Shiloh Page 8

  Of course I had been expecting I would find a lot of men back here—after all, I had been watching them make for the rear all day, one after another, fast as they became scared or discouraged at the way the fight was going. But I wasn’t prepared for what I saw. Upstream and down, far as I could see, they crowded the space between the bluff and the bank, sitting on the sand and looking at the river, watching sunlight flash on the choppy waves and wishing like Jesus they could walk on water. A few hadn’t stopped with just wishing: they were out in the river, hanging onto logs and bundles of driftwood, paddling across to the opposite bank.

  It was lower over there. I could see a great mass of men drawn up in columns, waiting while some of their number—engineers, I suppose—cut a road down the low overhang so they could board the steamers. The Michigander said they were Buell's army, come from Columbia to save the day. He snorted when he said it, though, and he screwed up his eyes. "Save the day hell," he said. "Wait till they get up there. Then we'll see what they save. They’ll be right back here with the rest of us. Mind what I say. They’ll save their hides; that’s all They’ll save."

  By the time the first boatload of them got across, it was past sundown. The sound of firing had drawn in until it seemed directly above us, on the bluff. Soon now the rebels might be looking over the rim and shooting down like into a flock of sheep. Through the fading light I watched as Buell's men came off the steamboats and onto the wharf, picking their way among the rows of wounded laid there to be taken across to safety when the chance came.

  They had a hard time of it, those wounded. Retreaters had stepped on them with muddy shoes to reach the end of the wharf, in hopes that a boat might come to take the casualties across and they could crawl aboard among them. That wasn’t all, either. Cables had been raked over them by the sailors, scraping some of them off into the river and fouling the rest with slime from the river bottom. You couldn’t tell the dead ones from the living— they’d turned black with mud from the boots and cables and with blood from their reopened wounds. It made me sick at the stomach just looking at them.

  Retreaters were packed so close where the steamboats put in, Buell's men had to open a path with their bayonets. They cussed the men on the bank, calling them scoundrels and cowards while they shoved them aside with their rifles.

  "Get out the way," they said, shoving. "We'll fight your damned battle for you."

  But the men under the bluff jeered right back. ''You’ll catch it," they hollered, all of them yelling at once. ''You’ll see! They’ll cut you to ribbons up there!"

  Mostly we had been let alone. Not even the high-rank officers on Grant's staff, moving along the bluff road to and from Army headquarters on a steamboat, made any try at getting us back into the fight. They would just look at us and go on. I suppose they knew that even if they managed to get us back up the bluff and into the wood again, we would melt away as soon as they turned their heads. Or maybe they figured being scared was catching and they didn’t want us up there spreading it amongst the men who had held.

  But there was one fellow who didn’t feel that way about it. He was a chaplain, tall and raw-boned, and he ranted at us in a hard New England voice. You’d have thought he was back in the pulpit, the way he ranted. He stood in the middle of the road, halfway up the bluff, waving his arms at a group of men who sat on the sand and watched him with leers on their faces. Then the head of a column of Buell's men off the steamboat came up to where he was.

  "Rally for God and country!" he was saying. "Oh rally round the flag!"

  He was square in the middle of the road, blocking it and calling the skulkers to rally oh rally, when the colonel heading the column came up behind him.

  "Shut up, you goddam old fool," the colonel said. "Get out the way!"

  And the column brushed him aside and went up the bluff while the group of skulkers sat there laughing at the parson and calling him to rally oh rally, rally. They whistled and hooted at him till he stomped off fuming mad and didn’t come back.

  Night was closing in, first a blue dusk darkening, then just blackness, the big stretch of sky across the river sprinkled with stars winking at us through rifts in the smoke blown back from the battlefield. The firing had died to occasional sputters, sounding dull in the darkness, but every ten or fifteen minutes the gunboats would throw two shells up over the bluff. They went past with a noise like freight cars in the night, their fuzes drawing long curved lines across the sky. The explosions sounded faint and far in the woods above, the way it is back home when a farmer two fields off is blowing stumps.

  Torches were burning down by the Landing where Buell's men were still unloading. They came up the bluff in a steady column, cheering with hoarse voices when they reached the top. Nobody hooted at them now. We just sat there watching them. Their faces looked strange in the torchlight, eyes glinting out of hollow sockets, teeth flashing white against mouths like deep black holes when they cheered. From sundown until the stars burned clear with no smoke to fog them, Buell's men went on unloading and marching up that steep road to the woods above. When they reached the overlook, they would put their caps on the tips of their bayonets and raise them, cheering. Out over the water we heard the voices of the sailors as they took the steamboats across again, going back for more.

  Then the stars went out and the sky across the river was only blackness. There began to be a sound of sighing in the air—the wind was rising. Then the rain came. First it was only a patter, little gusts of it as if somebody up on the bluff was dropping handfuls of birdshot down on us. Then the wind died; the rain turned to a steady, fine drizzle almost like mist. You could see it against the torches, falling slantwise on the men marching up the slope and the retreaters huddled on the sand with their faces to the bluff and their backs to the rain.

