A Blaze of Glory (52 page)

“Yes, you farting old chicken gizzard. It was
fun
.”

T
he heavy rains came again, and once more the roads that led out of Corinth became knee-deep troughs of stinking mud. The stink came this time from the refuse of the men too often left behind, the men who simply fell away, some dying from bloody wounds they could not survive. Any hint of order, of regiments and brigades, was mostly gone, the few officers who could command anything as desperately tired as their men. All along the road, every house had become a hospital, whether there was a doctor there or not. With an effort few knew they could still muster, they made the slogging march over the roads that had brought them to the fight, once more crossing swollen creeks, drinking filthy water, eating nothing at all. The shoes were mostly gone, backpacks and bedrolls and the muskets as well. But many of the men kept their legs in motion, inspired by the single thought, that they were still an army, still hated the Yankees, that their families and their officers still expected them to fight for the cause they believed in. Corinth was, after all, a great stout fortification, a place they had always expected to defend. The fight around Shiloh Church had come from the plans and ambitions of generals, and no matter the disaster of that, it was the foot soldiers who would still do the deed, who would be asked to decide the fate of the town, of the country, and more important to many, the fate of the men around them.

BAUER

SOUTHEAST OF SHILOH CHURCH APRIL 28, 1862

G
eneral Halleck had arrived at Pittsburg Landing on April 11, saluted by his generals, mostly ignored by the troops, some of whom had been given the worst job imaginable, sifting through the wreckage of the battlefield, searching for anyone who had survived, burying the dead, and finally, burning the horses. By now most of the gruesome labor had been completed, the soldiers rested, but they expected more than what Halleck gave them. Instead of a rapid march to Corinth, to chase down and swallow up the battered remnants of the rebel army, Halleck kept them in their camps. The explanations stayed mainly with the senior officers, who already knew of Halleck’s need for caution. It was no different now. To Halleck, rapid action meant a greater probability of mistakes. No matter what his soldiers expected, Halleck first had to examine the mistakes already made, sifting through reports and facing his senior commanders. Grant understood that mistakes must be answered for, and regardless of the retreat of a badly mauled enemy, Halleck would put all of his ducks in a neat row before anyone pursued another engagement.

Though many of the Federal troops expected to finish the job they had been given, to destroy the enemy by first destroying their valuable rail junction, many of the troops appreciated the respite Halleck had given them. There was impatience, to be sure, inspired by the same boredom that had plagued the army weeks before the battle had actually begun. As spring spread its hand over the Tennessee countryside, the fresh flowers and nesting birds could not quite disguise the grotesque scenery, bodies not quite buried, the continuous stench of bloody earth that not even the rains could cure. And the rains did make the effort. The life of the camps was no less miserable now than it had been throughout March, frequent storms, deepening mud, and a lack of adequate supplies. Though Halleck, along with Grant and Buell, recognized that supply boats had to be a priority, those supplies were slow in coming, the food and clothing distributed to the men in a thin trickle. It only added to Halleck’s hesitation, that before this army could hope to drive southward, they must first be repaired. That repair required time.

Bauer sat alone, ate something he couldn’t recognize, tried to ignore the taste that tormented his mouth and settled into his stomach like a sack full of rocks. He felt an enormous need for coffee, but that supply was exhausted hours before, had been just enough, he thought, to satisfy the cravings of the officers. Instead the men were using their canteens, water sought out from the various springs, those places where the water was still clear.

Immediately after the fighting had stopped, word had spread quickly that the army was issuing rations of liquor to anyone volunteering for the burial parties. The army’s logic seemed to be that an intoxicated man might have far more tolerance for performing the awful task. The result, of course, was that a great many men had volunteered for the job. Bauer had been among those at first, had done what many had done, dug a hole or two, maybe a foot deep, had slid what used to be a man into the pit, covering with a few shovelfuls of dirt. Then they had gathered in small groups, bathed in whatever shade they could find, out of sight of the officers, who kept mostly to the camps. To Bauer, the liquor was nearly undrinkable, since he was not accustomed to alcohol in any form. But still he tried, and the burn and the dizzying effect in his brain had at least forced him to fall asleep, even if he suffered for that by the combined torments of a headache, poison ivy, and a plague of small creatures that attached themselves to the skin of any man who nestled into underbrush. Bauer knew something of ticks from his childhood in Wisconsin, and there were plenty now. But in Tennessee, the springtime offered up a new torment, virtually invisible to the men, some creature that delighted in burrowing under a man’s skin, producing an itch that could only be cured by applying their liquor rations directly to the skin. To many that was a tragedy all its own. To Bauer, it was the final excuse he needed to retire from the burial detail.

Almost immediately after the rebels had gone, the men had reconstructed their camps, new Sibley tents arriving, to replace the ones ripped or burned by the rebels. They slept as before, more than a dozen men arranged feet to feet in a circle. If the liquor had brought at least some kind of peace, there was no peace in the tents. Even if Bauer could escape the incessant snoring, he could not avoid the nightmares. The sights and sounds of the fight were a part of him now, a part of all of them. Some, like Willis, seemed to absorb all that had happened by shoving it away into some hidden place. Bauer saw the images even when he was awake, could not seem to blow the stink from his nostrils, could not quite wash the blood from his hands. During the night, the battles were fought again, and he awoke with the same shouts and short screams that affected many of the others.

The platoons and companies were a jumble, too many officers gone, some units too small to be called units at all. But Bauer thought little of that. It was, after all, the army, and the army would do what it did best, put men into lines and figure out how to divide them up into some kind of order. Whether that order made any sense, or whether the officers who might suddenly appear were familiar or complete strangers, Bauer didn’t care. It was his job to just … obey.

