Shiloh Page 9

  Not more than half a mile downstream and about a hundred feet below, we could see Buell's soldiers coming ashore. They came off the steamboats onto a wharf where torches were burning. All up and down the bank, in both directions from the Landing, the stretch of ground between the bluff and the river was crowded with men. Most of them were in shadow, dark splotches against the pale yellow sand, but when the lightning flashed—sometimes it lasted through time to count to five—we could see their faces, shrunk to the size of your palm across that distance and pale as magnolia petals. They were the ones who had left the fight, lost heart, thrown in their cards and skedaddled as soon as the going got rough. Part of my training was learning to look at bodies of troops and tell how many men were among them. I was never one to throw figures around carelessly anyhow. But I will say this, here and now: There were at least six thousand Yankee soldiers skulking under that bluff.

  Not all of them were sitting on the bank. Some were out on the wharf, trying to squeeze past the incoming men to find a place on the steamboats. Others were waist-deep in the water, trying to climb the sides of the boats, but there were sailors stationed along the gangways to keep them off by banging their fingers and heads with marlin spikes and belaying pins. We could hear the sailors cussing them, and whenever there was a lull in the roar that came up from the riverbank, we heard the men in the water offering money and gratitude if they’d let them aboard. It was the kind of thing that would make a man ashamed to be part of their army. If it hadn’t been for having seen blue-bellies as brave as any men I ever knew out on the battlefield that afternoon—in the Hornets Nest, along that sunken road—I'd have said the war couldn’t last another week, not with men like those wearing the uniform. I felt almost ashamed for them, because after all it was once our country too.

  Boats moved back and forth across the river, their wheels beating a white, foamy wake in the black water and drops shining like diamonds as they dripped from the paddles in the torchlight beside the wharf. Men came off the boats six deep, shouldering their way through the skulkers and marching up the bluff road to the tableland above, joining the line of battle where the fighting stopped at dark.

  "There they are," I said: "Buell's men come on from Columbia. More than we've got left after the all-day fight, and ready to hit us first thing in the morning."

  We watched them come off, regiment after regiment, as fast as the boats could make it down to Savannah for a fresh load. Forrest didn’t say anything. Crouched in the mud, looking down on them, he didn’t need to say anything for me to know what he was thinking, because having been with him for nine months now I could the same as hear him thinking out loud. He knew something had to be done before daylight. We had to hit them in a night attack, by coming up the way I'd brought him, or get off that tableland before they charged us in the morning.

  When Beauregard called off the fight at sundown he had every reason to think the next day would be spent picking up the spoils of battle. He had Grant's army pushed back within shooting distance of the river and he had received a dispatch telling him that Buell's army had reversed its route of march and was moving toward Decatur. But now Forrest had seen with his own eyes how wrong the dispatch was. For a quarter of an hour we watched the reinforcements coming ashore, the thick blue columns marching up the bluff. Then the gunboats fired again, both shells screaming past with their breath in our hair. Forrest got up, still without saying anything, and went back down the mound.

  The six troopers were there (they gave me a start for a moment, wearing those dark overcoats, until I remembered I was wearing one too) but he didn’t even stop to tell them what he'd seen. I knew where he was headed. The nearest troops were Chalmers' brigade, camped on the ground where Prentiss had surrendered before sundown. Forrest was going to Chalmers, tell him what he'd seen, and persuade him to use his brigade in a night attack on the Landing or at least bring them down the ravine to a position from which they could fire into the stragglers and the reinforcements coming in. Or if it was too late for that— which it well might be—he was going to Beauregard, wherever he was, and tell him it was a question of clear out or be whipped.

  When the battle opened Sunday morning, we were posted with the ist Tennessee Infantry on the south side of Lick Creek, guarding the fords. From sunup until almost noon we stayed there, hearing the guns roaring and the men cheering as they charged through camp after camp. About midmorning the infantry-crossed over, marching toward the firing, but we stayed there under orders, patrolling the creek with no sign of a bluecoat in sight and the battle racket getting fainter. Finally the colonel had enough of that. So he assembled the regiment and gave us a speech. (Forrest enjoyed putting on a little show every now and again, conditions permitting.) He stood in the stirrups and addressed us.

