“We just keep our eyes out. If the enemy does come, we just find the right means and slip away and hide, surrender. I hear that if you take the oath, you are set free,” Holly continued.
John turned to Grover. “You in on this?”
“First I’m hearing it,” David Grover replied with a shake of his head.
“You agree? You think it’s time?” John pressed his friend.
Grover grunted. “Every day goes by, I get more tired of this. If my family at risk if I leave, they more at risk if I die. Word from home is that no one is positive about a peace, and many more folk is just waitin’ fer it to just be over. Since we is soldiers along with those who willingly volunteered, our families back home isn’t singled out no more. Perhaps nothing will happen if just up an’ disappear.”
David Grover had been John’s closest friend before the war and was that especially now. He was younger than John, shorter and rounder around the middle, and in general Grover always tried to put a positive spin on even the worst situation. David had been the first to oppose secession and to help Phillip Leach work his land after Leach was beaten savagely by Campbell and Wade for the crime of being from the north.
“We do it during the fighting, take them days to figure out if we wasn’t just captured or something, or we surrender first chance we get an’ they can’t do nothin’ to our families. Either way, we get out,” Glenn stated and gave a hard shove on the handle, dropping an avalanche of earth into the gooey morass.
While John, Grover, Leach, and Holly were being led away like condemned men, Glenn was hiding out in the mountains trying to wait out the crisis. He’d been planning escape from the minute he was rooted out. Glenn wasn’t one to just let things happen, and he had pushed John and the others to take action. If John was the solidifying force behind a plan, Glenn was the impetus for it.
Despite the near-freezing temperatures, they were all sweating now as the sink was expanded and elongated, parts of it filled in and covered.
John wasn’t any more enamored of each dawning day in the service of the Confederacy than the others, but taking the chance to get out wasn’t a prospect he relished either. The old threats still seemed real, and anything could happen to his family if it were learned that he had deserted. He had been adamant about joining with the other Peace Society men before secession but had decided that the best way to serve and protect his family now was to get the war over with. He didn’t mind taking a chance for himself, but it wasn’t just his own comfort he had to worry about.
“I don’t know. We puttin’ our families back home at risk,” John said.
“They at risk now,” Glenn replied, leaning into his shovel. “We get killed, an’ no money goes back but a death pension.”
The conspiratorial attitudes were attracting the attention of their overseer, Sergeant Wade.
“You niddering wastes, quit jawin’ and get to finishing that sink,” Wade scolded. He was trying to roll a cigarette, but the cold had reduced his fingers to sausages and he kept dropping his tobacco upon the ground, with oaths each time he did so.
“Look, we better off all leavin’ if we gonna. We can make it to the Yankee lines quicker than goin’ home,” Grover said, starting to warm to the idea.
“You can surrender an’ take the oath, but gettin’ home is out of the question,” John replied in a low voice. “You can volunteer, I hear, if you take the oath, an’ serve in a Yankee regiment. But you still in the war, an’ who knows what going to happen to your family back home when they learn you’ve turned?” He had long ago resigned to fight if for nothing else but his own life and those of his friends. Glenn, who had tried to run from the army, was free to leave whenever he thought he could escape, but taking them all with him was another matter. John was unconvinced it was worth it.
“Say you do slip away, say you do get to the Yankee lines, then what?” John asked, resting for a moment on his shovel and ignoring Wade. “You going to volunteer to fight us? Your own people from Arkansas? You take up arms, your family will be evicted from their homes. This time Campbell make it happen.”
“My family already evicted,” Glenn replied bitterly. When they dragged Glenn out of the mountains where he’d successfully hidden for five months, the local authorities had already confiscated his property, and his family was renting a room in Pitman’s Ferry. He was hauled to Little Rock until they decided what to do with him. Of the five men, his was the only one whose land had been sold at auction. “They also readying to go north. I got nothin’ more to protect by marking a single day more in this army.”
John Meeks listened with some trepidation. There was a danger that one man leaving would spark a full company mutiny. The company officers had taken to keeping their reluctant volunteers well in hand, but as the months wore on and the desertions were few, the regulations had relaxed a little—perhaps enough to allow for something to happen.
And after all, John thought, there was still the death penalty if you were caught outside the camp in the act of quitting the army. No one from K Company was ever allowed to be outside the camp, and picket duty was always in a group with a loyal NCO or officer in charge. They had gotten used to it. No passes were ever granted to go into town or to the nearest civilian population for errands or on leave. They were always in camp, and other companies always picketed the K Company area. Normally a regiment would post guards around its camp to prevent people from coming in who did not have a pass, but theirs also prevented privates from slipping away for “liberal leave.” The K Company area was always under scrutiny.
Vanishing from the ranks was no easier in battle, despite the confusion. Sergeants stood in the rear as file closers to keep all of the privates and corporals in line, and only the best and most loyal soldiers were promoted to sergeant. The company officers always stood in the rear of the company battle line to ensure that their charges were behaving as ordered. Some of the company had managed to slip away at Shiloh later in the day when exhaustion and casualties in officers and sergeants brought a laxness in duty, but even that was not without risk. With everyone armed and loaded, a quick run might turn out to be your last—and you still had to make it through the fire of the enemy as well.
