A Blaze of Glory

by Jeff Shaara

  Smith stared again at the ceiling.

  “You’re going to camp your men … where?”

  Sherman felt a cold knot in his stomach, watched as Smith waved an arm, his mouth moving, no voice, a show of delirium. Just a scrape on his leg.

  “You just rest, sir. My men will be at Pittsburg Landing.”

  CHAPTER SIX

  BAUER

  THE TENNESSEE RIVER, NEAR SAVANNAH, TENNESSEE MARCH 20, 1862

  “This thing’s got hair on it. Still growing.”

  “Eat it anyway. There won’t be another ration till we get into camp. That’s what the captain says, anyway.”

  “Can’t do it.”

  Bauer watched as Willis tossed the blob of white pork back into the pot. Willis had suffered already with the camp gripes, what every man in the company had endured at some point since their first introduction to the army’s food. Across from Bauer, Patterson lurched forward, grabbed the meat, said, “Heck a mighty, Sammie, you gonna waste food, you toss it my way. Anything I stick in my gut’s better than an empty hole. I hear the bellies of every one of you corn brains singing to me all night long. You gotta eat, keep ’em filled up.”

  Willis turned away, stared out to the shoreline.

  “Can’t keep anything filled up. I eat those damn crackers and they can’t slide through me fast enough. All we’ve had to drink is the water out of this river. I can see things swimming in it. So half the regiment has been suffering … what they call it? Dysentery? Who thought that was a good idea?”

  Bauer leaned back against the bulkhead, stared out with his friend, tried not to listen to Patterson chewing noisily on the lump of what was supposed to be sowbelly. Hair and all. Willis put his chin on the iron railing, and after a long silence, said to Bauer, “I gotta say, Dutchie, the wiry edge of excitement has done worn off. We been on this boat for four days, and ever since we left the Mississippi, this whole damn place is nothing but wilderness. A few darkies and trading posts. I’m still waiting to see something of this rebellion we’re after. Startin’ to wonder if the captain’s lying to us, that the war’s over and done. My pappy’s last letter … he was hopping up and down about our great victory at Fort Donelson.” Willis looked at him with sad, sick eyes. “I’m telling you, we missed it, Dutchie. The whole thing. They took so damn long to get us moving, all that drill and nonsense, too many days in St. Louis giving these pea heads time to find out how much fun liquor can be. I never knew there was that many taverns in the whole world. And those women.”

  Patterson interrupted through the half-eaten goop in his mouth.

  “God’s gift to the army, Sammie. Good for morale. Say what you want, but those ladies are happy to be showing off their patriotism. That’s all it is. Devoted to the flag. Extra enthusiasm for these nice blue uniforms.”

  Willis looked back out to the shoreline, and Bauer said, “Just eat your sowbelly, Patterson. I’m not about to go dancing around with gals like I saw in St. Louis, or Cairo, either.”

  Patterson seemed to shudder, exaggerated it.

  “Cairo … now I gotta say … you’re right about those critters. The ugliest creatures on God’s earth. Toothless wonders with black fingernails. And if that wasn’t bad enough, every one of those gals had their daddy looking past ’em with a shotgun in his hand. They were friendly all right, but I met one … whooee, smelled worse than either of you two. But St. Louis … ah, now there’s a place I’ll remember. Not a daddy in sight. Might end up there permanent, when this is over.”

  Bauer turned away, saw Willis closing his eyes, ignoring Patterson’s chatter, the turmoil in the man’s gut too obvious. Bauer put a hand on Willis’s shoulder.

  “Maybe you oughta go down below. There’s a two-holer right under us.”

  Willis shook his head.

  “Nothing left to give. Just … knotted up. Hurts. It’ll pass. Be nice if this loudmouth trollop hound would clam up.” Willis turned toward Patterson now, who seemed oblivious, was scraping the metal pot for remnants of anything left to eat. Willis said, “How’d you get to be a damn soldier, anyway?”

  Patterson looked up, licked his forefinger.

