Fort Pillow

by Harry Turtledove

Two or three minnies from the fort cracked past the stump behind which Ward hid. They knew he was here, which meant it was time to go somewhere else. He'd fired several shots, and the clouds of smoke belching from his carbine announced his whereabouts to the world.

  He scrambled to find fresh cover a little closer to the fort and to the firing pits in front of it. Other troopers were doing the same thing, and cheering one another on as they moved. Only a couple of wounded men staggered back toward the rear. One had a hand that dripped blood. The other…

  “Son of a bitch!” Ward said softly. He'd seen some nasty wounds, but this was one of the worst. A Mini? ball had caught the trooper in the lower jaw and carried away most of it. Blood splashed down the soldier's front. Shattered teeth gleamed inside his mouth. His tongue flopped loose and red, like butcher's meat.

  Could you live after a mutilation like that? If you could, would you want to? You'd never be able to show your face-or what was left of it-in broad daylight again. If you had a wife, would she stay with you? If you didn't, how could you hope to get one? Wouldn't you just want to pick up an Enfield or a shotgun and finish what the Yankee bullet had started?

  Those were all good questions. Matt Ward did his best not to think about any of them. He tried to move up on the enemy soldiers in the rifle pits.

  Major William Bradford had been in some skirmishes before this fight, but never a real battle. This was a different business from everything he'd known up till now. He didn't care for any of the differences.

  The Confederates here weren't going to ride off after exchanging a few shots with his men. They meant it. He didn't need to be U.S. Grant to figure that out. They had numbers on their side, too. The volume of gunfire told him that. So did the way they pressed the attack along the whole perimeter, from the Mississippi all the way over to Coal Creek.

  Not far from him, a colored soldier from one of the newly arrived artillery units fired his Springfield, calmly reloaded as fast as a white man could have, and fired again. The Negro nodded to him. “Them Secesh keeps comin', suh, we shoots all of 'em,” he said.

  “Uh, right.” Bradford made himself nod. He knew Bedford Forrest's men hated the idea of Negro soldiers. They denied that Negroes could be soldiers. If Negroes could fight as well as whites, that knocked the Confederacy's whole raison d’?tre over the head. The Rebs could see as much perfectly well.

  But Bill Bradford, though no Confederate, was a Tennessean, and a Tennessean from a county with more slaves than white men. He didn't believe-well, he hadn't believed-Negroes could fight, either. If they made him see they could, he would have to do some fresh thinking, and few men are ever comfortable doing that.

  Worst of all, though, was what the battle was showing him about himself. With a major's oak leaves on his shoulder straps, he had rank enough to imagine himself a bold commander like General Sherman-or even like General Forrest, for whom every V.S. officer had a thorough and wary respect.

  Now reality was rudely testing his imagination. What happened when the bullets started flying? He got flustered and fearful, and he knew it. He'd been the next thing to paralyzed till Major Booth told him to send out a couple of companies of skirmishers. Would he have thought of it for himself if Booth hadn't? He hoped so, but he wasn't sure. Dammit, he wasn't sure.

  When a minnie struck home, it made a wet, slapping sound that chilled the blood. A white man-a trooper from the Thirteenth Tennessee Cavalry-groaned and clutched at his shoulder. Welling blood made his dark blue tunic even darker. He stumbled away toward the surgeons' tender mercies.

  That could have been me) Bradford thought with a shudder. Once lodged in his brain, the idea wouldn't go away. Know thyself, some ancient had said. This was knowledge Bill Bradford would rather not have had.

  One of the cannon that had come north with the colored artillerymen bellowed. The crew reloaded the gun with the same matter-of-fact competence the Negro fighting as a rifleman displayed. They had a white sergeant and a white captain, but they didn't need anyone to tell them what to do. They knew, and they did it.

  No answering Confederate cannonballs came. Forrest's men seemed to have no artillery with them. That was the one bit of good news Bill Bradford saw. Confederate soldiers in gray, in butternut, and even in blue swarmed everywhere out beyond the perimeter. Their fierce yells of fury and defiance put him in mind of the baying of wolves.

