The Shiloh Series: Books 1-3

by Phillip Bryant

  “You jus’ don’t know when to quit, you self-righteous filth! Yer daddy would at least had the good graces ta not disparage the dead nor deny them proper ceremony. But you ain’t your daddy, is you?”

  “No, I ain’t,” Philip shot back. “The good Reverend might have conducted your wretched kin to the ground with a mighty fine speech, quelling even the most righteous breast of tribulation, but I wouldn’t and still won’t. If you fall on this field, I will personally send your soul to the waiting arms of Beelzebub himself and your kin.”

  “And if you should fall, I will see to it your bones be picked clean by these southern hogs what roam about in the dark woods.”

  Philip crossed his arms over his chest and cocked his head. “And what if both of us should tumble? Do we continue this feud in the afterlife, hurling barbs at one another from the separating space of Heaven and Hell? If both of us should fall, then perhaps that is the only respite from this desecration. Do we have a pact, Harper? We both should fall?”

  “I ain’t makin’ no pact with you or your God fer my life. I’ll let the gods of war pick and choose the time of my passing, but I’m waiting to see the wild pigs tearing at your carcass!” Harper turned on his heels and marched away.

  “Rev?” Sammy asked Philip. “How long you gonna keep this up with him?”

  Watching Harper stride away, Philip answered, “As long as he does. I know I fall far short of that Christian charity that I am supposed to show even my enemy, but I won’t be faulted for not burying that cheat’s brother.”

  “Whatever happened to forgive and forget?” Johnny asked.

  Philip exhaled slowly. “It died along with any shred of decency a body might hold onto in the face of reprisal years ago with the shedding of my collar.”

  “I can see why Harper has something against you, but what is your issue with him?” Sammy asked.

  “He and his family forced me out of the pulpit, pretending to be pious and God fearing. They took their case to the bishop, and I was given a choice of resign or be stripped of my collar for refusing to bury the worst man in the valley.” Philip sighed loudly. “I suppose I should be grateful to them as I was never cut of the same cloth and collar as my father in respects to piety and preaching ability.”

  “I can see as where that might make a man kinda’ mad.”

  “I suppose I never forgave them for the personal insult.” Philip grew silent and stared into the dark ground.

  “I dun’ have much in the way of thoughts fer them neither,” Johnny said, “but seems that carrying on like this after this long can’t be good, given circumstances.”

  “Ain’t there somethin’ in the Lord’s Prayer ‘bout that?” Mule chimed in.

  “What that?” Sammy asked.

  “Forgive us our trespasses as we forgive them what trespasses against us,” Mule responded.

  “Yeah, it do say that, Mule,” Philip answered. “But sometimes it’s another thing puttin’ it into practice.”

  “How hard can it be?” Mule asked him.

  “Hard enough, Mule. Hard enough.”

  *****

  Stephen Murdoch

  Shiloh Church Yard 10 PM April 6, 1862

  Across the way, far into the rear of the Confederate army, Stephen Murdoch looked across the wounded laid out around the Shiloh Church, searching for Willy Hawkins. Willy hadn’t responded to roll after the Federal camp was taken, and the regiment had moved off before Stephen could pick through the dead and dying on the hill slope. The 6th Mississippi was but a shell of its former glory. Fortunately, they had not been called upon to give more blood this day and had spent several uncomfortable hours resting just behind the firing line. As the fight kept getting farther from them, every face mirrored the relief. They lazed about in formation in the boiling sun until an officer on General Cleburne’s staff rode up and directed the regiment to counter-march back down the Shiloh road.

  The 6th marched not only to the rear of the fighting but also to the very rear echelons of the army, back to their starting point. They passed the evidence of a great host having trod through the woods for the attack. They saw the acres of wagons and supply trains gathered around Michie’s Crossroads and the bustle of hundreds of uniformed men. There, dispirited and exhausted, the survivors attempted to find rest in the growing heat of the forenoon.

  Stephen collapsed after shedding his traps. He lay motionless for a time, too morose and spent to engage in chat. Few in the 6th felt like talking. Three hundred names were absent from the roll, including the commanding officer and second in command. Few were left even to make a respectable company. Fewer still were the messmates and pards whom Stephen had grown to know as his family.

