Bitter Ashes: Fallen Timbers at Shiloh

Bitter Ashes

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But curiously enough, when we were back aboard the transports where they passed out hot coffee and blankets, everyone felt fine about the whole business. For one thing, we had been into the enemy country a division on its own, looking for trouble: Sherman was not the same man at all. He was not so nervous. His shoulders didnt twitch the way theyd done in camp. He was calm and ready, confident, and when he saw the thing wasnt possible he did not fret or fume and he didnt hesitate to give it up.

Whatever else he might be, he certainly was not crazy. We knew that now, and we were willing to follow wher- ever he said go. There is a thing I hope you will do for me, Martha Bake me one of those three decker cakes like the one you brought out to Camp that day while we were training near home.

All I got that time was a single slice. I can taste it right now it will be so good, so please do not delay. In peacetime Plttsburg was the Tennessee River landing where steamboats unloaded their cargoes for Corinth, twenty-odd miles to the southwest. There was a high bluff at the river bank it rose abruptly, its red clay streaked at the base with year-round flood- stage marks.

Fallen Timbers at Shiloh

Beyond the bluff, a hundred feet above the water level, there was a rough plateau cut with ravines and gullies. The creeks were swollen now. Oaks and sycamores and all the other trees common to this region were so thickly clustered here that even at midday, by skirting the open fields and small farms scattered there, you could walk from the Landing three miles inland without stepping into sunlight.

If you carried an ax, that is. For the ground beneath the limbs and between the tree trunks was thickly over- grown with briers and creepers and a man leaving the old paths would have to hack through most of the way.

We spent a rough week clearing our camp sites, but after that was done it was not so bad. Looking southwest, with your back to the river, Snake Creek was on your right and Lick Creek on your left. A little more than a mile from the mouth of Snake Creek, another stream called Owl Creek branched off obliquely toward the left, so that the farther you went from the Landing the narrower the space between the creeks became.

Roughly, the plateau was a parallelogram, varying from five to three miles on a side, cross-hatched with a network of wagon trails running inland from the Landing and footpaths connecting the forty- and fifty-acre farms. It was con- fusing. When we first arrived, messengers went badly astray going from one camp to another. Guards would roam from their posts without knowing it. All that first week you saw men asking the way to their out- fits; theyd gone to the bushes and got turned around and couldnt find their way back.

I got lost myself every time I stopped without taking proper bearings. But after we had been there a few days we became used to it and realized what a good, strong position Sherman had chosen. He had an eye for terrain. Those creeks, swollen now past fording, gave us complete protection on the flanks in case the Rebels obliged us by coming up to fight on our own ground. Through 44 FOUNTAIN the opening to the southwest we had a straight shot for Corinth on a fairly good road considering down which we could march when the time came for us to move out for the attack on Beauregard.

Hurlbut's division landed with us. Within a few days the others had arrived, Prentiss and McClernand and W. Our division was out front the position of honor; they called it that to make us feel good, probably; certainly there was small honor involved three miles down the Corinth road, on a line stretching roughly east and west of a small Methodist log meeting-house called Shiloh Chapel, near which Sherman had his head- quarters.

Hurlbut was two miles behind us, within a mile of the Landing. Prentiss took position on our left flank when he came up, and McClernand camped directly in our rear. Wallace was to the right and slightly to the rear of Hurlbut. There were forty thousand of us. General Smith, who had his headquarters at Savannah, was in com- mand of the army, but it was Sherman who chose Pittsburg Landing as the concentrating point and made the dispositions. We drilled and trained all day every day, march and countermarch until we thought we'd drop, improving the time while waiting for 45 SHILOH BuelPs army to arrive from Nashville.

When he joined, we would be seventy-five thousand. There wasnt a soldier who did not realize the strategic possibilities of the situ- ation, and everyone was confident of the outcome. When the war began a year ago, all the newspapers carried reprints of speeches by Con- federate orators, calling us Northern scum and mer- cenaries and various other fancy names and boasting that Southern soldiers were better men than we were, ten to one.

Then Bull Run came a disgrace that bit deeper than talk. That was when we began to realize we had a war on our hands, and we buckled down to wink. Belmont and Fishing Creek and Donelson showed what we could do. We pushed them back through Kentucky and Tennessee, taking city after city and giving them every chance to turn and fight. If they were worth ten to one of us, they certainly didnt show it. Now we were within an easy march of Mississippi, one of the fire-eater States, first to leave the Union after South Carolina, and still they wouldnt turn and stand and fight.

God forbid its not my notion of a picnic grounds. Every one -feels that the sooner we move against them the better , because when we move we're going to beat them and end this War.

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Then General Smith skinned his leg on the sharp edge of a rowboat seat, and it became so badly in- fected he had to be relieved. Halleck put Grant back in command; he had found that the anonymous letter was untrue along with some other scandal about the mishandling of captured goods at Donelson. We cheered when we heard that Grant was back. He kept his headquarters where Smith's had been, at a big brick house in Savannah, nine miles down the Ten- nessee and on the opposite bank, overlooking the river. We saw him daily, for he came up by steamboat every morning and returned every night.

The men liked being in his army. Fighting under Grant meant winning victories. He was a young general, not yet forty, a little below average height, with lank brown hair and an unkempt beard. His shoulders sloped and this gave him a slouchy look that was emphasized by the pri- 47 SHILOH vate's blouse which he wore with the straps of a major general tacked on. I could remember when he used to haul logs for his father's tanyard back home in Georgetown. There was eight years' difference in our ages: He was called Useless Grant in those days, and people said he would never amount to anything.

