River of Blood (Shiloh Series Book 4)

by Phillip Bryant

  Neibling gave the order to right face, double-quick march, and the regiment by companies turned and fell in at a run. Philip and Young ran alongside the company commanders. The regiment quickly became jumbled by the steep descent, dodging boulders and each other as the hill led down to a rough and uneven plain before dipping into the river. Several batteries of artillery rushed along the uneven field to pull into battery as crowds of panicked soldiers splashed across the river from the other side and ran for safety. There were so many men now along the good ford that one could hardly fail to shoot into the mass and hit something. Men were falling as Confederates on the opposite height took time to fire into the barrel of fish.

  Not all of the regiments on the other side of the river were retreating in disarray. A house stood off to the left of the ford on the slope down the opposite hill, and its yard offered some shelter from the oblique fire pouring down from the upper heights to the brigade that was rallying there. Confederates were also pushing down the other side of the hill where the river bent round to the north before curving east, and several Union regiments were still holding their own with their backs to the river. One was the 24th Ohio with Grose’s brigade. A terrific fire was being directed at the Confederates gathering at the ford, coming at once from their right flank, from their front, and from the cannons on the hill above the ford.

  At the ford itself, all was confusion. There seemed to be as many Union men trying to get away from the river’s edge as there were trying to push their way toward it, and just as many enemy on the opposite shore firing into the mass. Some Confederates had already gained the Union side of the river and were infesting a cedar wood at the river’s edge, peppering the Unionists with annoying fire. As Miller’s brigade double-quick marched round the base of the hill, the Confederates opened a deadly fire from several batteries atop the hill into the small beachhead.

  Survivors from the retreat were trying to rally, small clumps of regiments being herded together by officers behind Miller’s brigade and single regiments being goaded forward by zealous commanders, making the scene a confusion of either defeat or obstinate defense. The boulders at the base of the hill and up to its top were crowded with sharpshooters taking advantage of the shelter and firing into the mass of Confederates teeming the water’s edge. It was time for the Confederates to be crowded at the bank with little avenue of escape.

  Artillery opened from the plain behind the Union positions, canister raining into the surging Confederate tide as a regiment rushed into the water to force a crossing. They were met with a volley from the 74th Ohio as Colonel Moody rushed to the water’s edge and opened up a destructive fire that stopped the Rebels from gaining more than a few feet of water. Overhead, a roar of artillery fire from above brought a rush of the ill wind of canister and solid shot.

  As Philip ran down the hill, a queer sense of exhilaration coursed through his limbs. He was running into danger with nothing more than his butter knife slapping his thigh, a weapon that was not even sharp. Willfully rushing into the maelstrom with nothing but a will and a testament. A chaotic panorama of formations and mobs of men intermixed with shouts and discharging musketry engulfed his senses. The ground shook with discharging cannon, and musket fire rattled in irregular staccato. Both shorelines of the fifty-yard ford in the river were crowded with soldiers vying with one another for room to stand and shoot into the opposite throng. The banks of the river were strewn thickly with the wounded and the dead. Those who’d fallen too far from the shallow bed of rock were drifting downstream, and others bobbed grotesquely at the water’s edge.

  For either side, forcing a passage seemed an impossibility. More Confederates surged down the slope of the hill, and the masses gathering at the ford’s gently sloping bank paused for another attempt to rush across. But the solid wall of Union regiments forming to greet them meant that any attempt to push across was going to be slaughter for either side.

  With a shout, the 74th Ohio suddenly leaped into the water, led by Colonel Moody, and rushed across a deeper portion of the river to the left of the ford at a point the enemy formations had left wide open with little to cover the flank. Fire was coming down on the Confederate beachhead from an eighty-degree arc: from the hilltop, from the front, and now from the flank; and those regiments who’d made the gallant rush headlong to the embankment, mixed up now and without strict discipline to keep their ranks from mingling, found themselves standing amidst strangers and strange officers shouting commands.

