Shiloh Page 10
And I thought: Well, as well here as there. It had the sound of a man I could work for. I had reached that stage in my life where it didn’t matter which way the cat jumped, and besides, I was tired of riding the train. It was mid-July of the hottest summer I ever knew. Cigar smoke writhed in long gray tendrils about the hotel room; the air was like a breath against my face. Sitting there beside the high window with the newspaper folded in my lap, I knew I had ended a six-year chase after nothing.
My father was a Baptist preacher in Houston. He'd come to Texas from Georgia (on the call of the Lord, he said) and when he had founded his church and was a pillar of society, he channeled all the drive that had brought him West into making me all he'd hoped to be. I never felt he was doing it for me, though: I always felt he was doing it for himself. He thought he was doing fine, too, until the day he got the letter from the head of the divinity school in Baltimore telling him I'd been dismissed for immorality, and all his dreams went bang. I was never cut out to be a preacher anyhow. When the proctor came into the room that Saturday night and stood there with his eyes bugged out, looking at the whiskey bottles and the girl my roommate and I had picked up on the waterfront, I was almost glad. It meant an end to trying to be something I was never meant to be. I packed and left.
All I knew about making my way in the world was what I'd learned from a thousand divinity tracts and a half-hour lecture my father once gave me on the benefits of purity. I sold my clothes and shipped as a seaman on a British bark bound round the Cape with a cargo of hemp for the California coast. I was nineteen at the time and I had never hit a Hck of work in my life.
I jumped ship in Los Angeles, got a berth as driver with a wagon train heading east for Missouri, and left them in Kansas to join another one rolling west. It was like that for six years—I tried everything I could imagine. I was faro dealer in a Monterey gambling hell, wore a tall silk hat and a claw-hammer coat with a derringer up one sleeve; but I couldn’t make the cards behave, so they dealt me out. In Utah I sold buffalo meat to Mormons. I panned for gold on the Sacramento River and was a harvest hand in Minnesota. I worked as a bouncer in a San Francisco saloon but got bounced so often myself they let me go. I was a mule skinner with a pack train out of Denver and nearly died of thirst after running into trouble with Apaches in the Colorado Desert. Six years was enough: I shipped round the Cape again, this time on a Massachusetts schooner, and docked at Galveston in late June of '61. I'd intended to go up to Houston then, to see if my father was alive; but when I heard there was a war on, I put it out of my mind completely, the way you close a book.
For some men war meant widows' tears and orphans' howls. For me it meant another delay before time to go to my father and admit I'd done as poor a job of making a bad man as I had of making a good one. I decided to go to Richmond to see the lay of the land, then to Wilmington or maybe Charleston to join the Confederate navy. I preferred fighting on water; it seemed cleaner. But when I stopped overnight in Memphis, between trains, and saw the notice in the paper, I changed my mind and settled for the cavalry under Forrest.
The recruiting office was in the Gayoso House— the colonel's brother Jeffrey swore me in. While I was waiting for there to be enough of us to go in a group to our quarters upstairs, Forrest entered from Main Street. He was tall, over six feet, narrow in the hips and broad-shouldered, with the flat legs of a natural horseman. His hair was iron gray, worn long and brushed back on both sides of a rounded widow's peak above a high forehead. Between a wide mustache and a black chin-beard his lips were full but firm. His nose was straight, nostrils flared, and his eyes were gray-blue. They looked directly at you when he spoke (I never saw such eyes before or since) and his voice was low, though later I was to hear it rise to a brassy clangor that sounded from end to end of the line, above the sound of guns and hoofs.
From that first instant when I saw him walk into the lobby of the Gayoso, I knew I was looking at the most man in the world. Afterwards—in Kentucky rounding up horses and men and equipment, then back in camp at the Memphis Fair Grounds, then fighting gunboats on the Cumberland when no one believed they could be fought, then in the attack at Sacramento when I first saw him stand in the stirrups and beller "Charge!" and then out of the wreck of Donelson across freezing creeks and backwater saddle-skirt deep—I followed him and watched him grow to be what he had become by the time of Shiloh: the first cavalryman of his time, one of the great ones of all time, though no one realized it that soon except men who had fought under him.
