Rosecrans said nothing to indicate his thoughts, so Bond continued.
“From the heights, sir, one cannot gain much of a view of the enemy’s right-wing positions, as the brow of the hill obscures his line closer to the town. But the hill does have a good view of the enemy entrenchments near the river and in front of the Cowan house where the enemy tried to turn our line the other day. Crittenden has placed all of the corps’ long-range guns on this height. The enemy does seem to have a battery in position on his right that has the range on our own positions by the railroad, and he has been there for some days.”
“And General Fry,” Rosecrans asked, “has he been ordered forward?”
“Yes, sir, he is bringing with him the regiments left in Nashville. They marched this morning. He’s been given a strong cavalry escort and should be on the field by late tonight.”
“Good, we’ll send him to Van Cleve’s position across the river. We will move on the enemy from there as originally planned tomorrow morning.”
Rosecrans stated it unconvincingly, betraying a sense of his own doubt.
Bond hesitated. The new aide-de-camp had suddenly remembered something, and he was loath to bring it up now. He didn’t have much choice about it. “Sir, Van Cleve has reported increased activity from his pickets—movements of regiments from Murfreesboro and more artillery coming forward.”
“When?” Rosecrans cried. “Why wasn’t this brought to me before?”
“Sir,” Bond shifted uneasily on his perch upon a collapsible canvas chair, “I . . . I uh, it came a little while ago, and I was collating the reports into—”
“I needed to see that when it came, Captain!” Rosecrans snapped. “Do McCook or Thomas report anything?”
“Sir, no sir,” Bond replied quickly. “Only Van Cleve. His report just says increased picket firing and some movement of troops behind the enemy’s line in the woods. But sir, that is all it says. No indication that anything is about to happen.”
Rosecrans paused midpose, mouth open but eyes closed. Could Bragg be about to steal a march upon him once again? Picket firing had been a staple of the reports coming in from the corps commanders. The picket lines were close in some places, and the firing was compulsory. In other places all was quiet as both sides decided to let the other alone. But an increase in activity meant something.
“It is after two p.m. o’clock; no one has reported brigades being moved from their fronts?” Rosecrans asked.
“No, sir, but the enemy occupies a strip of cedars that obscures his rear from our view. Half of Bragg’s army could have shifted around and we’d not know it, and the enemy cavalry on his wings has screened what activity we have observed. We know he has not pulled back from our right nor from his center to the river, where we do have a view of his entrenchments.”
“Van Cleve is isolated on his side of the river, but the position is strong and supported by the heights opposite,” Rosecrans said, mostly to himself. “I’ll feel better once we get the ford and the bridge repaired and Thomas in motion.”
Bond nodded in agreement and waited a moment more for his chief to say something else. Garesche had been more adept at reading Rosecrans and handling his little outbursts of energy or directives. It was never comfortable to assume a position vacated by the death of one’s predecessor. A few times Rosecrans had called out for Julius to pass on some directive when he’d suddenly realized his mistake, and awkward moments had passed while the general decided whether to apologize or ignore it.
The tent fell silent for some minutes when Bond decided Rosecrans wasn’t going to say anything further and turned back to his work of drafting the official orders.
A sudden violence broke the peace. Clear and loud came a rumble of cannon fire following a single shot fired close by. Then the noise broke like a thunderclap from all parts of the field.
Rosecrans jumped up and rushed out of the tent with Bond on his heels. With their own artillery responding, it was difficult to pinpoint just where the danger lay. Everyone seemed to be firing.
“Get the mounts, we need to see what is happening!” Rosecrans shouted. He gave a little smile, clearly pleased that something was happening to break the doldrums of the afternoon.
Enemy artillery posted along the river and on a hilltop across from Polk’s corps were indeed firing upon the Union positions from all over the field. Rosecrans and his staff rode the length of the Federal line running parallel to the pike. There did not seem to be a single part of the field that was not brimming with the discharges of cannon, smoke wafting into the air so that anything in the distance was difficult to discern. Was the enemy actually moving on any part of the line? Rosecrans was not satisfied that he had divined their intent just yet.