  The Pioneer battalion, taking their cue from Moody’s regiment, were now also forcing their way into the river to the right of the ford toward where Grose’s brigade was sheltering. Death was still being dealt by the Confederates despite their disorganized state, and Union soldiers fell by the score as they splashed across the water in headlong charge. Those on the bank were loading and firing as fast as they could, and cannon fire peppered those Confederates atop the hillside.

  Colonel Neibling shouted something impossible to hear, but his attitude and waving sword made his intent all too clear. He charged forward, and the regiment obeyed. With a shout, the 21st Ohio rushed for the water’s edge, and in a few steps they were shin deep in the lazily flowing current.

  Philip followed behind the rear ranks, expecting any moment to be struck down. The 74th Ohio had already gained the opposite bank of the river and had fought their way through the thickly growing cedars, and the few Confederates opposing them were forming up on the green, looking up the long, sloping hillside covered with Confederate cannon and fleeing infantry. Those crowding the shoreline were now scrambling to get back up the hill, the devil take the hindmost. All that was left on the opposite bank were the dead and the soon to die. Perhaps several thousand of the enemy had crowded the banks for a short span of fifteen to twenty minutes before vanishing back up the slope in pell-mell fashion.

  Men were struggling through the water now, not so much to get across in safety but to hurry and keep up with the fleeing enemy. Philip found his legs giving out in the struggle against the water. He slipped and slid up the bank, tripping over the bodies covering the ford’s exit. The ground was muddy, bloody, and strewn with equipment. Wounded men were crawling away, and the slope leading up from the ford was crowded with Confederates struggling to get away. Regiments that had broken and run across the ford were now marching back across, having rallied and come under control once more.

  No one was under orders to advance, it seemed, as elements of several brigades were strung out on either side of the river now and individual regiments were just letting the flow of battle dictate their direction and actions. “Up the hill” seemed the general order, and the 21st Ohio, joined now by the 74th Ohio on its left flank, began the long ascent. Grose’s brigade, now no longer trapped in the sheltered spot by the farmhouse and the deep part of the river, was also advancing. There was nothing to stop or slow the Unionists now, as thousands of Confederates all quitted the field at once in disorganized fashion.

  Philip soon saw why everyone had been so eager to charge up the hillside. Three batteries of Confederate artillery were scrambling to disengage themselves and limber up, having been left uncovered and unprotected by their retreating infantry. It was cannon begging to be captured. The guns were in trouble: having been brought forward to support the Confederate advance and be ready to cross the ford, they had been subjected to thirty minutes of counterfire from the opposite hillside. Dead horses lay in their traces, and the crews were hurrying to cut the wounded and dead animals out of the harness so the salvageable guns could be brought off the field. They had minutes. There were no friendly forces between them and the onrushing Union regiments.

  Several of the guns were being fired by prolong—a method of moving the weapon by hand using an iron rod jammed into the weapon’s tail to lift its rear. They dealt deadly canister fire into the 74th Ohio as Colonel Moody led them in a headlong rush up the hill. One battery seemed to have been abandoned altogether, its guns mute and its crews dead on the field o
r caught up in the rush to get away. The remaining battery was down to firing only two of its five guns and was trying to get those limbered when the 21st Ohio rushed up to their very muzzles and swarmed over the remaining crew.

  Philip rushed by the guns, Neibling not halting to reorganize but leading the regiment onward, leaving those crewmen of Louisiana’s famed Washington Artillery looking dazedly about as if they had not quite come to grips with the sudden reversal. Looking down the hill, Philip noted that the little bridgehead the Confederates had held was now nothing but a mass of blue bodies moving across the ford and coming up out of the water. The artillery position had a perfect view of the base of the opposite hill and of the hilltop itself. Judging from the destruction all around him, he could tell that the battery had been under a punishing fire and unable to do much to support the infantry as they tried to force a passage across the river. The Union batteries on the other hill had shifted their fire now, but the ground all around the battery was pocked and scarred by solid shot, and tens of dead horses lay a hundred yards to the rear.

