by Bob Mayer
Officers were issuing contradictory orders, sergeants were getting their men into formation to go in which direction no one seemed to know, and privates were swallowing their breakfasts as fast as they could. Confusion reigned, which Ben was beginning to realize was the norm for combat. It was a far cry from the precise dress parades on the Plain at West Point.
The sound of combat was eerie. The crackle of musketry in the distance, the muted roar of cannons, meant men were dying. To be swallowing a lumpy biscuit at the same time seemed surreal and Ben’s stomach rebelled. He went over to a tree and doubled over behind it. The biscuit came up, having barely touched his stomach.
He scrambled back to his horse and mounted. Those who saw said nothing, each man lost in their own world. A few, the most frightened, were talking loudly, as if trying to convince themselves. They were all waiting to be told what to do as his company stood in formation next to the frozen road. The firing was to the right, Ben had no doubt of that, so he wondered why the officers were confused. There were now musket-less soldiers wandering past in retreat, eyes vacant, indicating lines being broken, men being killed, the flank turned.
A murmur rippled through the ranks. Ben looked to his left and saw two men galloping at an insane pace down the icy path. One wore a plain officer’s uniform but carried himself in a way that said he was in charge. The other wore buckskin pants, a flannel shirt and had a long rifle across the pommel of his saddle.
“It’s Grant,” someone said.
As the two raced past, the man who looked like a frontiersman glanced to his right, making eye contact, and Ben felt a jolt.
The man jerked back on his reins, causing Grant to also rein in.
“Elijah?” Grant called out.
“Go on, General,” the man yelled. “I’ll be right behind.”
Grant wasted no more time, continuing toward the sound of the firing.
Ben gripped his reins tightly as the man trotted his horse up. He halted a few feet away.
“Ben Rumble?”
“Yes, sir.”
The man stuck his hand out. “I’m Elijah Cord. You have my ring.”
The orderly withdrawal was over. The Yankees, instead of retreating like any sensible minded soldiers should have, were fighting to the death to regain control over the road to Nashville. Counter-attack after counter-attack was bashing into the Confederates outside the fort, who attacked back in turn. King ordered his men to stop pulling the artillery from the walls, sensing the battle was turning. Just as he did that, shells began arcing in from the river. The gunboats were back.
“What color were my mother’s eyes?” Ben asked Cord as he broke the handshake.
Cord said nothing. He wasn’t capable for the moment. After so many years, to see his son as a man in the flesh, when all he’d had were a sketch of a child, old memories, and regrets was overwhelming.
Ben raised two fingers, pointing at Cord’s eyes, then he pointed at his own. “I see me.”
Cord gathered himself. “Your mother had the most beautiful green eyes.”
“What happened?” Ben asked.
Cord looked to his left. Grant disappeared around a curve in the road. Cord reached to his belt and unfastened it. He slid the Bowie off. “We got to fight now, son. You stay safe and we’ll talk.” He tossed the knife to Ben and then galloped after Grant.
King and Forrest watched as Generals Floyd, Pillow and Buckner argued. A steamboat puffing smoke was tied up to the dock outside the fort, pressing them to make a decision.
Floyd bowed to Pillow. “I turn the command over to you, sir.”
Pillow turned to Buckner. “I pass it to you, sir.”
Buckner didn’t flinch, but he wasn’t pleased. “I assume command. Get me pen, paper and ink and send for a bugler.”
Floyd and Pillow scurried away to the steamer as soon as they scribbled their names on the order relinquishing command. The deckhands were tossing off the mooring ropes before the two generals were even aboard.
“How’d you know?” King asked Forrest.
The cavalry commander spit tobacco juice in a long stream. “I was in those meetings. All they talked of, except Buckner who’s stuck here now, was saving their hides. Both are afraid of being hanged as traitors by the Yankees if they get caught. Should have shot them myself. Buckner seems a decent sort, but it’s too late now.”