I was a scout by then, operating out beyond the rim of the army and dropping back from time to time to report. I liked that work. Sometimes it took me far from headquarters, beyond the Union lines. Sometimes it was simpler. At Shiloh it was much simpler. I went to the Indian mound, saw Buell's men coming ashore, and came back to tell Forrest what I'd seen. The only trouble was I couldn’t find him.
There was no use floundering around on the battlefield looking for him while he was looking for Willy, so I waited at headquarters. It was a long wait, sitting there while rain drummed on the captured tent fly. Then, about eleven o’clock—not long before the weather broke in earnest—the colonel and his son arrived from opposite directions. Willy was his special concern, not only because he was likely to get his head blown off poking it into every corner of the fighting, but also because the boy had begun to pick up soldier talk and soldier manners, and Mrs. Forrest had warned her husband to look out for his deportment as well as his safety. A week before, while we were at Monterey, the colonel rode over to Polk's camp, borrowed the sons of Bishop Otey and General Donelson (they were about Willy's age, fifteen) and brought them back so Willy would have someone his own age to be with.
Forrest returned first. He was dripping wet, angry, and worried. I usually steered clear of him at such times but this couldn’t wait. Just as I was about to report, however, there was a whoop of laughter and catcalls, and through the opening of the tent we saw the three boys marching a batch of prisoners in the rain. They had struck out together soon after the taking of the Peach Orchard, making a tour of the field, and on the way back they came upon a group of about a dozen Yank stragglers in a ravine near the river—a sorry, bedraggled lot sitting like mudturtles on some logs. The boys threw down on them with their shotguns, put them in column, and marched them into camp. Reporting to the colonel with their prisoners, they were the three proudest boys in the Confederacy. Forrest was so pleased and amused he even forgot to scold them.
But he became serious enough when I told him what I'd seen from the overlook. He called for the six troopers and we put on the blue overcoats and went out. As soon as he had found out for himself that what I reported was true, we came back down the mound and he led the way straight for the camp of Chalmers, whose troops were sleeping on the ground where Prentiss surrendered. The general was asleep when we got there, but Forrest made one of the aides wake him up. He came out to us still in his fighting clothes, a young man, his eyes puffed almost shut with fatigue and his hair rumpled in a wave on one side from sleeping on it.
His troops had done some of the hardest fighting on the field, and when he bedded them down for the night he didn’t doubt that tomorrow would complete the victory. Hearing that the Army of the Ohio had come up, he shook his head—he couldn’t believe it. When Forrest made it clear that he himself had seen them arriving on steamboats from down the river, it jarred him completely awake. But he wouldn’t agree to a night attack. His men were too weary, he said. Besides, he couldn’t make an attack without orders from Corps or Army headquarters. Johnston was dead; he didn’t know where to find either Bragg or Beauregard. So that was that as far as he was concerned. All through the scene Forrest's face had been getting redder and redder, a sure sign his anger was rising—I have seen his face go red as brickdust —and at last he stood up from the camp stool and shook his finger in General Chalmers' face.
"If the enemy comes on us in the morning, we'll be whipped like hell," he said. And stomped out.
/> It was the same everywhere we went. No brigadier was willing to make an attack without orders from above, not even those who realized that waiting for the Federals to complete their reinforcement meant sure defeat for us after daylight. The main difference between Chalmers and the other brigadiers we managed to stumble on was that he knew where his men were bivouacked—most of them had no idea. They were waiting for morning, they said, when they could get their troops into line and renew the attack. And every time they said this, Forrest got a little redder in the face and began to tremble and told them the same thing he'd told Chalmers: "We'll be whipped like hell." Then we'd go on to another camp, trying to persuade another general. Everywhere, always, it was the same—no attack without orders: the men were too tired to advance till they had their sleep out. Over and over again we heard it. It was enough to make an angel cuss, let alone N. B. Forrest.
