The Training Ground Read online

  Grape was a larger and equally lethal antipersonnel round that had greater range. When first designed for the siege of Constantinople in 1453, the balls had been packed in a small burlap sack that was tied with string, making the armament resemble an oversize bundle of grapes, hence the name. By the nineteenth century, a metallic container divided into three sections had replaced the sacks. Each section was packed with sawdust and three cast-iron balls roughly the size of a man’s fist. Because of its size, grape was used in the larger-diameter barrels of siege and fortress cannons. In the case of Taylor’s army, that meant the eighteen- and twelve-pounders. Grape rounds worked on the spray-and-maim premise — and with devastating effect. They could easily disable a man from nine hundred yards away.

  Taylor’s plan was to open the battle by peppering the Mexican ranks with canister and grape. If all went well, the scattershot armament would not only kill and disfigure a large number of his opponents but also cause the Mexican soldiers to panic and break ranks. In the confusion that followed, his infantry units could rush into the breach and do their business.

  The Mexican forces maintained their position as the Americans slowly marched forward through the tall grass. Taylor’s all-important cannons were pulled by pack animals, with the guns themselves mounted on spoke-wheeled carriages. The lethal eighteen-pounders were not normally used in the field — they were cumbersome and hard to move, ill suited to the speed of battle; Taylor only had them along because they had just arrived on a boat from New Orleans, and he was transporting them from Port Isabel to Fort Texas. They were a liability, so heavy that six yoke of oxen were required to pull each gun forward, and the animals’ deliberate plod had set the pace at which Taylor’s army moved during the march to Palo Alto.

  Grant, somewhat absurdly, was still in denial. “Even then, I did not believe they were going to give battle,” he later admitted. He was shortly disabused of his ignorance. Once the Americans closed to within two-thirds of a mile, the Mexicans fired, “first with artillery and then with infantry.” As expected, the Mexicans had hidden their British-made nine-pound cannons in the chaparral, disguising their precise location to achieve maximum surprise. The combination of cannon and musket fire sent a fabulous din through the air and was meant to rattle the Americans. It didn’t work. Taylor’s men held their fire and moved forward.

  The open prairie favored a cavalry battle, but that was a fight Taylor knew he would lose. His dragoons were outnumbered two to one. Combine that superiority with the entrenched Mexican artillery and infantry, and the American horses and troops could be slaughtered by the bushel. So while it wasn’t glamorous, and it wouldn’t make for great copy in all the Washington newspapers, Taylor intended to fight a defensive battle, using his artillery to even the odds. His instincts were in opposition to the most bedrock of American tactical philosophies (borrowed, like most other U.S. military beliefs, from the French) — that aggressive tactical offensives would always win out over an entrenched enemy. “A general who waits for the enemy like an automaton, without taking any other part than that of fighting valiantly, will always succumb when he shall be well attacked,” the French military theorist Baron Antoine-Henri Jomini had written in his widely read 1838 treatise Summary of the Art of War, the bible of American military thinking. But Taylor had learned his trade well in four decades of soldiering. His battle plans were dictated not by a manual but by his own gut instincts.

  Unfortunately for the Mexicans, their leaders weren’t as adroit as Taylor. There were three hard-and-fast rules about the use of solid cannonballs, known well by every artillery officer in the field: never fire solid shot until the infantry is within a thousand yards; make sure the battleground is covered with trees and rocks, to increase the odds that balls will ricochet unpredictably; and use solid cannonballs when the enemy is marching in close formation for the most lethal effect.

  The Mexican artillery violated two out of the three.

  They started by firing too soon. If Arista had waited until the Americans were closer, the Mexican cannons could have done horrendous damage to Taylor’s formations, which were marching into battle upright and close together, in the manner of Europe’s great armies. But Arista was overconfident and eager. He misjudged the Americans, believing they would panic and break ranks, and as a result he commenced the artillery barrage when they were more than twelve hundred yards off. The cannonballs dropped harmlessly to earth, far short of their targets. He had also chosen his armament poorly, firing puny bronze four-pounders that — even if they somehow reached enemy lines — lacked lethal firepower. As for any ricochet danger, there was none: the tall prairie grass was so pliable that the cannonballs passed straight through, like a hot knife through butter, or bounced along in such linear paths that they were easy for even the most slow-witted soldier to dodge.