  "Boys, you hear that musketry and that artillery?"

  "Yair! Yair!" It came in a roar.

  "Do you know what it means?" But he wasn’t asking; he was telling us. "It means our friends are falling by hundreds at the hands of the enemy. And here we are, guarding a damned crick! We didn’t enter the service for such work while we're needed elsewhere. Let’s go help them! What do you say?"

  It came in a roar: "Yair! Yair!"

  So he led the way across the creek and we followed, splashing. There was a litter of canteens and haversacks and discarded rifles—this ground had already been taken. The wounded looked up with fever-hot eyes. Union and Confederate, from back in the bushes where they had crawled to be out of the way. After we'd ridden about a mile, looking for a place where we could do some good, Forrest put us in line on a road in rear of Cheatham's division, which had just been thrown back from an attack. The infantry lay on the grass, blown and surly because their charge had failed.

  While we were lined up there, waiting to support the infantry when they went forward again, the artillery opened on us. This was not as bad as you might think, for at that range, by careful watching, we could see the balls coming and clear a path for them. It was no fun, however. When they had given us a couple of salvos and were coming in on the range, Forrest rode over to General Cheatham, who was sitting his horse with his staff about him. It had begun to get hot, the sun high and bright as hammered gold. Forrest was in his shirtsleeves, his coat folded across the pommel of his saddle. He saluted and Cheatham returned it.

  "General, I can’t let my men stay here under this fire. I must either move forward or fall back."

  Cheatham looked at him—we were no part of his command and I suppose he figured he had enough to look after already. "I cannot give you the order," he said. "If you make the charge it will be under your own orders."

  "Then I’ll do it," Forrest said. "I'll charge under my own orders."

  And with that he came jingling back to where we were dodging cannonballs, wheeling our horses with the intent precision of men dancing a mounted minuet. The colonel's color had risen, the way it always did in a fight. His eyes had that battle-glint in them already.

  Beyond the road where the infantry had formed there was a field skirted with timber along its flanks and rear—blackjack mostly, thick with underbrush— and in the opposite far corner there was a peach orchard in full bloom, the blossoms like pink icing on a cake. Here were two Federal batteries and a heavy Line of troops lying beneath the peach trees, firing. Smoke lazed and swirled up through the bright pink blossoms. Another battery was in position to the left of the orchard, across the field and at the edge of the timber. When they saw we were forming for attack, the gunners changed direction and began to range in on us.

  Before they found the range we rode forward, advancing four deep on a wide front. When the battery pulled its shots in, sending them close again, Forrest signaled the bugler and we changed front, moving by the left flank into fours. The gunners shifted their pieces. But by the time they had us lined up (they were green) the bugle blared again and we came back on a regimental front. The horses were beginning to snort now, hoofs drumming on the turf. It was pretty, I tell you, an
d we were feeling mighty proud of ourselves. But next time they were too quick for us. As we came back into fours a ball took out the file behind me, killing two troopers and all four of the horses. We heard their bones crunch— blood spattered fifteen or twenty yards in both directions. By this time we had zigzagged to within rushing distance of the battery. When we came about by the right flank, back on a wide front once more, the bugle sounded the charge. We went forward at a gallop, sabers out.

  Forrest was in front. He stood in the stirrups, taller than life in his shirtsleeves, swinging that long razor-sharp saber—anyone within reach got cut; blue or gray, it didn’t matter—and bellering "Charge! Charge!" in a voice that rang like brass.

  The guns gave us a volley of grape, but when we came through the smoke I saw cannoneers breaking for the blackjack thickets where it was too dense for us to follow on horses. Then I saw for the first time that the infantry had come on behind. Cheatham's men whooped and hollered round the guns.

