A Chain of Thunder

by Jeff Shaara

  After three months in Milwaukee, Bauer had suffered through more gloom than he had ever experienced in the army. His family’s affairs had finally been settled, and he was surprised to learn that his father’s sausage business had in fact been moderately successful. He had paid off a variety of debts, and offered his family’s house to tenants who Bauer knew to be reliable. Once the details were handled, Bauer had no more reason to remain a temporary civilian. With the expiration of his ninety-day leave, he boarded the train that would take him to Memphis, where much of Grant’s command had encamped. Bauer had done his best to carry the optimism that this time, when the spring came, the campaigns would be brief, would end this war once and for all. Surely, with the South absorbing so many defeats west of the mountains, they would be drained of the will to continue this bloody rebellion. But along the way, the newspapers filtered through the railcars, loud talk and condemnation of Washington, of the War Department, and the incompetence of blue-coated generals. The papers reported of a place in Virginia called Fredericksburg, details of how the traitorous rebel Robert E. Lee had thoroughly embarrassed the Federal army, driving them from the field in one of the most costly fights of the war. Bauer ignored the big talk from people who had never stepped on a battlefield; he knew that the “embarrassment” suffered by generals and politicians meant that there had been enormous casualties, no doubt on both sides. On the jostling ride southward, he couldn’t avoid dragging himself back to Shiloh, and the more talk he heard the more gruesome the memories became. When he finally reached Memphis, he had had enough of railcars filled with big-mouthed cigar-smoking civilians. He had one goal now, a single-minded purpose: return to duty, return to the men who knew what this fight truly meant. The army was the only home he had left.

  When he reported to the camp of the 16th, he couldn’t avoid seeking out the casualty lists, that if the men had been a part of more tough fights, or had suffered inevitable waves of illness, there would most certainly be the empty spaces in the tent, the absence of men whose names he knew too well. The first jarring shock came when he sought out his friend Sammie Willis. The summer before, not long after Shiloh, Willis had been promoted to sergeant. No surprise there. Willis was the best soldier Bauer had seen, and it was clear that observation had been shared by the company commander. But when he arrived at the encampment in Memphis, Bauer learned that Willis had been promoted yet again, someone farther up the chain of command making the decision that this small, rugged fighter should become an officer. To Bauer’s astonishment, Willis was now a second lieutenant. Every soldier knew that the lieutenants took more than their share of battle wounds, that the top brass constantly sought out men to fill the boots of so many who were taken down. What Bauer did not know was that those freshly promoted officers were sent where they were most needed, anywhere they were needed most. Lieutenant Samuel Willis had been transferred to fill a spot in a different regiment, the 17th Wisconsin. Though most of the Wisconsin troops fought within the same brigades, and certainly they would be assigned within the same corps of the army’s new organization, to Bauer, Willis’s absence was a tragedy all its own. No matter how close their camps might be, or whether the 16th would ever stand alongside any of the other regiments from Wisconsin, to Bauer the 17th Wisconsin might as well have been serving on the moon.

  After long weeks in Memphis, more of the usual training and drill, adding new recruits to rebuild the ranks, the 16th Wisconsin had been ordered to the transport boats and sent downriver. Bauer heard the grumbling talk again, the army’s most common commodity, that they were to serve as one small part of Grant’s futile efforts to maneuver past Vicksburg by waging hand-to-hand combat with Mother Nature. Bauer had been regaled immediately with the tales of engineers and their grandiose plans for digging what was called Grant’s Canal. The tool most commonly given the men was the shovel, and Bauer received no more enjoyment from that work than the new recruits who worked alongside him, or the Negroes who had been gathered in work crews of their own, many of them runaway slaves. Bauer suffered his own blisters, hardened his own calluses, feared dysentery as much as he learned to fear snakebite and alligators, all the while suffering from armies of ticks and infinite swarms of mosquitoes.

  And then, the order came. In was time to march.