  Most infuriating to the Mexican gunners, though, was that they had the third rule on their side but it didn’t matter. The Americans didn’t panic, nor did they break ranks. They marched forward, maintaining close formation in order to concentrate their musket-firing power, and offering the Mexicans a prime target all the while. Yet even when the clumped Americans came within range, the weak and avoidable cannonballs had no effect.

  Taylor, riding Old Whitey, called a halt when the two armies were separated by just five hundred yards. He wore a floppy palmetto hat to keep the sun off his face, and a plug of tobacco bulged in his cheek. As always on the battlefield, Taylor’s bearing was nonchalant, as if all the shooting and dying were some sort of casual affair he had mistakenly stumbled upon.

  Yet Taylor was far more intense than he liked to let on. Scrutinizing his army, he quickly decided he didn’t like the positioning of his artillery. He ordered the gunners to wheel their cannons just a little farther forward, and so they rolled closer to the Mexican lines: the twelve-pound howitzers, which fired a dangerous high-trajectory shot, the lighter six-pound flying artillery, and even the mammoth eighteen-pounders.

  Then each of the seven-man gun crews began its dark ballet: the tampion, or lid, was removed from the muzzle; the gun leveled and aimed; the powder wad and round shoved down into the muzzle with a rammer; the primer placed into the gun vent; a lanyard uncoiled and stretched to its full length, the gunner always holding this firing mechanism in his right hand. The men didn’t have to think about what they were doing, for they had practiced this again and again, more times than they could remember. They worked as one, with fluid precision, their every movement preceded by a barked command, from “Take implements” to “Ram” to “Heave,” then “Ready.”

  The final instruction, that fatal barked command they all awaited, was “Fire.” The gun crews sweated in the heat, their hearts racing as they prepared to blast men into pink mist for the first time.

  Taylor ordered his gunners to do their job.

  Grant could only admire the brutal demonstration. “The infantry stood at order arms as spectators, watching the effect of our shots upon the enemy, and watching his shots so as to step out of their way. It could be seen that the 18-pounders and howitzers did a great deal of execution.”

  Indeed. “Every moment we could see the charges from our pieces cut a way through their ranks, making a perfect road,” Grant added, describing the gruesome effects of canister and grape. “Their officers made an attempt to charge us, but the havoc had been so great that their soldiers could not be made to advance.”

  Up and down the rows, Grant and his fellow West Point alumni got their first taste of war. Longstreet, over on the far left, dropped back with the Eighth Infantry to protect that flank from a charge by Mexican cavalry. “Prince” John Magruder, the flamboyant lieutenant who had designed the theater back in Corpus Christi, was right up front with the First Artillery, lobbing cannon rounds. Lieutenant George Gordon Meade, serving as a messenger for Taylor, galloped his horse across the battlefield from one command to another.

  Grant was surprised to discover that he felt no fear. In his usual detached manner,
he became so absorbed in watching the war that he behaved as if he were not part of it. He was bemused by the sight of overly eager American soldiers firing their Model 1822 flintlock muskets at targets several hundred yards away — a distance well beyond their range and design. Indeed, the musket was so inaccurate that it worked best when fired in volleys, into tight bunches of enemy at close quarters, then followed up by a bayonet charge. Firing from more than fifty yards away was a waste of powder and ball — or as Grant put it, “a man might fire at you all day without your finding out.”

  Once the Americans were close enough that the Mexican artillery could do real damage Grant’s personal detachment evaporated as men around him began to fall. “Although the balls were whizzing fast and thick around me, I did not feel a sensation of fear, until nearly the close of firing a ball struck close to me, killing one man instantly. It knocked Captain [John] Page’s under jaw entirely off and broke in the roof of his mouth,” Grant wrote. “The under jaw is gone to the wind pipe and the tongue hangs down to the throat. He will never be able to speak or eat.”