“Send to Van Cleve, what is happening on your front?” Rosecrans shouted as a fusillade of return fire from a string of Witworth rifled guns exploded in a volley. Today had been an artilleryman’s war, and the Union forces had the advantage in long-range cannon despite their losses of guns on the 31st. The hill overlooking the good ford was a haze of gun smoke as battery after battery took action in the return fire.
“Up the hill, gentlemen!” Rosecrans cried, a look of fire in his eyes.
At the top of the hill and overlooking the opposite height—a height that rose to a point several hundred feet above them before the slow ascent down to the river—Rosecrans stood his mount behind Captain Mendenhall’s position as he directed the collection of guns to respond to the annoying fire of an enemy battery that had plagued the hilltop for days. The enemy guns were behind barricades, four of them, attended by another battery that would roll up, go into battery, and blast away until driven off, only to return a few hours later and repeat the process. Mendenhall had been trying to drive off the fifth battery again without success. Its crews were well-protected behind a wall of rock and fence posts.
Several batteries in the middle of the hill were taking the brunt of the enemy fire and were in the process of being withdrawn after leaving men and numerous horses dead on the field. The infantry supports were lying down but also taking casualties. Rosecrans’s army was disposed so as to defend against any assault on the right side of the river. Other than a brief time on the 31st when Van Cleve had been withdrawn from the left side and off the hill, the enemy had been kept away from the ford, and Rosecrans’s army had regained control over both sides of the river via the two critical hilltops.
On a map, it looked clear that Rosecrans would have to control both hills to retain his position on the field and to threaten Murfreesboro. But in person, Rosecrans could see that the hill he stood upon now was like a knife poking into Bragg’s ribs. It overlooked a mile of Bragg’s line running from the right side of Stone’s River and on into the cedars. It likewise overlooked Rosecrans’s new line along the Nashville pike.
“The enemy gets guns up here, we in for a hot time of it,” Rosecrans muttered to himself.
Captain Mendenhall was just conferring with several of his battery commanders when a sudden shout arose. A row had developed between Captain Stokes’s Chicago Board of Trade Battery and several others during the morning cannonade, when Stokes was said to have turned his fire onto Captain Bradley’s 6th Ohio Battery and the right regiment of Colonel Harker’s brigade, peppering both with canister shot. Both officers were now in a heated argument accusing the other of malfeasance. Captain Mendenhall was not in the mood. He’d heard it all already from Bradley, but that officer had not been content to let his complaint go up the chain of command, and now Bradley was facing down Stokes himself and the invective was flying.
After taking the fire, Bradley had ordered his battery to limber up and move back. A correction had been required to shift Stokes’s pieces to another target, but a courier from Bradley had ridden up and demanded Stokes’s battery fall back, at which point a confused lieutenant had ordered the caissons of his gun back and then followed suit with the piece. The other drivers of Stokes’s battery, seeing the one caisson pull back, had
followed with the others. Captain Stokes had been livid when all of his ammunition suddenly vanished and he was forced to retreat.
A group of officers was now gathered around both Stokes and Bradley, adding to the verbal melee as Mendenhall tried to remain calm. The two battery commanders were nearly at fisticuffs. Now, at the moment of crisis, Stokes’s battery was replenished and needed again, but the two commanders were eyeing one another viciously, neither in the mood to support the other if the shells started to fly once more.
A sudden cry and explosion of small-arms fire thankfully drew everyone’s attention away from the feud and toward the hillside. The cannon fire to this point had been off in the distance and someone else’s problem, but now it became a solid wall of booming and volley fire that could mean only one thing.
Bragg was attacking once more.