Mainly he was known for his love of animals. It was strange, he loved them so much he never went hunting, and he refused to work in the tanyard because he couldnt bear the smell of dripping hides. He had a way with horses. Later, at West Point, he rode the horse that set a high- jump record.

When I watched him drill the militia at Georgetown after he finished at the Academy he graduated far down the list and had almost every demerit possible marked against his name for deportment I got the idea he hated the army. Seeing him stand so straight and severe, maneuvering the troops about the court- house square, I thought how different this was from what he would prefer to be doing. Then the Mexican War broke out, and though he only had some admin- istrative job down there, we heard that he had dis- tinguished himself under fire, going after ammunition or something.

However much West Point might have changed him, his method of asking his girl to marry him was just like the Ulyss we had known back home. Then one day everybody knew about him. Stationed on the West Coast, away from his family, he took to brooding and finally drank himself right out of the army. His father-in-law gave him an eighty-acre farm near St Louis.

Grant cleared the land him- self, then built a log house there and named it Hard- scrabble. It was about this time that a man from home went down to the city on business and came back saying he'd seen Grant on the street, wearing his old army fatigue clothes and selling kindling by the bundle, trying to make ends meet.

But it was no go. He sold out and went into town, where he tried to be a real-estate salesman. But that was no go either. So Grant moved up to Galena, Illinois, where his brothers ran a leather business, and went to work selling hides for a living, the occupation he had hated so much twenty years before. Mostly, though, he just sat around the rear of the store, for he was such a poor salesman that the brothers did what they could to keep him away from their customers.

He had a high- born wife and four children to support, and at thirty- tight he was a confirmed failure in every sense of the word. But at first not even the declara- tion of war seemed to offer him an opportunity. He served as drill-master of the Galena volunteers, but when the troops marched away he stayed behind because his position was not official. Then his real chance came. The governor made him a colonel in charge of recruit training at a camp near Springfield, and not long afterwards he picked up a St Louis news- paper and read where he'd been made a brigadier.

This had been at the insistence of an Illinois congress- man who claimed the appointment for Grant as his share of the political spoils. No one was more sur- prised than Grant himself. A proclamation he issued in Kentucky "I have nothing to do with opinions. I shall deal only with armed rebellion and its aiders and abettors" first attracted the attention of the government which was having its troubles with generals who were also politicians.

But it was not until the Battle of Belmont that they began to see his fighting qualities. Then the double capture of Forts Henry and Donelson, espe- cially the unconditional surrender note he sent to his old friend Buckner, made his name known every- where. This coming great Battle of Corinth will be -fought not more than a month pom now. It seems so long. For goodness sake dont let any body see this not even a peek. He'd smoked a pipe before. But after Donelson, people sent him so many boxes of cigars he felt obliged to smoke them.

The soldiers never put much stock in all the tales about him drinking and carousing, for we saw him daily in the field. There may have been those little whiskey-lines around his eyes, but they were there before the war. We knew that he had seen to it himself that the whiskey would not get him this time, the way it had done eight years before, and here was how he did it: He had an officer on his staff named Rawlins, a young hard-faced man in his late twenties, dark com- plexioned with stiff black hair to match.

He'd been a lawyer in Galena, handling legal aff airs for the Grant brothers' leather store; that was how Grant met him. As soon as he made brigadier, Grant sent for Rawlins and put him on his staff. Rawlins had a gruff manner with everyone, the general included. Other staff officers said he was insubordinate twenty times a day. That was what Grant wanted: There was a saying in the army: He was Grant's conscience, and he was a rough one. So that was the way It was. There had been flurries of snow at first the sunny South! Soon afterward the weather cleared, half good days, half bad, and Sherman made a practice of sending us down the road toward Corinth on conditioning marches with flankers out and a screen of pickets, just the way It would be when we moved for keeps.

It was fine training. Occasionally there would be run-ins with Rebel cavalry, but they would never stand and fight. We'd see them for a moment, gray figures on scampering horses, with maybe a shot or two like hand-claps and a little pearly gob of smoke coming up; then they would vanish. That was part of our training, being shot at.

It was during this period that Colonel Appier and I began to fall out. He had a wild notion that all mem- bers of his command, cooks and clerks and orderlies included, should not only be well-versed In the school of the soldier, but also should take part In all the various tactical exercises. That was all right for theory, perhaps, but of course when it came to putting It Into practice it didnt work. In the first place they made poor soldiers and in the second place it interfered with their regular duties and in the third place it 53 SHILOH wasnt fair in the first place.

All my clerks complained, and some of them even applied for transfer. One or the other, they said; not both. So I went to the colonel and put my cards on the table. He was angry and began to bluster, complaining that he could never get his orders carried out without a lot of grousing. He said all headquarters personnel were born lazy and he looked straight at me as he said it. Finally he began to hint that maybe I didnt like being shot at.

Well, truth to tell, I had no more fondness for being shot at than the next man, but I wasnt going to stand there and take that kind of talk, even if he was my regimental commander. I saluted and left. If this had been an ordinary, personal sort of feud I would have been enjoying my revenge already. Colonel Appier had been making a fool of himself, the laughingstock of the whole army, for the past three days.

He was a highstrung sort of person any- how, jumpy, given to imagining the whole Rebel army was right outside his tent-flap. Friday afternoon, April fourth, a regiment on our left lost a picket guard of seven men and an officer, gobbled up by the grayback cavalry, and when the colonel advanced a company to develop the situation they ran into 54 FOUNTAIN scattered firing, nothing serious, and came back with- out recovering the men. All day Saturday Colonel Appier was on tenter- hooks.