  We drew back and formed our ranks again. The colonel was beginning to fret because he couldn’t find anyone with authority to tell him where he was wanted. I suppose, too, he was feeling a bit guilty about leaving the Lick Creek fords unguarded. He told Lieutenant Strange, the adjutant, to report to General Beauregard for orders. Strange was a top-notch soldier when it came to paper work (he was regimental sergeant major until the reorganization two weeks before) but Forrest wasn’t so sure how well he would do when it came to finding his way around on the battlefield, so he told me to go along with him.

  We rode toward the left, following what had been the fine of battle an hour or two before. There was worse confusion on this part of the field than any we had seen since we crossed the creek. The wounded were thicker and the captured camps were crowded with men who had stopped to plunder. Passing a Yankee general's tent I saw four Confederate privates sitting in a ring around a keg of whiskey. They were drunk already, passing a gourd from hand to hand and wiping their mouths with their cuffs. Off to one side, demonstrating the privilege of rank, a big sandy-haired corporal sat with a demijohn all to himself. At another place, a little farther along, the woods had caught fire. Most of the wounded had crawled clear, or had been dragged out by friends, but I heard others squalling beyond the flames.

  No one knew where Beauregard's headquarters was, until we lucked up on Colonel Jordan, his chief of staff, who told us we would find the general at Shiloh Meeting House, a log cabin over toward the left, on the Corinth road. We went the way he said and there it was. I waited at the road-fork with the horses while Strange went in to report.

  While I was standing there, holding the reins of both horses, a tow-headed boy wearing a homespun shirt under his jacket came up to me. He was about seventeen, just beginning to raise some fuzz on his cheeks. He carried his left arm across his stomach, holding it by the wrist with the other hand. The sleeve of the hurt arm was caked with blood from just below the shoulder all the way down to the cuff.

  "Whar's a doctor?" he said, his voice trembling.

  I told him I didn’t know but there should be some of them over toward the right, where the sound of the fighting had swelled up again, and he went on. He was sad to see: had a dazed look around the eyes, as if he'd seen things no boy ought to see, and he wobbled as he walked. I thought to myself: Boy, you better lie down while you can.

  Finally Strange came out of the meeting house and we turned back the way we had come. That seemed the sensible thing to do, though Lord knows there was no telling where the regiment was by now. They might be almost anywhere on the whole wide battlefield, with Forrest leading them.

  Strange said he hadn’t talked to old Bory himself but one of the aides had told him there was nothing unusual about not knowing where to go for orders. The battle was being fought that way, he said—It was just a matter of helping whoever needed help most at the time. That seemed to me to be a mighty loose-jointed way to fight a war.

  When we got past the place where we left Forrest the sun was near the landline. There was a great yelling in the woods beyond, and just as we rode up we met what I thought was the whole Yank army coming toward us. Then I saw they were marching without rifles or colors and they were under guard. It was what was left of Prentiss' division, surrendered when the other Union outfits fell back, leaving them stranded, and our regiment and most of Chalmers’ brigade got between them and the river. They looked glum as glum but they had no cause for shame. They were the fightingest men in the whole blue-belly army, bar none, and if they hadn’t held that sunken road in the Hornets Nest for six hours, it would have been all up with Grant before sundown.

  Beyond the woods, in the little clearing where Prentiss had surrendered, our troopers and the men of Chalmers' Mississippi brigade were trying to out-yell each other. Their lips were black from the cartridge bite and their voices came shrill across the field while the sun went down on the other side of the battleground, big and red through the trees. The colonel was still in his shirtsleeves, sitting with one leg across the pommel, smiling and watching the fun. When Strange told him what Beauregard's aide had said, I suppose he was easier in his mind—knowing he'd done right—but then again maybe I'm wrong; maybe it hadn’t bothered him at all. Forrest was never one to let orders keep him from doing what he knew was best.