  Sitting there getting wetter and wetter I began to think about the long day that was past. I saw it from then to now; I went back over it, beginning with three o’clock in the morning when I lay warm in my blankets and heard the infantry going out, then back to sleep again and the long roll sounding and we stood to the guns, anxious for the johnnies to come because we still didn’t know what it was going to be like. I saw Captain Munch getting bowled over by a cannon-ball. I looked at myself in my mind, watching myself as if I was another person—God, maybe—looking down and seeing Otto Flickner fighting the rebels on Shiloh battlefield.

  He did all right, considering. He was scared from time to time, no different from the others, but he did all right until word came down to retreat from the sunken road. That broke it. That was when the spark went out of him. I heard Lieutenant Pfaender calling Flickner! Flickner! and saw myself going back through the blackjack scrubs without even looking round. I saw again the things I'd seen at the Landing, the hangdog faces of the skulkers turning to jeer, the wounded laid out in rows on the wharf all bloody, muddy from being tramped on; Buell's army coming off the steamboats, calling us cowards to our faces— and us taking it; and finally I saw myself the way I was now, sitting in the rain and telling myself that Buterbaugh was wrong. I wasn’t demoralized back there at the sunken road: I hadn’t even lost confidence. I was just plain scared, as scared as a man can be, and that was why I walked away from the fight.

  Just thinking it, I was panting like the dog. And soon as I thought it—You were just plain scared, I thought—I wished I had let it alone. Because being demoralized or losing confidence was all right. Like Buterbaugh said, it was a thing that closed in on you from outside, a thing you couldn’t help. But being scared was different. It was inside you, just you yourself, and that was a horse of a different color. That meant I would have to do something about it, or live with it for the balance of my life. So I went up the bluff.

  I didn’t say anything to the others, and only the Michigander looked up as I walked away. I thought maybe it would be a good idea to take a poke at him before I left, but what was the use after all? Bango was sleeping—anyhow he hadn’t moved. The rain was coming down harder now; wh
en I cleared the top of the bluff it came against me in sheets, driven by the wind, and there was a steady moaning sound in the limbs of the trees. Then I saw campfires. They followed a ridge and overlooked a gully, drawing a wide low half-mile semicircle against the night. Siege guns, big ones long and black against the firelight, were ranged along that ridge with their muzzles reaching out toward the rebel lines. Later I heard that a colonel by the name of Webster—he was on Grant's staff— had placed them there, and with the help of some of the light artillery and rallied infantry, they formed the line that broke the final charge that evening. But I didn’t know this now; I just saw the siege guns against the campfires strung out along the ridge.

  Then I passed a log house with lanterns burning and wounded men lying half-naked on sawhorse tables, being held down by attendants while the surgeons worked on them. The surgeons wore their sleeves rolled up, arms bloody past the elbows; from time to time one would stop and take a pull at a bottle. The wounded screamed like women, high and trembly, and the attendants had to hold them tight to keep them from bucking off the tables.

  I went past in a hurry, picking my way among those laid out to wait their turn in the house. It was pitch black dark and the rain was coming down harder, blowing up for a storm. Everywhere I went there were men on the ground, singly or in groups, and most of them sleeping. But no matter who I asked, not a one of them could tell me how to find my outfit.

  "Where will I find the 1st Minnesota Battery?"

  "Never heard of them." That was always the answer.

  Once I saw a man huddled in a poncho, leaning back against the trunk of a big oak. But when I went over to ask him, I saw his face and backed away. He could have told me, maybe, but I didn’t ask him. It was General Grant. He had that same worried look on his face, only more so. Earlier he'd tried to get some sleep in the log house where I saw the surgeons, but the screams of the wounded and the singing of the bone-saws drove him out into the rain. Remembering all I saw when I went past—surgeons with their sleeves rolled high and bloody arms and legs thrown in a pile outside an open window—I couldn’t say I blamed him.

  It went on that way: "Never heard of them," until finally I gave up trying to locate the battery. I thought I'd better find the division first; then maybe I could find the battery. But that was no better, for no one could tell me about the division either, until at last I came on a fellow leaning back in a fence comer with a blanket pulled over his head like a cowl on a monk.

  "The Sixth?" he said, holding the edges of the blanket up close beneath his chin. His voice shook because his fist was against his windpipe. "Man, that’s Prentiss' division. They surrendered before sundown, the whole kit and kiboodle. By now you’ll find them marching down the Corinth road, under a rebel guard."

  So that was that. There was no use beating around the wet woods any longer, looking for an outfit ten miles away on the opposite side of the lines by now.

  It sort of took the wind out of me, knowing that now I had no chance to get back to the ones I'd walked away from, no chance to make it up to them the way I'd planned. Then for a minute I had a crazy notion to go back to the big oak near the log house and report to Grant: "General, here's an unattached cannoneer, got his nerve back at last and wants a share in the fighting tomorrow morning."

  It was just a notion; of course I'd never do a thing like that. But then I remembered the siege guns, the ones strung out along the ridge where the campfires were. I'd never served any piece larger than a twelve-pounder, but I thought I might be of some use swabbing the bore or carrying ammunition or something— this six-foot-five of mine always came in handy when heavy work was called for. So I went back the way I came, past the sleeping men and the log hospital where they were still hard at work (the amputation pile reached the window ledge now, beginning to spread out into the yard) and up to where the line of campfires began on the ridge. That was when I saw for the first time that all the cannons weren’t big ones. There were some light pieces mixed in, looking like toys alongside the siege guns.