  NEAR HARD TIMES, LOUISIANA

  APRIL 21, 1863

  For weeks the soldiers had spent their days slogging through muddy fields and narrow bayous, every watery hole humming with every kind of bug, and worse, lurking danger in every muddy footstep, every bog hole seeming to hold some creature whose sole purpose was to torment men. The rebels had come as well, but not many, small raiding parties, easily scattered by the vigilance of the picket guards. Bauer had heard the speculation from the officers, that the rebels were using darkness to slip across the river, and so patrols were sent out along the banks, searching for hidden rafts or small boats. But the steep riverbanks were no friendlier than the dark swamps, the blue-coated troops easily visible to watchful lookouts on the other side, rebel gunners itching to find a target. It was more of a game than anything else, the Federal gunners keeping watch of their own, waiting for the telltale puff of smoke, then launching their own shells back the other way.

  The roads they used were often laid on the driest ground, the tops of the levees, and so, for long stretches, the troops marched in perfect view of the rebels across the way. But farther south of Vicksburg, between the smaller settlements the rebels occupied downriver, the gunners were few and scattered, nothing like the massed batteries that guarded the town itself. When the shell came, it was almost always too high, the men dropping low from instinct, the shell tumbling harmlessly into some bog. To the men like Bauer, the shells went by mostly unnoticed, the men focused more on the tramping of their sore feet, the rhythm of the march wearing at their brogans. Though the labor in the swamps across from Vicksburg had been a miserable duty, at least the supplies had been plentiful, even the food reasonably edible. But the veterans knew that, now that they were on the march, any wagon trains would stay far behind them, and if a man wore a hole in his shoe, he might just have to live with it. Or swap out his own with the shoes of a corpse, something no one wanted to think about.

  SOUTH OF NEW CARTHAGE, LOUISIANA

  APRIL 22, 1863

  They had marched for nearly a full day, cooled by a brief shower that kept the dust low on the road. But there had been more showers, days of rain that made for slow going, long stretches of muddy bog. Most of that had been repaired by a carpet of cut trees, what the engineers called “corduroying.” For the foot soldiers, mud was merely an annoyance, but the poor roads put a grinding halt to the artillery, which in turn would slow the march for anyone else. Bauer had no idea how many miles they had covered, didn’t really care. That was a problem for the officers, and for the senior commanders back there somewhere, who always seemed to think the army should be able to move as quickly as a line could be drawn on paper.

  For much of the day they could see the river itself, and Bauer felt drawn to the scene, the quiet serenity of moving water, thick and muddy. He knew enough of geography to understand that this same water started its journey far to the northwest of Milwaukee, emerging from springs and drainages in country that some said still held Indians. Bauer had never been to northern Minnesota, had all the wilderness he had needed closer to home. As a boy, he had hiked and hunted with his father through land that bore little resemblance to what surrounded them now. In April the Wisconsin mornings still held a sharp chill, but here the heat came early, any effort at all drawing a soaking of sweat through the wool uniform. In the swamps, the men who strained with the shovels had been allowed to go half dressed, and even in the winter season, the cold had never been what the Northern men were used to. The decorum of the uniform had been an encumbrance, made filthy by the work, and a welcome hiding place for an amazing variety of vermin. There were weekly bonfires in every camp, so many uniforms too dirty to salvage, and infested with God-knew-what ki
nd of creature. The army seemed to recognize that allowing a man to go shirtless was more acceptable than the cost of replacing uniforms on a daily basis. It was one of those rare pieces of wisdom that surprised even the officers.

  But now the shovels were gone. On the march, the uniforms were regulation, muskets on shoulders, bedrolls wrapped across one shoulder. The canteens had been filled with what Bauer could only hope was water cleaner than what flowed past him in the river. It had been a miserable lesson learned in southern Tennessee, when the troops often had to drink water straight from the Tennessee River. The sickness had infected enormous numbers of troops, had certainly contributed to the army’s weakness when the rebels came. Bauer had at least made the effort not to drink anything he couldn’t actually see through, though lately there had been little choice.

