The battalion wagons had gathered a hundred yards beyond the pike, and Paul volunteered to go and collect as many packets of rounds as he could carry and hurry back. And he would hurry back—after wandering over to see what was happening with his old regiment.
The survivors of the near encirclement were still gathering in more or less a mob formation. Winded and wounded men came over to where the colors were planted, and nearby Colonel Neibling and General Rosecrans were in consultation with General Miller.
Captain Wofford was trying to get his own company in line in their rightful place when Paul approached his old comrades.
Many were too shell-shocked to notice that Paul was even there, but Private Pine greeted him warmly.
“Pearson, pard!” Pine cried in delight. Up until Paul’s selection for the Pioneers, Pine had been his closest pard. Since Corinth, both had grown up enough to realize that they were in for a penny and in for a pound.
Pine looked haggard and worn, as did all the company.
“Saw you retreat in our front. The 3rd’s over there in the trees.” Paul jerked a thumb over his right shoulder.
“It were awful, Pearson. They come at us from all sides. Shot us down like cattle,” Pine said wearily. “Don’t know any but for those here who got out of there.”
“You seen my brother?” Paul asked, looking about.
“No, not seen him since this morning early.”
“You seen Lucius, his darkie?”
“No, but some of them came through before we rallied here. He might be around here somewhere with the wounded they was bringing off. We beat?” Pine asked.
“Not yet, Private Pine,” Captain Wofford replied. “Private Pearson, haven’t seen your brother. As you can see, not much of the company made it through or has rallied yet, so I’ll mind you not to distract my company when I’m getting them into formation.”
“Sir, I’ll be off,” Paul replied stiffly. It was not the reception he’d expected from his pards, but they were no longer his pards either. There were but twenty men gathered around their captain, and about the same for the companies that were being shepherded to their colors in loose formation.
Paul nodded and left the company. With all the hundreds of men now milling about—some lying down, some just standing in small groups, and others being rallied to their colors—finding one man was going to be difficult. His brother should have been with the gaggle of officers in the 21st hurrying about, but he wasn’t.
There could be a thousand reasons why Philip wasn’t with the regiment at this moment. But Paul was worried.
Plausible reasons trooped through his mind. Philip had been left behind with the wounded, volunteering to stay; he was at brigade or division headquarters this morning; he was back in Triune or La Vergne; he was still struggling to get through in the retreat. Or he was dead or wounded. What was clear was that Paul would not know what had happened until he found someone in this sea of men who could vouch for Philip’s whereabouts.
Paul had been away too long now, his official errand left uncompleted. The enemy would not tarry long in rallying and moving upon them once more, and this time in greater force. The lull in the fighting was only the prelude to a greater effort by the enemy to finish pushing Rosecrans further down and away from the Nashville pike.
Paul had a choice: keep poking around or go back to his company. As a corporal he had a responsibility to his squad, and the pockets of his sack coat and pants were bulging with the rounds he’d drawn from the wagons. There was perhaps nothing to worry about. Philip was just not with the regiment at this moment in time. He was off on some other duty.
Taking another quick survey of the surroundings before he would go back, Paul spied a familiar black face.
Running up to the man, he cried, “Lucius, you seen my brother?”
Lucius looked at Paul a moment, and confusion showed in his eyes as he worked out who this man was and how he knew his name.
“Mars Paul,” Lucius stated tentatively, “you Chap’lin Pearson’s brother, no?”
“Yes, Captain Pearson’s my brother; have you seen him?” Paul replied impatiently.
“We bof of us start out away from de fightin’ carryin’ de wounded out o’ harm’s way, but I lost sight o’ yo’ brother as we run.”
“So he was with you this morning?” Paul asked, feeling his heart sink.
“Yes, he was wid us dis mornin’ in de fightin’.” Lucius stood with his hands thrust deep into the pockets of his trousers through the slits of his overcoat. Bloody stains marked the once light blue of his coat and the edges of his pockets.
“So . . . so the captain was helping wounded away? Did you see him go down?” Paul’s eyes pleaded for some hint of good news.