He tossed aside what remained of his supper, the darkness already spreading, no sunset, again, thick clouds and drizzle adding to the misery of his worn-out shoes. Few of the men had anything solid on their feet, and the curses toward the supply officers went mostly unheeded by the officers, who had worries of their own. It had been a relief to Bauer that Captain Patch seemed still to be in command of the company, though talk had spread, as it always spread, that Patch would be promoted, might get his own regiment. That same talk mentioned Colonel Allen, whose presence was still so reassuring to Bauer. The colonel wore the bandage still, but smaller now, a comforting sign that Allen would survive after all. Some of the rumors floating through the camps offered the most tantalizing of details, men satisfying their boredom by speculating on the fate of their generals. Halleck’s arrival had only added fuel to the fire, that Grant or Buell would be dismissed, that perhaps all the generals would be removed, replaced by men no one had ever heard of. So far, none of that had proved true, something else Bauer was accustomed to. There had been one formal announcement, passed through by the senior officers, the army’s way of convincing the men that the message was no rumor at all, but was actually true. The fight for Island Number Ten, one of the last great rebel strongholds on the Mississippi River, was a complete victory for the Federal troops. The officers cheered that as a monumental accomplishment. To Bauer, and most of the men around him, it meant nothing at all. Like so many, he had no idea where Island Number Ten was, or if in fact there was an Island Number Eleven, some battle yet to be fought.

He stood, fought the stiffness in his back, the rumble of unhappiness in his gut. The men around him ignored him, as they mostly ignored one another. Some of them were struggling through the rations, other just sat, staring into a campfire, some writing letters, or reading them. There was futility in that as well, the orders coming down in a very specific and very menacing way. No letters would be mailed from the camps at Pittsburg Landing until someone high up the chain approved that. Bauer saw no mystery in that at all. He had spent too much time wandering the battlefield with a shovel in his hands, had tripped over too many bones, seen too many blackened corpses, smelled too much rotting flesh and sickening horse meat. Bauer understood completely that the army didn’t want these soldiers writing any of those details on paper and sending them home. It would be the perfect ammunition for newspapers, those who had some ax to grind against the army in general, or Halleck or Grant or Buell in particular. And most certainly, mothers and wives who read of those kinds of horrors might become energetically motivated to pressure their congressmen to call this entire thing off.

Bauer had contemplated that. He missed home, his parents, the lush green of Wisconsin, so very different than nature’s various curses here. In some part of his logical mind, he knew there had been a mission that was not yet accomplished. The goal had always been Corinth, that talk coming from officers whose job had been to stoke them with enthusiasm for this campaign. Like Island Number Ten, it had never seemed to matter if the troops had ever heard of Corinth, where it was, or really knew just what they were supposed to do. They knew now. But the talk had changed, very little goading of the men for all the masterful ways they would crush the rebels, those men who had
spit on their flag
. Bauer knew that the officers still expected him to hate the enemy, but now, the reasons had changed. The enemy was not some mythical beast, to be brought down by the gallantry of the Union sword. They were an army, faces behind muskets, a horde of screaming soldiers who had just as much passion for tearing you in two as you were supposed to have for returning your flagpole to their local courthouse. The 16th Wisconsin had lost at least six of their color bearers, something the officers were already trying to use as some kind of emotional kick in the 16th’s tail, a kind of inspiration for these men to seek out revenge. To Bauer, it meant that the flag he had followed had been more of a deadly target than he had ever thought. If there was to be any kind of fight in the future, he would keep his distance.

He moved toward Willis, his friend sitting on the ground, reading the letter again, the same rumpled scrap of paper, torn and ragged. Willis glanced up, then did as he always did, stuffed it into his pocket, self-conscious, mysterious. Bauer waited for the invitation to sit, never knew if Willis was in the mood for conversation or not. Willis leaned back against a cut log, looked up at him.

“You eat, Dutchie?”

“Tried to.”

“Not me. I got the damn gripes again. I eat it, it just slides on through, stabs me like a thornbush all the way along.”

Bauer felt his legs weakening, the long dreary day taking its toll. He sat down beside Willis, too tired to care if he was invited or not.

“You gotta see the doctor, Sammie. Tell them about it. They got potions and stuff.”

“Yeah? You been back there? You seen those places? Not me. Somebody’ll tie me down and cut my leg off, just for fun.”

Bauer couldn’t argue with Willis’s reasoning, had his own fear of hospitals. There was no reason at all to go back to the landing, especially after what he had seen in the field.

“Guess you got a point. Few days back, I was out near that bloody pond. Just needed to get away from these tents. I hoped the bodies were all gone, but right down in some hole, I saw an ambulance. The smell told me plenty, but I found some of the burial boys, and they checked it out. The secesh had just left it behind. Guess they needed the horses for something else. But there were still men in there, and one of them was alive, right in the middle of a pile of dead. They were green, Sammie.
Green
. The poor secesh … he was shot in both legs, couldn’t move at all. The smell knocked me to my knees. I couldn’t imagine what that poor fella had to endure. We pulled him out, and pieces of the dead came with him.”

“Shut up. Please shut up.”

Bauer saw a hint of green on Willis now.

“Sorry. Won’t do that again.”

They sat in silence, and Bauer felt a chill, the relentless drizzle soaking through his coat. He looked toward the nearest campfire, nowhere to sit, the men gathered close with no gaps between them. After a silent moment, Willis said, “What happened to him?”

“Who?”

“The wounded secesh.”

“They hauled him off, I guess. I didn’t stay around there. Figured out I needed to stick closer to camp.”

“You did your part. Wondered why you let them give you a shovel in the first place. Not me. They can fill me with
Old Misery
till I bust. I’m not burying pieces of anybody.”