“I’m not surrendering,” King said as another gunboat shell exploded nearby.
“I aint either,” Forrest said. “This war got a long way to go.”
Grant took charge in the absence of effective subordinate leadership on the routed right flank. Many men were out of ammunition, but Grant, with his quartermaster experience, knew where stocked depots would be positioned. He issued orders to officers, to sergeants, to privates. He even corralled some frightened horses. By force of will and his single-mindedness he turned the routed regiments on the right around, even as the units in the center began counter-attacking based on the orders he’d rapidly issued on the way through.
Cord had a hard time focusing. He followed Grant with his body, but all he could think of was Ben, sitting tall in the saddle, in a blue uniform. A man.
“Fill your cartridge boxes quickly, men,” Grant shouted at a group of soldiers standing in a confused group. “The enemy is that way!” Grant pointed with the now dead cigar he’d had clamped between his teeth the entire ride.
The soldiers obeyed. As they always did when Grant gave orders.
Ben tried to calm his horse. It wasn’t the cannon fire or even the nearby musketry. It was the unearthly screaming of the rebels in the assault. None had ever heard the like before. It wasn’t a cheer. It wasn’t a shout. It was a sound that came from somewhere deep inside a man who was committed to an assault that would end in victory or death. Whose very essence was pouring up from the center of his being. The rebel yell screeched across the battlefield for the first time.
Ben felt as if a cold snake had just coiled around his spine and tightened down, while sinking its teeth into the back of his head. He gripped his rifle tighter.
The company commander came riding up, having finally received orders to maneuver. “Forward at the trot!”
The 5th Ohio moved out, passing through retreating infantry. The unit slid into a seam in the Union lines and dismounted at the edge of a patch of woods, every fourth man taking the reins for the other three and pulling the horses further back into the trees. Ben moved forward to the edge of the treeline with the rest of his unit. The regiment took a line.
For the first time they saw the enemy. Men clad in mud-splattered gray and butternut uniforms were moving across the front in an open field about two hundred yards away, unaware of the dismounted Union cavalry in the treeline.
The order to prepare to fire was given.
Ben put his musket to his shoulder, pulling back the hammer. He saw a rebel officer, pointing with his saber, issuing orders.
Ben slid his finger over the trigger as he aimed at the man.
“Fire!”
The regiment fired.
Ben couldn’t.
Grant grabbed Cord’s arm, shaking him out of his trance. “Are you faring well?”
Cord nodded, focusing on his surroundings. He saw a body, a man in tattered gray, lying in the field next to the road. A haversack was on the man’s back. He’d pawed at his clothes, searching in vain for the bullet that had killed him.
Grant was about to spur his horse on, further into the turned flank when Cord dismounted and ran over the man.
“Elijah?” Grant called out.
Cord waved a hand, for Grant to come over. Cord pulled the pack off the man’s back and opened it. He stared at the contents for a moment, and then looked up. “They aren’t attacking to destroy us, Sam. They’re trying to break out. He’s got his personal gear in here. They’re skedaddling.”
It took Grant three seconds to realize the implications. “We have them!”
Cord ran to his horse as Grant
galloped forward. Within a minute they spotted a Union division commander sitting under a tree, issuing orders to couriers. The commander jumped to his feet as Grant road up.
“General,” Grant said to the man. “The moment is now. You must take the firing pits outside Fort Donelson. Seal them in. Can you do it?”
“My men can take the gates of hell, sir!” The division commander wheeled to his staff. “No firing caps. Bayonets only. We load and fire when we are amongst them!”
The division rose up out of the ground, blue ghosts, bayonets ready, and charged.
It was over in fifteen minutes. The firing pits were taken and Fort Donelson was cut off.
Evening was drawing its shadow over the battleground and Grant turned his stallion toward the rear to establish a new headquarters. Cord rode beside him, the horses picking their way among the dead and wounded littering the ground.
