CHAPTER XXVII. THE FIGHTING NEAR ELKHORN TAVERN--HARRY’S EXPERIENCEUNDER FIRE.
|Van Dorn’s movements were delayed by the obstructions on the roadsby which he moved. As soon as General Curtis became satisfied that therebels were trying to get around to his rear, he ordered General Dodge,who commanded the fourth division of the army, to cut down trees alongthe road leading north from Bentonville, and the order was instantlycarried out. General Dodge had been ill in his tent for three days, butwhen the news of the approaching enemy reached him he was cured as ifby magic. Remarking that it was no time to be sick, he got out of bed,assumed the active command of his division, and during the afternoon ofthe sixth supervised the work of a large detail of men, who felled treesacross the road and otherwise blocked it to delay the rebel advance. Hekept at it until the rebel skirmishers began to fire upon his men, andas he had orders not to bring on an engagement he prudently withdrew.
“General Dodge was a trump,” said Harry afterwards, when telling thestory of the battle; “sick in his tent and in the doctor’s hands beforethe battle began, he was almost constantly in the saddle for three days.When the battle was over and the enemy had retreated, he dropped to theground and went back to his sick-bed. It’s a good example of what a mancan do under excitement.”
“And there was another example of the same sort,” said Jack. “There wasMajor Post, of the Thirty-seventh Illinois who became General PhilipSidney Post, and served gallantly in a good many battles. Early on thesecond day at Pea Ridge he was wounded in the arm, but he kept his placewith his regiment and would not stop to have his wound dressed. Thesurgeon insisted, but he would n’t go. ‘I can walk and give orders,’he said, ‘even if I can’t use my arm, and I’m going to stay here.’ Thecolonel of his regiment had to order him to go to the field hospital. Hewent very reluctantly, as he wanted to see the battle fought out to theend, and was determined to do all he could toward winning it.”
The same spirit prevailed among officers and men throughout the wholearmy. Of course there were instances of shirking, as will always be thecase in any battle, but they were not numerous. Perhaps the knowledgethat the enemy was right on the line of communications, so as to cutoff retreat and render surrender necessary in case of a defeat, hadsomething to do with the good conduct of a few, but it could not bethe case throughout the whole army. And to do the rebels justice, theydisplayed similar courage, but they had the advantage of being theattacking party and knowing that they were superior in numbers to theunion forces.
“On the morning of the seventh,” said Harry, in his story of the battle,“there was great activity all through the union camp. Every drum andfife in the army was called into use, and never before had the woods ofPea Ridge resounded to so much martial music. Rations for two dayshad been prepared, the soldier’s cartridge-boxes were filled to theirfullest capacity, every man made a careful inspection of the lock of hisrifle to make sure that it was in perfect order, and then the order wasgiven to load with ball cartridge and be in readiness to advance whenthe word was given.
“We were kept waiting while General Sigel had his fight with the enemyon the left of our line that I’ve already told about. While we weregetting ready for work Jack and I went to General Vandever and askedwhat we should do.
“‘What do you want to do?’ said he.
“‘We want to do the best we can,’ I answered, ‘and help all we can.We’ll do anything you tell us to do.’
“‘Well, then,’ the general said, very quickly, ‘stay near me and act asmy volunteer aide till I tell you to do something else.’ Then he turnedaway to attend to getting his brigade in order, and we stood still andwaited till he came back.
“He was gone only a minute or two, and then told Jack to ride over toGeneral Carr and say the second brigade was waiting for orders. He toldme to go to General Dodge and ask if he had received orders to move yet,and to let him know whenever orders came.
“Jack came back with the order for the brigade to follow that of GeneralDodge, which had received its orders just before I got to it. One ofGeneral Carr’s aids had brought the order to General Dodge, and he rodewith me to General Vandever to repeat the order which Jack had alreadybrought.
“The order to advance was loudly cheered, and the men stepped off asgayly as though they were going to dress-parade, and most of them agreat deal more so. I couldn’t help thinking how many of these gallantfellows would be stark and stiff on the ground or suffering with woundsbefore another morning sun would rise on them. We could hear the rollof musketry and the booming of cannon where General Sigel was engagedon the left, and before long our advance was engaged with that of therebels, and the shot and shell were crashing among the trees as theirartillery opened upon us.
“General Dodge’s brigade marched up the main road toward the Missouristate line, and filed off to the east near Elkhorn Tavern. As soon asit got into position it opened with a battery upon the rebels, who wereposted in a wood on a slope in front. The battery was promptly repliedto, and then the shots were exchanged with great rapidity. There weresix guns on each side, though some of our men thought the rebels hadeight or ten guns, but we afterward learned they had only six; but itwas the best battery in their whole army. Our battery was the FirstIowa, and its captain prided himself on having brought it to a state ofgreat efficiency, but he wasn’t quite equal to his antagonist.