* * *
Soldiers on the hill, animals too, were becoming accustomed to the lazy afternoon, though the skies were clouded and the sun just barely a thin disk in the sky. Then it began across the river with a single booming cannon. Then the peace was shattered by cannon fire from other parts of the enemy line on both sides of the river. Correlating counterfire from their own cannon began to bark. All was commotion as the regiments roused themselves from rest and stood to, lining up behind rifle stacks without order.
Philip was peacefully reading when the first shot rocked the air with a crack. The temperature had reached its zenith for the day, and his hands were not as numb as they had been earlier or would be again once the sun completed its arc across the sky.
“You ready for this?” Surgeon Young asked as he quickly stood and checked his meager collection of supplies.
“No,” Philip replied sharply as the lamppost sent by the enemy made landfall nearby.
“You take the wounded if we stay here; I’ll find a nice dying tree for seeing to those who come up if we move from here,” Young said. His attention was off across the river where Van Cleve’s division was rousing to attention. Several batteries were interspersed between brigades, and up along the elongated hill stood cedar patches that masked the presence of the enemy—though his cannon fire was enough to rouse their defenses.
“You can give me some of those bandages,” Philip offered and opened up his haversack. Young was hurriedly folding a a loose pile of crumpled and stained cloth into his knapsack.
“Here, then.” Young offered Philip a pile. They would do little to stanch a flow of blood, but bandages seemed to have a psychological effect on the recipient—a soaking rag was better than the free flow of blood from a gushing wound. Bandages at least covered over torn flesh and gore. They would offer little else.
Sounds of skirmisher fire now mingled with the continuous roar of cannon—an ominous sound. Where there was rifle fire, it meant two foes were close enough to engage in more than just random potshots. The cannon with a clear target were busily loading while other guns stood mute, their crews standing at their stations and watching the goings-on across the river intensely. From where he stood, Philip could not see the river at all, at least not the ford. They could all see the opposite bank, as it rose to an equal and slightly higher height than the hill they occupied now.
Their position was not enviable. They all knew the division of Van Cleve was isolated, thrown out more as a deterrent than a means of heavily fortifying this part of the Union line. As all eyes watched the rising cloud of smoke from the near-continuous discharges of cannon from the opposite hill, minds conjured what might be happening beyond the rise and the trees that capped it. Somewhere, beyond that hill crest and the trees, lay the city of Murfreesboro, overlooking the river valley and cutting the two armies in half. With the town in Confederate hands, the enemy had the advantage of a road network that allowed them to shift supplies and forces across the river and keep communications clear.
The attack of the previous day had made quickly moving men and material from one side of the river to the other another matter. Before the attack, Bragg’s line had run parallel to the Franklin pike, north to south, and connected with the town of Murfreesboro and across the one remaining bridge. The right flank of Bragg’s army and the left of Rosecrans’s army hadn’t moved, and both wings still occupied the positions gained when Rosecrans’s army first appeared in front of the town on the 27th of December.
The suddenness of the enemy fire alarmed the soldiers on this sector of the line, heightening their sense of insecurity. All prospects for a quiet evening finally shattered in the tempest’s rumble and Rebel yell.
Chapter 23
A Perfect Slaughter
Sounds of skirmishing had become so commonplace in the last few days that no one even thought to look up toward the opposite bank of the river from whence a steady stream of musketry was echoing. Since first light, the fire had been exchanged back and forth with increasing and then decreasing rapidity so that no one really paid a trebling of fire any mind. Someone was causing a local fuss somewhere over the ridge, that was all. Until the cannonade from the enemy’s batteries resumed again, the 21st Ohio had lazed about in the winter sun waiting for the next order to be given.
As artillery rounds began to detonate about the field, the men of the 21st Ohio came from all over to regain their positions as Neibling ordered the regiment to fall into line, grabbing muskets from the stacks. Ordered to lie down, the soldiers thankfully fell back to earth, face-first, as the rapidity of the artillery fire increased. Solid shot and case shot bounded about the hill. Spherical shot, timed to explode above a target and shower it with leaden balls the size of large hail, burst from above, causing mini-geysers of earth to spring up as the balls slammed home.