  Their brief moment of heroism and fury were followed by a calming of emotions and time for introspection. Four hundred men answered the call that morning to march forward, only to leave the greater portion dead and maimed upon the slopes of that rise. For some few hours, Stephen knew not how many, he drifted in and out of a fitful sleep upon the grass. The 6th Mississippi was on its own recognizance, and not even a fatigue detail was demanded of it. Having borne the battle, and bravely so, the regiment was left alone.

  Near evening, weary of the idleness, he sought permission to search for Willie. Stephen shouldered his water bottle, and started out on his solitary mission. What had the sacrifice wrought? Had it brought victory? What of the rest of the divisions and corps?

  All about him was confusion. The injured lay wherever a building and water was to be had. The field hospitals were easy to spot. He only had to spot the wounded gathered for the surgeon’s saws, but no one knew where Hardee’s dressing stations were located. Pitiful-looking men sprawled about any shack that would house the quick, painful surgery. Rows of blanket-covered forms attested to those who were now beyond care. Stephen’s eyes fell upon gruesome wounds oozing blood and staining the once-green grass.

  Others, like him, milled about free from wound or disability. Some sat by comrades; others moved from form to form, offering water or encouragement. Regimental chaplains administered last rites or absolutions, depending on the faith of the stricken, and surgeons’ assistants hurried to and fro dressing wounds. Stephen steeled himself, retraced their steps of that morning and spied familiar landmarks. The farmstead where they first met the enemy was silent now. The wood line where the enemy broke and fled was peaceful. In the wood lay yet the still forms of what used to be men. Stephen took in these fell scenes in silence.

  The light was fading as he crossed the marsh and the late scene of their desperate charges up the hill. Enemy dead still dotted the hilltop, but the Confederate dead and maimed had already been taken away. Stephen stood alone amid the dead. To the left, right, and ahead, he looked into the cold, open eyes of the fallen enemy, and some small pity heaved in his heart. They had been stripped clean of anything of value. None wore shoes. Some had been relieved of their trousers and lay in shameful exposure in their under drawers. It was too much to understand. Stephen turned and quickly strode back to, and through, the camp. He was reliably informed by a wounded corporal where Hardee had his field hospital, and he caught a rumor that a church lay ahead.

  The darkness helped cover the day’s sinful work. The Federal camps were occupied now by the victorious conquerors and appeared as if they had never been abandoned. Fires flickered everywhere, and the sounds of murmuring mingled with the rustling of leaves. Only the solitary booming of several large caliber guns broke what might have been a normal night in the vicinity of a large, armed host. The calm betrayed any tenseness, any grief, as if the battle of the morning had been imagined. Those soldiers yet unscathed walked to and fro, riders trotted upon the roads, and the army did what it always did at nighttime.

  Stephen’s feet hurt. Despite a long rest, his limbs still felt heavy. The light of several fires drew his attention away from his aches to an illuminated building. It was the church. Surrounding it was a mass of humanity prostrated by battle. In the dark, only forms cou
ld be discerned moving about the flickering shadows among the crop of furrowed wounded. The fields surrounding the church were filled with wounded, and the task of finding one specific face struck Stephen as ludicrous. Each face would have to be gazed upon to find the one he sought.

  Stephen sniffed the air. Dampness mixed with blood and decay offended his senses. As if it wasn’t enough to endure shot, shell, and maiming in battle, the heavens added their own form of misery: rain. His heart felt for those sufferers upon the ground, but he had seen enough suffering to build up a callous. He had seen men withered away by disease, and still others die outright before him from sudden and violent deaths. A soldier could surrender to the agony of such sights and desert, he could be discharged for wounds, or he could divorce himself of compassion altogether. Stephen had grown an age since the morning, and his heart felt nothing for the suffering of those hundreds. He only had one objective at the moment and a hope against hope of finding Willie in the dark, rainy night.

