by Kelli Estes
By sunrise the next morning, they were back on the march. The terrain they covered was all rolling hills, knobs, and valleys interspersed with creeks and gullies. Wide meadows and fields were bordered by hardwood forests with occasional stands of pine. It was beautiful country—or it would have been, had the weather been pleasant. The road on which they marched took them through small towns and across vast plantations. Emily knew hundreds of slaves had fled their masters for the safety of Union-occupied locales such as Nashville, so she was surprised to see slaves working those fields. If only she could’ve gotten within earshot of them, she would have urged them to flee.
To pass the endless hours, the soldiers talked as they marched. A popular topic of conversation was what they planned to do after the war. “I’ll return to the farm, no doubt about it,” Ben told them before launching into a long reminiscence on the buildings, their crops and animals, and the neighbors who lived nearby.
Emily stayed silent as Ben talked. She wasn’t so sure that she wanted to return to Stampers Creek after the war, because that meant returning to a life without the freedoms she’d become accustomed to. Aunt Harriet might be more accepting, but Uncle Samuel would have her hide the moment she set foot back on the farm, and then he’d beat her again for wearing men’s trousers, and then a third time when she spoke her mind. Men had all the power in this world, and now that she’d tasted that power, she wasn’t ready to give up even a small slice.
“What about you, Willie? Will you return home to Nebraska Territory?” O’Brien asked after telling them all about his dairy farm.
“I long for Nebraska,” she told them wistfully. “But I don’t know if that’s the place for me after a falling-out I had with my family a while back.”
Ben was eyeing her closely, as though this was the first time they were discussing where to live after the war. “Nebraska is a large territory. If that is where you want to settle, it’s what you should do.”
Willie marched silently for several steps before she replied. “If I save my pay, I might be able to buy some land and build a house and farm there.”
“I’ll go with you,” Emily found herself saying. “Owning my own land sounds like a fine way to live out my days.”
Ben looked at her sharply, and Emily knew he was full of questions he wouldn’t dare ask with the other soldiers nearby. She took pity on him and offered, “I’m not so sure Indiana has anything for me to return to, other than you, Brother. Why don’t you come to Nebraska with Willie and me?”
A flush crept up Ben’s neck, and a small smile tugged at his mouth. Emily could see the idea was growing on him. She bumped her elbow against Willie’s arm and grinned. “The three of us could be neighbors. What do you think of that, Willie?”
Willie nodded, though her gaze was on Ben. “I’d like that.”
The march to Savannah should have taken nine days but it took more than twice that, and they finally arrived late on the sixth of April. Although they’d been looking forward to a day of rest, what they found was a full-scale battle in progress on the other side of the Tennessee River.
Emily, Ben, and Willie gathered with the rest of their regiment on the bank of the wide, brown river and looked across to where a swarm of Union blue amassed on the opposite bank from the unseen battlefield farther beyond. Although the setting sun and all the smoke in the air made it difficult to see, the river appeared to be rimmed in blue.
“Are they all injured?” Willie asked no one in particular. “There must be several hundred men sitting there.”
Emily watched officers on horseback riding back and forth along the river. They were too far away to hear, but they seemed to be calling to the men huddled under the overhanging bank. “You don’t think they are cowards, do you?”
“They sure seem to be hiding from something,” Ben answered, his eyes glued to the opposite shore. “The wounded are those lined up at the landing and being carried onboard the steamships.”
As they watched, one steamer pushed away from shore and chugged to the middle of the river, so full of wounded men that even the open decks were packed with them. Cries and moans echoed across the water.
Two Federal wooden gunboats, the Lexington and the Tyler, positioned with their cannons pointing toward enemy lines, kept up a continuous assault. Their cannons boomed and their shells shrieked, and each one sent a shudder of fear through Emily. She wanted to cover her ears and run far away from all this misery and terror. The battle must have been worse than any other, or so many men wouldn’t be cowering on the riverbank. She wanted nothing more than to turn around and march back to Nashville. Or anywhere. As long as it was far from here.
She looked at Ben and Willie. Fear etched lines onto both of their faces, and Emily felt words forming on her tongue—Let’s run away from here.
But she did not speak, and she did not run. She’d made a promise to serve her country, and so she would. She would stand proudly beside her brother and Willie and all the others, and she would fight because that was what was asked of her. Most of all, she would fight beside Ben and Willie and protect them.
By the time it was their turn to be ferried across the river, night had fallen and a storm had blown in. As Emily stepped onto the muddy ground at Pittsburg Landing, she found herself face-to-face with a bloodied Union soldier, his eyes wide with fear so palpable that Emily’s entire body shook in response. He tried to shove past the disembarking soldiers to board the steamboat himself. From out of the darkness appeared an armed guard who forcibly shoved the terrified soldier away. Sickness settled into Emily’s gut. What horrors awaited them over that bluff?
Despite her fear, her training kicked in, and she marched with her regiment up the embankment. As lightning flashed, she saw they were in a wide field bordered by a forest lined with soldiers lying on their bellies with weapons pointed into the dark. It was so dark, in fact, that Emily had to stay close to the heels of the man in front of her to avoid taking a wrong turn. She reached back and held Ben’s hand, worried of being separated from him.