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We felt really ashamed for him. Other outfits began to call us the Long Roll regiment because we had sounded the alarm so often. The last straw came that afternoon. A scouting party ran into the usual Rebel horsemen and the colonel sent me back with a message to General Sherman that a large force of the enemy was moving upon us.

I was angry anyhow because I had found just that morning that he'd put me on O D that night, and then after dinner he'd made me accompany him on the scout so I wouldnt have time to get properly ready for guard mount. Now he was adding the crowning indignity by mak- ing me carry one of his wild alarms, crying Wolf again for the God-knows-whatth time, back to the general himself. I knew the reception Fd get at division headquarters, especially if Sherman turned that redheaded temper on me. My hope was that he would be away on inspection or something. Then all I would have to put up with would be the jeers of the adjutant and the clerks.

As luck would have it, I met the general riding down the road toward our position, accompanied by an aide and an orderly. When I told him what Colonel Appier had said, he clamped his mouth in a line. But he didnt say anything to me; he clapped the spurs to his horse, and soon we came to a clearing where Colonel Appier and some of his staff were standing beside the road with their horses' reins in their hands. Colonel Appier began to tell Sherman how many Rebs there were in the woods out front.

He was ex- cited; he flung his arms around and stretched his eyes. Sherman sat there patiently, hearing him through and looking into the empty woods. When the colonel had finished, Sherman looked down at him for almost a full minute, saying nothing. Then he jerked the reins, turning his horse toward camp. As he turned he spoke to Colonel Appier directly. There is no enemy nearer than Corinth. It was certainly a rebuke to Colonel Appier, administered in the presence of his men. I heard at least one of them snigger. Charley Gregg has been promoted ist Lieut in Co G. You 'would not catch me wearing a thing like that it would be like admitting in public you were afraid.

It was cool and clear, the Lord's day and a fine one. Somewhere out front, over toward the right, the pickets already were stirring. There was a rattle of firing from that direction two groups of soldiers, grayback horsemen and a bunch of our boys, earning a living but that meant nothing more than that there were some nervous pickets on the line for the first time, itching to burn a little powder and throw a little lead the way they always did, shooting at shadows for the sake of something to write home about. It died away and the birds began to sing.

The guard tent, facing northwest so that the sun came up in the rear, was out in an open field a few hundred yards short of a swale which crossed the center of the clearing. In the swale there was a small stream with a thin screen of willows and water oaks along its banks. The willows were green already but the oaks had just begun to bud. I could see through the fringe of trees the field continuing for a few more 57 SHILOH handled yards to where it ended abruptly against a line of heavy woods at its far margin.

Sherman's head- quarters tent had been pitched directly in rear of the guard tent, out of sight across the road. Shiloh Chapel was to the right rear, visible through the trees which were tinted blood-red now, the color moving down as the sun rose higher. Near at hand but out of sight, between the guard tent and division headquarters, the cooks were up. I could hear two of them talking above the rattle of pots and pans. I could even recognize their voices. One was Lou Treadway; he was from Georgetown.

Back home he always had his pockets full of tracts and was ever ready to talk salvation to anyone who would listen or to anyone who wouldnt, for that matter. He knew his Bible, cover to cover, and at the drop of a hat he'd expound on a text, usually an obscure one that gave him plenty of room to move around in. He was a little wrong in the head, but a good cook.

You know what that means, brother? By the sound of his voice, he was plenty weary of Lou's eternal preaching. But this was Sunday and Lou was all wound up. There was no way of stopping him. Bible scholars interpret that it means the Place of Peace.

Now mind you Martha, no more reproaching me for not writing long letters that give all the news about myself. Here are three pages of big sheets close written you can not say again your husband never writes you long letters. Guard duty would not be so bad if every man could spend it this way writing to the one he misses most. Its a beautiful Sunday morn, the sun just coming up. I bet you are sleep in bed. Remember what 1 said that last night about next time? All the birds are singing. Birds were tearing their throats out, hopping around in the budding limbs, and there was a great scamper- ing of animals out front in the thickets.

It was fine to be up at that time of the morning, even if it had meant staying up on guard all the night before. I didnt feel a bit sleepy, but I knew it would come down on me that afternoon. For the first time, this Southern country took on real beauty, or else I was a little drunk from lack of sleep. The countryside looked so good that it reminded me of spring back home in Ohio, when everything is open- ing and the air is soft with the touch of summer and fragrant with rising sap and bursting buds.

O my dearest, if only you knew how much I lo There was a rattle of sound all across the front of the position, like snapping limbs, and another racket mixed in too, like screaming women. Bango lifted his head, the big yellow eyes still glazed with sleep. I recognized it as the sound of firing, and then there were the thudding booms of cannon. Beyond the swale and through the screen of trees along the stream I saw rabbits and fluttering birds and even a doe with her spotted-backed fawn.

She ran with nervous mincing steps, stopping frequently to turn her head back in the direction she had come from. Then I saw the skirmishers come through. They looked tall and lean, even across that distance. Beneath their wide-brimmed hats their faces were sharp, and their gray and butternut trousers were wet to the thighs with dew. They carried their rifles slantwise across their bodies, like quail hunters. That was what roused me I believe, because for a minute I disremembered where I was.

I thought I was back home, woke up early and laying in bed waiting for pa to come with the lantern to turn me out to milk that was the best thing about the army: But then I realized part of the sound was the breathing and snoring of the men all around me, with maybe a whimper or a moan every now and again when the bad dreams came, and I remembered.

We had laid down to sleep in what they call Line of Battle and now the night was nearly over. And when I remembered I wished I'd stayed asleep: But it was warm under the blanket and my clothes had dried and I could feel my new rifle through the cloth where I had laid it to be safe from the dew when I wrapped the covers round me. That was the way he said it. I was just going to tell them I would be back with a Yankee sword for the fireplace, like pa did with the Mexican one, when I heard somebody talking in a hard clear voice not like any of my folks, and when I looked up it was Sergeant Tyree.

