Gods and Generals - Jeff Shaara [141]
He looked back into the room, through a haze of cigar smoke and blue coats, saw one man watching him. General Couch had been placed in command of the Second Corps after the apparent failure of Bull Sumner to again appreciate the value of initiative. While everyone bore some share of the failures at Antietam, Sumner had controlled the entire center of the line, and by keeping up the pressure, could have split Lee’s army in half. When the time had come, he simply quit, and the talk began quietly that he had run out of nerve. Even McClellan had understood that Sumner had only one advantage that gave him seniority in the army, and that was his age. He was simply the good old soldier, the career man who had spent his long life rising gradually through the ranks. At the start of the war neither Winfield Scott nor the War Department had any reason to assume that Sumner was not qualified to lead large numbers of troops into battle. It finally fell on McClellan to pull him off the line.
Darius Couch was slightly younger than Hancock, a small man of light build. He had come out of West Point in 1846 with the same class that produced McClellan and Jackson. He left the army after Mexico, but returned to serve with his friend McClellan, and had shown a fiery competence for leading troops.
Hancock returned his look, saw Couch glance toward the door, a silent signal, and Hancock moved that way, followed Couch outside into the blowing snow. They walked out a way from the house, toward the camps of the troops, and Couch stopped, reached a hand out, his palm catching the snow.
“Winter.”
Hancock nodded in the dark.
Couch said, “Nothing will happen now. We have wasted the last good month of the year. Have you spent much time in Virginia, General?”
Hancock looked out through the snow, toward a large field, a wide sea of small fires and huddled men.
“No, sir.”
“A miserable place to move an army. The roads . . . after a snow like this, it will probably warm up, melt it all, and the roads will turn to deep mud. Doesn’t get cold enough to freeze solid, so the cycle repeats. We’ll probably sit right here for months, until someone persuades our commanding general to get started again . . . if he is still our commanding general.”
“Yes, sir.” Hancock held himself back, did not know Couch well, but there was something in the man, something quiet and dark and dangerous, something he had begun to see in a few of the others, had seen it now in himself, that nameless thing: Men who advanced with their troops and did not hear the muskets and stepped over their dead without looking down. He also sensed that Couch did not fit into that great warm celebration behind them, powerful men who drank too much brandy and toasted each other’s empty successes. Couch pulled at his coat, wrapped his arms around his thin frame.
“I know how much Mac appreciates your work, General. I know he appreciates mine. He’s a good friend, and once he’s in your corner, he’ll go all the way to Hell to back you up. There’re a lot of people in this army who have never even met him, and they feel the same way, that he’s their friend too.” He paused. “I wish he was a better fighter.”
Hancock could not see his face, knew the words were difficult, that since their days at the Point, Couch and McClellan had always been close.
Hancock felt the cold now as well. Snow was blowing into his collar. He said, “Well, excuse me, General, I believe I’ll head back to my quarters.”
Couch turned, held out a hand, said, “Good night, General,” and Hancock took the hand, then started away.
There was a sound of horses on the road, between the house and the vast field, and Hancock saw four men. They rode up along the rail fence, reached the gate, where a guard halted them, then from a small shelter more guards appeared, and one horseman said, “Special courier, I have a message for General McClellan.”
The guards gathered closer. One man lit a match,