Despite the rolling thunder, pounding rain, booming cannons from the gunboats, and the cries of the wounded lying somewhere out in the night, no one spoke above a whisper. The enemy might be hiding in the shadows.
“Get what rest you can,” Colonel Moody ordered via whispers that were passed down the line. “No fires. We move out before dawn.”
They dropped to the ground and quietly dug cold rations out of their haversacks. No one bothered to lay out a bedroll. Instead, they wrapped their rubber blankets around themselves and got as comfortable as possible in the cold and rain, and tried not to think of the guns that could be pointing at them.
Whispered rumors spread through the line as men on the outskirts of their huddled regiment encountered men from Grant’s army who had been in that day’s battle. Someone said that Grant himself had been shot, but someone else reported he’d only taken a tumble from his horse and was now commanding the action on crutches. No one knew how many Confederates they would face, but the answer was certainly in the thousands, although that was the same number claimed to have been killed already. Tales of walking across a carpet of dead bodies emerged, and Emily wondered if they were still out there in the dark, forgotten. Some said the Union side had won the day’s battle; most said they’d lost. All agreed it would continue when the sun rose.
Emily tried to sleep, but her nerves were frayed and she could not manage more than a few minutes at a time. When the call to assemble came, Emily felt even more achy and tired than she’d been at the end of the march. Still, she dropped her knapsack in a pile along with the rest of the regiment’s, taking a precious few minutes to stuff her diary into her damp chest bindings for fear of losing both it and the money she stored in the secret compartment. At the last second, she also slipped her inkpot into her pocket. With her haversack, canteen, and full cartridge box strapped to her body, she took her place in lin
e, musket in hand.
The regiment moved southward through Dill Branch, expecting at any moment to encounter their opposition. Emily knew what to expect from battle, but that knowledge did nothing to ease her anxiety. The waiting was harder than the actual fighting would be, and she wished they could get on with it.
Blessedly, the rain had stopped, and the eastern sky was starting to fill with color, promising a beautiful spring day. Everywhere she looked, vibrant green leaves sprouted from their buds, promising the return of life.
That’s when Emily realized there was little else alive in these woods, other than the soldiers walking beside her. No birds sang in the trees; no squirrels chased one another in the branches. There even seemed to be an absence of insects. Everything was still, silent, and holding its breath.
As she rounded a clump of trees, Emily was startled to find a body lying on the ground. At first she thought it was an enemy lying in wait to shoot her, but then she realized the man wore Union blue. She let out a quick rush of breath and was about to ask him what he was doing, when Ben, walking next to her, nudged him with his rifle butt.
The soldier did not move. Ben nudged him harder until he managed to roll the body over onto his back.
Emily retched. She turned away and stumbled blindly from the body, knowing she would never be able to forget the sight of the man whose face had been shot off, leaving a gaping, rotting hole in its place. The only thing that told her there had once been a face there was the remaining row of teeth and a tongue lying blackened in the gore.
She did not stop running until she emerged from the woods, uncaring if she stumbled right into a Confederate line.
Thankfully, no Rebs awaited her on the other side of the Branch, and when Ben and Willie caught up with her, she was at least able to breathe again.
That is, until the breeze shifted and she caught hold of the scent filling the area. The stench of decaying flesh made her gag yet again, and her eyes filled with tears. Only now did she realize that what she’d thought were mounds of earth scattered around the field were actually bodies left lying where they’d fallen in the battle the day before. They lay in every conceivable position, marked with horrific wounds that no person should ever have to see and no body should ever endure.
“You can’t think about it, Jesse,” Willie told her, placing a sympathetic hand on her back. “Only think about what we’re here to do.”
The idea that she might inflict such damage on a person sent a shock of horror sliding again through Emily’s body.
The face of the Reb she’d shot at Allegheny Mountain flashed into her mind, and her own chest felt carved out.
“Fall in!” came a bark down the line.
She squeezed her eyes shut and forced herself to think only of Pa and David. If they could give their lives for this cause, so could she.
When she opened her eyes, both Willie and Ben were with her, watching her carefully. For them, she would fight today. She could kill Reb after Reb to stop them from hurting these two. “Come on,” she said to them, hoping she looked stronger than she felt.
They hurried to take their places in the reassembled line. Their 9th Indiana was on the right flank of Hazen’s 19th Brigade, with the 6th Kentucky and 41st Ohio filling the line to their left. Emily continued the march south over the fields, cringing every time she had to step over a body or, worse, a detached limb. “Don’t think about it,” Ben said, echoing Willie. “Think only about staying alive yourself and doing your duty.”
“What duty?” Emily could not recall why this awful war was even being fought. It was senseless.
“To fight to preserve our great Union!” Ben answered, looking annoyed.
Emily nodded numbly. Of course she wanted to preserve the Union, and she’d also come to realize that she fought to stop the spread of slavery into new states and territories, if not abolish it altogether. But right now, as she marched south on the battlefield and saw more dead bodies than she ever thought she’d see in her lifetime, she knew she would be running screaming from the battlefield if not for her brother and best friend. Today she was fighting solely for them.