“Worse than anything in Mexico,” Grant muttered.
Two wounded men lay close together on the side of the road. A Confederate private and a Union officer. Both badly wounded, now bound next to each other in pain. Most likely caused by the other. Grant halted and dismounted.
“Elijah,” Grant called. “Your canteen.”
Cord sighed and reached into his saddlebag. He pulled out a flask he hadn’t taken a sip from in thirteen years. “They need more than water, Sam.” He tossed it.
Grant knelt between the men and gave one, then the other, a sip of the brandy.
“Send for stretchers!” Grant called out in his command voice, which never seemed a yell, but always carried clearly.
Corpsmen came hurrying up and they placed the officer on a stretcher, ignoring the private.
Grant was back on his horse, but he held in place. “Take the Confederate also. The war is over for both men.”
Another stretcher was produced and both wounded were carried away.
Shoulders slumped in exhaustion, Grant nudged his horse and continued on. He held out the flask to Cord.
“Keep it, Sam. Was just carrying it as a reminder.”
Grant raised it to his lips, took a draft, then capped it and shoved it inside his tunic. “Let’s get away from this awful place. I suppose this work is the devil’s part in all of us.”
They rode in silence except for the cries of wounded men all around and the quieter, but more insidious prayers of dying men, beseeching God. Some were whispering for their mothers to help them in their most dire moment.
“’Man’s inhumanity to man, makes countless thousands mourn’,” Grant murmured, reciting a poem Cord remembered from cow year at West Point.
“’Tis true,” Cord said.
Grant gestured for an aide. “Have artillery brought up to the ridge to bear on the fort. We will make them yield in the morning.”
The yielding began earlier.
King accompanied Forrest to the bunker where General Buckner was ensconced.
“Sir, me and Captain King here—” Forrest began, but Buckner waved his free hand for silence as he wrote with the other.
Headquarters, Fort Donelson, 16 February, 1862
Sir. In consideration of all the circumstances governing the present situation of affairs at this station, I propose to the commanding officers of the Federal forces the appointment of commissioners to agree upon terms of capitulation of the forces and posts under my command, and in that view suggest an armistice until 12 o’clock today.
I am, sir, very respectfully, your ob’t se’v’t
S.B. Buckner
Brig. Gen. C.S.A.
Buckner folded the piece of paper and handed it to a lieutenant. “Deliver this, with my respects, to General Grant.”
Then he looked at the two officers. “You wish to depart to fight another day, Colonel Forrest?”
“I do, sir.”
“And you, Captain King?”
“I have duties in the east,” King said, “with the Navy, that I must return to.”
“You may both depart, gentlemen.”
“I couldn’t fire,” Ben said. “I let my fellow soldiers down.”
Cord and Ben were seated on a log next to a blaze. They were just outside a farmhouse where Grant had set up his field headquarters. Cord had been able to track down his son rather easily, given how few cavalry units were attached to Grant’s army. He’d escorted Ben back to the headquarters, not certain how to answer whatever questions would arise or how to even describe the past decades and that fateful morning so long ago. But his son didn’t seem interested in any of that at the moment.
“It’s normal to be scared in your first battle,” Cord said. “I bet a lot of fellows didn’t fire. I seen fellows who just keep reloading but never pull the trigger. End up with five or six balls in the barrel.”
“I had an officer in my sights,” Ben said. “I just started imagining the bullet hitting him, wondering if he had a wife, a family.”
“Can’t imagine like that in a fight,” Cord said. “You had too much time to think before it all. But I’d rather you not shoot than take pleasure in it like some do. You know, there are jobs around the army that don’t require shooting. Stretcher-bearers and such.”
“And those jobs keep one in the rear and safe,” Ben said, shaking his head. “You sound like fa—” he paused.
“Lucius is a good man,” Cord said. “He’s your true father, I know that.”
Ben reached inside his shirt. He pulled out the silver chain and West Point ring he’d worn for so many years. “You should have this back.”
