Warriors: Extraordinary Tales from the Battlefield. Max Hastings

found him another horse. He hastened away, still covered in mud and blood, to a sector where one of his regiments was pressed. It was plain that this force – the 185th New York – must counter-attack. ‘Once more!’ he shouted. ‘Try the steel! Hell for ten minutes and we are out of it!’ Then he led them forward to a hillock where he was bent upon mounting guns, and held the ground until the cannon arrived. He was stirred by the splendour and terror of the scene – ‘the swift-served bellowing, leaping big guns; the thrashing of the solid shot into the trees; the flying splinters and branches and tree-tops coming down upon the astonished heads’.

      As Chamberlain sat his horse, swaying with fatigue, Griffin arrived and cried out: ‘General, you must not leave us. We cannot spare you now.’ Chamberlain responded dryly: ‘I had no thought of it, General.’ Then he led his men, now strongly reinforced, to charge the wood harbouring the enemy. The Confederates were thrown back in disarray down the Quaker Road. His own brigade of some 1,700 men including gunners had suffered four hundred casualties fighting a Confederate force six thousand strong. Visiting the wounded that night, he came upon old General Sickel, badly hit during the day. Sickel welcomed his tenderness, but thought Chamberlain looked more in need of comfort and succour than himself. He whispered wryly: ‘General, you have the soul of a lion and the heart of a woman.’ Chamberlain could scarcely walk from the pain of his wounds old and new, but before he lay down to rest he visited the wounded Charlemagne in a farm building, then sat down by the light of a guttering candle to write a letter to the mother of one of his officers killed that day, to describe the heroic manner of his passing.

      Two days later, on 31 March, Chamberlain was resting, very conscious of the pain of his wounds, when a new crisis broke. Lee had attacked 5th Corps in overwhelming force, driving back many of its regiments in headlong flight. A rabble of disorganised men was pouring through the Union positions. The corps commander, Gouverneur Warren, turned in despair to Chamberlain, the finest battlefield leader of men whom he commanded: ‘General,’ he said, ‘will you save the honour of the 5th Corps? That’s all there is about it.’ Chamberlain replied: ‘I’ll try it, General. Only don’t let anybody stop me except the enemy.’ His arm was still in a sling. Every movement cost him pain from his bruises. Yet he led his men forward across Gravelly Run, scorning to linger for bridging, the infantry carrying cartridge boxes above their heads on bayonets. After Chamberlain’s force had swept the far bank, Warren urged a delay to consolidate before trying the strength of the next line of Confederate entrenchments. Chamberlain demurred – speed and momentum were all, he said. He got his way. Instructing his regiments to advance in open order rather than close ranks, and once more mounted on Charlemagne, he cantered forward as the bugle sounded. His force carried the Confederate breastworks and drove the enemy back three hundred yards across the White Oak Road. Although Chamberlain’s deeds that day formed a minor part of the Army of the Potomac’s battle, they provided a further example of remarkable personal leadership. And before it was all over, there was one more action yet to come.

      On the morning of 1 April, a day of Union confusion which cost Gouverneur Warren his command while bringing disaster to the Confederate army, Chamberlain at the van of 5th Corps met General Sheridan, under whose command the corps had been placed. ‘By God, that’s what I want to see!’ exclaimed the irascible cavalry commander. ‘General officers at the front.’ Scattered parties of Union infantry were roaming in disarray after suffering an early repulse at Five Forks. Sheridan cantered away, having given Chamberlain a peremptory order to assume command of all infantry in the sector and take them forward. As he rallied groups of men wherever he found them, Chamberlain met a soldier hiding from the crackling rifle fire behind a tree stump. ‘Look here, my good fellow,’ cried Chamberlain concernedly, ‘don’t you know you’ll be killed here in less than two minutes? This is no place for you. Go forward!’

      ‘But what can I do?’ demanded the man. ‘I can’t stand up against all this alone!’

