The Smoke at Dawn: A Novel of the Civil War

by Jeff Shaara

  The route was laid out, a wide path that carried him through the most dismal wood and swamp bottoms he had ever seen. If he needed some boost of enthusiasm, something to ease the monotony, it was first, that he was alive at all, and second, the aches and agonies from his illness were noticeably diminished.

  The orderly who followed him was there for discipline, to keep Bauer honest, a task that Bauer had to believe was as boring as his own. He glanced back from time to time, the orderly nowhere in sight, hanging back, he thought, to perhaps catch him in some improper disregard for the doctor’s instructions. Bauer had begun to imagine that the orderly might be back there performing some indiscreet act of his own, probably with a flask of spirits. It was speculation that offered Bauer at least some kind of break from the fog that still filled his head, what the doctor assured him was only the aftereffects of the drugs they had given him.

  He stared into a deep hole in the woods, a cavelike tunnel through dense brush over a carpet of black water. There was too much of that, too many places that reminded him of the endless swamps that seemed to fill every low place in this part of the world. Any soldier who had served this long close to the Mississippi River had seen for himself that such places held terrifying and dangerous creatures: alligators, snakes, other critters that belched out groans and shrieks that had inspired numerous legends. Even now, the talk in the hospital was of some man-ape creature, who slogged his way through the deepest mud holes, silent, efficient, sure to attack anyone foolish enough to tread too near the swampy bottoms. His brain tried to focus, the talk even from the doctors of that demon of the deep woods, and Bauer wondered now if the tale had begun from the imaginations of the medical men, to keep anyone, patient or orderly, from slipping off on some indiscreet mission that had nothing to do with medicine. This was, after all, Natchez, and many of the troops had found that the gentility of this Southern community masked the availability of a different kind of creature, one who smelled of perfume. Bauer stopped, looked back, saw the man now, coming around the curve behind him. No, he’s too efficient. Takes his orders too seriously. Bauer began to move again, the stiffness in one knee tormenting him. A man-beast, he thought. A great hairy ape. That kind of tale is good for tormenting new recruits, give them a healthy fear of these swamps. Most of the fresh-faced boys tried to laugh it off, just some fairy tale, but Bauer knew that several of them slept with their muskets.

  He saw another gap in the thickets to one side, more black water, thought, No shortcut that way. I’ve seen at least one alligator in that hole, and I know full well there are snakes out here big enough to swallow me right up to my neck. That doctor knew just where he was sending me. If I tried to slice off a mile or two from this hike, I might never be heard from again. They’d find me when some gator spit out my bones. Or maybe I’d come out the other end. Either way, Fritz, stay on the road. Damn it all anyway. My legs are doing just fine.

  He winced, the strain in his calves giving the lie to his attempt at bravado. His lungs ached as well, but the pungent stench of the swampy water was far better than what waited for him at the hospital. Okay, just keep walking. Can’t be too much more of this. Your gut’s doing okay, for now. That’s a good thing, for certain. A man ain’t built for permanent squatting. I’ve hugged my knees so much, they’re rougher ’n my pants legs.

  The trail curved around a muddy water hole, and the smell curled his nose, as it always did. That’s gotta be where they get our rations from, he thought. Fill the canteens with something you can’t even see through.

  He knew it hadn’t really been like that in Natchez, and not for a long time anywhere else. The food had improved considerably since the long marches had stopped, their supplies coming in regularly from upriver. Some men still griped, always griped, but he knew better, had heard plenty of stories from the rebels they had captured at Vicksburg, many of those men, and the civilians along with them, enduring Grant’s siege by drinking water straight from the Mississippi River. Bauer had experienced that misery back before Shiloh, the soldiers often forced to drink right out of the Tennessee. There was sickness then, too, dysentery, or something close enough, sweeping through the regiment. Bauer had dodged that one, one of those pieces of good fortune that some insisted on labeling fate. Bauer didn’t have much faith in that, believed instead that he had just been lucky, or that by sheer strength of will, he had kept the diseases away. The inspiration for anyone to stay healthy came from any visit to a field hospital, miserable bloody places that no one wanted to see, sick or not. But his luck had run out. At least the hospital’s a big damn house, he thought. Mansion. Some rich rebel long gone, figuring us nasty old Yankees are gonna burn his place, or tear everything to shreds. Good. Keep outta the way, let us do our business. My business is to get this affliction outta my body and get strong enough so the doctor’ll send me back to the regiment. Mansion or not, right now, a tent would be a whole lot nicer than big rooms full of puking soldiers.