“No, Mars Paul; I didn’t sees de Chap’lin go down. I been lookin’ fo’ him too. Mens keep comin’ in from de fields. He might have hit de road furder down.”
In the lull, solitary blue forms were crawling up from the ground and limping or walking toward the new line as if they’d just woken from a nap. Others, carrying a wounded comrade in in twos or threes, hustled to clear the remaining distance before the enemy reemerged from the trees for another go.
Paul nodded and turned to go back to the Pioneers’ position, reluctantly leaving the one place his brother would try to come if and when he returned to safety. There was little else he could do short of going absent. He wanted to.
Chapter 16
In a Tight Spot
Sounds of fighting far to the right where the 3rd Battalion Pioneers were clinging to their little patch of wood told each man that the enemy was gaining their rear. Soon they would be subjected to fire from their right as well as from their front.
Paul Pearson had seen this before. The anxious looks upon the faces of his fellows and the frenetic loading and firing at an enemy whose battle lines overlapped their own and pressed in, aided by the force of numbers and the hand of God. How else to interpret the forcing of their lines ever backward? Wasn’t God behind the terrible losses and the invincibility of their foe?
Paul’s musket was hot, too hot to hold. Each discharge and process of loading meant a ginger handling of the piece as it slid to a position of rest between his feet, needing to be held steady as he reached behind him for another paper cartridge from his quickly emptying cartridge box. His hands had become calloused with months of manual labor, but the callouses didn’t shield his palms and fingers from the searing heat coming from the iron barrel of his Enfield rifle.
The enemy had come at them and retreated and now came upon them once more, having rallied their line and added more brigades to the effort. The cannons of the Chicago Board of Trade Battery were ranged in a semicircle about the hill and booming, artillery fire coming back from across their left from a cotton field where the 21st Ohio fronted. Further to their left was the Round Forest, where the colors of the 24th Ohio of General Grose’s brigade stood planted next to the brigade of General Hazen, whose occupation of the Round Forest was becoming a thorn in the side of the enemy’s left flank.
While he was out searching for ammunition, Paul had witnessed Grose and Hazen rallying along the forest and the pike, collecting the regiments to defend the Nashville pike from wherever they could lay hands on them. Johnny Henson, Sally Henson’s brother and Paul’s future brother-in-law, was clinging desperately to the cedars in the Round Forest along with Philip’s old pards. His brother still spoke of Johnny Henson and Sammy Henderson often. Paul had met them each once. Now that regiment was going through hell.
The enemy seemed desperate to clear the forest so his battalions could continue to assault the center of the Union lines. All manner of shot and shell were exploding amidst the trees. Twice the enemy’s brigades had marched into the maw of artillery fire from the Union guns and come within a stone’s throw of the trees, and twice they had been thrown back. The collection of Union cannon and regiments thrown into line to keep hold of the forest were equally desperate.
Th
e enemy pushed fresh brigades forward where the Pioneers stood near the Union center.
Pioneers were being cut down at an alarming rate by shrapnel splintering the tops of the cedars and by the musketry of the approaching enemy, who fired as they came. Every moment produced the sound of something else being struck. Tree trunks, tree limbs, and the dull thud of someone being hit. The defensive line now ranged from the right, where portions of the 3rd Battalion stood in open ground one hundred yards at an angle to the Nashville pike, extending then to the Chicago Board of Trade Battery, then to the 1st Battalion Pioneers, and then across the pike and the Round Forest. The ten-foot-high railroad berm was now blistered with rifle fire. In front of the berm, the Round Forest positions terminated at the flow of Stone’s River where the line ended. The enemy was pushing up closely along the river way.
If the Round Forest fell, so did everything else Rosecrans was trying to hold onto. The enemy would have a toehold on the pike in two places and force the center to fall back further. The Pioneers and their battery knew themselves to be in a critical spot: if they fell back, the Round Forest would fold.
Some of Paul’s pards had already fallen out. One was dead, and his feet still poked between Paul’s legs, someone having dragged his corpse a little way to the back to make room for covering down and filling the gap. Another was a few feet away, nursing a thigh wound and trying to drag himself away from the front.
