Shiloh (19 page)

One minute I was expecting to be told to retire, and the
next the bugle was blaring the charge. For a moment I mistrusted my ears. It
caught me so unprepared I was still sitting there with my mouth dropped open,
reins lax in my hands, when the line of horsemen surged forward, galloping down
the slope. I finally caught up, the hoofs drumming like thunder, the horses
breathing hoarse, the men all yelling. The Texans had dropped the reins onto
their horses' necks and were going into the charge with both hands free, one
for the saber, the other for the revolver. The checkered-shirt Mississippians
carried shotguns across their thighs, whiskers blowing wild in the wind.

Forrest was fifty yards out front, standing in the stirrups
and swinging a saber.

Most of the skirmishers had begun to run before we hit them,
scrambling among the fallen trees and tripping over the vines. Those who stood
were knocked sprawling by a blast from revolvers and shotguns fired at twenty
paces. I caught a glimpse of Forrest hacking and slashing, riding them down.
His saber looked ten feet long; it flashed and glinted. All around me horses
were tripping and falling, crashing and thrashing in the underbrush, snorting
and whinnying with terror. We had scattered the skirmishers, but Forrest didn’t
stop. He rode on, still standing and brandishing the saber, charging the
Federal cavalry behind the skirmishers. They were in complete disorder even
before we struck them, some wheeling their mounts toward the rear, others
pressing toward the front, all panicky, firing their carbines in the air. It
was the wildest craziest melee a man could imagine, one of those things you
would have to see to believe. But it was true, all right, and I was in the very
middle of it.

That was when my horse went down, struck in the knee of the
off foreleg by a wild shot—Union or Confederate, Lord knows which—and before I
even had time to think what was happening, the whole front end of him broke
down and I went sailing over his head. I landed on my chest, spread-eagle; my
wind went out with a rush. I got on my hands and knees, trying to breathe and
trying to breathe, but no breath would come. My breathing apparatus had been
knocked out of action. I was hoping for someone to give me a whack on the back
(Rebel or Yank or even one of the horses: I didn’t care) when I looked up and
saw something that made me forget that breathing had anything to do with
living.

Forrest was still out front and he was still charging. He
had broken the skirmish line, scattered the cavalry, and now he was going after
the main body, the remainder of the brigade, which stood in solid ranks to
receive the charge. The trouble was, he was charging by himself. Everyone else
had reined in when the cavalry scattered; they saw the steady brigade front and
turned back to gather prisoners. But not Forrest. He was fifty yards beyond the
farthest horseman, still waving that saber and crying "Charge!
Charge!" when he struck the blue infantry line, breaking into it and
plunging through the ranks. They closed the gap behind him. He was one gray
uniform, high on his horse above a sea of blue. I could hear the soldiers
shouting, "Kill him!" ''
Kill
the goddam rebel!" "Knock him off his horse!"

Then Forrest saw what had happened and began to haul on the
reins, trying to turn back toward his own men. But as the horse wheeled,
lashing out with its hoofs while Forrest slashed with his saber, I saw one of
the soldiers—a big heavy-set corporal—shove the muzzle of his rifle into the
colonel's hip and pull the trigger. The force of the ball lifted Forrest
sideways and clear of the saddle, but he regained his seat and held onto the
reins, the horse still kicking and plunging and Forrest still hacking and slashing.

He was facing our lines by then, clearing a path with his
saber, and as he came out of the mass of blue uniforms and furious white faces,
he reached down and grabbed one of the soldiers by the nape of the neck, swung
him onto the crupper of his horse, and galloped back to our lines, using the
Federal as a shield against the bullet’s fired after him. When he was out of
range he flung the soldier off, the man's head striking one of the jagged
stumps with a loud crack, and rode up to where we were waiting. I discovered
that my breath had come back—I was breathing short and shallow from excitement.