  He emerged from the woods, the trail intersecting a wide road, could see the first of the grand houses. To one side, the regimental camps spread out through what had been a massive cornfield, white tents in rows that stretched as far as he could see. The regiment had been sent southward from Vicksburg soon after the surrender of Pemberton’s Confederates, most of the army going into garrison duty in several of the cities that lined the river. The only contact with rebels had come from a few brief skirmishes, most of the rebels gone completely from this part of the war.

  He still didn’t know how far he had walked, had thought at first it had been a dozen miles. But even through weak legs, he knew better. There had been too many of those twenty-mile excursions in the past, toting his various equipment. He had pushed hard at those memories, keeping away what would certainly be the worst experiences of his life. And his brain had obliged him. Now those days seemed forever in the past, unexpectedly fading into faint memory. What emerged instead was a strange kind of nostalgia, vivid recollections of the exhilaration that came after the bloody successes at Shiloh and Vicksburg. The worst surprise was that no matter how awful those fights had been, for all his terror, the horrific sights and sounds and smells that could still inspire nightmares, he was engulfed now in a different kind of nightmare, something he never expected. He had nothing to do. There was no fight anywhere close, no marching, no enemy, no screams, no terror. Even through the long days confined to a bed, his brain pondered the possibilities, wondering just what they would ask him to do now. More marching? Where? Why?

  He was surprised to feel the itch he had heard of from some of the veterans. There was no challenge in camp life, and so some of the men reacted with a different kind of aggression. There were fistfights nearly every night, some men finding liquor, and so, drunken brawls, even a deadly knife fight. The result was usually a trip to the stockade. But some men made a more radical escape. The army still called them deserters, and when they were caught, the results could be gruesome and heart-wrenching. He had seen one execution, the entire regiment gathered into formation to witness a man shot down by a firing squad, tumbling into a grave he had dug himself. Bauer had known the man, a fearsome soldier. But when the guns went silent, the man did not, and if there were no rebels nearby, the man seemed intent on finding them himself. The army didn’t seem to care if he had run away just to go home, or if he was still soldiering, off on a rebel hunt. It was a lesson Bauer found difficult to digest, but he understood discipline. Even in garrison duty, the army had its rules.

  Not all of the veterans festered over the inactivity. Many spoke about going home, undisciplined chatter that they weren’t going to fight, no matter who gave the orders, no matter how many rebels there were. Bauer rarely responded to that, and not because it was dangerous talk, something to land a man time in the stockade. His first reaction was outrage, that anyone would claim to be a part of his army, to stand beside him and face the enemy, only to make the purposeful decision just to run away.