  The Mexican forces knew that movement was the key to victory — in particular, movement toward the all-important American supply column. The wagons were parked to the rear of the battlefield, guarded by an American cavalry outfit under the command of Captain Charles A. May. If nothing else, the Mexican forces were determined to capture those wagons or at the very least set them aflame and render them worthless.

  General Torrejón sent his cavalry off into the chaparral to the right of the American forces as the battle raged, hoping to use the cover of the thick vegetation and the low hills to hide his men. But the land was swampy, as Taylor well knew. The Mexican cavalry bogged down. Not only that, but the American Fifth Infantry had anticipated the move and taken up positions on the edge of the chaparral. As Torrejón’s men charged the Fifth in force, eight hundred lance-carrying Mexican cavalry, looking like medieval throwbacks, galloped into the American rifles. The Americans, their bayonets affixed, formed themselves into a hollow square, four lines facing outward toward the points of the compass. The men of each line stood shoulder to shoulder, with another rank lined up behind them to fire a quick second volley while the first line reloaded.

  Cavalry charges had been a staple of battle for centuries, and as far back as ancient Greece, infantry had formed into a square to defend against an onslaught. The hollow square required a great deal of nerve on the part of the foot soldier, for it was imperative for the lines to stand firm at all costs. Its weakest strategic points were the corners, but fainthearted soldiers who turned and fled were an even more deadly liability.

  It had been three decades since an American force had formed such a square, whether they could pull it off was anyone’s guess.

  The Americans held their fire until the lancers were just fifty yards away. “The front of the square attacked, poured in its volley of buckshot and balls,” wrote one lieutenant. “Horses, officers, and men of the lancers were brought to the ground. Many more of them reeled in their saddles, wounded. Some were thrown, and the rest, in confusion, galloped back to their own side of the field.” The Mexicans fell back to regroup. When they attempted to range even farther out in a last-ditch attempt to attack the wagon train, they were shocked to discover the Third Infantry waiting with a pair of cannons to block them.

  Meanwhile, farther to the left, Grant and the Fourth were taking the brunt of the battle. Their artillery was systematically mowing down the Mexican forces, but time and again they regrouped, their lines bloodied but unbroken, their numerical superiority making itself known. Arista’s men returned fire with such ferocity that the Fourth began taking fantastic casualties and had to pull back. The Mexican troops were not their only danger: a prairie fire started by a powder wad that had fallen onto the grass threatened to engulf the Fourth. But though fire scorched the dry battlefield grass and raised so much smoke that fighting actually halted on both sides for an hour, no one was burned.

  Like a curtain raised before a spectacular second act, the dissipating smoke gave way to more ferocious shooting. Fighting raged throughout the afternoon. Both sides were mentally and physically exhausted by the time the sun began to set. Fighting finally ceased for the night when the sky grew too black for either side to see what they were shooting at. The Americans promptly dropped to the ground and slept, resting upon the exact spots where they had stood when the sun dropped, unwilling to concede so much as an inch to the enemy. Somewhere out in the darkness and chaparral, the Mexicans did the same. The cries and moans of the wounded carried through the night, sometimes Spanish, sometimes English, always lonesome and heart-wrenching.

  Grant, exhausted after the long day of marching and fighting, had no trouble resting. “I believe all slept as soundly on the ground at Palo Alto as if they had been in a palace. For my own part I don’t think I even dreamed of battles.”

  In the predawn darkness, as Grant lay dreaming, Taylor called a council of war. He was worried and asked his key officers whether he should press the attack. Seven of the ten said no. But artillery specialist Captain James Duncan boldly declared, “We whipped ’em today, and we can whip them tomorrow.”

  Taylor was fortified. “That is my opinion,” he declared. “Gentlemen, you will prepare your commands to move forward.”