  The surrendering crewmen were left unguarded to sit on the ground and sulk as more Yankees rushed up the hill. The 21st moved up the hill quickly, the 74th Ohio capturing several guns of the abandoned battery before also continuing on.

  Philip tarried behind, struck now with the drama of what had happened in less than thirty minutes’ time. Union dead also littered the hillside. Another regiment swept by, laying claim to the Washington Artillery and then also passing on, leaving the crew in place. The Confederates looked too sullen and defeated to need guarding.

  Philip trailed behind the latest regiment to pass by, taking his leisure. There was firing up ahead, but mostly just outbursts of skirmisher fire. The Union held the hill once more, and the Confederates were retreating faster than they could keep up. The hindmost were those too exhausted to carry on up the hill or too wounded to be carried along. Discouraged and panting Confederate soldiers sat in miserable clumps of three to six men, guarded by disinterested privates whose glances up the hill toward the remainder of the fighting told where they would rather be.

  Philip carried on past the silent cannon, the scores of wounded and dead, and the final remnants of the fighting and up onto a rough plateau. In the distance above the dead-looking cedar trees, a few spires of Murfreesboro churches could be seen in the haze of late afternoon. The prize, the goal of the whole campaign, had been in sight for these past several days.

  The chase had halted, and the regiments were being realigned as Philip caught up to the 21st Ohio. Many of the men were dead on their feet, leaning heavily upon muskets or just looking vacantly into the orange eastern skyline. Surgeon Young busily inspected scratches and scrapes and sent the more serious walking wounded back down the hill.

  “Chaplain,” Young called. “Mind?”

  Philip made his way over to the man as he was poking through a soldier’s torn forearm. An evil-looking gash had been delivered the man as he stood in the firing line and raised his musket. He sat cross-legged as the surgeon looked inside the wound, dragging out chunks of wool and shirt cotton. The round had traversed up the forearm and then away, taking a good portion of flesh with it. Young motioned for Philip to hold the man’s arm up while he dug with his fingers into the hole. A wave of nausea washed over Philip as he watched. The man himself was dazed but trying not to look. He was shaking all over.

  “You lucky,” Young was saying. “You might have lost the lower part of your arm if the ball had entered at a different angle.”

  Blood was streaming down the man’s lower arm and fingers. “He’s going to need carrying down the hill.”

  Philip nodded, too overcome to say anything.

  “Think I got most of the cloth out. You going to be without the use of this fer some time now,” Young said to the man as he started wrapping the wound. “You take him down?”

  “Yes . . . yes I’ll take him,” Philip managed to get out amidst the urges to heave.

  “Take it slow, he’s like to collapse from blood loss.”

  Philip stood and offered a hand to the man, who blankly took it but only weakly attempted to stand. He was a dead weight, and Philip had to brace himself to lift him upward. It was going to be a long walk down the hill. What was worse was the sudden and distinct smell of damp permeating the air as the sun completed its westward arc. A mist was beginning to form.

  With his charge’s arm over his shoulder, Philip carried on at a slow pace and in silence. He’d heard the surgeon talk about something they called shock, and this man displayed its symptoms. Philip usually only encountered its aftereffects as he saw to those who had made the line of wounded on their own power or been carried there by comrades. Occasionally he’d seen the first stages of it when helping someone from the firing line. This man was ghost-white and shivering. If he was going to survive, he needed to find shelter soon and just rest.

  Philip’s instinct was to deliver the man to the farmhouse near the ford where he surmised all of the wounded would be collected, seeing as it offered both shelter and proximity to the safe side of the river. But what should have taken fifteen minutes to traverse led into three times that. By the time he passed the captured guns of the Washington Artillery, it was already dark and beginning to rain. Fires were burning all around the farmhouse, and moving figures in silhouette showed lots of activity in and around the house. Philip picked up his pace as the two were drawn more by gravity than by willful hurry down the slope.