  Another cannon crashed. Half a dozen guns had seemed plenty to defend Fort Pillow. The earthwork along which they were mounted wasn't very long. But, no matter how many rounds they fired at the Rebs, Forrest's men kept pressing ever closer.

  A shell from the gunboat in the Mississippi arched up over the bluff atop which Fort Pillow sat. It burst somewhere to the rear of the attacking rebels. Bradford swore under his breath. The New Era had to supplement the firepower in the fort itself.

  “Make' em shorten the range, Theo!” Bradford yelled.

  “I'll do it!” His older brother, Captain Theodorick Bradford, passed signals down to the New Era with blue wigwag flags. The system had seemed good enough on paper. In the heat of action… It was liable to be slower and clumsier than Bradford wished it were.

  Major Booth went from one gun along the earthwork to the next, encouraging the crews to keep firing. “Give 'em hell!” Booth yelled. “Those bastards don't know what hell is! Show' em, damn you! “

  And the colored men responded. They laughed and cheered and served their cannon with a will. Not even white men obeyed Bradford so readily. He envied the more experienced officer for his ability to command.

  “Major!” he called.

  “What is it, Major?” Booth asked, mindful of the civilities even under fire. A bullet snapped past his head. He ducked, then laughed at himself for ducking. “Warm work, isn't it?”

  “Er-so it is.” Bradford couldn't act so cheerful about it. “They're putting a lot of pressure on the skirmishers, sir. Shall I send out more men, or shall I pull back the ones we've already got out there?”

  “Neither,” Booth said at once. “If you send out more, we'll lose them. Skirmishers can't stop the Rebs from coming forward. Three times as many men out there couldn't stop them, and the ones we do have are enough to slow the enemy down. If you pull them back into the fort, though, Forrest will push right up to the earthwork. I want to put that off as long as I can.”

  “Major?” Bradford said, perplexed.

  “If we can hold the Rebs out till reinforcements come up the river from Memphis, the fight is as good as won,” Booth said. “No way in hell Forrest can overrun us then. His men will skulk off and go back to thieving and murdering and bushwhacking. That's all they're good for, and they can keep doing it from now till doomsday without changing the way the war turns out one damn bit.”

  “Uh, yes, sir.” Bradford wondered if he could have been callous enough to sacrifice the skirmishers in the hope of saving the fort and most of the garrison. He didn't think so, even if he could see it was the right move.

  Along with his other talents, Lionel Booth might have been a mind reader. He patted Bradford on the back. “I know they're your men, and I know you're fond of them, Major. But every now and then we need to take some losses for the good of the greater number. Do you see it?”

  “I see it. I don't like it.” When a minnie cracked past Bradford, he ducked as Booth had. He couldn't laugh about it. It made him feel like a coward, even if it was altogether involuntary.

  A wounded man screamed. Bradford set his teeth against the appalling cry. Booth hurried on to hearten the next gun crew.

  IV

  Surviving skirmishers ran back toward the earthen parapet warding Fort Pillow. Hale soldiers helped their wounded friends. Every so often, a man who'd loaded his Springfield before retreating would fire it at the oncoming Rebs to make them keep their heads down.

  Lieutenant Mack Leaming watched a couple of Federals go down, but only a couple. Most of the men who'd set out for the earthwork reached it in safety-or as much safety as U.S. sold
iers could find anywhere on this field.

  A Mini? ball snapped past in front of Leaming's nose, too close for comfort. He flinched. Half a minute later, another near miss made him flinch again. Fifty yards away, troopers from the Thirteenth Tennessee Cavalry shouted that another officer was down. The Confederates seemed to be taking dead aim-though Leaming wished he didn't think of it quite that way-at anyone inside the perimeter who wore shoulder straps and more than his share of brass buttons.

  Though clouds still covered the sun most of the time, Leaming didn't think it could be much past eight o'clock. Looking at his pocket watch never even crossed his mind. The Confederates hadn't been attacking for much more than two hours, and they'd already driven the Federals back inside the fortress proper.

  That wasn't good, and Leaming knew it. How could the garrison hold out till reinforcements got here from Memphis? Leaming spotted Major Lionel Booth, who was still going from gun to gun encouraging the colored cannoneers. “Major!” he called. “Excuse me, Major…”

  “Yes, Lieutenant?” Booth sounded as calm as if on parade. Leaming didn't think he really was that calm, but even being able to seem so was a valuable asset to an officer. “What do you need?”