  The new men were very different, f
resh volunteers full of enthusiasm for the unknown, seeking out the stories, which the veterans supplied with exaggerated vigor. Bauer had learned to despise the mouthy recruits, knew that when the shooting started, they were the most unpredictable. Some had risen up to heroics in the most unlikely ways, while others, especially the biggest talkers, would most certainly disappear when the fight grew hot. During the great horror of Shiloh, Bauer had been among the latter. That haunted him still, not the bloody memories as much as what he had done, how he had reacted to his first confrontation with the rebels. His courage, his sense of honor and duty had simply collapsed and he had joined a manic stampede away from the fight until his legs and his lungs gave out. But Shiloh was a very long time ago now, and since then, the other great fight had been at Vicksburg, where most of the veterans stood tall and did the job they had to do. The satisfaction of that victory wiped away the stains of Bauer’s own shame; and any thoughts of escape, of scampering away from the firing line, had dissolved completely. He was a soldier now, had accepted that with perfect certainty. He had been wounded only once, a small slice along his arm, not deep enough to cause alarm. He knew that others kept a healthy fear that somewhere, sometime, there was an inevitability that one musket ball or one piece of shrapnel was meant only for you, would find you no matter what safe place you tried to find. Bauer believed now that when a man accepted the certainty of his own death, he became a better soldier. If God had decided your destiny, running away had no point. But Bauer had also drawn inspiration from watching the good soldiers around him. He believed now, more than ever, that he was fighting for them, that the man beside you expected you to do your job, and the man who led you expected you to follow. It was as simple as that, what he assumed the army meant by duty.

  He didn’t feel any great hatred for the rebels, had killed several of them with the keen eye of the sharpshooter, a talent that surprised him. But through all of that, he had grown to love the men around him, the men he served beside, something he could never admit out loud. He had served with two different regiments, the 16th and now the 17th Wisconsin, and in both places, the men he fought with, fought for, had become the most important thing in his life. He would never commit any act of shame, would never display cowardice in front of those men. He had no idea if anyone else felt that way. The only real displays of affection and camaraderie seemed to erupt when one of the men was struck down. You were allowed tears then, and men shed them without embarrassment. But when the guns stopped, and the campfires lit the night, you didn’t speak of fallen comrades. The talk returned to the mundane, bragging rights, skills with the musket, the knife, talk of women and home. Some didn’t at all, settling for card playing and letter writing. Some kept to their Bibles; some, like Bauer, spent long hours staring into the night sky, wrapped in the privacy of their own thoughts. Those thoughts had once been about home, going back to the world he grew up in, Milwaukee, his father’s business. But that ended a year before, the death of both his parents, a sudden, crushing blow that ripped away any desire for going home. For nearly two years now, his home had been a tent, or a bed of leaves, a night sky, or a mud-slop march. His Sunday dinner had been stale crackers and sour beef, raw bacon and foul water, and if it had ever been any other way, his memory wouldn’t take him there, wouldn’t allow him to sit at the family’s table with china plates and steaming bowls and the voice of his mother.

  He could see the magnificent house that was his own hospital, saw other soldiers emerging, some accompanied by orderlies, or walking in pairs. He felt the same relief as the doctors, that more men were regaining their strength, that the number of new patients was decreasing, the number of deaths falling off dramatically. He knew that some of the men had grown stronger far more quickly than he had, and by mid-September, with a slight break in the torrid summer heat, some of those men were being returned to duty. As much as he despised the hospital, Bauer had no particular desire to jump back into the ranks, knew that the daily routine for the healthy wasn’t much more interesting than it was for the sick.

  Garrison duty meant marching, formations, bugle calls, inspections, and, worst of all, speeches. The victory in July at Vicksburg seemed to rouse official Washington to a mass travel schedule that brought all manner of politician and orator to the Mississippi River, each one seeking to bathe in the army’s glory. Throughout August, as Bauer suffered in his hospital bed, the railroad tracks anywhere near an army post were kept hot by the steady traffic of enthusiastic civilians, and though some made it to the hospitals, the speechmakers quickly learned that the best audience was one that didn’t smell of death and disease.

  With the return of his strength came a curiosity for just what was happening with the men he had fought with, the Irishmen who populated the 17th. Some of those had taken the time to visit him, cautiously peering in on him, keeping their distance. As grateful as Bauer was for the hesitant company, it was one man’s absence that now affected him most of all.