  “Same as you.” He put a hand on his heart, made an exaggerated gesture. “Told ’em I love my country. Love the flag. Hate secesh. Love Lincoln. Love darkies. And when I signed my papers the sergeant told me I’m gonna love fighting. He said we’re off on the adventure of a lifetime. All we gotta do is carry a musket, and the army’ll send us out on a grand journey to exotic lands.”

  “You three need to be below. We’ll be pulling up to the landing soon. They’re finally letting us off this tub.”

  Bauer looked up, saw the captain standing tall above them. Patterson said, “I even love the captain, pardon me for saying so, sir. And the colonel, too. With his permission, of course, sir.”

  The captain stared at Patterson, said, “Your mouth needs to be closed once in a while. Try it sometime. Now, get below.”

  Patterson snapped an unnecessary salute, still sat cross-legged, surrounding the round pot, thrust his fingers in for one more search. Bauer pulled himself up, one hand on the iron rail, Willis slower to move. The captain started toward the ladder that led to the lower decks, then stopped, his attention on the shoreline.

  “You see that? Right out there. Makes my blood boil. That’s why we’re gonna win this war.”

  Bauer looked that way, a wide field of brown, fresh-plowed soil, and scattered across it, a dozen Negroes, most with hand tools, working the ground. Patterson said, “Told you, sir. I love the darkies. Come down here to set ’em free.”

  “Shut up. You see what they’re doing?”

  Bauer said, “Farming, sir. Guess they’re getting ready to plant something.”

  The captain seemed annoyed, his point lost on all of them.

  “They’re working, you numskulls. And where are the white men? They make the slaves do the real work, while the Southern gentlemen court their ladies and drink their bourbon and fight their duels. All they know how to do. That’s who we’re fighting, that’s the damn enemy. A bunch of coddled rich boys who don’t know what a fight is. They’re good at talking, good at rousing rabble. And those dirty devils think they can spit on our flag and tell the rest of us to go to hell. That’s why we’re here, and that’s why we’ll whip those devils before they know what happened.”

  Bauer had heard this kind of talk before. All throughout the training at the first camp, Randall, near Madison, there had been great bombastic speeches launched at them with much more flair and poetry than the captain’s simple rage. It was the politicians who brought their flowery enthusiasm to the troops, men in fine suits who stood on cracker boxes and lauded the flag and the president and everything about the Union. Most of the troops had grown used to it, and after hearing so much of it for so many weeks, the more fiery the speeches, the more the soldiers ignored them. Some of the officers felt the same need, to encourage their men with ridiculous words. But Captain Saxe wasn’t a speechmaker, the man mostly keeping to himself, doing the job, pushing hard for the company to learn its craft the army way. What Bauer liked about the captain had nothing to do with flowery words. There was an air of authority about Saxe, confidence that he was the right man to lead them. There had been talk from above, too, Bauer overhearing a conversation between two of the adjutants, that the regiment’s commanding officer, Colonel Benjamin Allen, had already chosen Saxe to climb the chain of command as quickly as it could be arranged. As far as Bauer knew, the captain didn’t seem the type to do the brown-nose campaigning for higher position, something too common in the growing army. Saxe had done nothing to show his men any more than hard-nosed discipline, was quick to punish the shirkers, and had little patience for the big-mouth louts like Patterson.

  Bauer stared out at the dark-skinned men working the field, bare feet and strong backs, few of them paying attention to the long line of boats that passed them by. The captain was gone now, down the ladder, a last sharp command to get
below, and Bauer started to move that way, made sure Willis was upright, could move at all. Willis suddenly lurched forward, vomited over the rail, and there was a curse from below, a brief chorus of laughter.

  “Geez, Sammie, better get you down low. Maybe the doc oughta have a look at you.”

  Willis showed no acknowledgment, and Bauer knew immediately it was a useless suggestion. The doctor who accompanied them was the same man who had examined many of these men when they first volunteered. When their enlistment papers were signed, the first order the men received was to submit to a doctor’s examination. Bauer had imagined all sorts of rigorous physical tests, coordination, strength. At the very least, the men would be examined for any illness that made them unsuitable for the long marches. Bauer knew he was healthy, had stood straight and marched into the medical tent prepared for anything they might ask him to do. He didn’t expect to find the doctor most assuredly drunk, the man sitting shakily in a chair he never left. The doctor had told Bauer to stand in front of him and turn around once, then said, “Two arms. Two legs. You’re a soldier.”

