Those who were ambulatory of the wounded were also waiting to be transported to an awaiting prisoner of war camp. Kearns was there, in a delirium of pain and fever. His shoulder wound was oozing through the bandages, and those were several days old. Despite his feelings of animosity, Will felt obliged to at least see to his care, even if that was rudimentary. Several hundred wounded were lying about, most with arm or leg wounds, men who could stand or be helped along.
“Take some water,” Will said as he held the mouth of his canteen to Kearns’s lips.
Kearns’s eyes were red and glazed. He sipped the water as if he were in a dream; no thank-you or other acknowledgment as he laid his head back down. Will stared at Kearns for a moment, a helpless man and entirely in the power of whomever was going to provide for him. Will relished it even if it was Kearns’s fault for all their predicament.
Will wandered over to a group of lieutenants sitting in a circle.
Some of the captured officers were listlessly lounging in the grass and grousing about the lack of food and water. Some of the Union guards had shared their rations with Will and the others after their capture, but now that their numbers had grown, the process broke down so that a cracker and a trip to the well was all they were getting. It was an insult. At least their guards seemed likable enough—no one was heaping scorn or abusing any of the Confederates, and they were allowed to just sit and wait for their turn to be sent to a camp or paroled.
Talk was that an exchange system was being worked out between the belligerents, and they might be sent back to their units. There was hope.
Will sat in the company of first and second lieutenants, all from infantry and artillery regiments, as they talked about what they had experienced. Will listened with interest: to a man, each swore the enemy had been finished after the first day’s fighting. The infantry had advanced, pushing the Federals back. Most of these men were captured on the second day when the Confederate lines collapsed under the pressure of fresh Federal legions. They sat now with long faces and dirty uniforms. They talked of the carnage. All agreed it was better to have been captured than to have been shot and maimed, but it would have been better still to have died on the field for eternal glory over the ignominy of surrender. Will doubted very much that this had really entered into their minds when they surrendered their swords. Why die today when you can surrender and fight another day? The cavalry had never been involved in the fight, or in anything like what these tired men described seeing. Will was glad he was in the mounted arm, more glad the longer he listened. To stand shoulder to shoulder and face grape and canister, musket ball and bayonet was for men who were mad.
They shared their memories from an endless pool of anecdotes: actions by captains, majors, and colonels performing feats of gallantry amidst galling fire. Will’s war experience was nothing to compare, so he sat silently listening. His brush with the Yanks had been a trifling affair.
A tall infantry lieutenant told of Johnston’s fall from his horse after leading Statham’s brigade in a failed attempt to dislodge the enemy from a peach orchard. It was the first Will had heard the news. Johnston had refused to recall his personal surgeon from his work on enemy wounded to tend to his own wound, one that led to his eventual death underneath a tree close to the battle lines.
The day was turning hot, and the prisoners were unable to follow the shade, which was taken first by those who assumed privilege of rank while what was left to the slightly wounded. The waiting to be marched away or paroled was insufferable, making the heat that much more so. The officers milled about just as listlessly as the lower ranks.
Will fidgeted absently.
After a time there was little to talk over, and the group grew silent as the day grew long and hot. Some tried to sleep, others carried on quiet conversations, and Will pretended to be interested in nothing. He was interested. He was interested in every nuance of the battle and of the heroism of the officers who commanded men. He longed for the dash and chase and thought it would be a long while before he would experience it again. He’d done well in what he’d been given a chance to do, small though it was. Bitterness churned in his throat. His one big chance to excel and advance in a battle—ruined by Kearns! Will cast another glance over at the wounded.
A commotion stirred everyone to their feet as a Federal captain approached. He was the provost in charge of the prisoners, and his coming and going always drew a crowd. He was making for the higher ranks lounging in the shade of the trees.
“Maybe we move soon?” asked one of the lieutenants.
“Maybe we all get paroled and can go home,” wondered another.
“They would have done that long ago. I think we bound for up north somewheres,” postulated a third.
The captain, gesturing toward the river and the paddle steamers, seemed to Will to indicate another boat ride was in store. Will’s heart sank; they were not going to be paroled. Though parole meant an oath not to take up arms until exchanged, it was better than having to go and sit in some Yankee internment camp waiting to be exchanged. One of the captains in the 1st Alabama had been captured some time before but got paroled and sent home. He had to wait in Richmond until he could be exchanged, which took months of negotiations between the two armies, and meanwhile he had nothing to do, couldn’t come and go, and was basically a prisoner. Yet, he was in friendly hands and did not want for anything. Once exchanged, the captain had made his way back to the regiment and returned to duty. It was a system that guaranteed one would not spend too long in the clutches of the enemy. One could count at least on someday making your way back home.
Conflicting emotions raged in Will’s head. It was better to get away than to surrender, it was better to surrender than to die, it was a disgrace to turn and run when you could have fought, and it was for none of these that he found himself in this company of men who had cheated death but not gotten away cleanly. Some of these officers had surrendered when they’d been cut off and come face-to-face with overwhelming force. Others had been slightly wounded and couldn’t get away. And some, he suspected, had turned the white feather and given up, though they would never admit to it.