  “Sir, how many Rebs do you reckon are out there?” Leaming blurted.

  Booth considered. He ducked when a bullet cracked past above his head, but he didn't seem especially flustered. “I'd say fifteen hundred, maybe two thousand,” he replied at last. “From the weight of fire, that's about what it feels like to me.”

  “Is that all, sir?” Leaming said in amazement.

  “Isn't that enough? Two and a half, maybe three times what we've got in here,” Booth said with a wry chuckle. “More than I figured Bedford Forrest could throw at us, I'll tell you that. But does someone else think there are more?”

  “When I asked Major Bradford, sir, he said he thought Forrest had six or seven thousand men,” Leaming said.

  “Did he now?” Booth started to say something, then visibly changed his mind. What did come out of his mouth after that brief pause was, “Well, Lieutenant, you have to remember this is Major Bradford's first real combat. Your first few times, you're liable to see things that aren't there.” He sounded indulgent, like a father talking about a boy who didn't want to go to sleep without a candle by his bed.

  Leaming hoped the fortress commandant felt indulgent about him, too. This was also his first real combat, and he was scared. He was scared spitless-the Sahara couldn't have been drier than the inside of his mouth. The first few near misses, he'd almost pissed himself. That would have been a fine thing for an officer to do in front of his men!

  “You're getting along just, fine, Lieutenant, Booth said, so maybe he could seem paternal toward more people than Major Bradford. “I think there are only a few people who aren't afraid on a battlefield and they're men who don't care if they live or die. Nothing wrong with being afraid. The trick of it is to go on doing your job whether you're afraid or not. You're not shirking, and that's all anybody can ask of you.”

  “Thank you, sir.” Leaming was no Catholic, but that felt like absolution from a priest.

  Major Booth's grin showed crooked teeth. “It's all right. The more Rebs who try to rush this place, the more Rebs we'll shoot, that's all. Let 'em come, by God! How are they going to make it over the parapet? We'll hang on till help from Memphis steams up the river, and then we'll see who runs, and how far.”

  Shells from the New Era climbed high over the bluff, slow enough to be easily visible to the naked eye, then rained down someplace not too far from where Confederate troopers were moving. Seeing those bursts and the clouds of smoke rising from them heartened Leaming. Even so, he said, “I wish we had better signal arrangements with the gunboat. The way things are, she's almost firing blind.”

  “I won't say you're altogether wrong, but I think we're doing as much as we can,” Booth replied. “Signal flags are about as good as we can manage, I'm afraid, even if they aren't perfect-her crew can't see their targets. The ground up here is too high, that's all, and the Rebs are moving faster than we can let the New Era know where they're moving to. But some of what the gunboat fires off is bound to come down on their heads.”

  “Here's hoping, sir,” Mack Leaming said. When Booth put things the way he did, the New Era didn't seem so very formidable after all. Leaming was glad nobody else inside Fort Pillow had heard the commandant. That left him the only one to have his spirits lowered.

  Major Booth seemed unworried about what the gunboat could or couldn't do. He hardly seemed worried about anything. Touching the brim of his black slouch hat, he went back to encouraging the gunners.

  Despite their steady fire, and despite the work of the white and colored riflemen behind the earthwork, Forrest's men steadily worked their way forward. They came close enough to let Leaming hear their officers shouting orders, close enough to let him hear their wounded men groan when they were hit.

  They came close enough to let him draw his revolver from the holster and fire two or three shots at them: the first shots he'd ever fired with intent to kill. He couldn't see if he hit anybody. That was probably just as well.

  And then, instead of sliding forward, the Confederates slid back. They still kept up a steady and galling fire, but they didn't seem to think they could simply storm the parapet any more.

  We taught them respect, by God, Leaming thought. Those loping, caterwauling shapes had been everywhere in front of the fort, or so it seemed to him. He found Major Bradford's estimate of their numbers far easier to believe than Major Booth's. Six or seven thousand Rebs? Looking at them out there, he could have believed there were six or seven million of them.