  Yet when the sun rose, the Mexican army was gone. It had retreated so quickly that surviving soldiers abandoned their personal baggage. The garbage of war littered the chaparral. Corpses dotted the grassy plain, and the air reeked of rotting flesh. Numerous Mexicans had been cut in two by the canister and grape. Bodies without heads, legs, and arms lay in the Texas dust. The Americans found one dead Mexican cavalry officer with a daguerreotype image of his sister tucked in one pocket, and another soldier with letters waiting to be mailed home tucked into the bill of his cap. When translated, the letters told of a poor army where the men were always hungry, surviving on a small daily ration of salted meat.

  Wounded Mexican and American soldiers were taken to a field hospital. They were treated side by side. Taylor chose to bury the dead before chasing the enemy, and Grant spent the morning supervising a burial party. “It was a terrible sight to go over the ground the next day and see the amount of life that had been destroyed. The ground was literally strewed with the bodies of dead men and horses. The loss of the enemy is variously estimated from 300 to 500. Our loss was comparatively small,” he wrote. “About twelve or fifteen of our men were killed and probably fifty wounded.” The difference in the battle had been Taylor’s deliberate use of artillery. Having wasted much of their firepower on their initial, premature assaults, the Mexicans fired just 750 rounds during the long afternoon, while the Americans launched almost 3,000 projectiles into the enemy ranks.

  Yet there was little time for self-congratulation. Fort Texas was still under siege, and the Mexican army, wherever they were, still held the road. Just before noon, Taylor ordered his men to march forward once again. This time he intended not only to relieve the fort but to push the Mexican army back across the Rio Grande — and perhaps to follow them if conditions were right.

  EIGHT

  Resaca de la Palma

  MAY 9, 1846

  War,” Sam Grant wrote of his first taste of combat, “seems much less horrible to the persons engaged in it than to those who read of the battles.”

  Lieutenant George Gordon Meade understood that sentiment very well. Palo Alto was his first taste of battle, too. Meade had found it nothing short of exhilarating. “I was in the action during the whole time, at the side of General Taylor, and communicating his orders, and I assure you that I have had my ‘baptême de feu.’ ”

  At thirty-one, Meade was the oldest second lieutenant in Taylor’s army. Other officers might have been discouraged lagging so far behind their peers, but not Meade, a man who had already lived an extraordinary life. He had an open face, kind blue eyes hidden behind spectacles, and a long, brown beard. Meade was married to the former Margaretta S
ergeant, the daughter of John Sergeant, who had been Henry Clay’s running mate in the 1832 presidential election. They had wed on Meade’s twenty-fifth birthday and now had two young sons and a six-month-old daughter, all of whom he pined for during the long Texas days and nights. Saying good-bye on the day he departed for the war had been a “terrible agony” for the reserved cartographer. “No one can tell how my heart was rent at parting with you,” he wrote Margaretta three days later.

  Meade was, despite his slow progress up the career ladder, an elite individual in myriad ways. For starters, he was a member of that select band of officers known as the Corps of Topographical Engineers. In all of the U.S. Army, just forty-four men were so designated. They were a unit without a past, so to speak, for the “topogs” had never been employed in an actual war; Mexico would be the first.

  Members of the Topographical Corps possessed a singular form of expertise. On the one hand, they were primarily engineers. But unlike members of the more traditional and much larger Corps of Engineers, who specialized in bridge and fort construction, the topographer’s job was to map the land, surveying natural and man-made features for military purposes and building roads, lighthouses, and canals when needed (the Mexican army’s lone engineering corps, the Zapadore, performed both engineering specialties). Very often, topographical engineers worked alone, riding out into the countryside to gaze upon the land. In this way, they behaved very much like explorers, appraising the unknown and returning with not just a perfect new map but also detailed information about local plants and animals, the current and depth of rivers, and the sort of rock formations that studded and scarred the landscape. A good topographical engineer was equally at home holding forth with generals, scientists, and civil engineers, for the information he discovered in the course of his duties was precious to them all.