The highest-ranking colonel of the captured officers strode out into the middle of the group and gestured for all to come within hearing distance.
“Gather your traps; we’re to march to those boats there an’ board. Provost says we bound for a place called Camp Chase to await exchange. We’ll form ranks of companies of like ranks and march with heads held high. Start forming companies. It’s a short march, but I do not want these bastards to see us look anything but proud.”
With that, all let out a resounding cheer and began to form themselves. With no arms or sidearms, just what each had been permitted to carry with him after capture, the sixty-odd officers marched in columns of four toward the loading docks, with the highest-ranking officer of each rank company leading the way. The loitering Federals stood and watched the proud display with little emotion. They knew. No matter how hard it was to conceal, each Rebel was seething inside, humiliated, and wishing to gouge the eyes out of every watching Federal present. There was a wall of Federals on each side of the marching column, silently watching and smiling. Neither group said a word to the other; the Confederates with stony faces forward and the Federals with gay, happy eyes watching. Will felt the extreme embarrassment, all those eyes watching, burning into him with elation and curiosity. Will tried to look proud in defeat as he marched down to the riverboat; an unknown future lay ahead. The wounded were queuing up to board last. Will wasn’t going to be rid of Kearns that easily.
Chapter 8
Pittsburg Landing, Tennessee, April 15, 1862
It was finally happening. After a week of living amidst the rancid odor of dead horse and human flesh and the despicable work of digging mass graves, the 24th Ohio Volunteers were moving camp. The west Corinth road was still crowded with moving humanity, and the riverboats belched forth line after line of deckhands carrying cargo onto shore.
Pittsburg Landing was still the best place to unload the supplies and reinforcements, ferried ashore from the Savannah road on the opposite bank. Buell’s Army of the Ohio arrived and its divisional supply trains began arriving. The soldiers of Buell’s army had made due for the past seven days with meager supplies of food carried when they had marched to Grant’s rescue at Shiloh or on what they could scrounge or steal from his army.
The stench was the worst. It never left the nostrils. Immediately after the battle ended, Philip Pearson and his pards had been put to work gathering their own dead and wounded and then that of the enemy that lay in heaps. The dead from April 6 were blackening and filling with noxious gas that burst out of clenched teeth or open wounds, covering the gravediggers with a sense of dread and ill temper. The Army of the Ohio camped wherever there was space, which meant sleeping in the open while Grant’s Army of the Tennessee reclaimed the ransacked camps they’d abandoned in the face of the first enemy attack. The dead were collected and buried and the wounded carried to the tent hospital to await death—the inevitable and only result. Philip was ready to march on, to get away to any place but this loathsome stink. His pards were all still with him—they’d lost more in wounded than in outright death. He could count on his friends most of all when the day was turning to gruesome work. But today, they were glad to shoulder packs and muskets and put this place behind them.
Between fatigue details, Philip was drawn again and again to the field hospital as word spread quickly of a man who would give communion for the dying, pray with them, or offer other comfort. His reluctance to play the part of minister melted amidst the long lines of torn men laid out to die. He had thought he was escaping the responsibility to be religious, but the wounded did not care what he’d done previously, how badly he had ended his career as a Methodist preacher. He had the words they wanted to hear before passing on.
In a scene he’d thought he had left far behind, Philip found himself performing communion for a mixed crowd of Federal and Confederate wounded and just as mixed religious affiliation. The wounded and dying wanted some last touch with a spirit world they had either forgotten from youth or still clung to with a fervency that shamed him. He was the former minister, but those begging for some last comfort of ritual still laid some stock in what was to come. Hardtack and an officer’s wine ration served from a dirty mucket was the ceremony, and words from the heart to send some on to the next part of existence. Again and again, comrades sent word back to the regiment for him to pay a visit or sit with another dying comrade, leading to long vigils and more communions to comfort those faced with the final breaths of life.
He was emotionally exhausted but energized. He had told himself he was not cut from the same cloth collar his father had worn to serve the Germantown churches for decades. He’d tried to lead them and failed to live up to his father’s legacy. When the bishop of Dayton demanded Philip resign the ministry, with help from the Harper family, Philip had been relieved of a great burden and had adopted the mistaken idea that he could walk away from the trappings. His comrades would not see it. Even the open feuding between himself and Lee Harper was not enough to convince the others that he was not really as pious as they all assumed. Piety was not just the inward but the outward, and he’d failed the outward time and again. It was the outward he was trying to escape. It followed him everywhere, even to the foul odor of the dying at the hospital. His pards, too, never let him escape. They would not countenance it for a moment; they never believed he was as ill-fitted for the role as he did.
A question had been bugging him for days. Why? Why was he bothering with the daily trek to the hospital to do something he didn’t have to? There were plenty of regimental chaplains seeing to the dying and comforting the wounded. But a sense of having done something worthwhile drew him back each time. A sense of purpose was creeping back. He could no longer grouse when someone called him “Rev.”
