in the earliest days of the war and occupied the little port of Alexander Bay. Then they had brought up a division of Malagasy troops, and another of Hispaniolan Creoles, and set those men to digging. Sprouting from the rock, scree, gravel and sand had grown a mammoth sand-castle whose out-works ran down to the river-bank and vanished north past the American settlement of Orangeburg. With American patrols slipping through the back-country and landing on the coast from small boats, General Dedham had been forced to leave large garrisons along the railway in his rear. To abandon the railroad would have been suicidal; every necessity of life, even forage and firewood had to be brought overland, for the scanty foliage along the Orange River could not have sustained the army for a week. North of the American position the bare, bleached white sands of the Skeleton Coast rolled away to a seemingly-infinite horizon. Before long the Imperials were making long-distance raids into that desert against the American railroad while the rest of the army dug approaches to the American fortress. All the while, the hellish, inescapable sun pounded down upon attacker and defender alike, beat down as though the god of war were hammering them on his red-hot anvil.
The siege had lasted a solid month, then five weeks, then six. American outworks had been driven in but at a terrible cost in dead and wounded on both sides. The wounded could rarely be helped or the dead retrieved; usually, the corpses were covered over by the spoil from new trenches, or had their bodies incorporated into a new wall so as to fend off disease. Over the siege works hung a terrible, reeking miasma of rotting corpses, diarrhea, baked mud and sulphurous gunpowder. The American colonial divisions were not long on artillery but they had been liberally supplied with repeating rifles, Gatling guns and man-portable mortars. Imperial troops had soon begun to hate the shoomp! shoomp! shoomp! sounds those weapons made, and captured ones were highly prized – until the captured ammunition ran out, after which they were so much scrap metal. So the light forces sparred over the railroads – infantry only; for the horses and mules of both armies were long since dead – while the main armies grappled in the stinking, sandy rubble. Had either managed to dislocate the other’s steel-ribboned lifeline, or had any British assault produced a gain of more than yards, the battle for the Diamond Coast would have been over. But as it was the issue remained in doubt, with just enough damage being done to the railroads to leave both armies slowly starving while they bled each other to death.
By the end of October the American divisions were spent. The brutal attrition of trench warfare had reduced them to a fraction of their former numbers, and if the British Army of the Cape was little better off it was still much stronger in absolute terms. General Dedham and his staff had determined that this was the moment for an all-out assault to be made, and if their men were less than enthusiastic about their prospects they were ready enough to make the effort if only to settle the issue, one way or another. Artillery shells were carefully hoarded and nightly patrols increased, scouts probing for weak places in the massive sand and rubble berms of the American forts. Morale was not good on either side, for the little news that found its way to the front was generally bad: the Royal Navy defeated in the Channel, British armies encamped in Maryland and Massachusetts, Canada overrun. On both sides there was a willingness, a need, to make one final effort and let that decide the campaign.
But the climactic battle that would release both sides from the burning hell of the desert was never to come to pass. On the twelfth of October, clouds of black smoke were seen far out to sea, heralding the arrival of General Wesley Merritt and two divisions of regulars from Spain. Their escorts were eight American cruisers, who shelled the British positions to cover the landing of Merritt’s men. The infusion of so many fresh, well-equipped men made a British assault impossible and forced Dedham to make preparations for a retreat. Despite his garrisons, the Capetown railroad was now perilously exposed to American landing parties. Slowly the remnants of proud regiments were extracted from the entrenchments and put in motion for the weary march south. Merritt’s men made no effort to stop or harass them, and the reason for that was soon appallingly clear: shielded by half the American cruisers, three more divisions had landed at Capetown, cutting the vital railroad at its root. With that, the nerve of the Cape army finally failed; mere flesh and blood could do no more. On October 25th, General Reginald Dedham surrendered his surviving forces, the railway garrisons and the Cape Colony.
There is a point to all the make-work of military spit-and-polish, of drill and standing at attention, in fact there is more than one. These things have no obvious application to combat, and in modern times may even be detrimental; the term for a soldier who goes up against automatic weapons with his uniform creased and his metalwork brightly polished is casualty in any language. But these seemingly time-wasting activities are in fact a vital part of soldiering, of the making of men into soldiers. For one, they fill time, and spare time is an enemy more destructive to an army than any other disease. Idleness breeds sloppiness, and disrespect, and a casual contempt for the right way of doing things. Neatening, polishing and making everything spruce and proper gives a man a feeling of belonging to something finer and more special than the merely ordinary. He sees the respect shining in the eyes of civilians and the curled-lip envy of other soldiers and he knows himself to be a better man than ever he was before. With drill comes obedience to orders – immediate and instinctive, for if a man is well trained he will do his duty despite the horrors going on around him, and without regard to the awfulness of the task. When he has learned to do his work well he gets respect from his fellows and a slight but noticeable decrease in the invective of his sergeant, and then – and only then – is he fit to be a soldier.