  Every man had been examined with the same result, and no one had been particularly enthusiastic when they found this same doctor assigned to accompany them south. When illness struck any of them, as it clearly had struck Willis, few of them even considered a visit to the medical tent.

  Bauer kept the captain’s words in his mind, had wondered often about the Southern soldiers, if the captain was right. If they’re lazy, he thought, then this should be over already. Sammie might be right. They’re not telling us anything at all. Maybe there’s cleaning up to do, chasing down the secesh who are too stupid to surrender. Maybe we’re heading for occupation duty, sitting tight in some city, keeping the citizens from causing any trouble. He waited for Willis, who began to follow behind him, one hand unsteadily on the rail. Bauer said, “I wonder if you’re right. Maybe the big fights are over. There’s sure a bunch of us, though. There’s gotta be a hundred boats on this river. What you think we’re gonna do?”

  Behind them, the sergeant climbed up from the other side, gave the sick man a slight push.

  “Move! The captain’s ordered everyone down to the main deck. You boys thinking of hiding out up here, shirkin’ off, you better think again! I’ll bullwhip any man who doesn’t show for formation. You hear me?”

  Willis responded weakly, a sour frown on his face.

  “I hear you, Sarge. We’re going.”

  “Nobody in my unit on sick call, either! You puke again, I’ll make you eat it!”

  Bauer tried to avoid Sergeant Williams whenever possible, though of course, it was rarely possible. He reached the iron ladder, dropped down quickly, joined a packed crowd of men lining the deck, most seeking out their company commanders, falling into line, other sergeants doing most of the talking. Patterson was already there, and Bauer caught a glimpse of nervousness on the man’s face, a glimmer of fear in his eyes. It surprised him, and Bauer was curious about that, if Patterson knew something. But there were no secrets on the transport boats, just rumors, a great many rumors. Bauer sniffed, thought, for all his talk, he’s probably just a coward. I haven’t seen a single thing we need to be scared of.

  Willis was close beside him, pointed, and Bauer saw Captain Saxe, moved that way through the throng of men. The talk was low, urgent, a hum of expectation. Out to the right, another transport was moving up tightly against the bank, the black smoke rising in a thick column, drifting up into gray sky. Their own boat did the same, a grinding thump as the boat impacted the shoreline. Bauer fell into line, nodded to the man beside him, Graff, friendly, smiling back at him. Good, he thought. Graff’s no coward. Just curious what happens next. Just like me. Graff said quietly, “This is really amazing, Dutchie. Look at us. Damn if we ain’t an army.”

  Bauer never needed to be reminded why he joined the army, and for the most part the rest of the boys in the 16th Wisconsin had joined for the same reasons. It was simple. What had happened in South Carolina, and then in Virginia, had roused considerable anger in places where politics had rarely been discussed. The emotions about the Southern rebellion made many of these men understand that their country was under attack, that what was coming out of Washington might be deadly serious. The threat to their country was becoming real and dangerous, and most of the men trusted President Lincoln. When the fights became bloody, and when Lincoln called for an army to stop the rebellion, the men who volunteered believed that joining up to fight for the Union was simply the right thing to do. Whether Captain Saxe was accurate in his description of the rebels really didn’t matter. Bauer had never had any trouble accepting that the secesh, and the men who claimed to be their army, had to be stopped, even if it meant more of the bloody confrontations. Like most of the men in the regiment, Bauer had developed a healthy enthusiasm for doing his part, and so had suffered a nagging fear that whatever fight there might be, the 16th Wisconsin would get there too late to enjoy it.

  Fritz Bauer had joined the army in his hometown of Milwaukee, the regiment assembled at Madison near the first of the year, finally mustered into official service as part of the Federal forces in late January, two months before. Like many in the state, Bauer was German, his father risking a great deal to escape the chaotic political turmoil that had spread through Germany in the 1840s. Fritz had been born on the sea voyage westward, and his parents had put every effort into educating their only child as an American. Unlike many of the Germans who now wore the blue uniforms, Bauer had virtually no accent at all, his parents adapting to their new country by learning and speaking only English, even in the privacy of their home.

