“Shoulda knowed it would be like this as soon as I decided to throw the lot down on this one chance to whip the enemy—shoulda knowed Bragg an’ the other generals would fail to do it.”
Still, what else could they have done? John looked pleadingly at his friend.
“Had we deserted we might have found ourselves back in the same hands, only under irons or set blindfolded behind of our own coffins. We had an even chance, didn’ we?”
Grover shrugged. “Too late now. We done throwed our lot down an’ have to live with it. Glenn was gettin’ reckless, an’ Leach woulda had all of us in irons had he tried it on his own when he wanted to. You made the only sensible choice. Coulda gone either way the other day.”
“I suppose we see Leach again if we do retreat,” John replied.
The woods were strangely silent save for the patter of rain upon the barren branches of the cedars and the crackling of the fires, hissing with the falling of the drops upon the hot coals. The chin music hushed, reflecting the exhaustion of the whole army as it waited for its benighted generals to make the next move.
* * *
Several miles to the west, Will Hunter labored to dismount his horse. It was dark, he was soaked through and through, and the regiment was finally going into camp for the night. He was still in command of his troop. Colonel Allen had failed to pass on his intention of relieving Hunter from his post to Major Lowery before being carried from the field.
Will slowly took a seat at a fire pit at Antioch Church. Hours earlier, the command had been sent down the Wilkinson pike once more to scout the situation in the enemy rear. It wasn’t until three in the morning that the exhausted troopers finally pulled to a stop and dismounted. They would push on to Nashville and see if the Union army was coming or going. The rain had been incessant, and now it was just plain cold. Sniffles and coughs, shivers and muted conversations from those still awake gave the camp scene a flavor of misery. Will was trying to keep the shivers from totally overtaking his limbs despite the warmth of the fire.
Casualties the last two days had been light. The command had scooted here and there, back and forth from one spot to the next, and skirmished whenever the enemy showed himself, but they had not really closed with the enemy since the 31st. When New Year’s Day dawned, they were on their horses again, moving back through to the rear only to come back again and take up their former positions for a day. What they weren’t seeing even as they moved around the enemy rear was the desired prolonged flight of blue back to Nashville. Word had come back that Breckenridge’s assault had been a dismal failure and the enemy still held the height above Murfreesboro. They would just need to push to get enough men across the river to take the town.
This was what he’d rushed out of Ohio to do—to get back with his command and command. God seemed to be favoring him with luck once again. Tomorrow would tell. Tomorrow would show the enemy in flight. It had to.
Will shivered again as he huddled with his arms wrapped tightly against his chest under his captured Yankee poncho. His head was beginning to throb, and his limbs felt heavy. If he could see through the flames and watch, he fancied he might see the Yankee hordes crowding the Nashville pike in a hurry to get back to the city. If Bragg was bold enough to give chase, they might even be able to trap the enemy between two forces. Wheeler would do it.
* * *
In the time it took Philip to make his way back down the hill, the rain turned from an annoying sprinkle to an annoying downpour. If it was miserable for the healthy soldiers still milling about farmhouse or wearily marching, it was worse for the wounded without shelter. Fires were tended as well as could be in the wet, but the flames offered little relief from the descending cold for those unable to get close enough to enjoy the warmth. The 21st Ohio was making its way around the house to the now well-worn path to the good ford when Philip was arrested in his soggy brogans by another familiar face.
“Captain Bacon?” Philip asked as he confronted his old commanding officer in the 24th Ohio.
“Pearson, we meet again,” Bacon replied with a wan smile that was barely visible in the deep shadows and inconsistent light of a nearby fire.
“Captain, how do you fare?” Philip asked, concerned. Anyone at a hospital was either wounded, visiting wounded, or aiding the wounded, and Bacon was not a surgeon.
“Well. Several of the company not so. We was pushed some up there.” Bacon motioned with his chin. “But we stood our ground and had a fight of it too.”
“Familiar tale,” Philip replied.
“A few of the company was brought over from a field over yonder; brought our dead over too.”
“Losses?”
“Further twenty wounded, two missing, five killed, and now Captain Cockerill in command. Captain Weller was killed rallying the regiment when the enemy looked to flank us.”
“Hate to ask, but who was killed?”
Bacon rattled off names of men whom Philip had known, but they were just names to him—faces who used to line up in company formation or crack jokes at inappropriate times, or men who talked to much or too little. That is, until Bacon said a name that sucked the air out of Philip’s lungs.
“Henderson? Johnny Henderson?” Philip asked, his heart firmly stuck in his throat.
“We brought his body down from where he fell and put him in the dead line. They been reports of wild hogs, and we didn’t want them to touch our dead,” Bacon replied.
Philip regarded the corpses with new eyes. The line of the dead was long and dispiriting to behold, most of the men uncovered and laid out as best as could be managed. The last formation each would participate in.
“Captain, it is heartening to see you still upright. God’s speed to you.” Philip offered his hand to Bacon, who took it warmly.
“Take care, Parson.”
The regiment had continued on across the ford as Philip made his way to the dead line. There was something about the gathering of the dead in the dark and damp that was more pitiful than seeing them in the day. Another line of the violently killed, with grotesque expressions writ in the last moment. No different, in the end, than the dead lines of Shiloh or Corinth.