All of these martial make-works give the soldier something to hang his sanity on when the mess drops in the pot and shells are bursting all about. When there are worse things than death or wounds to be encountered, his pride in himself, in his regiment and in his nation will carry him forward to endure what would otherwise be unendurable. A rational army, as Montesquieu said, would run away, so the purpose of military discipline is to turn men into irrational creatures who will do the unspeakable and bear that which cannot be borne. By this we mean not only combat, with all its terrors and vast, impersonal forces, but other things – other woundings, not physical but of the soul, and no less terrible for that. The worst of these indignities is not death or wounds but surrender. The loss of control over one’s fate, the symbolic emasculation involved in the surrender of weapons, the pervasive, shaming knowledge of failure are all painfully difficult for a soldier to endure. Only pride and discipline will carry soldiers through the loss that surrender entails.
After the dreadful slaughter of the Battle of the Peninsula both the American and British armies worked frantically to regroup, entrench and prepare for the next round. For the Americans, casualties could be replaced and ammunition and supplies restocked. For General Gordon’s men, the prospect was much grimmer. Every day meant fewer rations on hand, and if there were less men each day to eat those rations there were also fewer to fill the ranks. Like sand tricking down an hourglass the manpower and resources of the army were running out, and only a heroic effort by the Royal Navy could save them. Unbeknown to them that heroic effort had been mounted weeks before the Peninsular battle was fought, but it gave no relief to General Gordon’s weary men. While they were fighting and dying in the Peninsular woods, eighty thousand British soldiers were landed between Fall River and New Bedford in Massachusetts. But the Americans were fully mobilized now, and this new invasion proved no more capable of a rapid breakout than Gordon’s army had been. By the time General Helton’s men were ready to march on Boston they were ringed around by two hundred thousand American bayonets. Each American assault grew in strength while British power of resistance faded; long gone was any chance to achieve any objective beyond mere survival.
Two days after the Battle of the Peninsula, an American delegation under flag of truce formally presented a request for Gordon to surrender his army. Enclosed was a note from General Helton stating that his position in Massachusetts was untenable and evacuation impossible. General Gordon had already received a message smuggled ashore via a small boat from the cruiser Phalarope: there would be no reinforcements or supplies until the New Year, and there was no possibility of evacuation. Under the circumstances, Gordon thought it prudent to bring his officers together for a council. He found them universally opposed to surrender but unable to offer any practical alternative. Under the most stringent rationing the men could be fed for at most another thirty days, and stocks of ammunition were perilously low. Before them was the vastly more numerous American army, drawing itself up for another attack rather as a crossbow winches its quarrel into place, and behind them was only sand and the sea.
“To prevent needless effusion of blood,” General Gordon’s address to the army read, “and to spare the lives of men who have shown such valor and devotion, it is determined that this Army will surrender its arms upon the twelfth of October…” The terms were most generous. Officers and men were to give their oaths not to serve in any capacity for the duration of the present hostilities, and in exchange for their parole would be shipped to Britain in specially-marked American transports. The ceremony was somber; General MacArthur had given strict orders against any unseemly display of emotion, but the American soldiers seemed not to need a reminder other than the long British columns marching slowly forward to lay down their arms. Sousa’s Marine Band joined the massed pipers of Highlander and Pennsylvanian regiments while immaculate lines of soldiers of the 1st Virginia formed a corridor down which marched all the varied troops of the Empire. The ceremony was interrupted only once, and that at the very beginning. The 35th Royal Suffolk Regiment was at the head of the Imperial column, led by their colors. As they marched past, General Armistead barked an order and the 1st Virginia snapped into a salute, which the officers of the Suffolks answered. As they reached the point at which arms would be stacked and the colors surrendered, Major General Emory Upton came forward. The general had been charged with overseeing the ceremony, but had now decided to change a small but significant detail.
“You have done nothing dishonorable or unbecoming your regiment,” he said. “Keep your colors, that your honor remain intact and our friendship be renewed.” On the dais, General Gordon turned to General MacArthur and commented, loud enough for all to hear, “That is very handsome, sir, and is most sincerely appreciated.” To which General MacArthur only replied, “Honor responds to honor, sir. As General Upton has said, may we soon be friends again.”