  So many had been wounded in the fight at the ford that the surrounding grounds were already chock-full of sufferers. Several surgeons were busily at work in the torch and firelight, and Philip found a spot under a dead cart to place his cargo. A line of dead was already forming even while some few of its members still moaned and groaned.

  Philip was exhausted as he looked about the grounds. The fencing was all down and being chopped up for firewood; the simple porch out front was covered with men lying with their feet hanging over the edge. Only a small path into the house had been left open. The door had been removed and propped up on two makeshift sawhorses built from the crossbars of the fencing, and inside a surgeon was probing wounds upon that door. Several ambulances were already crossing the ford headed toward the Nashville pike, loaded with wounded who would be jostled and bumped along the open field until they could get to the smoother run of the pike.

  Misery was all that was to be had in this quarter of the field—a gathering of wounded as unlike a gathering of soldiers in full health as could be. Few talked, few could. Surgeons gave curt commands to the stewards aiding in the quick surgeries, and the stewards in turn ordered about the Negroes or soldiers who’d gotten sucked into the duty of caring for the sufferers. Aside from the moans, a general silence was observed by even the most grievously wounded.

  Philip didn’t want to get caught up in another long, suffering night of wishing peace upon those expiring, and he was picking his way back across the open yard when he came face-to-face with Lucius.

  “Chaplain!” the Negro cried, and he wrapped Philip in a bear hug. With those who associated in the acts of the Spirit and ministry, it might be said that a brotherly bond existed despite difference in race, and it was certain that those of sable skin had a habit of being more physically connected to those whom they considered fellow bondmen. Philip was not expecting the sudden enthusiastic contact and took a moment to accept it.

  “Lucius, you . . . you made it out,” Philip exclaimed after a moment.

  “Yes sah; made it out de other day. Made it to de rear wif de wounded. Come, I wid yore brother,” Lucius said, beaming.

  “Paul?” Philip said and suddenly felt ill. “Paul is hurt again? I left him back at the pike at the hospital there.”

  “Come, he over here,” Lucius said with a shrug and made his way across the yard.

  It was the day Philip had always dreaded, having to identify the corpse or watch his brother ebb away from this life into the next. He followed Lucius wit
h a dull sense of growing horror.

  Philip quickened his pace as Lucius led him out from the yard to a covering of naked cedars growing twenty yards from the house proper, where many of the lightly wounded were gathering. Nearby, Confederates and Federals were laid out in quiet rest. It was raining proper now, not a torrent but an annoying patter upon the bill of a hat or an exposed head. There was only so much shelter near the house, and the rest of the wounded had to be left out in the open. Those who possessed a gum blanket sought shelter underneath, and those who did not lay out in the open, shivering in the wet. The naked trees offered no cover at all.

  Paul was lying upon one arm thrown behind the back of his head, with the bill of his hat sheltering his face. He looked whole in the fading evening light.

  “Paul,” Philip called as he hurried to where his brother lay.

  Paul sat up slowly and let his hat fall into his lap. “Brother, you look awful.”

  Philip looked down, caught off guard by the pronouncement. His overcoat was still blood-soaked from the day before and now had fresh blood from the wounded man he’d just led down the hill. Paul’s head was still bandaged, but he did not seem to be hit anywhere else.

  “What happened? I left you in the rear!” Philip asked as he knelt down, almost overcome with relief.

  “Nothing from today’s fight—fell out when I got dizzy.”

  “Young massah stop right he’ya. No go no furder,” Lucius pronounced.

  “How’d you find him?” Philip asked Lucius.

  “At de rear hospital. Found ’im dis morning. Stay wid ’im when he went back to de regiment.”

  “You made it through the other day,” Paul said gladly. “We seen the 21st come up next to the battalion the day of the attack, but I was hit and wondered if you’d made it out. They say many was left behind the lines.”