“You know what you in for if you’re caught,” John replied, leaning in further. “We losing this war, only a matter of time now. Why risk it at all?”
“Glenn’s got a point, though—why we still risking our own lives when we could just get away and see what comes?” Phillip Leach asked as he heaved a clump of semifrozen earth into the glop within the trench. “Sending my family back to Ohio also not a bad thought. Wife say merchants won’t sell to her because they still see me as a traitor. We bought that land, but no good starvin’ on it.”
“Okay, so we send our families off into the North, destitute an’ friendless. We still here,” John protested. “You forfeit your land and all that you possess on it, you got nowhere else to go. Leach, you got family in Ohio, but we got family in Mississippi. You think they will take us in after learnin’ that we deserted?”
Glenn straightened his back. “John, we do it together as our best shot of getting away. I’ll not fight another action with this regiment or this army. If action coming, then that the best time.”
David Grover nodded.
John looked at Grover and sighed. The bond between them had grown stronger in their mutual suffering in the ranks. He hated to think of parting ways with David now.
Glenn continued. “We find ourselves on the skirmish line or in line of battle, or close to the enemy, we take a chance an’ feign a wound or claim ill an’ let one of the others carry us away to the rear. Then we just see what we can do to get clear. If you afraid for your families back home, get them moving now.”
John Glenn looked at each of his compatriots for signs of agreement.
Meeks shook his head and sighed again. He could tell all of them were seriously considering this. Would he be the only dissenter? Even Phillip Leach, who had been prepared t
o give it all up and leave Arkansas when the likes of Campbell and Wade were making life rough for the transplanted Yankee before secession, had opted to go along and wait for the outcome of the war to decide itself. John had been counseling them all along to wait it out, that the war would soon be over, but even he was beginning to suspect that was not the case. Glenn had always been a loner, but this time he was making inroads. But to go in search of one’s rights now? To try to move their families in the wintertime? Wagons had to be loaded, food laid up, bad weather prepared for. This was madness. This was desperation.
“We either all in on it, or those not keep your mouths shut about it,” Glenn finally added as the silence and the stillness begged to be broken.
John Meeks turned his attention back to his shovel. There was no question about keeping quiet, though who knew what punishment would be meted out to those who knew about an attempt to desert and didn’t say anything. He just nodded, unwilling to commit either way.
“I’m in,” whispered Phillip Leach.
“Me too,” added David Grover. Looking over at Meeks, he said, “It going to catch up to us sometime. We gonna get shot an’ killed by Yankees or by our own people if we get caught. I’ve had my fill of Yankee minié balls and more than my fill of Campbell’s command.”
James Holly had been quiet the whole time, digging and listening and keeping his thoughts to himself. He gave the group a quick nod and stayed his tongue. He was always the quiet one in their midst. He had at times been the model soldier, juxtaposed to the “traitors” as he took to army life more ardently than most in the company. It surprised Meeks to see him being swayed by Glenn’s pushing.
With all of them in agreement, John Meeks exhaled slowly, blowing a billow of frosty breath out of puckered lips before stating, “We do this and we all get caught, we face a firing squad, an’ then our families back home have nothing. If we get away, anything can happen to them. We all understand this, no?”
Meeks looked from man to man, and each nodded in agreement.
“We need you, John,” Glenn said. “We need you to be in on this. You got the level head, an’ I’d feel better if you was in.”
Meeks nodded in the affirmative. He couldn’t see that he had much choice. “I don’t know when the right time will come, but we have to be thinking and looking when we get close to the enemy next. We not been on picket in a long spell. Maybe that is when we go.”
Chapter 4
Skirmishers Forward
December 28 dawned cold and crisp. The 21st Ohio had been rousted before dawn to begin the process of striking camp. Fires danced at the head of each company street, and a hurried breakfast was consumed as the tent city was brought down regiment by regiment and loaded onto the brigade supply trains.
The infantryman carried everything he owned on his back, even his tent half. The dog tent was being introduced to the armies as a practical means of lightening the supply load on a force moving through open country. The Sibley tent, the army mainstay for the past decade, was heavy and took up wagon space better used for food and other transport. Unfortunately, the dog tent was just a shelter half connected with another shelter half that was open at both ends—not very practical for winter usage. The men had their heavy wool overcoats and blankets and gum blankets, and a third shelter half could be introduced to the end to form a more closed quarter, but that also meant cramming a third man into the middle. Still, the tents were easily struck, and each man carried his own half in his knapsack.
In the firelight, Philip helped Lucius take his own respectable wall tent down. Surgeon Young, with whom he shared the tent, was busy inventorying his kit and tools, knowing that he was going to be practicing his vocation soon. As the brigade moved forward, he would come under the direction of the division’s chief surgeon, Ferdinand Gross, who would direct every regimental medical man in the establishment of hospitals and the use and distribution of supplies.