It was not in Joseph Chamberlain’s nature to concede defeat. Reverses were inevitable, but could always be overcome; so long as the will remained to animate the body, any setback could and would and must be overcome. Nevertheless, the catalog of catastrophies that had marked the course of the war to date was unparalleled in British history. Not even in the darkest days of the Napoleonic Wars had Britain been so humbled. The Royal Navy’s two-century-old tradition of victory was wrecked, lying with the bones of its ships and men beneath the waters of the Channel. American men of war prowled unmolested within sight of Plymouth, Portsmouth and London herself, and every effort to bring the enemy to battle only lengthened the list of casualties and shortened the number of ships on the Royal Navy’s roll. Canada was all but gone with the Americans triumphant from Vancouver to Montreal, and heavy reinforcements had been necessary to keep Newfoundland from being overrun. British armies in Maryland and Massachusetts had been surrounded, overwhelmed, forced to surrender – the humiliation of Cornwallis on a larger scale, twice repeated. Bermuda, the Bahamas, Jamaica and even Trinidad were taken and Mexican troops were in Belize. Word had only lately arrived that Singapore had fallen to an American corps that arrived seemingly from thin air. General Phillips had posted his men north of the city in the fortifications across the Johore neck, secure in his conviction that Singapore was unassailable. Now Phillips was faced with the dismal prospect of trying to evict the enemy from his own former base of supply. Chamberlain fervently wished him luck but could not do otherwise than assume another disaster was in the making. Ewarts’ campaign in Nigeria had latterly gone down to inglorious defeat, his army trapped by American forces in front and rear.
Chamberlain had never considered for a moment that Britain could fail. In naval strength, economic and financial power, in population available to support its armies – in every aspect the Empire had been far stronger than its American foe. But all had depended upon the one thing that every Briton assumed was immutable but was now revealed to be a rotten timber: the strength of the Royal Navy. Now, everything he had thought would ensure a British victory had failed. The Royal Navy would be a decade recovering from its losses in material and men, longer perhaps in recovering its battered esprit de corps. The invasions of the American homeland had simply been swallowed up, and the tiny regular army wrecked in the process. Given time, British finance and industry could rebuild a warfleet and the Empire’s immense population could be formed into mighty armies. But time, which Chamberlain had always assumed would be on his side, was now his enemy. His working majority in the House was reduced to a bare sliver and the Lords were furiously in opposition. Lord Randolph Churchill and the Conservatives were rattling the rafters in Whitehall with denunciations of Chamberlain, his party and his government. To date they had been scrupulously careful to criticize the government’s conduct of the war without venturing to examine how the war came to happen, but the wolves were growing bolder while Chamberlain’s men grew ever more despondent.
At any moment a vote of no confidence could come, and despite Chamberlain’s outward bravado he had only fair confidence that his Liberal government would be returned to power in an election. There were members who could be trusted to pass along to the opposition anything they were told, and Chamberlain had carefully spelled out to them the sort of election he would run if forced to hold one. He would use patriotism and the crown ruthlessly, would pillory any vote for the Conservatives as a stab in the back of every serving soldier and sailor, would paint the opposition as traitors to the honored dead, to country and to the King. It was only partially a bluff, for Chamberlain was quite willing to wage a brutal war at the polls if that was what was required. What was a bluff was his threat to publicly involve the monarchy, for while the King was still committed to the war he was no longer fit to be seen in public. With his prolonged bouts of inebriation had come a settled depression and an unraveling of his faculties. Chamberlain had been able to find men who could surround the King and keep news of his condition from getting out, but that cordon could not long hold. Britons were accustomed to seeing and hearing from their monarch on a regular basis, and in this crisis of war the need for royal reassurance was especially acute. The sight and sound of Edward VIII just now would be deeply shocking to the solid mass of voters who might not like the Liberals but who would reliably back any government in wartime. No, calling on the monarch for help was out of the question. His brother George would be no help, either; the man was a Conservative to his fingertips and had already quietly passed the word that he would not make any public appearance to assist the present government.
Despite the litany of disasters, the war had settled into a sort of stalemate. The British armies in the United States had been overwhelmed and forced to surrender and Canada was lost, but India remained undisturbed and no American army had dared to land in the British Isles. Given time, Chamberlain was confident the American voters would tire of the war and demand peace whereas Britons were both more patient and more stubborn. One vital piece of the political calculus had changed, however, and with it had flown any chance he had of waiting out his opponent. The American blockade of the Channel and the southern approaches to the Irish Sea had idled the ports of London, Portsmouth, Plymouth, Bristol and Liverpoole. Without a means of getting their goods to the world’s markets the country’s prosperity was collapsing, and all too often American exports were being sold in place of British goods. Most damning of all, imports of meat and grain had all but ceased; in weeks, or a month at most, the markets would be empty and the people would begin to go hungry. Even during the darkest days of the French Revolution and Napoleonic Empire there had been no real threat of revolutionary mob rule in Britain. But now, with Irish intransigence, unrest among the laborers and the possiblilty of famine in the streets, with the retreat of the monarch from public view and the destruction of the navy’s guardian bulwark… well, much that was unthinkable was being thought about in Britain, today.