It was Sunday already and we were fixing to hit them where they had their backs to the river, the way it was explained while we were BADE waiting for our marching orders three days ago. From then on everything moved fast with a sort of mixed-up jerkiness, like Punch and Judy. Every face had a kind of drawn look, the way it would be if a man was picking up on something heavy.

Late ones like myself were pulling on their shoes or rolling their blankets. Others were already fixed. They squatted with their rifles across their thighs, sitting there in the darkness munching biscuits, those that had saved any, and not doing much talking. They nodded their heads with quick flicky motions, like birds, and nursed their rifles, keeping them out of the dirt. I had gotten to know them all in a month and a few of them were even from the same end of the county I was, but now it was like I was seeing them for the first time, diff erent.

All the put-on had gone out of their faces they were left with what God gave them at the beginning. And while Sergeant Tyree passed among us, checking us one by one to make sure everything was where it was supposed to be, dawn begun to corne through, faint and high. While we were answering roll-call the sun rose big and red through the trees and all up and down the company front they begun to get excited and jabber at one another: I was glad to see the sun again, no matter what they called it.

One minute we were standing there, shifting from leg to leg, not saying much and more or less avoiding each other's eyes: It happened that sudden. There was no bugle or drum or anything like that. The men on our right started moving and we moved too, lurching forward through the underbrush and trying to keep the line straight the way we had been warned to do, but we couldnt.

Captain Plummer was cussing. So after a while, when the trees thinned, we stopped to straighten the line. There was someone on a tall claybank horse out front, a fine-looking man in a new uniform with chicken guts on the sleeves all the way to his elbows, spruce and spang as a gamecock. He had on a stiff red cap, round and flat on top like a sawed-off dice box, and he was making a speech. All I could hear was the cheering and yipping all around me, but I could see his eyes light up and his mouth moving the way it will do when a man is using big words.

I thought I heard something about defenders and liberty and even some- 66 BADE thing about the women back home but I couldnt be sure; there was so much racket. When he was through he stood in the stirrups, raising his cap to us as we went by, and I recognized him. It was General Beauregard, the man I'd come to fight for, and I hadnt hardly heard a word he said. We stayed lined up better now because we were through the worst of the briers and vines, but just as we got going good there was a terrible clatter off to the right, the sound of firecrackers mixed with a roaring and yapping like a barn full of folks at a Fourth of July dogfight or a gouging match.

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The line begun to crook and weave because some of the men had stopped to listen, and Captain Plummer was cussing them, tongue-tied. Joe Marsh was next to me he was nearly thirty, middle-aged, and had seen some battle up near Bowling Green. They had told us how it would be. They said we would march two days and on the third day we would hit them where they were camped between two creeks with their backs to the Tennessee River. We would drive them, the colonel told us, and when they were pushed against the river we would kill or SHILOH capture the whole she-bang.

I didnt understand it much because what the colonel said was full of tactics talk. Later the captain explained it, and that was better but not much. So then Sergeant Tyree showed it to us by drawing lines on the ground with a stick. That way it was clear as could be. It sounded fine, the way he told it; it sounded simple and easy.

Maybe it was too simple, or some- thing. Anyhow things didnt turn out so good when it came to doing them. On the third day we were still marching, all day, and here it was the fourth day and we were still just marching, stop and go but mostly stop the only real difference was that the column was moving sideways now, through the woods instead of on the road. From all that racket over on the right I thought maybe the other outfits would have the Yankees pushed back and captured before we even got to see it.

The noise had died down for a minute, but as we went forward it swelled up again, rolling toward the left where we were, rifles popping and popping and the soldiers yelling crazy in the distance. It didnt sound like any elephant to me. We came clear of the woods where they ended on a ridge overlooking a valley with a little creek running through it.

The ground was open all across the valley, except where the creek bottom was overgrown, and 68 BADE mounted to another ridge on the other side where the woods began again. There were white spots in the fringe of trees these were tents, I made out. We were the left brigade of the whole army. There was a Tennessee regiment on our right and two more on our left and still another at the left rear with flankers out.

Then we were all in the open, lined up with our flags riffling in the breeze. Colonel Thorn- ton was out front, between us and the skirmishers. His saber flashed in the sun. Looking down the line I saw the other regimental commanders, and all their sabers were flashing sunlight too. It was like a parade just before it begins. This is going to be what they promised us, I said to myself.

This is going to be the charge. That was when General Johnston rode up. He came right past where I was standing, a fine big man on a bay stallion. He had on a broad-brim hat and a cape and thigh boots with gold spurs that twinkled like sparks of fire. I watched him ride by, his mustache flaring out from his mouth and his eyes set deep under his forehead. He was certainly the handsomest man I ever saw, bar none; he made the other officers on his staff look small.

There was a little blond-headed SHILOH lieutenant bringing up the rear, the one who would go all red in the face when the men guyed him back on the march. He looked about my age, but that was the only thing about us that was alike. He had on a natty uniform: I said to myself, I bet his ma would have a fit if she could see him now.

General Johnston rode between our regiment and the Tennessee boys on our right, going forward to where the skirmish line was waiting. When the colonel in charge had reported, General Johnston spoke to the skirmishers: Today you wield a nobler weapon: He was the only man I ever saw who wasnt a preacher and yet could make that high-flown way of talking sound right.