Johnny Henderson was reposing as naturally as his pards could lay him out, and but for his unnatural expression, Philip might have guessed him to be asleep. When Theo Mueller was swept away in the flooded Seven Mile Creek in May, Philip and the others had faced their first empty spot around the fire. They had felt anger at the loss; the futility of accidentally drowning while at war felt cheap for someone who should at least have had the dignity of dying facing the enemy. And now Johnny was the last.
Surrounded by death, it was hard to bear anything but a passing of emotion. The dead line was a collection of such sad tidings that one might expend a lifetime of tears over it. Instead, tears remained absent.
Philip knelt down next to Johnny’s head and stared down at the vacant features, now glistening with moisture. His bare head was a mop of black hair, slicked and lying limply down the back of his head, and his eyebrows shone in the flickers of firelight that danced about the surroundings.
Soldiers form kinships with those they suffer privation beside. Philip had suffered long marches and cold nights on picket with Johnny, and they were something of kindred spirits besides. Perhaps this was why Paul was going to marry Johnny’s sister—there was a kindred connection between the Hendersons and the Pearsons born of war.
His last good-bye had been in haste and not meant to last eternity. A wartime good-bye would have to suffice for now.
“Damn you, Johnny,” Philip whispered. “You didn’t listen to me. I stayed back.”
Philip’s lower jaw trembled. He was cold and the rain was making it worse, but the tremor wasn’t just the chill.
“But you couldn’t hang back, could you? You had to fall in. You had to fall in.”
Philip shook a little, a convulsion that wracked his chest and came out as a moist sputtering on his rain-soaked lips.
�
��I’m sorry!” he managed to get out. “I left you and Sammy and broke up the mess. I’m sorry I wasn’t there next to you, or to Sammy.”
At the moment Philip wanted to curse the one being responsible for this state of affairs. He wanted to break out in a cry for relief. He wanted to curse anything and everything that had brought him to this moment. Balling his hands into fists, he reached for his friend.
Philip laid a hand on Johnny’s damp and pink-stained chest and tried to regain composure.
“Our Father, who art in heaven, hallowed be thy name,” Philip whispered, bowing his head until it rested upon Johnny’s cold breast. “Thy kingdom come, thy will be done . . .”
Another wave of convulsion doubled him over. “Thy will be done” rumbled in his ears like a cannonade. With fingers numbed by cold and wet, he clung to Johnny’s soaked overcoat and not so silently added tears to the falling of rain upon his friend.
Chapter 25
Yankee Hordes
Philip woke before the sun even considered it time to force the issue. A few hours had been allotted for rest, but sleep had come like a thief. It was January 3. Just to let the Yankees know that their enemy was still around, the Confederates had made another attack on the Round Forest. It failed to wake the weary soldiers of the 21st, though the attack put many on the alert. It was someone else’s problem. Most men had briefly gathered around fires in the rain and the cold, then fallen asleep around smoking embers. Philip woke suddenly, very cold and shivering. The fire he and Surgeon Young had built was out, and the rain had seen to it that not even a hint of a coal was left to easily start it up again.
It was with fumbling and stiff hands that he managed to get another fire started. Other fires dotted the regimental line and all about the base of the hill where the brigade had reformed on the other side of the river.
Young woke as the fire was getting nice and going, and he shook himself violently as if suddenly set upon by some foe. “We never gonna get a good sleep with this rain.”
“No, we not. Not until the army goes into winter quarters,” Philip replied wistfully. Winter quarters. Huts, warmth, dry, food. An army in winter quarters came as close to calling someplace home for several months in a row as they ever would in war. Winter quarters also meant routine and boredom, soldiers getting into trouble, disease from ill-kept camps, and unhealthy living spaces after several weeks. Even so, it sounded good now.
“I told the chief surgeon I’d go back to Nashville for supplies. Want to come?” Young asked as he rubbed his hands vigorously.
“I can see if Neibling will give leave,” Philip replied. There was little for him to do until the army settled back into a routine. No services, no ministering but in the hospitals—and Philip did not relish the sights and sounds there at the moment. A stretch of the legs might be what he needed. “I was going to go to the hospital to see that my brother was getting on. Could do with a stretch of the legs.”
“Be more than a stretch, but get away from this for a few days,” Young replied.
“A long walk or a long ride in a wagon,” Philip said. “What if there’s another fight? Won’t you be needed?”
Young shrugged. “Chief surgeon’s directive; blame him if I’m not about. Someone has to go back and make sure we get what we need.”
“I’ll let Neibling know then,” Philip said and stood.
Getting permission was easy. Neibling, still on his high from the day before, was not particularly argumentative about what his chaplain was going to be doing.
A battlefield is a depressing place after a fight, and little consolation to the victor left in command of the field. Human and animal wreckage has to be dealt with. Philip had seen it now thrice. He’d seen enough of it. The last several days had been filled with fear and anxiety, and though the whole affair still seemed to be in question and the enemy was still in their front, a chance to leave it behind for a few days was welcome—and with leave, no less. He was always free to go on French leave, of course—free as to the will but not to the consequence.