They marched past two deserted log cabins that had once been someone’s farm. Bullet holes riddled all four walls of each. Spreading out behind the buildings was a newly planted field with only a few tender green shoots poking up through the mud. The rest had been crushed to oblivion. A shot rang out, shattering the early morning quiet, and Emily dropped to the ground along with the rest of the line as a bullet whined past her.
“Fire at will!” Colonel Hazen shouted from atop his horse.
Emily fired into the line of trees across the field. Without looking to see if her bullet hit its mark, she grabbed another cartridge from the box hanging at her side, tore it open with her teeth, rammed it into the barrel with the rod, and fired again. Over and over she fired, advancing forward across the field when ordered, and doing her best to keep track of Ben and Willie at all times.
As Emily advanced toward the trees, she could make out the butternut color of the Rebs’ uniforms and the glint of their musket barrels as they lifted them to fire. A cold stillness filled Emily’s body, and she found she no longer cared what damage she inflicted on those men. She was happy to put a bullet through a skull or two, or several, in order to stop them from doing the same to Ben or Willie.
For what felt like hours, they fired at the line of Rebs in the trees. As Emily grabbed her last cartridge, Ben shouted, “I’m going back for ammunition!”
Emily took her shot and raced after Ben to the supply wagon parked near the cabins. As they filled their boxes, Ben looked at her, his eyes glassy. “Where’s Willie?”
Emily looked back toward the line and saw their friend running toward them through the smoke. “Here she comes!” she yelled, relief making her voice crack.
Ben grabbed her arm, his eyes wide with fear before his gaze jerked toward the other men at the wagon. Only then did Emily realize she’d used the wrong pronoun. They covered the slip by grabbing cartridges and helping Willie refill her box, while Emily carefully watched the other men. No one paid them any mind. Relieved, and with their cartridge boxes now full, Emily turned with her friends back toward the line, pausing to squeeze her brother’s upper arm. “Be careful, Ben.”
He gave her a quick glance. “I will. You too.” As Willie took off, he ran after her and Emily brought up the rear. When they were all three back on their bellies, Ben hollered, “Take that, filthy Rebs!”
The fighting continued. With shot after shot, Emily lost all track of time. When the Confederates retreated, she jumped to her feet with the rest of the line and chased after them, bursting through the forest and into another field, this one with cotton on one side and peach trees on the other. The trees were full of pink blossoms. Emily was shocked that such beauty could exist here in this hell.
Emily pushed out all other thoughts but those of loading, firing, protecting Ben, protecting Willie. She felt like a machine, cranking through the motions of her job without emotion. She had a purpose, and she was fulfilling it. Her senses were full of noise—beating drums, screaming wounded, booming artillery—and smells—sulfur, decay, sweat, smoke. Her sight narrowed to the pinpoint of where she aimed her shots.
An enemy bullet slammed into the tree right next to her head and sent splinters shooting painfully into her face and neck. She slapped her palm against her cheek and drew it back to find it covered in blood. The sight renewed her anger, and she yelled her rage as she took aim and fired again.
Suddenly, a great commotion arose as their line ran forward. She got to her feet and followed, reloading as she went.
Along with the rest of her regiment, Emily burst out of the forest into a bare field and abruptly stopped when she saw the artillery on the other side of the field pointing right at her. Going by instinct, she dropped to her belly and took aim as Willie rolled to the ground
beside her.
As she fired, she wondered where Ben had gotten to. He wasn’t on the other side of Willie.
She raised her head higher, hoping to spot him, but grapeshot flew over her head and slammed into the trees behind her, making her dive back to the ground again.
“Where’s Ben?” she yelled to Willie between shots.
“I don’t know. I saw him heading that way.” Willie jerked her chin to the right before lining up the sight on her rifle and firing. “I’ll go look for him.”
“No, wait—”
Emily did not have time to get her warning out before Willie jumped to her feet and was immediately hit in the stomach. Her face filled with confusion as she dropped her rifle and pressed both hands to her abdomen. Before Emily could react, another bullet hit Willie, the impact sending her sprawling onto her back.
“Willie!” Emily screamed. Horror held her in its clutches for one frantic moment, and she couldn’t move, couldn’t even breathe. And then suddenly, everything slammed into her all at once. All the noise, the revolting smells, the taste of gunpowder and blood in her mouth, and the sight of Willie lying on her back, too still.
“Ben!” Emily cried. Tearing her eyes from Willie, she searched for him. “Ben! Where are you?” She couldn’t see him anywhere.
Frantic, Emily scooted over to Willie, trying to keep her own head down in the process. Willie was still breathing. Relief flooded through Emily, sending strength she didn’t know she had through her body. She had to get Willie to safety. “I’ve got you, Willie. We’ll get out of this. Just hold on.”
With little regard for the bullets still whizzing past them, Emily slung her rifle over her shoulder and out of the way. She reached under Willie’s shoulders and lifted her upper body enough to drag her into the copse of trees behind them. She dragged her inert body over fallen logs and corpses until she was sure they were well away from the line of fire.