Shiloh (12 page)

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 above
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.

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, and 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.