  Sammie Willis had visited him often, had shown none of the hesitation of the others, had sat on Bauer’s bedside, scolding him for what Willis claimed was Bauer’s clear dereliction of duty. Bauer knew better. Willis had come into the regiment with Bauer at its formation, and both men had endured the worst fights the army in the West had experienced. Willis had become Bauer’s best friend, but more, Willis had a knack for being a soldier, had taught Bauer how to find the courage, how to stand tall when it mattered. And how to kill. Willis also had a talent for leadership, and very soon, someone besides Bauer had recognized that. Willis had been given a commission, had served through the siege of Vicksburg as a second lieutenant, a platoon commander. By the end of that extraordinary success, he had been promoted again to first lieutenant. And now, Willis had been promoted again to captain. With that rank came new assignments, command of an entire company, and Bauer had been devastated to learn that Willis would no longer be part of the 17th Wisconsin. Willis was still the same quiet, intense man, short, thick, and stocky, who had led his platoon with plainspoken discipline that the men instinctively knew to follow. Now the lieutenant who led a dozen men into fire at Vicksburg would be the man who would lead several times that many in the next fight. But the worst news for Bauer was that Willis had made the jump away from the volunteers, and enlisted in the regular army, leaving the Wisconsin men behind.

  With Bauer confined to his bed, there had been little time for conversation, a quick goodbye, a brief handshake. Willis had left him claiming that the orders had come more quickly than expected. Only later did Bauer learn that Willis had started this process weeks before, a trail of army paperwork pushed hard by Willis for much longer than he admitted to Bauer. Bauer had to admit that the move was completely in character. But without Willis in the regiment, Bauer felt a gaping hole, a hint of the old panic returning, that no fight would be as glorious or as successful without his friend to lead the way.

  Willis had a wife, and a child he had never seen, and sometime in the aftermath of Shiloh the year before, Willis had revealed to his friend that his wife had ended their marriage by running off with someone Willis wouldn’t speak of, but a man he certainly knew. Bauer couldn’t help nursing a volcanic sense of revenge for any man who would steal away anyone’s wife. But Bauer couldn’t probe that wound, Willis always shutting down. To the men who didn’t know Willis’s humor, his good-natured jabs at Bauer, who only saw the officer, that change barely mattered. To the men who followed him, Willis was just the “good soldier,” the man who stood up in the storm of musket fire and never flinched. Willis even seemed to enjoy it, had stood up to the rush of the enemy, had led charges into places that few should survive. And yet, survive he did, prepared, even eager, to do it all again.

  HEADQUARTERS, 17TH WISCONSIN,

  NEAR NATCHEZ, MISSISSIPPI—SEPTEMBER 27, 1863

  “Good to have you back in the ranks, Private. You’re a lucky man. This miserable sickness has affected the whole division.”

  “Yes, sir. Thank you. Um, sir, I hav
e a request. Lieutenant O’Brady said I could speak to you directly, that maybe your office could help me.”

  The officer sat back, said, “You’re Captain Willis’s friend, right?”

  Bauer was surprised. “Yes, sir. Sammie’s my best friend. Well, hard to think of him as an officer, begging your pardon, sir. Sammie … Captain Willis and I go back to the beginning, the formation of the 16th Regiment. He was transferred over here last year, brought me with him. Still not certain how he managed to do that.”

  The lieutenant laughed. “It’s war, Private. It’s the army. I remember now. Colonel Malloy had me do some checking, asking around to the other Wisconsin regiments. We needed a couple lieutenants, and your colonel over there owed me something. Once Willis got here, Colonel Malloy and I saw something we didn’t expect. Frankly, he scared us a little. And his company commander agreed. Some of these low-grade officers assume they’re on track to make general, think Abe Lincoln’s gonna pick them out to run this whole show. Not Willis. He made it pretty clear he would much rather be out front. No surprise then, when he went straight to Colonel Malloy and asked for a discharge, insisted he wanted to sign up for the regulars. We’ve had a few do that. First time it was an officer, though. Hated to lose him, but the regulars need good officers, too. We sent him on his way. But I guess you know all this.”

  “Yes, sir. Sammie … Captain Willis … he’s given me a fright sometimes. Never seen a man who loves hearing the musket balls whiz by.” Bauer paused. “Well, sir, as I said, I have a request.”