The banners of Shepherd’s brigade of regulars had come streaming out of the woods and were now reforming behind the Pioneers. The enemy who had put flight to the pride of the army now pushed up close.
Paul was distracted by the absence of his brother and the thought that he might be somewhere beyond reach, behind the lines of the enemy, perhaps dead on the field. Until the war, Paul had lived his whole life underneath the shadow of his brother. Philip had volunteered and gone away, leaving only Paul and their father to carry on the daily tasks of leading the Germantown Methodists. He’d suddenly had his own life to live apart from his brother. Yet he was still the brother of Philip and the son of Charles, both preachers. Following Philip to enlist had been his own decision entirely.
Standing now in the firing line, the stripes of a corporal on his sleeves, leader of a squad of men who were falling by the moment, Paul wondered that he hadn’t gone off the rails somewhere. He hadn’t intended to become a soldier, nor had he expected to be anything but a follower the rest of his life. But something happened to him when the enemy lines drew close, such as they were now. He became something he’d never otherwise account for. He became a soldier, and one who inspired confidence.
At the moment, however, his tendency to fearlessness was melting in his worry over Philip. If he could charge ahead and burst through the enemy lines for no other reason than to go on a brother hunt, he might. He’d never make it a few steps forward before being cut down. And anyway, he had his duty.
That duty was looking more and more critical as more enemy formations appeared, advancing for an all-out push. Despite the terrific cannon fire directed at the thousands of butternut-clad enemy soldiers marching forward, they were continuing to come.
In spite of the protruding feet of his pard between his legs and the gathering pile of paper at his feet from the cartridges he was spitting out, in spite of the sounds of rounds smacking into the tree trunks, and in spite of his squad furiously loading and firing across the open space, Paul was still quite calm. His fingers burned with energy, his limbs feeling the twitching of excitement and fear and his breath beating his lungs in great gulps. Each round sent down the field added to the deathly tumult created by both sides in their efforts to kill and maim as many as possible of their respective enemies. Paul forgot he was a preacher’s son and brother and instead fought the urge to think too hard about what he was doing.
A eruption of fire and explosions from the Nashville pike behind them added to the pang of energy coursing through the Pioneers. The enemy had gotten a battery behind their positions. The pike was still crowded with fleeing soldiery and wagons. The Chicago Board of Trade Battery was still pouring fire across their front into the enemy brigades marching on the Round Forest, with several guns turning now and again to blast canister upon enemy regiments trying to rush the hill.
Paul’s grasping for the next round found only empty space in his upper tins. Time pauses when in the moment, when one is consumed with some problem or is acting on trained impulse. The moment is interrupted when the upper tins are empty and one is left to fuss with extracting the cartridges from the lower compartment.
Frustrated, Paul had to juggle his weapon, his tins, and the packages of cartridges wrapped in paper as he emptied the packet of caps into his cap box, all with the rounds whizzing by and his fellows shouting and firing. Sixty rounds had been issued early that morning when the battalion was rousted. He’d already gone through the rounds in his pockets, and now he had twenty left. His upper tins held ten rounds each, and what rounds he had been able to carry back from the wagons for his squad were also gone.
Loud peals of thunder, as if something was taking a scythe to the treetops, rushed across their front, artillery rounds flying across their length and finding nothing. Tree limbs cracked overhead as thick trunks shattered under the impact. Paul flinched as he hurried to dump the remaining paper cartridges into his other tin. Explosions of case shot above their heads sprayed shrapnel in an arc, concussing the air and sending tree limbs crashing upon their heads.
Paul finished his chore and was reaching for a cartridge when another burst cracked overhead and the man next to Paul jerked and fell. He felt something strike his own head—or was he imagining it? His head felt suddenly cold, then painful, and his legs buckled.
Stumbling backward, Paul fell through the rear rank and tried to regain his feet, but his legs wouldn’t respond. From where he lay, the firing line just feet away, the soldiers of his squad going about their business of war, Paul saw the ground around him moving with wounded and convulsing with ruptures as more artillery rounds exploded and shrapnel plunged into the ground, sending debris flying into his face.