I left him about one o’clock, dead on my feet, but he kept right on going from camp to camp, blundering around in the wet and the dark, trying to locate someone with enough rank and gumption to move against the landing. He finally found General Breckinridge, who was a corps commander—not to mention Vice President of the United States, just over a year ago, when we were all one country—but Breckinridge said that as head of the Army reserve he did not have the authority to order an attack. He didn’t know where Beauregard was sleeping—nor Polk, he said, nor Bragg—but he told him where to find Hardee, and Hardee was a fighter.
But there it was even worse. Forrest couldn’t so much as get past the staff, though at length he managed to see the AAG, a tall thin middle-aged man with a lisp, wearing a bathrobe and carpet slippers, who heard what Forrest had to say and then dismissed him, saying the information was sure to be known at headquarters already. He yawned as he spoke, the words sounding hollow:
"You can rest assured they know what’s best up there. We have already received orders to attack at day dawn." He tapped his teeth with his fingertips, yawning. "So go back to your troops, colonel, and keep up a strong and vigilant picket line all along your front."
This was the brand of talk that made Forrest maddest. Nine times out of ten he'd have exploded right there in the staff officer's face, would have reached out and grabbed him, bathrobe and all, but I suppose he knew it was too late already, even if he could have got Hardee to order an advance. Buell's army was mostly ashore by now, probably, and our men needed all the rest they could get for the fight against fresh troops tomorrow morning.
I took one of the blankets off the Yankee colonel's bed (—it would be Forrest's bed tonight; there was enough cover on it to wrap a regiment) and spread it on the ground in one corner of the tent. But before I even had time to tuck it round me I fell asleep. I knew I was tired but I hadn’t known how tired. The minute my head came level with my feet, every muscle in my body turned to jelly. I took a deep breath, intending to heave a sigh, but I let it out again I was gone from this world, gone to what my old nurse back in Texas used to call Snooze land.
Next thing I knew, there was a thumping and groaning, mixed with a jingling and the sound of someone cussing a blue streak. I raised myself on one elbow, pulled the blanket around me at last, and looked across the tent. It was Forrest, sitting on the edge of the Yankee colonel's bed and wrastling his boots off. The jingling was the spurs, but the rest of it was just Forrest being angry. He was talking to himself, muttering something about a vigilant picket line, a bathrobe and a pair of carpet slippers. None of it made any sense to me. The lightning had stopped and so had the thunder. The wind had fallen, too, but the rain drummed steadily against the tent.
Just as I was about to get up and help him, tired as I was, he got the boots off and lay back on the bed, still mumbling. I could smell him; any time he got thoroughly mad you could smell it. Suddenly the tent was filled with snoring. I began to drift back to sleep myself, smelling the strong sweat of Forrest's anger and thinking how much I had lived through today and how different tonight was from last night, when we'd bivouacked on the south bank of Lick Creek and lain there listening to the Federal bands serenading us unbeknownst. For a second there flicked across my mind a picture of the boy who had come up to me that afternoon at the crossroads near the chapel and asked where a doctor was. I wondered if he made it—but only for a second: there were lots like him, and besides I was asleep by then.
The sound of firing woke me. Dawn had come, paling the canvas so that the first thing I saw when I opened my eyes was the big U S stenciled on the ceiling (I saw it in reverse: S U, directly above my head) and when I looked around I saw I was alone in the tent. When Forrest let a man sleep like that, it meant he was pleased with his work.
By the time I got myself unwrapped from the blanket and out in front of the tent, the firing had swelled to a steady clatter like the sound of a wagon crossing a canefield, stalks popping against the axle-tree. The Union infantry was roaring to the attack. Charging, they made a different sound from us. Ours was a high yipping series of yells, like foxhunters coursing, but theirs was a deep roar, like surf on a stormy night. It was somehow more organized, more concerted, as if they had practiced beforehand, and it came from down deep in their chests instead of up high in their throats.