  *****

  25th Missouri survivors

  Last Battle Line, 9 PM April 6, 1862

  The Indiana regiment, after making its stand by the guns as twilight descended upon the field, stood for a time in battle line before moving off farther to the right to be joined by the rest of their brigade. Not far from the Shiloh churchyard where Stephen started his search for his pard, Robert, Hube, and a few of the other survivors from the 25th Missouri walked through the trees on an errand of their own. The group hurried through the darkness to find their late battle line.

  “Thish vay,” Piper said and gestured.

  “It’s too dark, and I’m cold,” Huebner whimpered.

  “We don’t have much time before they miss us,” Robert said tersely.

  The group, five of them, each shouldering a shovel borrowed from the entrenching supplies of their adopted company, wandered about the large field where they thought Gustavson had fallen.

  “You sure it was here?” another of the group asked.

  “I think so,” Robert called back.

  “I think ve vere closher to die trees,” Piper said.

  The enemy had retreated from the field, leaving their dead and wounded behind, and the field was dotted with still forms. The darkness made it impossible to see in any direction without a lamp, and they had no other illumination. One merely stumbled over something and inspected it for Union blue.

  The ground was littered with equipment and soggy paper from the thousands of paper cartridges opened and discarded where the combatants stood, but that was of little help when the clutter that usually discerned a battle line was just a mix of random garbage upon the ground.

  “We should have done it right away,” a man named Henderson said.

  “That first sergeant would have shot one of us for sure,” Robert told him. “We just need to keep heading toward the river. We’ll see him.”

  “Ve be lucky to make it back to der Kompanie,” Piper said.

  “Doesn’t matter,” Robert snapped. “We couldn’t bury Hilde, but we’re going to bury Gustavson before those infernal hogs get to him!”

  Huebner stopped and leaned on his shovel. “Can’t we stop? I’m tired.”

  Without looking back, Piper hissed, “Hube, get moving und look for Gustavson.”

  A sudden flopping sound reached Robert’s ears, and he turned in time to see Huebner hit the ground hard.

  “Hube, ya’ need to get those feet straightened out. Ya’ know, one in front of the other?” He backtracked to where Huebner lay.

  “Tripped over something,” Huebner said. He rolled onto his hands and knees and gasped when he saw whom he had tripped over.

  Robert froze. He knelt down next to Huebner. Crumpled upon the ground where Huebner had fallen was Gustavson.

  “Shhh,” Robert whispered. “Hube, found him! We found Gus.”

  Huebner sat trembling. “Tripped ich über. . . .”

  Robert put his hand on Huebner’s shoulder. “Shh. No harm done, Hube. Forget about it. I won’t tell anyone.”

  The others gathered around. Each man stared at the corpse who had been their companion since the company had mustered in St. Louis a few months before. Gustavson and Hildebrande had been with the 13th Missouri when Colonel Peabody surrendered the command after Lexington, Missouri, was captured by the Confederate General Price. He had borne the marches and the bitter early engagements at the beginning of the war in Missouri. He had stood with them before the battle that morning, only to fall at last light.

  None of them knew what to do next, nor had they planned any ceremony for burial. It was raining, and they were five men gathered around a fallen comrade. Thoughts of their own comfort had taken second place to the proper treatment of their pard in his passing.

  “Let’s carry him over there by those trees. Seems wrong to bury him here in the open,” Henderson said.

  “Let’s get his traps off,” Robert said, “and cover him with the blanket.”

  Huebner looked at the cold body as the others discussed how to disposition the burial. Robert sensed the youth was about to lose it again, just as he had that morning.

  “Hube, go pick a spot over by those trees while we get ready to carry him over,” Robert said.

  “Huh?”

  “Go pick a spot to bury Gus,” Robert repeated.

  “Oh. Ja, gut,” Huebner responded, slowly gaining his feet.

  “So, we just dig a hole and put him in it?” Henderson asked.

  Piper nodded. “Ja. Carve his name and date on der tree.”

  The others commenced to removing the traps from Gustavson’s body. Soon, Gustavson lay in state with the wool blanket for a shroud. The body had begun to stiffen, and righting him took no little effort.

  “Come, I find perfect spot,” Huebner yelled from the darkness.

  “Shtay z’ere,” Piper yelled back.