  He stepped in silence, the only sound the tramp of the footsteps around him. He glanced toward the sun, falling low, knew the march would end soon, blessed rest for his feet, the opportunity for rations, however meager. Beside him were three other men, the march a column of fours, and far to the front he could glimpse the horsemen, the flag hanging limp, thought of Colonel Allen, the man lucky to be alive. Bauer had escaped any serious wound at Shiloh, but so many had gone down hard, including Allen himself. Amazingly, Allen had survived wounds that those who saw had been convinced were mortal. Whether it was the skill of the doctors, or Allen’s own willpower, he had recovered to lead the 16th once more. No one was more pleased with that than Bauer. With the colonel’s generosity in allowing Bauer the long furlough, his respect and affection for the man was that much stronger.

  “A gunboat! Whoeee! Look at them cannons!”

  Others around him were pointing to the obvious, an ironclad moving upstream, what Bauer assumed was protection to the army on the march. He had seen the black smoke long before the boat appeared, watched it now, barely moving, just enough power from the rumble of the engines to counter the flow of the current. There were four big guns protruding from the side he could see, three more pointing forward. Yep, you stay right out there. No rebel’s gonna come floating across here with you looking at ’em. After a few minutes, there was a fresh belch of smoke, the boat moving on past, upriver, and men all along the column were waving their farewell, acknowledging the comforting show of strength. Bauer had wondered about life on the water, knew boys from home who had spent their time on Lake Michigan, while Bauer preferred the deep woods. Some of those boys are right out there, he thought. Somewhere, some other boat maybe. Maybe New Orleans, those big ocean ships. Not sure I could take that. The river’s smooth. The gulf, or worse, the Atlantic … people drown out there by the hundreds. I ever have to get on another boat, I’ll stick to the rivers.

  The levee beneath them seemed to flatten out, the road turning away from the river, and he saw an enormous house, white columns and a wide veranda. The men were flowing out into a field to one side, flat high ground, a good place for a camp. That order drifted back toward them, the horsemen moving that way, the captain relaying the word.

  “Column halt! Prepare for camp! There’s no tents, so find a good spot and keep close together!”

  There were groans about that, but Bauer understood the meaning. This camp was for only one night, just a place to eat and sleep. This march still had a ways to go.

  The captain waved them off the road, and Bauer followed, the column breaking down, men flowing along with their color bearer, directed into place by one of Colonel Allen’s staff. The officers were gathering, the usual routine, and closer to the men, the sergeants took command, cursing and taunts, the amazingly stupid ritual that seemed to give such joy to the men who wore the stripes. The exception was Champlin, and Bauer saw him now, a quick drink from his canteen, waving the men out toward a cluster of trees.

  “Move! Grab that shade while you can! It rains tonight, you’ll know why!”

  Bauer obeyed, moved beneath a low-hanging limb, lifted his pack and bedroll over his head, dropped down heavily, was suddenly very tired. He looked skyward, the oak tree spread out like an enormous skeleton, barely flecked with new growth, specks of green on the smaller branches. Beyond, the clouds were small and sparse, white puffs darkening with the setting of the sun. Men were settling down all around him, many reaching for their rations, and Bauer did the same. He unwrapped a small cloth bundle, smelled the bacon, almost raw, typical, stuffed it partway into his mouth, tried to bite off one corner. He tugged, the soft meat shredding, the pungent sour taste adding to the growling in his stomach. He focused on the challenge, swallowed a lump of greasy meat, then attacked a piece of hardtack. The square biscuit broke in his hands, something of a relief, sparing his teeth. He tossed a small piece into his mouth, the cracker crumbling into dust, grabbed the canteen, tried to avoid inhaling the floury dust. He took a short swig, stopped, held it away, clenched his jaw, closed his eyes. The water was awful. He took a long breath, his tongue working furiously to wipe away the remnants of hardtack and any hint of what was supposed to be water. The rumbling in his gut continued, loud enough to hear, and he let out a breath, stared again at the wad of soft meat, knew he had to do it all again.