“General Vandever’s brigade went a little beyond Elkhorn Tavern andtook position on the left of the road nearly opposite to where GeneralDodge had stretched out to the right. As I sat on my horse close behindthe general I could see that we had a dry ravine in front of us and awooded slope farther on, and it did not need sharp eyes to discover thatthis slope was well occupied by rebels. The general ordered the Dubuquebattery (Captain Hayden) to open fire on these gray and butternut coats,and as he did so there was a lively running of the fellows to cover.They showed by their actions that Captain Hayden’s shots were wellaimed; but we had not given them more than two or three rounds before abattery on the other side replied to us.
“That battery was evidently in the hands of a good officer, as he gotour range at the very first fire. A shot came whistling close to thegeneral, and I thought it passed between him and me, but an officer whowas there said it went over our heads. You have no, idea if you’ve neverheard it, what a spiteful screeching a cannon-shot makes when it goesby you. Involuntarily you dodge, but really dodging is of no use, as theball has gone past you before you hear it. A cannon-ball moves a greatdeal faster than sound. According to our school-books sound moves onethousand one hundred and forty-two feet a second, and the scientificgunners say the velocity of a cannon-ball is from one thousand fourhundred to one thousand, eight hundred feet a second. That of arifle-ball is greater, and so by the time you can hear the sound made bya missile, whether large or small, it has gone way past you.
“At the third fire the rebels blew up one of our limber-chests, whichwas standing close behind the gun to which it belonged. The great puffof smoke that rose from it showed the rebels that they were takinggood aim, and they poured in their shot very rapidly after that. In tenminutes more they blew up another limber-chest, and then the generalordered the battery to change its position, and sent me to carry theorder to Captain Hayden.
“It was about nine o’clock in the morning when the first shots wereexchanged on this part of the field, and in fifteen minutes the wholeof General Carr’s division was engaged. Before I could get to CaptainHayden to give him General Vandever’s order the rebels made a rush uponthe battery and captured one of the guns; the rest were hauled backa short distance, and at the same time the Ninth Iowa, which wassupporting the battery, poured in a heavy fire and covered the groundwith the enemy’s dead and wounded. The rebels were driven back to theircover in the woods, and the gun that had been captured was retaken, asthey did not have time to drag it from the field.
“‘They stand like veterans,’ said General Vandever, referring to thesoldiers of the Ninth Iowa. ‘Their
long march yesterday has n’t affectedtheir courage. There were never better men on a battlefield.’
“Just as he said this Colonel Herron, of the Ninth came up, and thegeneral congratulated him; and then the general rode along the line andsaid to the soldiers the same that he had to their commander. Themen cheered him and were evidently determined to do their part towardwinning the battle for the union side. But would they succeed againstall those masses of men that could be seen on the hill-slope to theeast and west, and crowded in the brushwood and among the trees thatstretched away to the north?
“After this for a while there was a lull in the fighting, and meantimewe could hear the artillery and small arms to the left, where GeneralSigel and General Davis, with their divisions, were sustaining the shockof the enemy. They were overmatched in numbers, but their weapons weremore effective, and they had a better supply of ammunition. Many ofthe enemy were armed only with squirrel-rifles and shot-guns, and, ofcourse, they could not load and fire with the rapidity of our men. Hadthey been able to do so, and had their weapons been equally effectivewith ours, the battle would have been hopelessly lost to us by reasonof the great superiority of the rebels in numbers alone and their betterknowledge of the ground.
“By and by we heard that Sigel and Davis had driven away the enemy andwere slowly drawing in their lines, as only a small force were in frontof them. The attack on General Carr’s division was renewed by the rebelartillery, and we could see that they had a great number of men gatheredbehind their battery to charge upon our lines at the proper moment. SoGeneral Carr sent an order for General Vandever to fall back, and at thesame time he gave a similar order to General Dodge.
“We fell back perhaps a hundred and fifty yards, close to Elkhorn Tavernand a little to the north of it. There our battery opened fire again,still supported by the Ninth Iowa, and there the rebel battery againpoured its fire upon us.
“Near the house were two companies of infantry drawn up in line andwaiting orders to move. I had just gone to carry an order for them tocome up to the support of the Ninth, when a shell passed close to me andstruck in their ranks, where it burst. Two of the men were killed andfive were wounded by this shell. Almost at the same time another shellexploded on the ground in front of the house and shattered the leg ofa soldier who stood there. Another fell among some horse-teams,frightening the animals into running away. They dashed up the road inthe direction of the enemy, and were lost in a cloud of dust. In itsrunaway career one of the wagons knocked down some of our soldiers,wounding one seriously and two or three slightly. A solid shot struckthe house and went completely through it, but did no damage to any one,as the family had taken refuge in the cellar.”
The Lost Army Page 27