Then he turned his horse and rode back through our line, and as he passed he leaned sideways in the saddle and spoke to us: Captain Pluinmer walked up and down the com- pany front. He was short, inclined to fat, and walked with a limp from the blisters he developed on the march. Aim for their knees. I was watching toward the front, where we would go, but all I could see was that empty valley with the little creek running through it and the rising ground beyond jwith the trees on top.

While I was looking, trying hard to see was anybody up there, all of a sudden there was a Boom! But when I looked around I saw they had brought up the artillery and it was shooting over our heads towards the left in a shallow swale. I felt real sheepish from having jumped hut when I looked around I saw that the others had jumped as much as I had, and now they were joking at one another about who had been the most scared, carrying it off all brave-like but looking kind of hang-dog about it too.

I was still trying to see whatever it was out front that the artillery was shooting at, but all I could see was that valley with the creek in it and the dark trees on the flanks. I was still mixed up, wondering what it all meant, when we begun to go forward, carrying our rifles at right shoulder shift the way we had been taught to do on parade. Colonel Thornton was still out front, flashing his saber and calling back over his shoulder: When we got to where they had gone down, we saw them again, but closer now, kneeling and popping little white puifs of smoke from their rifles.

The rattle of firing rolled across the line and back again, and then it broke into just general firing. I still couldnt see what they were shooting at, specially not now that the smoke was banking up and drifting back against us with a stink like burning feathers. Then, for the first time since we left Corinth, bugles begun to blare and it passed to the double. The line wavered like a shaken rope, gaining in places and lagging in others and all around me they were yelling those wild crazy yells. General Cleburne was on his mare to our left, between us and the 5th Tennessee.

He was waving his sword and the mare was plunging and tossing her mane. I could hear him hollering the same as he would when we did wrong on the drill field he had that thick, Irish way of speaking that came on him when he got mad. We were trotting by then. As we went forward we caught up with the skirmishers. They had given around a place where the ground was flat and dark green and there was water in the grass, sparkling like silver. It was a bog. General Clebnme rode straight ahead, waving his sword and bawling at us to close the gap, close the gap, and before he knew what had separated us, the mare was pastern-deep in it, floundering and bucking to get rid of the general's weight.

He was waving his sword with one hand and shaking his fist at us with the other, so that when the mare gave an extra hard buck General Cleburne went flying off her nigh side and landed on his hands and knees in the mud. We could hear him cussing across two hundred yards of bog. The last I saw of him he was walking out, still waving the sword, picking his knees high and sinking almost to his boot-tops every step.

His face was red as fire. The brigade was split, two regiments on the right and four on the left, with a swamp between us; we would have to charge the high ground from two sides. By this time we had passed around where the other slope came out to a point leading down to the bog and we couldnt even see the other regiments. When we hit the rise we begun to run. I could hear Colonel Thornton puffing like a switch engine and I thought to myself, He's too old for this. Nobody was shooting yet because we didnt see anything to shoot at; we were so busy trying to keep up, we didnt have a 73 SHILOH chance to see anything at all.

The line was crooked as a ram's horn. Some men were pushing out front and others were beginning to breathe hard and lag behind. My heart was hammering at my throat it seemed like every breath would bust my lungs. I passed a fat fellow holding his side and groaning. At first I thought he was shot, but then I realized he just had a stitch. It was Burt Tapley, the one everybody jibed about how much he ate; he was a great one for the sutlers. Now all that fine food, canned peaches and suchlike, was staring him in the face.

When we were halfway up the rise I begun to see black shapes against the rim where it sloped off sharp. At first I thought they were scarecrows they looked like scarecrows. That didnt make sense, except they looked so black and stick-like. Then I saw they were moving, wiggling, and the rim broke out with smoke, some of it going straight up and some jetting toward our line, rolling and jumping with spits of fire mixed in and a humming like wasps past my ears. Lord to God, theyre shooting; theyre shooting at me! And it surprised me so, I stopped to look. The smoke kept rolling up and out, rolling and rolling, still with the stabs of fire mixed in, and some of the men passed me, bent forward like they were running into a high wind, rifles held crossways so that the bayonets 74 BADE glinted and snapped In the sunlight, and their faces were all out of shape from the yelling.

When I stopped I begun to hear all sorts of things I hadnt heard while I was running. It was like being born again, coming into a new world. There was a great crash and clatter of firing, and over all this I could hear them all around me, screaming and yelping like on a foxhunt except there was something crazy mixed up in it too, like horses trapped in a burning barn.

I thought theyd all gone crazy they looked it, for a fact. Their faces were split wide open with screaming, mouths twisted every which way, and this wild lunatic yelping coming out. It wasnt like they were yelling with their mouths: That was the first time I really knew how scared I was. If I'd stood there another minute, hearing all this, I would have gone back. Luther, you got no business mixed up in all this ruckus.

This is all crazy, I thought. But a big fellow I never saw before ran into me full tilt, knocking me forward so hard I nearly went sprawling. He looked at me sort of desperate, like I was a post or something that got in the way, and went by, yelling. By the time I got my balance I was stumbling forward, so I just kept going. And that was better. Moving, it was more like I was off to myself, with just my own particular worries.

I kept passing men lying on the ground, and at first I thought they were winded, like the fat one that was the way they looked to me. But directly I saw a corporal with the front of his head mostly gone, what had been under his skull spilling over his face, and I knew they were down because they were hurt. Every now and then there would be one just sitting there holding an arm or leg and groaning. Some of them would reach out at us and even call us by name, but we stayed clear.

For some reason we didnt like them, not even the sight of them. I saw Lonny Parker that I grew up with; he was holding his stomach, bawling like a baby, his face all twisted and big tears on his cheeks. But it wasnt any different with Lonny I stayed clear of him too, just like I'd never known him, much less grown up with him back in Jordan County.