That was the end of the fighting. The ball that wounded
Forrest was the last that drew blood in the battle of Shiloh. The repulse at
the Fallen Timbers put an end to whatever desire the Union army may have had
for pursuit. From the crest where we had begun our charge we watched them
collect their dead and wounded and turn back the way they had come. That was
the last we saw of them.

Out of the group of prisoners taken here, I heard one tell a
questioner that he was from Sherman's division and that the officer we had
watched while he studied the field with his glasses was Sherman him-self. I was
afoot then, and one of the Tennessee troopers let me ride behind him. We caught
up with the column on the Corinth road and doubled it a ways until the horse
began to fag and I got down. It was shank's mare for me from there on in.

Having seen Sherman face to face that way—even if I had not
recognized him at the time—I kept remembering the crazy notion I had had, while
going to sleep the night before the battle, about capturing him and making him
admit he was wrong about what he'd said that Christmas Eve a year and three
months ago, at the Louisiana State Military Academy; he was superintendent.

That year I had the measles and couldn’t go home for the
holidays. It was gloomy in the big infirmary with all the other cadets away
enjoying turkey and fireworks, so as soon as I got better—though I still wasn’t
allowed to get up and had to keep the shades drawn—Sherman had me moved into
the spare bedroom in his quarters. The place had a strong odor of niter paper,
which he burned for his asthma. I would come awake in the night hearing him
cough. He was about twenty pounds underweight and we all thought he was in
consumption.

That Christmas Eve he had supper in his sitting room with
Professor Boyd, a Virginian who taught Latin and Greek. The door was ajar and I
could see them sitting in front of the fire, enjoying their after-supper
cigars. Presently a servant came in with a newspaper which had arrived from
town. Sherman had his back to me, less than a dozen feet away, and when he spread
the paper I saw the headline big and black: South Carolina had seceded, voted
herself out of the Union.

He read it rapidly. Then he tossed the paper into Mr. Boyd's
lap and walked up and down the room while the professor read it. Finally he
stopped pacing and stood in front of Mr. Boyd, shaking a bony finger in his
face, addressing him as if he had the whole South in the room. "You people
of the South don’t know what you are doing," he said. "This country
will be drenched in blood, and God only knows how it will end. It is all folly,
madness, a crime against civilization."

He resumed his pacing, still talking. "You people speak
so lightly of war. You Don’t know what you’re talking about. War is a terrible
thing!" He reached the end of the room and came back, still talking.
"You mistake, too, the people of the North. They are a peaceable people
but an earnest people, and they will fight too—they are not going to let this
country be destroyed without a mighty effort to save it. Besides, where are
your men and appliances of war to contend against them? The North can make a
steam engine, locomotive or railway car; hardly a yard of cloth or a pair of
shoes can you make. You are rushing into war with one of the most powerful,
ingeniously mechanical and determined people on earth —right at your
doors." He stopped and frowned.

"You are bound to fail. Only in your spirit and
determination are you prepared for war. In all else you are totally unprepared,
with a bad cause to start with. At first you will make headway, but as your
limited resources begin to fail—shut out from the markets of Europe as you will
be—your cause will begin to wane. If your people will but stop and think, they
must see that in the end you’ll surely fail."

He made another turn at the end of the room, his hands
clasped beneath his coattail. As he came back I saw the firelight glisten on
the tears in his beard; they sparkled like jewels hung in the russet whiskers.

The memory of Sherman pacing the floor, saying we were bound
to fail, stayed with me constantly through the first year of the war. It rose
in my mind while I was joining up, during the heart-breaking attempt to hold
the shaky Line that snapped at Bowling Green and Donelson, during the long
retreat from Kentucky into Mississippi, and during the march to battle between
those two creeks on the tableland above Pittsburg Landing. He was the first
American I ever heard refer to the cause of constitutional liberty as a bad
one: I knew he was wrong there, I could discount that. But some of the other
things—the threat of blockade, for instance, the comparison of our mechanical
powers and resources—were not so easily set aside.

