Free The Battle of the Crater: A Novel by William R. Forstchen, Newt Gingrich, Albert S. Hanser Page A

does that get us out of here now?” Johann asked, feigning at least some interest. Poor Stan was still shaking and he wanted to divert the lad with talk of something else.
    “That mortar shell just now. Packed with a couple of pounds of powder. What a waste. Even if it lands in a trench we usually got time to run from it. But down underground, you laddies know what a couple of pounds of powder will do to ya inside a tunnel.”
    There were nods of agreement. Nearly every man of the 48th had come up out of the coalfields of Schuylkill County.
    Michael took the chaw from Lubbeck and bit off a piece.
    “I was thinking on it last night while taking a look at that damn fort up there.” As he spoke, half-a-dozen mortars back behind their lines opened from the fort called “fourteen gun battery,” lobbing their rounds high, seeking out the Confederate mortar, which had just fired. Michael paused, a few casual bets were offered, but there were no takers; it was far too risky to venture a peek for the results, even if the Rebs up in the fort were claiming a truce.
    Several of the shells detonated with hollow pops, the others were duds.
    “So what was you leading up to?” Johann asked.
    “Well, I was thinking. How long do you think it’d take us boys to dig a tunnel up under that fort?”
    As he spoke, he pulled out a pocketknife, opened it, and stuck it into the wall of the trench.
    “This ain’t no hard Pennsylvania rock. It’s clay and sand, boys. How long?”
    A healthy debate ensued for several minutes. Stan at last spoke up, and the men listened since he was book learned, having spent a year at college studying engineering before running off, the month prior, to join his brother in the army.
    “How far is it again up to that fort?” he asked.
    “Figure about a hundred and thirty yards or so,” Johann replied.
    “Three weeks through clay and sand, I’d figure,” Stan announced after sitting quiet for a moment, as if in deep concentration.
    The others chuckled good-naturedly. Given that he was the younger brother of their sergeant, they did not ride him too hard, but peppered back with, “Suppose you hit a spring? This ain’t no coal-digging tunnel,” and the debate gradually petered out. The heat rendered all of them dull, listless, and forlorn; it was even an effort to swat the flies, which plagued them by the thousands.
    “Colonel’s comin’,” a private announced, sticking his head out from the covered communications trench that led to the rear.
    The men made no effort to spruce up; they were in the forward trench and thus excused from such foolishness. Crouching low, a couple of officers emerged, one a captain, uniform as worn and battered as that of his men. It was their own Captain Conrad, commander of Company A. He was one of them, a coal cracker before the war, joined as a private and promoted through the ranks.
    Behind him was Colonel Henry Pleasants, mid-thirties. In spite of the years of war, his face had a certain gentleness to it, his frame diminutive; wearing spectacles, he looked more like a preacher than a regimental commander of a hard-fighting unit. A mining engineer before the war, he had joined with the regiment as a lieutenant. Whether he looked like a preacher or not, he had proven his mettle on every battle the Ninth Corps had faced, from New Bern to this godforsaken place, rising to command of the regiment after the Battle of the Wilderness.
    Men half stood at his approach, and he made a gesture for them to stay low.
    “How goes it, boys?” he asked, pausing to shake Johann’s hand.
    “Hotter than hell, sir.”
    “With the Rebs or that blasted sun?” and he made the gesture of taking off his hat to wipe his brow, nearly standing up.
    “Be careful, sir!” several of the men cried simultaneously, gesturing to the lip of the trench.
    “We got a deal with the boys over there,” Johann announced. “But not with the regiments to either flank of ’em.”
    “Besides,” Lubbeck