Before him, Chamberlain could see two roads. The one that might have been led to the revitalization of the Empire as a dynamic, vibrant and growing entity. The other led gently downward into stagnation and decay. Had the Americans been willing to peaceably make way, or had the Germans been willing to make a common cause… Chamberlain sighed. That road was lost to him now, nor would there be a turning aside to find it in any future he could see. What was real and must be dealt with were the documents on his desk. Both were body blows. One was a petition from his loyal Manchester constituents, requesting that he open peace negotiations with the United States. The other was signed by four of the ministers in his Cabinet, staunch Liberals all, declaring that they could no longer support the government and would resign unless peace talks were promptly begun. Without the support of the social Liberals his government was doomed, and if the ever-loyal Midlands were lost then his popular support was slim indeed.
There was, it seemed, nothing to do but play out the role he had written for himself, to empty the cup no matter how bitter the contents. Chamberlain would allow himself no self-pity, no tears, no might-have-beens. The King would not be glad to see him – might in any case not be conscious or in his right mind – but this he could not, would not do save in person. With numb fingers he rang for his butler, and in a voice far, far away requested his coat and hat. Two futures lay ahead of him, both terrifying. In one he wielded tyrannical power and took the Empire down in a Gotterdammerung of revolution and destruction. In the other he sacrificed himself and the reputations of his family, and gave the Empire over to decades of weakness. He stood. He took up his hat and cane. Numb fingers ripped the gorgeous orchid from his lapel, dripped blood upon his napkin, hurled the offending flower into the wastecan where it would shortly be joined by all his hopes, all his dreams of Empire. They would make a mockery of him, hang his effigy beside Guy Fawkes and curse him like Cromwell, small sacrifices beside the heaps of dead this war had brought. Chamberlain donned his coat as knights of old put on their armor. If his destruction could save his country, then Chamberlain would go to it, not willingly but with dogged, dutiful determination. The other path would be easier to choose, and he spurned it, not least for that reason alone. Let it be said that he was a fool; he had been a fool, and worse, but he would not permit fear to turn him aside from duty. He had led his country to the brink of destruction, but only a coward would sacrifice it for his own ends. “Never,” he whispered, “never that.” Let the New Year have a new government; Joseph Chamberlain would hold himself upright by the knowledge that he had done his best, as he saw it, and had done his duty when it was required of him.
Then he bowed his head, and wept as only a patriot can. “Dear God,” he whispered. “What have I done? What have I done… Dear God! May the Americans be merciful.”
Chamberlain had never considered for a moment that Britain could fail. In naval strength, economic and financial power, in population available to support its armies – in every aspect the Empire had been far stronger than its American foe. But all had depended upon the one thing that every Briton assumed was immutable but was now revealed to be a rotten timber: the strength of the Royal Navy. Now, everything he had thought would ensure a British victory had failed. The Royal Navy would be a decade recovering from its losses in material and men, longer perhaps in recovering its battered esprit de corps. The invasions of the American homeland had simply been swallowed up, and the tiny regular army wrecked in the process. Given time, British finance and industry could rebuild a warfleet and the Empire’s immense population could be formed into mighty armies. But time, which Chamberlain had always assumed would be on his side, was now his enemy. His working majority in the House was reduced to a bare sliver and the Lords were furiously in opposition. Lord Randolph Churchill and the Conservatives were rattling the rafters in Whitehall with denunciations of Chamberlain, his party and his government. To date they had been scrupulously careful to criticize the government’s conduct of the war without venturing to examine how the war came to happen, but the wolves were growing bolder while Chamberlain’s men grew ever more despondent.