  That was when I left to go out and do some scouting on my own. The regiment went on to support Chalmers and Jackson in their attacks against the siege guns drawn in a half-circle along the ridge near the bluff. They charged those guns, up the ridge, until Beauregard sent word to call it a day. But I had no part in that. Following the ravine down toward the river in the gathering dusk, I came upon the Indian mound, climbed it, and lay there for nearly an hour, counting troops and hearing them identify themselves as they came ashore.

  They were really obliging about that. Every now and then, when the steamboat neared bank, some rambunctious Fed would lean over the rail and yell at the skulkers: "Never mind, boys. Here's the 6th Indiana, come to win your damned battle for you!" It was Buell's Army of the Ohio—no doubt about that: I identified them regiment after regiment coming ashore. Some of the outfits were ones we'd badgered during our operation along the Green River, back in January.

  By the time I knew all I needed, it was full dark and had begun to rain, first a fine mist like spray, then a slow steady drizzle coming down through the branches with a quiet murmuring sound against the blackberry bushes. I went back. It was no easy job in the dark. Being in a hurry, I stumbled and slipped in the mud—I must have fallen at least a dozen times, getting disoriented every time. And to cap the climax, as if I wasn’t mad enough already, when I got back I couldn’t locate the colonel.

  I found the camp, all right: just blundered into it. But Forrest was out in the field somewhere, they told me, looking for Willy, his fifteen-year-old son, who had struck out with two other boys that afternoon on a little operation of their own. Long past dark, when they still had not come back, the colonel went out looking for them. Mrs. Forrest (she was the only person the colonel was really afraid of) had specially charged him to look out for Willy from the day she let Forrest take him with him to enlist.

  That was in Memphis, June of '61, a month before his fortieth birthday. He went down to the recruiting office and signed up as a private in a horse company, taking his youngest brother and his son. He had voted against secession but when Tennessee left the Union he left with her. By the time of Shiloh he had already made a name for himself: first by bringing his command out of Donelson after the generals decided to surrender, then by taking charge at Nashville and saving the government stores during the hubbub that followed General Johnston's retreat—but most of the talk was wild. Because he didn’t speak the way they did in their parlors, or fight the way it showed in their manuals, they said he was an illiterate cracker who came barefoot out of the hills in overalls and right away began to show his genius. They meant it well; it made good listening. But it was just not true.

  Bedford Forrest was
born in Middle Tennessee, son of a blacksmith and a pioneer woman named Beck. When he was sixteen his father died and left him head of a family of nine in the backwoods section of North Mississippi where they had moved three years before. He grew up there, working for an uncle in a livery stable. By the time he was twenty-four he was a partner and had met the girl he intended to marry. Her guardian was a Presbyterian minister, and when Forrest went to ask for her hand the old man turned him down:

  "Why, Bedford, I couldn’t consent. You cuss and gamble, and Mary Ann is a Christian girl."

  “I know it," Forrest said. "That’s why I want her."

  And he got her, too. The old man officiated at the wedding.

  He got most things he went after. Within six years he had outgrown the Mississippi hamlet and moved to Memphis, expanding his livestock trade to include real estate and slaves. Ten years later, when the war began, he was worth beyond a million dollars and owned five thousand acres of plantation land down in the Delta. What the citizens of Memphis thought of him is shown by the fact that they elected him to the Board of Aldermen three times straight running. So when people say Forrest came into the war barefoot and in overalls, they aren’t telling the truth; they’re spreading the legend.

  Less than a month after he enlisted he was called back to Memphis by Governor Harris and given authority to recruit a cavalry battalion of his own. That was the real beginning of his military career, and that was the first time I saw him.

  I was on my way to Richmond, just passing through from Galveston, when I saw the notice in the Appeal:

  I desire to enlist five hundred able-bodied men, mounted and equipped with such arms as they can procure (shot-guns and pistols preferable) suitable to the service. Those who cannot entirely equip themselves will be furnished arms by the State.