It wasnt a question of luck, the way some folks will tell you; they will tell you it's bad luck to be near the wounded. It was just that we didnt want to be close to them any longer than it took to run past, the way you wouldnt want to be near someone who had something catching, like smallpox. We were almost to the rim by then and I saw DADE clear enough that they werent scarecrows that was a foolish thing to think anyhow.

They were men, with faces and thick blue uniforms. It was only a glimpse, though, because then we gave them a volley and smoke rolled out between us. When we came through the smoke they were gone except the ones who were on the ground. They lay in every position, like a man I saw once that had been drug out on bank after he was run over by a steamboat and the paddies hit him.

We were running and yelling, charging across the flat ground where white canvas tents stretched out in an even row. The racket was louder now, and then I knew why. It was because I was yelling too, crazy and blood-curdled as the rest of them. I passed one end of the row of tents. That must have been where their officers stayed, for breakfast was laid on a table there with a white cloth nice as a church picnic. When I saw the white-flour biscuits and the coffee I understood why people called them the Feds and us the Corn-feds.

I got two of the bis- cuits I had to grab quick; everybody was snatching at them and while I was stuffing one in my mouth and the other in my pocket, I saw Burt Tapley. He'd caught up when we stopped to give them that volley, I reckon, and he was holding the coffee pot like a loving-cup, drinking scalding coffee in big gulps. Officers were running around waving their swords and hollering. So they begun to lay about with the flats of their swords, driving us away from the plunder.

It didnt take long. When we were formed in line again, reloading our guns, squads and companies mixed every which way, they led us through the row of tents at a run. All around me, men were tripping on the ropes and cussing and barking their shins on the stakes. Then we got through and I saw why the officers had been yelling for us to form. There was a gang of Federal soldiers standing shoulder to shoulder in the field beyond the tents.

I thought it was the whole Yankee army, lined up waiting for us. Those in front were kneeling under the guns of the men in the second line, a great bank of blue uniforms and rifle barrels and white faces like rows of eggs, one above another. When they fired, the smoke came at us in a solid wall. Things plucked at my clothes and twitched my hat, and when I looked around I saw men all over the ground, in the same ugly positions as the men back on the slope, moaning and whimpering, clawing at the grass.

Some 78 DADE were gut-shot, making high yelping sounds like a turpentined dog. Smoke was still thick when the second volley came. For a minute I thought I was the only one left alive. Then I saw the others through the smoke, making for the rear, and I ran too, back toward the tents and the slope where we'd come up. They gave us another volley as we ran but it was high; I could hear the balls screech over my head. No bullets were falling here but everybody laid low because they were crackling and snapping in the air over our heads on a line with the rim where our men were still coming over.

They would come over pre- pared to run another mile, and then they would see us lying there and they would try to stop, stumbling and sliding downhill. I saw one man come over, running sort of straddle- legged, and just as he cleared the rim I saw the front of his coat jump where the shots came through.

He was running down the slope, stone dead already, the way a deer will do when it's shot after picking up speed. This man kept going for nearly fifty yards downhill before his legs stopped pumping and he crashed into the ground on his stomach. That scared me worse than anything up to then. It wasnt really all that bad, looking back on it: It was just that he'd been running when they shot him and his drive kept him going down the slope.

But it seemed so wrong, so scandalous, somehow so unreligious for a dead man to have to keep on fighting or running, anyhow that it made me sick at my stomach. I didnt want to have any more to do with the war if this was the way it was going to be. They had told us we would push them back to the river. Push, they said; that was the word they used. I really thought we were going to push them with bullets and bayonets of course, and of course I knew there were going to be men killed: I even thought I might get killed myself; it crossed my mind a number of times.

But it wasnt the way they said. It wasnt that way at all. Because even the dead and dying didnt have any decency about them first the Yankees back on the slope, crumpled and muddy where their own men had overrun them, then the men in the field beyond the tents, yelping like gut- shot dogs while they died, and now this one, this big fellow running straddle-legged and stofte cold dead in the face, that wouldnt stop running even after he'd been killed.

What hap- pened from then on was all mixed up in the smoke. We formed again and went back through the tents. But the same thing happened: Three times we went through and it was the same every time. Finally a fresh brigade came up from the reserve and we went through together. This trip was different we could tell it even before we got started. We went through the smoke and the bullets, and that was the first time we used bayonets. For a minute it was jab and slash, everyone yelling enough to curdle your blood just with the shrillness.

I was running, bent low with the rifle held out front, the way they taught me, and all of a sudden I saw I was going to have it with a big Yank wearing his coat unbuttoned halfway, showing a red flannel undershirt. I was running and he was waiting, braced, and it occurred to me, the words shooting through my mind: What kind of a man is this, would wear a red wool undershirt in April? I saw his face from below, but he had bent down and his eyebrows were drawn in a straight line like a black bar over his eyes.

He was full-grown, with a 81 SHILOH wide brown mustache; I could see the individual hairs on each side of the shaved line down the middle, Fd have had to say Sir to him back home. Then something hit my arm a jar I stumbled against him, lifting my rifle and falling sideways. He turned with me and we were falling, first a slow fall the way it is in dreams, then sudden, and the ground came up and hit me: We were two feet apart, looking at each other. He seemed even bigger now, up close, and there was something wrong with the way he looked. Then I saw why.

My bayonet had gone in under his jaw, the hand- guard tight against the bottom of his chin, and the point must have stuck in his head bone because he appeared to be trying to open his mouth but couldnt, It was like he had a mouthful of something bitter and couldnt spit his eyes were screwed up, staring at me and blinking a bit from the strain. All I could do was look at him; I couldnt look away, no matter how I tried. A man will look at something that is making him sick but he cant stop looking until he begins to vomit something holds him.