His thoughts disturbed him. His uncharacteristic breakdown hours before did not portend an easy time ahead. Would all of this be possible to put into context in letters to his father and to Elizabeth? The eyes saw and the senses recorded all that transpired, and the scenes were recalled easily and with disturbing frequency. But how could he put any of it into a form that another might be brought to understand? And what was it all for—to hold a hilltop, a wood? The rights of a state to secede or the right of the government to hold the Union together?
Philip warmed his fingers close to the flames and worked them front and back, front and back. Feeling the numbness slowly wear off, he reached into his haversack and fished out several letters, skimming one in particular. Started before the camps around Nashville were broken for the army’s movement toward this place. He’d been complaining about Neibling when he ended a sentence. He’d been complaining about the soldiers who refused to attend his services, those who thought they were invincible or had no care at all for their spiritual lives. He had declared that he was hardened to the loss of life after Corinth, that he was finally able to eschew the personal for the impersonal and view his job with calculated detachment. If a man refused to respond to the gospel message, it was not for Philip to work any further toward an end he could not change.
Rubbish, he saw now. That was what was in this letter to Elizabeth. Rubbish. Lies, or at least what approximated to lies now. The man who had wept over Johnny Henderson’s body was not hardened, not detached.
Without a moment more to think about it, he gave the pages a slight toss into the flames. The words he’d written were something akin to blasphemy. The pages shriveled up quickly and vanished into the ashes. Who should know the truth about the flames that issued forth from musket and cannon and what they left behind? Would even Elizabeth be moved to respond to the truth? Would his father? There was nothing to describe it, no words to put to paper to do the scenes in his mind’s eye justice.
Taking out his pencil, he absently sharpened the tip with his pocket knife as he pondered how to put anything into words.
Dearest Elizabeth,
You will read in a few days, if you have not already seen in the papers, that a conflict has erupted in Tennessee near a small town called Murfreesboro where the enemy stubbornly attacked this army over a three-day period. I am still well in body. I am not so well in spirit.
Philip paused and reread the last line. It was a violation of the distance that separates the truth from decorum. Should anyone know the truth, or was the truth a burden that he alone could bear?
But there were things that needed to be said. He continued.
I brought news of your brother when last we spoke, how he expired and how he was struck. What I did not bring was the truth of the life of a soldier and how, even though we quarreled over my faults and words said in anger about your brother Robert and his failings, I did not express to you that we are all to be damned to hell for what it is that we have seen, done, and cursed God for. All of us. There is no one who is innocent of the blood spilled. I do not mean to alarm or frighten you, but I must begin to express what it is that has driven this country mad enough to shed blood so easily. Please accept these words as my best attempt to spell out what plagues my thoughts and the images that cloud my mind today.
Chapter 26
Loss
Will Hunter heaved uncontrollably as he doubled over by his mount’s side. It was a maneuver they called “fire and fall back,” and he’d been doing it ever since the regiment halted on the outskirts of Murfreesboro. Their raid, taking them from Antioch Church to within sight of the spires of Nashville’s churches, had been anticlimactic. Will hadn’t cared. His headache had become a fever and sitting his horse a struggle to keep from falling off as he grew weaker. The enemy wasn’t falling back. Supply and reinforcement columns could be seen heading toward Murfreesboro instead.
Small forays or not, it was over. Bragg had begun the
retreat, quietly pulling Hardee’s corps from in front of the enemy and down the Shellbyville road as Pegram’s and Wheeler’s cavalries positioned themselves in front of Murfreesboro to await the approach of the enemy, who had already begun to repair the western bridge across the river.
Will paused, waiting for another round of fire and fall back. His legs trembled, and he hated to move lest he be unable to maintain balance. His head swam and his throat burned.
Even if Allen had been present at this moment with an order to report to the rear, Will wouldn’t have cared. He would relieve himself of command and save Allen or Lowery the trouble.
It only took a moment’s thought to decide to go ahead and get the drama over with. At least he could save himself the dishonor of being ordered to step down. Still trembling and unsteady, he managed to take a few steps and motioned to his first sergeant.
“Take command; I’m going to the surgeon,” Will said haltingly.
The rest of the trip could have taken hours, each step a carefully planned movement to keep the peace in his stomach. It wasn’t worth it. Surgeon Morehouse was informed of his condition and then Major Lowery. Morehouse had nothing for him to take, and Lowery merely motioned toward the town as way of telling him what to do with himself. Whatever this bug was, it was biting hard.
The indignity of illness was made all the worse by the reality of the retreat. Murfreesboro was being cleared out of any official-looking Confederate property, and Bragg had already decamped the day before.
Will was too ill to be incredulous. The cavalry had executed brilliantly and bested the enemy every time they met, and yet with all of their riding and exerting, the army had still quit the field. He too, according to his own estimation, had performed well in command, bringing his troop out of several scrapes in one piece and with few losses. That should at least be worth something. And yet here he was, forced by a heaving stomach and aching head to lose what he’d gained.
River of Blood (Shiloh Series Book 4) Page 44