Gen. George Sykes leaned out of the railroad car that served as his headquarters. On the parallel track an engine inched forward, railroad workers jumping off the flatcars they had been riding on, a team handing down several rails, eight men shouldering the rail and running forward. 'Two more breaks in the line, General, sir." The yard boss, some Irishman by his brogue, gave a bit of an impertinent salute and ran forward with his men.
George stepped down from the car and walked forward. Behind him another train was easing to a stop, in front of the engine was a massive flatcar converted into a rolling fortress, an armored car they called it, the barrel of a thirty-pounder protruding from the iron-plated front.
A similar car was at the front of his own train and the one on the parallel track.
Ahead there was the rattle of skirmishing, some rebs visible on the track perhaps six hundred yards away, a marine detachment pushing them back.
Strange, all this, George thought as he leaned against the armored car to watch the laborers at work.
After surviving the debacle at Gunpowder River, he had assumed the few battered survivors of the Army of the Potomac would be disbanded and sent to other units, the name 1 of that famed command stricken from the records forever. Then had come the hand-delivered dispatch from the War Office, countersigned by Grant, specifically laying out a detailed plan that had stunned him.
He was to reorganize the survivors into a single corps, out of deference to him, the Fifth Corps. Units were to be banded together by the states they came from. The men would be resupplied, which they were, then told to rest and wait, which they did for five days.
And then word had come to prepare to move. The men had marched up to the Northeast River, ten miles back from the Susquehanna, to Charlestown. That night a flotilla of transport ships arrived, and the next morning they had steamed out, racing south.
Off the mouth of the Patapsco River at the entrance to Baltimore they had joined a second flotilla, this one actually commanded by Farragut himself, many of the ships having come up from the siege of Charleston. There were deepwater ships: transports crammed with marines and sailors converted to infantry, ironclads, and long flat barges carrying the trains he and some of his command now rode in.
Baltimore, contrary to expectations, had fallen with barely a shot being fired, except by the garrison at McHenry.
There had been some rioting, which the sailors were assigned to put down while he and his valiant few, his Army of the Potomac, reinforced by the marines, set off.
His first concern was that the rebs might blow up the huge stone viaduct at Relay Station. Thus once the armored cars and their locomotives were rolled off the trains at the dockyard and switched onto the Baltimore and Ohio's main line, he had set off. The charge by rail worked. Their arrival at dark sent the rebs scurrying back across the bridge, and dawn revealed that their commander, who he now learned was Lo Armistead, had indeed been trying to find enough powder to stuff up under one of the arches of the bridge to bring it down. Armistead had failed, and so they had been able to continue pushing west.
Today, though, had been frustratingly slow work. The rebs kept tearing up the track ahead, smashing switches. An armored car would be raced forward, firing its massive gun, and they'd scatter, pull back, and then resume their desperate work.
And yet they were moving forward, mile by mile. He knew his nickname, whispered behind his back, 'Tardy George."
The hell with them. His tardiness, as some called it, was being methodical and, by God, he certainly was not tardy at Taneytown. If only Sickles had listened to him at Gunpowder River and gone a bit more slowly, this whole operation would be different now.
The yard boss stood up, waved his hand, indicating the rail was fixed. The engine vented steam and George walked back to the command car behind the locomotive, climbing aboard. During their stop a telegrapher had hooked into the line and handed George the latest news.
"Heavy fighting all along the line at Frederick. Grant."
There was no need to be told that. Whenever the train stopped all could hear the rumble in the distance.
The yard boss ran back aboard his own train on the parallel track, saw George, saluted again, then turned to one of his men, who reluctantly offered up a bottle out of his pocket.
"How much we paying that man?" George asked of one of his staff.
"Sixty a day."
"Damn, I don't even make that much. I don't even think the president himself makes that much."
"Well, sir, he said that's what the rebels paid him, and he did his utmost to play hell with them. He was the only one around, and he does good work. Almost everybody with the Military Railroad command are still up in Harrisburg or repairing the Cumberland line."
"More than the president," George mumbled.
The train moved forward, gaining a little speed. Through the window he could see where the rebels had torn off several rails, heated them, and then bent them around a telegraph pole. The train shifted slightly as it crossed over the patched section, rolled forward another half mile, then slowed again.
Another break, damn it.
It was slow, he knew, but it was relentless. On the road parallel to the track, infantry was marching forward, the shot-torn standard of the old Fifth Corps at the fore.
The Army of the Potomac was marching toward the battle. Slow as ever, perhaps, but it was in the field again-and looking for a fight.
Hunt's batteries were lost in clouds of smoke. It was impossible to see them other than by the flash of their guns. Grant looked back toward Frederick. McPherson's boys were up, forming at the edge of town, four thousand of them, but ready to refight a battle the way they had done two days ago, street by street.
Around Grant his staff was hurrying about, packing up map cases and field desks and piling equipment into the single wagon that served as his headquarters, now harnessed to a team, back end open. Several enlisted men started to drop his tent.
"Leave that be," Grant shouted. "It's not important now. Get mounted and ready to move."
The rebel charge was still coming forward, picking up momentum. Hunt was already flanked but still holding on. He was tempted to ride down to him, but decided against it.
I am not a corps commander. He had to force himself to remember it. Nor even in command of a mere army. The telegraph connection that was being taken down even now was his link to an elaborate operation on three fronts in Maryland as well as to Sherman down in Georgia; the battle directly before him was not his only concern.
And besides, if I go dashing about, that will infect everyone. It always does. Stay calm, stay calm.
The last of the headquarters gear was packed up. The telegraphy wagon, was already on the move toward town.
He motioned for the headquarters wagon to set off, the driver looking back anxiously toward the rebs swarming up the road less than a quarter mile away now.
Ely led over Grant's horse and he mounted, making it a point to do nothing for a moment, taking the time to light a cigar.
He could see Ely was agitated. Minies were zipping by. He puffed on the cigar for a moment, watching them. Nodded and turned Cincinnatus.
Without a word he rode toward the town.