At any moment a vote of no confidence could come, and despite Chamberlain’s outward bravado he had only fair confidence that his Liberal government would be returned to power in an election. There were members who could be trusted to pass along to the opposition anything they were told, and Chamberlain had carefully spelled out to them the sort of election he would run if forced to hold one. He would use patriotism and the crown ruthlessly, would pillory any vote for the Conservatives as a stab in the back of every serving soldier and sailor, would paint the opposition as traitors to the honored dead, to country and to the King. It was only partially a bluff, for Chamberlain was quite willing to wage a brutal war at the polls if that was what was required. What was a bluff was his threat to publicly involve the monarchy, for while the King was still committed to the war he was no longer fit to be seen in public. With his prolonged bouts of inebriation had come a settled depression and an unraveling of his faculties. Chamberlain had been able to find men who could surround the King and keep news of his condition from getting out, but that cordon could not long hold. Britons were accustomed to seeing and hearing from their monarch on a regular basis, and in this crisis of war the need for royal reassurance was especially acute. The sight and sound of Edward VIII just now would be deeply shocking to the solid mass of voters who might not like the Liberals but who would reliably back any government in wartime. No, calling on the monarch for help was out of the question. His brother George would be no help, either; the man was a Conservative to his fingertips and had already quietly passed the word that he would not make any public appearance to assist the present government.
Despite the litany of disasters, the war had settled into a sort of stalemate. The British armies in the United States had been overwhelmed and forced to surrender and Canada was lost, but India remained undisturbed and no American army had dared to land in the British Isles. Given time, Chamberlain was confident the American voters would tire of the war and demand peace whereas Britons were both more patient and more stubborn. One vital piece of the political calculus had changed, however, and with it had flown any chance he had of waiting out his opponent. The American blockade of the Channel and the southern approaches to the Irish Sea had idled the ports of London, Portsmouth, Plymouth, Bristol and Liverpoole. Without a means of getting their goods to the world’s markets the country’s prosperity was collapsing, and all too often American exports were being sold in place of British goods. Most damning of all, imports of meat and grain had all but ceased; in weeks, or a month at most, the markets would be empty and the people would begin to go hungry. Even during the darkest days of the French Revolution and Napoleonic Empire there had been no real threat of revolutionary mob rule in Britain. But now, with Irish intransigence, unrest among the laborers and the possiblilty of famine in the streets, with the retreat of the monarch from public view and the destruction of the navy’s guardian bulwark… well, much that was unthinkable was being thought about in Britain, today.
Before him, Chamberlain could see two roads. The one that might have been led to the revitalization of the Empire as a dynamic, vibrant and growing entity. The other led gently downward into stagnation and decay. Had the Americans been willing to peaceably make way, or had the Germans been willing to make a common cause… Chamberlain sighed. That road was lost to him now, nor would there be a turning aside to find it in any future he could see. What was real and must be dealt with were the documents on his desk. Both were body blows. One was a petition from his loyal Manchester constituents, requesting that he open peace negotiations with the United States. The other was signed by four of the ministers in his Cabinet, staunch Liberals all, declaring that they could no longer support the government and would resign unless peace talks were promptly begun. Without the support of the social Liberals his government was doomed, and if the ever-loyal Midlands were lost then his popular support was slim indeed.
There was, it seemed, nothing to do but play out the role he had written for himself, to empty the cup no matter how bitter the contents. Chamberlain would allow himself no self-pity, no tears, no might-have-beens. The King would not be glad to see him – might in any case not be conscious or in his right mind – but this he could not, would not do save in person. With numb fingers he rang for his butler, and in a voice far, far away requested his coat and hat. Two futures lay ahead of him, both terrifying. In one he wielded tyrannical power and took the Empire down in a Gotterdammerung of revolution and destruction. In the other he sacrificed himself and the reputations of his family, and gave the Empire over to decades of weakness. He stood. He took up his hat and cane. Numb fingers ripped the gorgeous orchid from his lapel, dripped blood upon his napkin, hurled the offending flower into the wastecan where it would shortly be joined by all his hopes, all his dreams of Empire. They would make a mockery of him, hang his effigy beside Guy Fawkes and curse him like Cromwell, small sacrifices beside the heaps of dead this war had brought. Chamberlain donned his coat as knights of old put on their armor. If his destruction could save his country, then Chamberlain would go to it, not willingly but with dogged, dutiful determination. The other path would be easier to choose, and he spurned it, not least for that reason alone. Let it be said that he was a fool; he had been a fool, and worse, but he would not permit fear to turn him aside from duty. He had led his country to the brink of destruction, but only a coward would sacrifice it for his own ends. “Never,” he whispered, “never that.” Let the New Year have a new government; Joseph Chamberlain would hold himself upright by the knowledge that he had done his best, as he saw it, and had done his duty when it was required of him.
Then he bowed his head, and wept as only a patriot can. “Dear God,” he whispered. “What have I done? What have I done… Dear God! May the Americans be merciful.”
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We are all going to feel sorry for Chamberlain now. It is good that he is not veering (too much) into the whole coulda woulda shoulda thoughts about past decisions.
The army movements sound like a lovely vacation.
The army movements sound like a lovely vacation.