  I was making my way up to one of the light pieces, thinking maybe I could have my old job again— Number Four, back on the handspike—when I tripped over someone rolled in his blanket. My shoe must have hit him in the ribs, for he gave a grunt and a groan and raised himself on one elbow. Then firelight flickered on his face, showing his mouth all set to Stan cussing, and I could hardly believe my eyes. It was Lieutenant Pfaender.

  I said, "Scuse me, lieutenant."

  "Whyn’t you go where you’re looking?" he mumbled, and rolled back over and went to sleep again. He was so tired he hadn’t even recognized me, or else he'd forgot I'd ever been gone.

  What had happened, they had got away from the sunken road just before the surrender, bringing off two guns, and when Lieutenant Pfaender reported to Colonel Webster back at the overlook, the colonel put what was left of the battery in line with the siege guns. They’d had a share in breaking the final charge that came just before dark. I didn’t know that now, though, and I was certainly surprised to find them here after being told they were surrendered.

  I went on to the gun. The crew members, those that were left, together with some of the men from guns that had been lost, were sleeping on both sides of the trail. Sergeant Buterbaugh sat with his back against a caisson wheel, smoking his pipe upside-down because of the rain. Corporal Keller was asleep beside him; he had a bandage round his head. The sergeant watched me come up, then took the pipe out of his mouth.

  "What happened to you?"

  "I was scared," I said; "I ran. You want to make something of it?" That made me mad, having him ask a thing Like that when he already knew the answer.

  He put the pipe back in his mouth, puffing. "Go on, bed down," he said. "We've got a rough day coming up tomorrow."

  5

  Sergeant Jefferson Polly

  Scouty Forrest's Cavalry

  Near midnight the storm broke over us. It had been raining since sundown, a steady drizzle with occasional gusts of wind to drive it, but now there was thunder, rolling and rumbling like an artillery fight, and great yellow flashes of lightning brighter than noonday. The wind rose, howling in the underbrush and whipping against our faces, even through the upturned collars of our captured overcoats, and by the flashes of lightning we saw the trees bent forward like keening women and trembling along their boughs. We made our way down a ravine, one of those deep gullies which were supposed to drain the tableland into the Tennessee but which were thigh-deep with backwater now, all of them, because of the rising river.

  There were Indian mounds in the woods beyond the rim of the gully. Earlier in the day, soon after the surrender of Prentiss, I stood on the tallest of these, right at the bluff overlooking the Landing, and watched troops come ashore off the steamboats. When I'd been there long enough to make certain they were reinforcements from Buell's army finally marching in from Columbia, I went back the way I had come, located the colonel, and reported what I'd seen. He never had any reason to doubt anything I'd told him so far, but this was too big to pass on as hearsay, and as usual he wanted to see for himself.

  He chose six troopers, dressed us all eight (including himself) in the blue Federal overcoats we had picked up in the captured camp that afternoon on the chance they might come in handy, and told me to strike out, guiding the way, and he would have a look-see. I was worried for fear I would lose the path because things were so different with the storm brewing, but I picked my way from stone to tree as I recognized them by lightning flashes, and at last came to the base of the mound. That was a relief, as you would know if you’d ever seen Forrest with his dander up. There were about a dozen of these mounds in this comer of the tableland, put up by Indians in the olden days before the white men—I suppose for tribal purposes: burial, maybe. They varied in size from just little dirt-packs six or eight feet high, to real hills maybe thirty feet up in the air. Mine was the largest and not really hard to find; I had no real cause for all that worry. It stood out directly ab
ove the lower end of the bluff, overlooking the Landing.

  Forrest told the others to stand guard at the base, and he and I began to climb the steep western face of the mound. This was easier said than done, for the rain had made it slippery. We had to hold onto each other and onto bushes and small trees, pulling ourselves up hand over hand, slipping and sliding in the mud and catching our spurs against creepers and blackberry bushes.

  Just before we reached the top there was an explosion on the other side and a great flash of red outlining the mound. At first I thought one of the steamboats had blown her boiler, but then there was a sound of wind rushing whoosh! past our ears, and a long trail of sparks against the night. Almost immediately there came a second explosion, the same flash of red followed by another rush of wind: whoosh! and the paling arc of the fuze along the sky. Forrest had his face turned toward me when the second one went off. His chin beard was black against his face.

  "It’s the gunboats," I said. "We'll see them directly."

  From the eastern slope we saw them anchored not far from bank, near where a branch ran out of the gully and into the river. There were two of them and we were looking almost straight down onto their decks. The gunners had rolled back the big naval cannons; now they were busy swabbing them, getting ready for the next shots ten minutes later. Their shells had been falling out on the battlefield, among the wounded and sleeping Federals and Confederates, coming down on schedule ever since dusk-dark, two every fifteen minutes. They were so big and they made such a God-awful racket going off, the men called them lampposts and wash pots.