Cord demurred. “No. I gave it to you a long time ago and it’s yours.”
“I didn’t earn it,” Ben said. “I can’t wear it openly or be accused of being something I’m not.” He shoved it into Cord’s callused palm.
The two sat in uneasy silence for a while, which was interrupted by a pair of soldiers escorting a Confederate lieutenant bearing a flag of truce and a note. Cord waved to the lieutenant and intercepted the note meant for Grant. He read it by firelight.
“Ben,” Cord said, “best be getting back to your unit. We can catch up later.”
Ben stood, but before he could get to his horse, Cord hugged his son, holding him tight. “I’m sorry for all the times I wasn’t there for you.”
Ben could only nod, eyes moist.
Reluctantly, Cord let go of his son and went into the farmhouse. Grant was asleep on the kitchen floor.
“Sam.”
Grant was instantly awake. “Another attack?”
“Come to the fire,” Cord said.
They walked outside to the blaze. Without comment, Cord handed the note to Grant.
Grant read it, then reached into his tunic and pulled out the flask. He uncapped and took a long, deep drink. “Interesting it’s from Buckner, not Pillow or Floyd.”
“I suppose they might be elsewhere by now,” Cord said.
“Well, well. What answer shall I send to General Simon Bolivar Buckner, Elijah?”
“Remember the night you took the duty to help me?” Cord asked.
Grant laughed, light-hearted for the moment. “I do indeed.” He snapped his fingers and an aide brought up a writing tablet, paper and pen.
Headquarters Army in the Field
Camp Near Donelson
February 16, 1862
General S. B. Buckner.
Confederate Army.
Sir. Yours of this date, proposing armistice and appointment of Commissioners to settle terms of capitulation, is just received. No terms except an unconditional and immediate surrender can be accepted. I propose to move immediately upon your works.
I am, sir, very respectfully,
Your ob’t se’v’t
U.S. Grant
Brig. Gen.
Grant blew on the ink to make sure it was dry, and folded the note. He didn’t hand it to the waiting lieutenant. He held it out to Cord.
“Elijah. Would you do me the honor? I believe General Buckner will get the message much more clearly if delivered by your h
and.”
Cord rode through the Union lines with the Confederate officer just before dawn. They entered Fort Donelson and dismounted. All was in turmoil. Wounded men crowded the interior of the fort and men were moving to and fro, many without any apparent purpose. A cluster of cavalry was mounting up, a huge officer in the lead. Cord froze when he recognized the man next to the cavalry commander as the unit began to ride past, trying to escape.
“King.”
The entire column halted behind them as Nathan Bedford Forrest and King paused.
“Cord,” King acknowledged. “Come to take the fort from the cowards?”
“The official tender of surrender was made but it has not been accepted,” Cord said. “You’ll be fired on if you try to escape.”
“I didn’t come here to surrender,” Forrest said, spurring his horse and moving on. “They may fire as they will and I will return hot lead in kind.”
King shook his head in disgust. “You’re fighting against your own state.”
“I’m fighting for my country,” Cord replied.
“More the fool you.” King leaned over in his saddle, his face scant inches from Cord’s. “You’ve always been the fool. Something you should know. I’m the one who killed your father.”
Cord reached up and jerked King off the horse. The two tumbled into the mud, flailing away at each other. Soldiers jumped in, pulling them apart. The officer who’d brought Buckner’s letter was outraged. “You’re under a flag of truce!” he yelled at Cord.
“Let’s go! Darkness is wasting,” Forrest shouted at King.
King pointed at Cord. “We’ll meet again. Count on it.”
Cord wiped mud out of his eyes and off his face as Forrest’s cavalry and George King galloped out of the gate. There was a scattering of shots, but no serious opposition to the fleeing forces as word had already spread like wildfire in the Union army that surrender had been offered. Few were willing to put their lives on the line when the end was in sight.