That was the way it was with me. Then, while I was watching him, this fellow reached up and touched the handle of the bayonet under his chin. He touched it easy, using the tips of his fingers, tender-like. I could see he wanted to grab 82 BADE and pull It out but he was worried about how much it would hurt and he didnt dare. I let go of the rifle and rolled away. There were bluecoats running across the field and through the woods beyond.

All around me men were kneeling and shooting at them like rabbits as they ran. Captain Plummer and two lieutenants were the only officers left on their feet. Two men were bent over Colonel Thornton where they had propped him against a tree with one of his legs laid crooked. Captain Plummer wasnt limping now he'd forgotten his blisters, I reckon. He wasnt even hurt, so far as I could see, but the skirt of his coat was ripped where somebody had taken a swipe at him with a bayonet or a saber.

He went out into the open with a man carrying the colors, and then begun to wave his sword and caE in a high voice: We were a sorry lot. My feet were so heavy I could barely lift them, and I had to carry rny left arm with my right, the way a baby would cradle a doll. The captain kept calling, "Wally here! There were a little over a hundred of us, all that were left out of the 83 SHILOH four hundred and twenty-five that went in an hour before.

Our faces were gray, the color of ashes. Some had powder burns red on their cheeks and foreheads and running back into singed patches in their hair. Mouths were rimmed with grime from biting cartridges, mostly a long smear down one corner, and hands were blackened with burnt powder off the ramrods.

We'd aged a lifetime since the sun came up. Captain Plummer was calling us to rally, rally here, but there wasnt much rally left in us. There wasnt much left in me, anyhow. I felt so tired it was all I could do to make it to where the flag was. I was worried, too, about not having my rifle. I remembered what Ser- geant Tyree was always saying: Take care of it. Then I looked down and be durn if there wasnt one just like it at my feet. I picked it up, stooping and nursing my bad arm, and stood there with it.

Joe Marsh was next to me. At first I didnt know him. He didnt seem bad hurt, but he had a terrible look around the eyes and there was a knot on his forehead the size of a walnut where some Yank had bopped him with a rifle butt. He looked at me, first in the face till he finally recognized me, then down at my arm. Have it your way. He had lorded it over me for a month about being a green- horn, yet here I was, just gone through meeting as big an elephant as any he had met, and he was still trying the same high-and-mightiness.

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He was mad now because he wasnt the only one who had seen some battle. He'd had his big secret to throw up to us, but not any more. We all had it now. We were milling around like ants when their hill is upset, trying to fall-in the usual way, by platoons and squads, but some were all the way gone and others had only a couple of men. So we gave that up and just fell-in in three ranks, not even making a good- sized company. Captain Plummer went down the line, looking to see who was worst hurt.

He looked at the way I was holding my arm. I just cant lift it no higher than this. They were hacked up all kinds of ways. One had lost an ear and he was the worst worried man of the lot; "Does it look bad? We sat under the tree and watched Captain Plummer march what was left of the regiment away. They were a straggly lot. We were supposed to wait there under the tree till the doctor came. We waited, hearing rifles clattering and cannons booming and men yelling further and further in the woods, and the sun climbed up and it got burning hot. I could look back over the valley where we had charged.

It wasnt as wide as it had been before. There were men left all along the way, lying like bundles of dirty clothes. I had a warm, lazy feeling, like on a summer Sunday in the scuppernong arbor back home; next thing I knew I was sound asleep. Now that was strange. I was never one for sleeping in the daytime, not even in that quiet hour after dinner when all the others were taking their naps. When I woke up the sun was past the overhead and 86 BADE only a dozen or so of the wounded were still there. The fellow next to me he was hurt in the leg said they had drifted off to find a doctor.

My arm was stiff and the blood had dried on my sleeve. There was just a slit where the bayonet blade went in. It felt itchy, tingling in all directions from the cut, like the spokes of a wheel, but I still hadnt looked at it and I wasnt going to. All except two of the men under the tree were leg wounds, not counting myself, and those two were shot up bad around the head. One was singing a song about the bells of Tennessee but it didnt make much sense.

The shooting was a long way off now, loudest toward the right front. It seemed reason- able that the doctors would be near the loudest shooting. I thought I would be dizzy when I stood up but I felt fine, light on my feet and tingly from not having moved for so long. XX "At last" thus read his Commentaries. XXI If one should reach the gate of glory,. No doubt his joyous heart would sadden,. At first she paddled nigh to shore,. XXIV No chance for human strength or skill! The hunter cast a glance before,.

But, fixedly as he might glare,. XXV As roars of lions welcomed those. A fierce, incessant, deafening roll,. They flitted like a random thought;. XXVI The man who wanders far with death. Like favored souls of Grecian days. There, crowned with plumes of eagle-wing,. The sachem cast an angry stare. No marvel Downing wrote with pen.

Anon he saw her, living still. Some angel helped; he quickly found. He knew that these were fated arms. Thus armed, he shouted, "Shoulder hoo! XXIX So changed desire our errant knight. His fervor cooled; he loathed the thought. XXX Yea, many setting suns he kenned,. Thus brightly dazzled on, he spanned. XXXI He made a noose; he climbed a tree. In after years our hero wrote. Simooms of horses rushed to meet. Uncounted bison thronged his flight. Again, for days he saw no face.

For them the rugged way is level,. I trow the angels and the pardoned. Ah, few divine the dreary labor,. They only know their matchless sadness,. XXXV And such was she, the witch who hurried. But gods of faint and fading races. So chanced it now with her who needed. This was the pest of early races,. No doubt the boundless brute had frighted. His hunger gone, he dozed a bit,. Aloft, around, enchantments frowned,. Again, the desert glittered bright. XL It seemed a mirage built of air,.