The officers remained upright, walking the line to shout encouragement or to make it known that they were willing to expose themselves to a higher danger than they expected of their men. Philip was torn: he did not have to thus expose himself, and prudence was to take as much cover as possible. Should he lie low or stand upright and make a target of himself like the other officers? Some company first sergeants were kneeling behind their men, some walking bolt upright, captains and lieutenants making sure ammunition boxes were full and Neibling himself mounted and staying that way. Philip crouched on one knee, making a compromise with himself between prudence and bravado.
Surgeon Young nervously crouched by Neibling’s horse. Major Walker, next to them, was also mounted. A well-placed round would take out half of the regiment’s command staff in one simple explosion. Philip thought they all made a tidy target: light blue against a dusty brown background amidst the grayish white stones. From far away they were just blotches of color, but they would be attractive as an opportunity to try one’s hand at trajectory and fuse timing.
Were those little puffs of smoke nine hundred yards away? A puff would issue forth from a tiny speck on a hilltop just across the river. There was too much noise from the guns on the hill around them to hear the report, but Philip was fascinated by counting the seconds after a puff until he could see the arching projectile and its fuse making its way toward them, the cloudy sky offering a backdrop for each fused shell. The pills were coming in fast and sounding like locamotives.
Could everyone see death trailing toward him? he thought. Was this what it was like to see the messenger of mortality coming one’s way? How many shots had already come from those guns that he’d not been able to see? Perhaps he was only imagining that he could see the shells coming at him. Either way, he was mesmerized by what he was watching, if not with the idea that he might catch the one that would end his own life.
While he was watching the skyline for another telltale fiery trail, General Van Cleve’s brigades on the opposite slope of the hill rose up and fired a volley. Then the enemy’s ranks appeared, crossing the crest of the rise and standing upon its top, exposed to all the world now to see.
Philip’s breath caught at the swell of rising gray. Thousands of them!
“Up, rise up, up men rise up!” shouted Colonel Neibling as he paced his mou
nt up and down the regimental line. The men were slow to react. The cannonade had not desisted; the noise of the counterfire from their own guns and the rounds still impacting around them made it impossible to understand that they were being ordered to expose more of themselves. “Rise up, rise up!”
Philip raised himself. He stood slowly as one of Van Cleve’s brigades across the river suddenly broke in confusion and tumbled down the hill. In moments the hill was covered with fleeing men in blue. The Union artillery fire abruptly halted, the gunners standing to each piece and waiting for the next order to fire, lanyards taut and ready to be yanked. The infantry on the hill incredulously watched the spectacle of Van Cleve’s division retreating precipitously down the opposite hill and toward the good ford.
Then ensued the race to get off the hill and down to the base where the ford was. Neibling waited impatiently for General Miller to order the brigade to right face and march down the southern slope. Ahead of them, the Pioneers were already in motion. Philip hadn’t seen them on the hill previously, but the guidon for the 3rd Battalion was clearly visible as the formation streamed down the hill at the double-quick. The 21st Ohio was the third regiment in the brigade formation, and as the 74th Ohio ran past followed by the 37th Indiana, Philip watched the reactions of the officers and men as they hurried by at right-shoulder shift arms. Seriousness and fear showed in the eyes of each man as he tried to keep pace in formation.
Philip faced his own dilemma. It would be their turn next to turn and fall into line, and what would he do? He was not needed at this moment, had no place in the line, no authority to give orders, no duty to perform that might turn the tide. Surgeon Young was regathering his supplies and stuffing them into his bag hurriedly. The opposite hill was still crowded with soldiers in blue, followed close behind by Confederates in loose formation of thousands, several lines of infantry crowded closely upon one another in their rush to get down the hill and kill Yankees. Their own artillery had resumed fire on parts of the opposite hillside, now cleared of Union regiments but filling fast with Confederates.
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