  “Private Bauer!”

  The voice drew his attention, and he sat up straight, saw Sergeant Champlin, and behind him the captain, walking toward him alongside … Colonel Allen. He stood, the instinct of training, snapped a salute toward the officers.

  Allen took charge and said, “The army’s a mysterious creature, Private. I try to understand its ways, but I learned a long time ago it’s best to just let things come as they come.” He paused. “It was made clear to me some time ago that the War Department frowned on anyone who requested a transfer to a different regiment. That’s not hard to understand. We need to know each other, to know we can fight together as a unit.” He reached into a coat pocket, produced a piece of paper. “Apparently, someone has enough influence to allow at least one exception. I have an order here … calling for your immediate transfer from the 16th Wisconsin Regiment of Volunteers … to the 17th Wisconsin Regiment of Volunteers.” He looked at Bauer now, shrugged. “Not sure I understand this, Private, but the order’s plain. Usually this kind of thing comes after a promotion, but I’ve heard nothing of that. I hate to lose you, Private. You’re a credit to Wisconsin, and a credit to this army. We need all the veterans we can get.”

  Bauer tried to absorb everything the colonel was saying, questions bursting up inside of him. He nodded, saluted again, fought through a jumble of words.

  “Yes, sir! Thank you! Uh … when, sir?”

  Allen looked at the paper, a point with his finger.

  “Says right here … immediately. Like I said, Private, it’s pretty plain.”

  Bauer noticed a man behind them, keeping back, seeming to wait for the colonel to complete the duty. Bauer didn’t know the man, a very young private, a coating of grime on the man’s face, the sign of the day’s march. The man eased forward now, hesitant, and Allen folded the paper, handed it to Bauer.

  “You’ll need this to get past the provosts, or any picket guard.” The colonel turned, then motioned the man forward. “This man was sent to guide you to the 17th. I suppose … no reason for any delay.”

  The private stood stiffly, prepared to do his duty, and Allen turned away, scanning the men around him, all the faces on Bauer.

  Allen said, “You new recruits … give a hearty farewell to this man. He could have taught you something. Like some of you others, he was at Shiloh, saw the worst of it. Hate to lose him.”

  The colonel turned again toward Bauer, who snapped the salute up once more. Allen returned it and spun away, moved back out into the field, trailed closely by the captain. Bauer heard a low voice, Allen.

  “Leave it to the army. Who in the hell …?”

  Champlin was there now, stood close in front of Bauer, shook his head.

  “I guess they’re gonna promote you. Only thing makes sense. You’re no damn officer. Somebody up the damn chain of comma
nd’s got too many bug bites to think straight. Well, Dutchie, you best get moving. This here escort of yours looks like he’s about to jump out’n his pants.”

  Bauer felt a swirl of thoughts, confusion most of all.

  “I didn’t ask for this.… I don’t want to leave these boys … or you, Sarge. The colonel …”

  “The colonel just read you that order. Now, stuff it in your pocket and follow this squirrely chap to wherever he’s supposed to take you. And, like the colonel said, you best do us proud. He won’t whip your ass, but I will. Get going.”

  Bauer saw the private waiting for him, expectant, a gangly boy with red hair, a slight smile, nodding toward him.

  “We best be headin’ out, sir. Afore’s it’s dark. Rebs be out and about. Other critters, too.”

  There was a distinct Irish brogue to the man’s speech, and Bauer said, “Not sir. I’m just a private. I don’t understand any of this.”

  The man nodded, then glanced at Champlin.

  “Well, we best be goin’ anyhow. My orders are to escort you to our camp, up ahead a ways, a mile or so.”

  Bauer looked at Champlin, who reached out, slapped his shoulder.

  “Keep your head down, Dutchie.”

  Bauer nodded, no words, looked again to the gangly private, who said, “You need to hang on to them orders. Like the colonel said, it’ll get us through the guards. I got orders of me own, pretty plain, too. We get to camp, I’m to take you directly to Lieutenant Willis.”