They will tell you Shiloh was no cavalry battle; the field was too cut-up with ravines and choked with timber for the usual mounted work. However, none of Forrest's men realized this at the time, and we had our moments. By that time he'd developed us to the point where we were more horse-infantry than cavalry. We used our horses more to get there on than to fight on. That was his tactics: "Get there first with the most men"—only he didn’t call it Tactics; he called it Bulge: "Fifteen minutes of bulge is worth a week of tactics," and his orders to us were always direct, in language a man could understand: "Shoot at everything blue and keep up the scare" or "Hit them on the end," where a West Pointer would have said: "Be aggressive" or "Engage them on the flank."
All through the long day's fight, while the battle went against us, we were not downhearted and we never failed to do whatever was required of us as long as the colonel was out front in his shirtsleeves, swinging that terrible sword. That was his way. He'd tried the night before to get them to do what he knew was right, and if the generals hadn’t seen it his way he wasn’t going to sit and sulk about it. We fought them mounted; we fought them dismounted, standing or running, all over that blasted field where the dead lay thick as leaves at harvest time. There was never a let-up until the thing was done.
Look at this notice he put in the Memphis Appeal; he was up there recovering from his Fallen Timbers wound:
200 RECRUITS WANTED
I will receive 200 able-bodied men if they will present themselves at my headquarters by the first of June with good horse and gun. I wish none but those who desire to be actively engaged.—Come on, boys, if you want a heap of fun and to kill some Yankees.
N. B. Forrest
Colonel, Commanding
Forrest's Regiment.
6
Squad
23rd Indiana
I used to think how strange it was that the twelve of us had been brought together by an event which separated brothers and divided the nation. Each of us had his history and each of the histories was filled with accidental happenings.
Myself for instance: I was born in New England and was taken to Indiana, adopted me out of an orphanage. I was six at the time—I can barely remember. "Your name is Robert," they said; "Robert Winter." It was my first ride on a train. "You are our son Robert. We are taking you home." Then we ate sandwiches out of a paper bag. For years I thought all children came from Boston.
That’s what I mean by accidental. I had to be adopted out of a New England orphanage to become part of an Indiana squad. And it was the same all down the line. Every one of the twelve had his own particular story.
This tied in with what Corporal Blake said during one of the halts Sunday while we were marching from Stony Lonesome toward the sound of guns across the creek. He said b
ooks about war were written to be read by God Almighty, because no one but God ever saw it that way. A book about war, to be read by men, ought to tell what each of the twelve of us saw in our own little comer. Then it would be the way it was—not to God but to us.
I saw what he meant but it was useless talking. Nobody would do it that way. It would be too jumbled. People when they read, and people when they write, want to be looking out of that big Eye in the sky, playing God.
But the strange thing was that I should think of it now, lying before sunup on the edge of the battlefield. Then again, tired and wrought-up as we were from all the waiting and the bungled march the day before, I suppose almost anything could have come into my mind. We had marched onto the field after dark. The first I saw of it was when daylight filtered through and we were lying there waiting for the shooting to get started again. We weren’t green—we had seen our share of killing: but this was different to begin with. We had heard so many tales the night before. The army had been wrecked, they told us; we were marching in for the surrender.
Our division, Lew Wallace commanding, was in position on the east side of a hollow. There were woods thick on both sides and a creek down in the draw. Across it, half a mile away, where the opposite slope rose up in a bluff, the rebels were lined up waiting. We could see their battle flags and sunlight sparkling on a battery near the center of their line.
We were the flank division of Grant's army. Snake Creek, which we crossed the night before, was off to our right. When dawn broke and the sun came through the haze, I lay there in the grass, watching it glint on the fieldpieces, and I thought: Oh-oh. If Wallace sends us across that hollow in the face of those guns, he's going to have considerably fewer of us when we reach the other side.