  His father was a sausage maker, had a small butcher shop in Milwaukee, the one throwback to the customs of the old country. On his first journey to the army camp, Bauer had been well stocked with a knapsack full of the kind of tasty provisions that had quickly disappeared. It was one of the first great lessons. No matter what treats they brought from home, they didn’t last long, either stolen or bartered away. The packages came later, of course, caring families doing what they thought was proper to keep their boys fed, but many of those arrived empty, if they arrived at all. As infuriating as that was, the greater surprise was the food the army provided. The army believed in bulk and speed and the least expensive fare that could be obtained, and the men suffered for it. Bauer had his share of the gripes well before they left Wisconsin, and it fueled his sympathy for any of the others who suffered from the dysentery, the most common ailment they had yet to endure. His friend Sammie Willis had a double dose of agony, the boat rolling just enough to afflict him with the liquid misery from both ends of his body. There were others who suffered from seasickness, few having any experience with that at all. For the most part the rivers were calm, but to men who had never spent much time on a boat, any motion at all stirred up a surprising kind of trouble. Even worse than the rations, the fresh water supplies had lasted only a day, and the volume of traffic on the river meant slow going for the enormous fleet of transports, supply boats, and the gunboats that protected them. If they needed water, it would come straight from the river beneath them.

  If the horror of the food and water was the first great shock, the second was the weaponry. The first muskets they were issued had been Austrian, a curiosity to Bauer. But during the few times they were allowed target practice, the adventure of that was instead a nightmare. The Austrian guns were heavy, unbalanced, and unreliable, and some of the most unfortunate found out they could even be dangerous. More than one finger and a number of teeth had been left in the soil of Camp Randall. But the frustrated officers could only placate the men by pointing out that other companies had been given a type of Belgian musket, which seemed to kill as many people behind the breech as it did anyone in front. But then came relief. Just before they were scheduled to leave the camp at St. Louis, the Dresden muskets had come, and for the first time the men understood that their colonel might actually have some real influence in this army. The reputation of the
Dresden had spread long before the weapons themselves, and Bauer quickly learned why. The Dresden was comparatively lightweight, far easier to load than the Austrian pieces, and Bauer found he could actually hit a target without fear of the musket blowing apart in his face. Grateful sergeants passed along the praises of their men, a gratefulness that quickly rose up the ladder, Colonel Allen himself offering thanks to the ordnance department that someone in the army had finally shown some grasp of the obvious. If those rebels truly intended to fight a war, these blue-coated troops had best be equipped with a weapon that might actually accomplish something on the battlefield.

  Though many of the new volunteers held on to their enthusiasm for a glorious rout of the first enemy they might see, Bauer and many of the others first had to absorb a dispiriting reality. Even with the far more reliable Dresden, the men learned what the veteran officers already knew, that passion for the cause had nothing to do with marksmanship. For the most part, their drills focused on maneuver, men shifting from column into line, responding to shouted instructions and bugle calls, and to Bauer’s surprise, and the disgust of many, once they reached the army’s vast camps at St. Louis, the men were rarely given much in the way of target practice. Most of the lessons with the Dresden involved teaching the men how to load them, as quickly and correctly as possible. The officers understood, even if the men with the muskets did not, that there wasn’t enough time to train these men how to hit a target. This was never going to be an army of sharpshooters. The tactics of the high command were based on numbers, that if enough of these boys were massed shoulder to shoulder in the face of the enemy, their sheer volume might have some good effect. It had been hoped, of course, that the rebel commanders didn’t understand that principle as well. But that hope had dissolved, first at Bull Run, at Donelson, and just about everywhere else the two armies had collided. The rabble of this rebellion, those illiterate farm boys from cotton country who knew nothing of soldiering, had brought to the fight an alarming talent for shooting straight. It was the first lesson learned by the men who were now veterans, a kind of experience not yet a part of the 16th Wisconsin.