  Not far away, two colored soldiers passed a dipper of sutlers' whiskey back and forth. Both of them grinned. One of them raised the dipper in salute to Lieutenant Leaming. “Want a snort, suh?” he called.

  “No, thanks,” Leaming answered. Dutch courage, nigger courage, what difference did it make? And some of the whites from his own regiment were drinking, too. Put a soldier, white or colored, anywhere near whiskey and he'd find a way to get outside it.

  One of the Negroes aimed an obscene gesture at the Confederates out there in the distance. His friend thought that was the funniest thing he'd ever seen, and sent the Rebs something even nastier. Several bullets snarled past them. They went right on laughing.

  They weren't afraid, anyhow. And they were fighting the enemy. The colored men at the half-dozen field guns kept firing steadily, while the colored soldiers serving as riflemen loaded and shot shoulder to shoulder with the troopers from the Thirteenth Tennessee Cavalry. Leaming wouldn't have believed it if he weren't seeing it with his own eyes. He had trouble believing it even though he was seeing it with his own eyes.

  A Negro let out a shrill screech. He staggered away from the parapet, clutching at his left elbow. “Do Jesus! The surgeon gonna cut off my arm!” he wailed. From what Leaming knew of wounds, he was likely to be right. If a bullet shattered bones, you almost had to amputate. Otherwise, the injured man would die of fever. Shy a limb, he might live.

  “Po' George,” one Negro said. “Hard luck,” another agreed.

  They both fired their Springfields less than a minute after George got hurt. The other colored soldiers shot at any Confederates they saw, too. Niggers really can fight, Lieutenant Leaming thought in swelling wonder. Maybe it's not a question of keeping them slaves from here on out. Maybe we were lucky to hold them in slavery as long as we did.

  By now, the white captain and sergeant nominally in charge of Ben Robinson's twelve-pounder had seen that the colored gun crew knew what it was doing. They gave fewer and fewer orders. They gave fewer and fewer suggestions. The black men were doing plenty all by themselves to give the Confederates out beyond the earthwork a hard time.

  When Bedford Forrest's troopers pressed close to the parapet, Sergeant Robinson ordered a couple of rounds of canister on his own. He looked back to Captain Carron after he did it, b
ut the officer didn't say a word. He just beamed and nodded, and Ben Robinson went on fighting the gun.

  Each round of canister had sheet-metal sides and a thin wooden plug at the top. It held two or three hundred round bullets. In effect, it turned the twelve-pounder into God's shotgun. At short range, it was supremely deadly.

  A man caught by the full fury of a blast of canister might be blown to red rags. He might simply cease to be, torn apart so completely that nothing recognizable as a human being was left. Or he might be killed or maimed in any number of more ordinary ways.

  The Rebs didn't want to come close to any gun that was firing canister. No matter how much Ben Robinson hated those Secesh sons of bitches, he couldn't blame them for that. He wouldn't have wanted to make the acquaintance of a canister burst himself. Who would?

  “Look at 'em run!” Charlie Key yelled. “You ever reckon you see Secesh run?”

  Some of the Confederates couldn't run. Some of them would never run again. The rest… didn't want that to happen to them.

  “Give 'em anudder round, jus' like de last one!” Charlie yelled.

  Robinson shook his head. “They outa range now,” he said mournfully. “Don't want to waste the canister. We ain't got but a few rounds.”

  “Too bad,” Charlie said. “How come dey don't give us mo'? Powerful good 'munition. Ain't nothin' else make the Rebs scamper like dat.” He mimed scampering himself. He was a dangerous mimic.

  “Canister shift damn near anything-anything up close,” Robinson said. “Out past a couple hundred yards, though, it ain't much. So we got us dese shrapnel rounds an' shot fo' de long-range work.”

  A twelve-pound iron ball would tear a fearful hole in a tight-packed group of men. Since the Rebs weren't fighting that way, shrapnel bursts did more damage here. Ben Robinson knew he could hurt the white men who'd done so much to make his life a misery. Sell me away from home, will you? he thought furiously as he lowered the altitude screw on the gun carriage. Sell me at all, will you? Treat me like a piece of meat, will you? Treat my sister like a piece of meat, will you? That was a separate outrage, one that burned all by itself.