Perchance the maiden hoped that here,. But on he tramped with fearless stride. XLI So faring on from sight to sight,. The Painted Land was lately past,. No man divineth whence they came:. XLII Our hero had a lovely fight,. At last, when battle seemed in vain,. A moment's peace, a moment's breath,. A thousand yards below the eye. Below, — far down, — alone, — in gloom, —. XLIV In any world of sin or bliss. And he who gazed upon it then. He knew his prey; he left the brow;. XLV I trow that every stream enchanted. I trow those demons live in pleasure,. And whoso reaches those dominions,.

Ah, bitter woe to dazzled mortals. Yea, also woe to spirits daring. No, neither just nor evil liver. XLVI However fair to fiendish sprites. The lanskip seemed a part of Hell,. Yea, every cyclopean hold,. The jinns of that infernal land. A month he chased the flying maid,. In all the years that Downing fought. Like Crockett he could grin the bark. XLIX Till evening came he sabred on,.

Again victorious in fight,. L "I'll do my very best endeavor,". LI "In short, the place was awful leaky,. LII So sturdy Downing wandered down. Its solemn gulfs and awful steeps,. But like the most of humankind,. LIII At last he 'scaped that realm accurst;. He glanced ahead; he spied his prey,. LIV She veiled her head to welcome death;.

He seemed to have before his face. Awhile they floated down the tide,. LV I am of Wampanoag race;.

Bitter Ashes

He filled New England earth with graves;. Where are the warriors of my clan? They left to me what freemen could. But now my lifelong task is done,. She ended here her funeral chant,. I Full many knight puts lance in rest.

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So Downing rode from day to day. Without a fear the hero went;. II He reached the town at sunset stroke,. Through desert ways the hero hied,. He tethered horse and paced the shade. III But when the hour of midnight fell,. The air was ghastly overhead. Behind arrived the wizard broods. IV And Downing spied among the crew.

Immensely dazed our hero was. Yet all the keener grew his fear. V Anon a silence fell; and then. Our hero marveled much to weet. But halting yet in ways of guilt,. VI What evil thing of hell or earth. But, when they saw a single wight. This foul apostate, full of guile,. Instanter all that wizard troop. A moment thus they lifted high. VII "It was the daintiest of brushes,". VIII "'Twas jest the same with all the boodle. Thereon the rider wheeled and hurried. X This planet hath no fairer sight. So marched the scarlet-coated men. Some yards before the musketeers.

XI No lord was he of mean degree,. But better loved than all of this. XII He held a letter even now. In vain she rode; the cunning shot. She seemed a maid of twenty years;. XIII I find that never wight of worth. So, while he faced his ranks about. XIV It is an easy thing, I hold,. But how could Esther think of love? XV By day the column seaward strode —. But Esther thought it worldly song,. XVI Not every earthly sight can be. So burly Downing, born for war,. And now, yet panting from the broil. Yes, thirty feet below his boots,.

But how pursue the foe afoot? In vain he heartened her to rise. XIX I hold opinion that the sprites. No doubt it was an imp like this,. XX Erelong the sleeper woke refreshed,. But deadly dark as seemed the case,. Now came a battle like to those. XXI "An fust the creetur cussed my vitals,". This haggard daughter of the wild. XXIV But when she saw the fallen chief. Our hero gazed, right sore amazed. XXV But men must work though women greet,. So, wheeling wide through leafy lands,. You all remember how the earl.

XXIX Through woodland wide the lover hied. Then, grieving o'er his fruitless quest,. But where were they, and where was he? XXX The morning wrestled with the moon. A moment's prayer; again he drowsed,. He knew the bony face and frame;. Then came a change upon his face,.

I Hurrah for Downing! Alone our rustic Joshua fought,. Thus roused to fury, Downing thundered. III So, grinding axe and chisel bright,. But like ingenious Crusoe, he. But genius finds all things a school,. Instructed thus, he climbed astride. Beside the drowsy, nodding sedge. Some thieving tories lurked aboard. The skirmish done, the pirates slain,. V But eftersoon, beneath his feet,. He leaped below; he found her there. VI A thrilling tale the daughter told,.

She walked at eve a lonely wood,. Then overhead the branches clove,. Which tale her father never doubted,. VII Rejoiced to meet his child again. Around him, thick and tame as sheep,. Alas that Downing failed to smite. But Arnold was a soul of power. Eftsoon the ocean imps collected. IX It was as though a second birth. X But, wild as that alarum was,. The ocean's visage altered; spells,.

But mainly all was sheeted white. Tiara'd breakers glinted by,. It struggled not; its strength was done;. Titanic sea-gods jostled it;. But when a second sunset fired. And now our castaways might sleep,. Again she would have drowsed away,. XIII She leaped a-foot; she reached his side;. A furlong off, beneath the lea,.

XIV Yea more; she seemed a ship of might;. Yet these were but a common brood. XV Thereon did puzzled Downing stammer. XVI Erelong a jollyboat was lowered. Next Downing spied four sailors glide. No phantoms, either, were the rowers,. A man he was, in blood and bone;. XVII A man he truly seemed; and yet. Moreover, man is rarely seen. At last he rose with calmer face,. So, partly awed, yet more perplexed. XIX The stranger started, not in spite,. Then, taking Downing's hand, he said,. This utterance of gladness rung. At first the sense was dimly marked;.

As one can hear discourse in sleep. XX Our chief, in column after column. XXI "But sartinly the strangest show. XXII "An' right among the raree-shows,.

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