      ‘No, that’s just it,’ said Chamberlain. ‘We’re forming here. I want you for guide center. Up and forward!’ Chamberlain gathered two hundred fugitives around him, and watched them advance under command of a staff officer. He wrote afterwards: ‘My poor fellow only wanted a token of confidence and appreciation to get possession of himself. He was proud of what he did, and so was I for him.’ Chamberlain spent the rest of the day in his accustomed role, leading forward elements of his command to confront the enemy wherever he stood. The Confederates broke. Lee was obliged to evacuate Richmond and Petersburg. Yet the chief emotions within 5th Corps that evening were shock and dismay at the news that Sheridan had sacked its commander, Warren, for alleged dereliction of duty.

      All through the week that followed, the rival armies conducted their legendary race as Lee and his starving men strove to link up with the Confederate forces led by General Joseph E. Johnston, and Sheridan led the pursuit to cut him off. On the night of 8 April, the exhausted Chamberlain had scarcely fallen asleep when he received a terse message from Sheridan. Rising on his elbow, he read it by matchlight: ‘I have cut across the enemy at Appomattox Station, and captured three of his trains. If you can possibly push your infantry up here tonight, we will have great results in the morning.’ Chamberlain and two brigades reached the station at sunrise. Within minutes he received orders which swung his men into line to support Sheridan’s cavalry. The epic drama of America’s Civil War was all but finished. The Maine general and his comrades saw before them ‘a mighty scene, fit cadence of the story of tumultuous years. Encompassed by the cordon of steel that crowned the heights about the Court House, on the slopes of the valley formed by the sources of the Appomattox lay the remnants of…the Army of North Virginia – Lee’s army! It was hilly, broken ground, in effect a vast amphitheatre.’

      As the Union masses prepared to attack, a lone horseman rode out of the Confederate lines and approached Chamberlain. It was an officer carrying a white towel. He saluted Chamberlain and reported: ‘General Lee desires a cessation of hostilities until he can hear from General Grant as to the proposed surrender.’ Chamberlain, stunned, said: ‘Sir, that matter exceeds my authority. I will send to my superior. General Lee is right. He can do no more.’ Yet even as the South’s principal commander acknowledged defeat, so keyed for combat were the men of both sides that their officers were obliged to struggle to restrain them. It took time, and a few lives, before desultory firing could be quelled. At last, as silence fell on the field, a figure appeared between the lines, superbly mounted and accoutred. Chamberlain was awed to perceive Robert E. Lee. Ulysses S. Grant rode out to meet him. The great war between the states was all but over.

      That night, 9 April 1865, Longstreet rode over from the Confederate lines and declared wretchedly: ‘Gentlemen, I must speak plainly, we are starving over there. For God’s sake, can you send us something?’ They did so, of course. Chamberlain wrote, with his accustomed stately pride: ‘We were men; and we acted like men.’ That night also, he was informed that he would have the honour of commanding the representative infantry division of the Union army at the ceremony of surrender. On the morning of 12 April, four years to the day since the attack on Fort Sumter which opened hostilities, as Chamberlain stood at the head of 1st Division, long, silent grey files began to march past. This was a moment of humiliation for the defeated Confederates, which Grant was determined that they must experience. Yet as they began to pass Chamberlain, the brigadier turned to his bugler. A call sounded. The entire Union division, regiment by regiment, brought its muskets from ‘order arms’ to ‘carry’, in token of salute. It was a magnificent gesture, which went to the hearts of a host of Confederates, who immediately responded in kind. Here was a token of mutual respect and reconciliation which won for Chamberlain the acclaim of the greater part of the American people.

      His generosity of spirit in the Union’s hour of triumph, reflected in all his dealings with the defeated Confederates, earned him as much regard as his deeds on the battlefield. Though the war was effectively over, on Griffin’s strong recommendation Chamberlain received brevet promotion to major-general in recognition of his services of 29 March 1865, on the Quaker Road. He assumed formal command of 1st Division, which spent the weeks that followed the surrender at the Appomattox seeking to maintain order in the countryside amid the chaos accompanying the collapse of the Confederacy.

      On 23 May Chamberlain received a final honour when he headed 5th Corps in the Grand Review of the