When word spread that the 10th Brigade, along with the whole of General Nelson’s division, was to take up the march, Philip took one last walk to the field hospital to say farewell to several of the 24th who were still convalescing. There was sadness in their expressions as he said good-bye. He felt it too, for this move meant that they were going to enter into active campaigning again; an engagement with the enemy would be on the horizon. Some had not made it more than a few days after the fighting ended, and he had been called upon by concerned pards to see to their final suffering moments with a little spiritual comfort. Others were already back home in Ohio after losing one or more limbs to the surgeon’s hacksaws.
There was one more place to visit: the row upon row of wooden headboards just beyond the hospital holding those collected from the field and those who had expired while waiting or receiving treatment. New graves were being excavated by fatigue details to add to the number whose mounds of earth were already becoming hard packed. The 24th Ohio had its markers, and there were the names of men Philip had known, but not closely. There was only one name Philip was looking for. The reason and purpose behind both Philip’s leaving behind his collar and volunteering to fight. Lee Harper, a man whom Philip had fantasized about seeing dead many times in his darker moments, was now truly dead. He had expired in Philip’s very arms. There had been months of heated words and barbs and one moment of human frailty—and the memory was all that was left of the man to whom Philip would not have given his last morsel of food while alive.
He had not thought of Harper in days. The constant skirmishing of words that had attended each and every day for months was missed. In its place now was a question. Was it truly over? The Harper family was cut down to two, Andrew and Elizabeth. Toward Andrew, Philip was indifferent and always had been, though as a possible father-in-law he’d tried to like him. Philip had insulted the family; how else was the father to react? Elizabeth was another matter. But all that felt like ages ago. Then the Robert Harper funeral. Try as he might, he had not been able to take the opportunity to let sleeping dogs lie, and before he knew it, he had been berating the crowd about Robert’s sinful life and eternal punishment. Insult one Harper and insult them all. Still, Philip didn’t know where Elizabeth stood. In the weeks following the funeral he’d sequestered himself at home, brooding before finally lighting out for Dayton to volunteer, only saying good-bye to his father and brother.
The sun bore down, and the stench of the hospital grounds was overpowering. Excrement and blood, infection and death hung about. The graves in the yard were deep, and the rains of the past few days had not washed away any covering. No wreaths adorned the sad-looking headboards, most with etchings made with whatever implement had been handy at the time the deceased was laid into the hole. Lee Harper reposed with four other comrades from the 24th, a rarity to be dignified with a marker at all. Most were marked simply with “unknown,” men who had expired without pard or relative to identify them. Found dead on some lonely hill or wooded forest where a battle line once stood; left with no one to identify the corpse.
The crude markers were all that remained to remind one of the man who had once stood in the ranks. Philip stood before the grave marked Harper, Lee, 24th Ohio. There was still a tie between home in Germantown, Ohio, and this lonely grave. The feud was ended; the Harper boys were both dead. The sounds of shoveling provided cadence for the words in his head, the apologies, the remorse for allowing Lee to go to the grave without redemption. The dying lips had refused to claim any such redemption. In the end, Philip was left with only having offered the gesture, and only because the man was dying in front of him.
Philip nodded as if hearing the last words from Lee all over again, and he bowed his head. Prayers for the soul were no longer needed; that soul had refused to hear any such thing as absolution for the body’s sins, and to the grave had gone the corpse with no Christian forgiveness. Not that his hardheartedness was Philip’s fault, but the Harpers were flock back home. The guilt might be Lee’s to bear, but the guilt of Philip’s actions were his own.
The only
prayers to pray over these graves were for the families in Ohio. With sweat trickling down his temples, Philip whispered each name and conjured a living image of the deceased, pondering a moment more before saying an audible farewell. The army would move, and these graves would be forgotten and left far behind. Philip could not even now remember the faces of the first men to die of disease before the regiment left Ohio. They occupied some lonely grave now in the Camp Chase cemetery.
Philip turned about and made his way through the irregular rows of burial mounds and closed another chapter of his life.
****
Philip, shouldering his musket, stood in the company formation waiting for the order to march. There was nothing left of the supposed sanity of the war, or of this war being a gentleman’s conflict, fought over by gentleman armies. The field hospital had grown and grown to a small city, with military and civilian surgeons and doctors tending to the vast army of wounded being brought in every day from the fields and farms that dotted the landscape. Even now, seven days after the last shot had been fired, bloated and stiffened bodies were still being collected out of the thickets. The wild hogs that roamed the area were slaughtered on sight and deemed unfit for consumption, as they had all fed on the dying or newly dead during the battle. It became something of a game to find them now and gladly put a minié ball into their heads. They observed no propriety toward the dead, enemy or pard. Killing them was last revenge for desecrations witnessed.
Philip still had his pards, but his ministrations to Lee Harper before his death had taken away the sting and humiliation of his escape from civilian ministry. The man he loved to hate was no more—a part of him was also dead. The loss of the chase and the strife, constant needling and insults now absent, created a disquiet. He was now just a regular infantryman without a personal enemy. Lee Harper’s hatred had brought a strange comfort and identity. Philip scarce could swallow the change. But with the change, with the death, had also come a chance to start over.
The Shiloh Series: Books 1-3 Page 41