It was not until the charge at the Fallen Timbers that I
found the answer, the oversight in his argument. He hadn’t mentioned Forrest or
men Like Forrest, men who did not fight as if odds made the winner, who did not
necessarily believe that God was on the side of the big battalions, who would
charge a brigade with half a regiment of weary men and send that brigade
stumbling back to its tents demoralized and glad to be let alone. The army that
had Forrest—and would use him—could afford to put its trust in something
beside
mechanical aptitude or numbers.

This was the answer to all he had said, and it made my
future certain. I said goodbye to staff work, the placing of words on paper
where they looked good and played you false, and determined that when I got
back to Corinth I would get myself another horse and enlist under Forrest,
commissioned or not. Or if it turned out that Forrest did not recover from the
wound he had received that day (which seemed Likely) I would enlist under
someone as much like him as possible—Wirt Adams, say, or John Morgan. I was
through with visions of facing Sherman in his tent and forcing him at pistol
point to admit that he was wrong. The time to face him down would be after the
war, when no pistol would be needed and the fact could speak for itself.

It was a load lifted from my brain—I was Like a man long
troubled by a bad dream who suddenly discovers he can sleep without its return.
Instead of being a prophecy, as I had feared, the things Sherman said that
Christmas Eve were a goad, a gauntlet thrown down for me to pick up. I hoped he
would last the war so I could tell him.

These things were in my mind as I traveled south on the
Corinth road, first on horseback behind the Tennessee trooper, then trudging
along in boots that got tighter and tighter across the instep. They had been
made for me by
Jeanpris
Brothers in New Orleans and
they were strictly for riding. When I had slit them and rejoined the column
they felt fine at first, but soon the rain began. I started to fag. The boots
got worse than ever; it was like walking on pinpoints. Holding onto the
tailgate of the wagon was a help. My feet did not touch the ground as long that
way, it seemed, and they no longer had to propel my body forward. All they had
to do was swing one-two
one-two
with the pull of the
mules, the rhythm of it washing all else out of my mind until I began to
remember General Johnston and the way he died at high tide of the battle.

"It don’t hurt much, Captain," the boy said.
"I just can’t lift it."

Then it was late afternoon, the rain coming slow and steady,
not really unpleasant once you were all the way wet, provided you were tired
enough not to complain —which I was—or had something else hurting you enough to
keep your mind oil the rain—which I had. Both sides of the road were Uttered
with equipment thrown away by soldiers and by teamsters to lighten their loads:
extra caissons and fifth wheels abandoned by the artillerymen when their horses
got too weak to haul them, bowie knives and Bibles and playing cards which some
of the men had managed to hold onto all the way to the fight and through the
fighting, and occasional stragglers sitting beside the road with their heads on
their knees, taking a breather.

As twilight drew in, the wind veered until it came directly
out of the north, whistling along the boughs of roadside trees. Thunder rumbled
and the rain was like icy spray driven in scuds along the ground. It grew dark
suddenly, not with the darkness of night but with the gathering of clouds, a
weird, eerie refulgence. Thunder pealed and long zigzags of lightning forked
down, bright yellow against the sky. The air had a smell of electricity; when I
breathed it came against my tongue with a taste like brass. The rain turned to
sleet, first powdery, almost as soft as snow, then larger and larger until it
was hail, the individual stones as large as partridge eggs, plopping against
the mud and rattling against the wagon bed with a clattering sound Like a stick
being raked along a picket fence. Within an hour it was two inches deep
everywhere, in the fields, on the roofs of cabins, and in the wagons where the
wounded lay.

We crossed the state line, entering Mississippi again. The
storm had passed by then, the worst of it, and what was left of daylight
filtered through. The countryside was strange and new, all white and clean
except for the muddy puddles. On a rail fence beside the road a brown thrasher
sat watching the column go past, and for some reason he singled me out, the
steady yellow bead of his eye following me, the long bill turning slowly in
profile until I came abreast: whereupon he sprang away from the rail with a
single quick motion, his wings and narrow tail the color of dusty cinnamon, and
was gone.