“That man’ll demand that I account for every ounce of sulfa and quinine and every foot of bandage,” Young groused as he worked. “He’ll insist the hospital stewards report to him personally so he can count the number of pills they make and dispense and how much wax they use. The man’s an ass, a war office clerk who thinks medicine is done by ledger sheet and precise calculation. He’ll want to know how many limbs have been severed, and if I have to take one too many arms or legs, he’ll write a complaint to the general!”
Philip had been ignoring Young for the most part, watching Lucius instead. Young liked to talk like he was the smartest man in the camp, despite his own recent elevation to the role of surgeon, but the fact was he was little more than a glorified tinkerer in medicine, only fit for the most basic procedures and ailment diagnoses.
As Young droned on and on about how unfair it was that he should have to submit to an upstart surgeon from Illinois, the hospital steward, Detweiler, was trying to concentrate on his ledger as he counted his supply of bottles. A man trained in apothecary and the finer points of drug dispensing in Cincinnati, Detweiler was responsible for dispensing any drug the surgeon ordered be administered to a soldier.
Philip didn’t have a problem with Young as a rule. He was a nice enough man to share a tent with. He never snooped through one’s personal stuff, and he didn’t snore that much. The regimental rumors were that Young was competent enough to probe a wound or hack off a limb, but that his country doctor training had been limited to following his father around. The joke was that you didn’t want to get a sniffle and have him decide you were finished. If he couldn’t cut off a limb, there was no hope for you. Philip thought to himself that Detweiler was probably more qualified to be a sawbones than Young. Even Lucius was grinning at the man’s incessant complaining.
“I’se hear de colonel not want the other conter’bands along,” Lucius asked. “You fink we’s come along?”
“Of course,” Philip replied. “You want to see the war, don’t you? I don’t think Neibling is going to give any wagon space for the servants, but he can’t roust you from the camp against his officers’ protests. I wouldn’t worry about Neibling none. You can march alongside and carry your tent.”
Lucius looked down and nodded slightly, a hint of hesitation in his response.
“Most of the other servants are coming along—going to keep doing what they are already doing for the company officers. I don’t see why you can’t too,” Philip said.
“You sure?” Lucius asked.
Philip reflected a little on the contraband camp in Corinth and the energy Chaplain Alexander had expended on those who gathered there to find shelter and express their freedom. The camp in Nashville was not so well regulated nor well kept. The denizens just existed and hired themselves out to whoever from the army regiments presented the opportunity for gainful employment. Otherwise it was go back to a tent and draw food from the rations supplied. The industriousness of the contraband slaves Alexander was utilizing in Corinth was not being copied elsewhere. Philip hated to see Lucius left behind.
“Neibling can’t prevent us from retaining a batman, and I think the others are steadfastly going to ignore his diktat,” Philip replied as he packed the last of his things into a traveling chest and pressed heavily down upon the lid so the latch could be fixed. Sitting a moment upon the top, he watched as other soldiers went about their duties of cleaning up the company streets and began to line up with their traps on, fully encumbered with rifle, pack, leathers, overcoat, and frozen fingers.
Young was still going on and Hospital Steward Detweiler still dutifully tallying bottles from the wooden chest that housed all of the regiment’s medicinal drugs.
For the moment, Philip’s attention was diverted to Detweiler. Every third or so bottle would be uncorked and sniffed, its label scrutinized through squinted eyes, and corked once more before being replaced in the box. The labels themselves were dirty and worn, obviously making identification difficult. As Philip watched, Detweiler retrieved several bottles that had already been scrutinized a
nd gave them a second olfactory inspection before consulting his ledger once more to make an entry.
The man knew his herbs and concoctions, Philip thought. He was the one most ill soldiers saw at sick call, the man who examined lumpy throats and listened to various symptoms. He spent a large portion of his time rolling wax pills for diarrhea and other stomach ailments. The most popular remedy on hand was quinine, from what Philip could tell; it was the largest bottle by far amidst the collection, with some bottles no taller than one’s pinky.
Steward Detweiler paused now and again to nod or grunt an “uh-huh” in reply to Young’s statements, but otherwise he didn’t appear to be listening. He was clearly more taken by his powders than by Young’s travails.
If the army was beginning to pay more attention to the level of skill of its volunteer surgeons, they were doing so even more with their hospital stewards, whose training and schooling was just beginning to be a matter of course in civilian practice. Unless you had trained under a respected apothecary or held a certificate from one of the new schools, you didn’t get a post in the army.
Philip’s attention was drawn to movement along the regimental street as Captain Canfield wandered by the staff area with his own servant in tow, carrying a load of equipment and baggage. His servant was another of the contrabands from the Nashville camp, dressed in Federal uniform and looking for the world like a soldier himself.
Lucius nudged Philip and pointed to the parade. Philip nodded.
“You keeping your man?” Philip called out, though he knew that this was so both by appearance and from knowing Canfield’s stance. Philip motioned to Lucius to follow as he jogged to catch up to Canfield.
Both Colonel Norton and Lieutenant Colonel Neibling had taken actions that Canfield opposed in the past. This was just another act of disobedience—within reason.
River of Blood (Shiloh Series Book 4) Page 5