Laying his head back, he noted the cloudy sky overhead and shivered in the cold a moment more before closing his eyes.
* * *
Up until this moment as the swirl and sounds of battle engulfed his senses, Will Hunter had been in a funk. General Wheeler was moving his tired brigade back to the army’s position before Murfreesboro. Since sunup, the sounds of battle had drifted toward them as the 1st Alabama circled the Unionist positions along the Franklin pike. The sounds of battle had come on brief wafts of the wind and then become distant thunder, rumbling along the brightening skyline in the east. Then the sounds drifted away from their line of march, heading northeast along the pike.
Will had awakened this morning waiting for the moment when Colonel Allen sent another officer to replace him. If not while on the march, he certainly would do so when they completed the march back to the army. Allen was not one to make idle threats.
As his troop readied for the move, Will had let his first sergeant make all the arrangements, too depressed to even do what he was supposed to do. He knew it was childish, but his frame of mind would not allow for any account of duty. His troop was too tired to take much notice. Rolling out of his bedroll and seeing to his own self, Will had ridden in silence and sullenness for the three hours before daylight, and only the sounds of battle began to enliven him as the regiment neared the scenes of fighting near Overall’s Creek at noon.
The command had arrived along the Franklin pike a few miles from Murfreesboro when a summons from Allen brought all of the troop commanders to a hurried conference. General Wharton’s cavalry brigade was in need of assistance. The 1st and 51st Alabama were being sent toward Overall’s Creek, where Wharton was trying to get off a haul of captured wagons and artillery from the enemy’s rear. The enemy had been pushed back to the Nashville pike, and Wharton was across Overall’s Creek scooping up retreating Federals and wago
ns by the score but running into enemy cavalry. The 1st and 51st would push north and open the way.
A weary set of officers heard the orders and the arrangements of the march, mixed emotions showing on exhausted features. With the first hint of cannonade heard from a distance, all knew that rest was the last thing they would encounter at the end of their march.
The 1st would deploy in column of companies and head for the Wilkinson pike with the 51st on the flank and then on to Overall’s Creek, hunting for the enemy’s flank and developing any enemy positions that might move to block Wharton’s escape. For Will, the orders were a welcome relief. At least he would be in command a little while longer.
The march to the Wilkinson pike was morbidly scenic: crumpled forms dotted the open fields and lined the cedar brakes. Dead artillery horses lay in groups, and prisoners gathered in groups of fifty to a hundred under the eyes of surly-looking keepers. Fresh blood streaked upon the dirt tracks of the pike itself, and the destruction became more acute as wounded Federals and Confederates could be seen moving about sluggishly, the fence lining the pike splintered and dismantled in places. Freshly wounded men walked along like sleepwalkers across the fields, cradling bloodied arms. Loud reports came from a string of cannon atop a small ridge to the right as the troops marched silently past the dead Federals lining the fence.
Severe fighting was happening close at hand as the troops moved beyond the Wilkinson pike, and the noise of musketry sounded continuously, the haze of gunpowder rising like a fog just beyond the cedars in their front. Cannon fire rocked the ground, and Will could feel the vibrations move from his horse’s hooves, up the animal’s flanks, and across his midsection, followed by the loud crack of fire moments later. Ahead, the two regiments were deploying in line of battle by battalions.
Giving his first order of the day, Will shouted the command to form the troop into line.
The fuss, as he thought it, was a formidable line of Union infantry huddled in another stand of cedars two hundred yards distant. The Nashville pike could be seen from where the Confederates formed line, the vista beyond the pike a mass of blue. The Confederate infantry to their right was milling about, reorganizing, the field in their front already dotted with their dead. The cavalry would advance on the flank of the infantry and be prepared to charge the enemy in the trees. Colonel Webb’s 51st Alabama was forming on the left of the 1st in double columns. After days of chasing about the enemy rear and finding relatively few Yankees to shoot at, forming up like this was a novelty.
River of Blood (Shiloh Series Book 4) Page 27