  “Well, let’s try to carry him best we can,” Robert said. The men looked at the shrouded form and hesitated, unable to figure how to carry their pard in the most appropriate manner.

  “Let’s do it,” Henderson said. “I don’t think there is any way to do it with the dignity we seek. We just gonna have to pick him up by the shoulders and legs. Someone get the middle. Maybe wrap him in the blanket. Might help.”

  “We’ll come back for the shovels,” Robert said.

  After the effort to wrap and transport the corpse of their friend, they rested at the foot of a great oak that Huebner had selected. The tree’s limbs and overgrowth sheltered them from the rain, and they agreed that the spot was the most appropriate for a burial plot, given the circumstances. Soon, they had excavated a hole large enough to accommodate Gustavson and placed the body lovingly within. After Piper finished chiseling the name, regiment, and date upon the tree, the five miserable-looking men stood around the grave.

  “What we say?” Huebner asked.

  “We said it by what we did,” Henderson replied.

  “What about Hilde?” Huebner asked.

  “Tomorrow,” Robert replied. “Maybe tomorrow.”

  No one wanted to cast the moment with anything trite or irreverent. They had laid a friend to rest upon the field in which his life had been purchased for their cause. Anything to be said would not begin to describe their sorrow or their relief at the act thus accomplished. They were dripping wet and fatigued. There was no time to don mourning cloth or to observe more than a moment of silence. They knew there was still more war to make upon the enemy and more work to be done. One by one, they peeled off into the field in the direction whence they had come.

  “C’mon, Hube, time to go back,” Robert said when only he and Huebner remained.

  “You think Gus mit Jesus?” Huebner asked.

  “Sure, Hube, Gus is with Jesus now.” The thought suddenly troubled Robert. Amid the struggle and the call of the long roll and the thunder of the guns, he had forgotten the soldiers’ one companion: death. A soldier only has death to look forward to, and if not death, then a life of ma
imed existence. But with death comes the question that man will ever ask of himself: What fate awaits his passing?

  “Ja, he mit Jesus now,” Huebner said. He managed a weak smile.

  Robert looked at Huebner’s boyish face and felt a chill run down his back at the surety of those words. There was something dead serious in Huebner’s tone, just as it was earlier when he trotted off toward their adopted regiment. It was the tone of conviction.

  “Let’s get going, Hube. Gus is resting proper now.” Robert said.

  “Ja. Gute Nacht, Gus,” Huebner said. He turned from the grave, and the two men walked into the gloom.

  CHAPTER 12

  Polk’s Battery

  Hamburg - Purdy Road, PM April 6th, 1862

  The rain was chilly and fell in a continuous drizzle. It wasn’t enough to soak a man but was enough to keep him damp and uncomfortable. Those who had them donned their gum blankets or wrapped their woolen blankets about their shoulders. They stood in groups to share the misery of a rainy night without shelter. Rest was the hardest thing to find, despite the mutual exhaustion, and the drizzle was annoying enough to keep the hardest sleepers awake. Those men who had been enterprising enough to scavenge the Federal’s camp had found a supply of ponchos. The captured vulcanized canvas ponchos kept the upper torso dry but did nothing for the legs and feet. Michael convinced Mahoney to turn a blind eye to the pilfering; at least they were pilfering the spoils of the enemy and not his dead. Behind where the battery had taken station was a Federal camp with tents and food and equipment just begging to be “liberated,” as one private commented.

  Indeed, all sorts of equipment were available if one looked hard enough in the darkness. Also to be found were wounded of both sides seeking shelter. To some, including Michael’s men, those wounded hampered any scavenging. Out of respect, Michael’s men left those tents alone, though others of their kind were not so polite.

  Michael sat leaning against a tree and huddled under a captured gum blanket one of his men had given him. There were the day’s reports to send up the chain of command, and the gum blanket helped keep the drizzle from falling upon the pages of his notebook as he penciled in the returns. The battery had expended twenty-five cases of grape shot and seventy-five of solid, or round, shot. Three men were carried from the field injured, and two had been killed outright. Ten horses were disabled. The caissons were replenished from stores twice, and the battery moved and fought with the progress of the infantry and covered territory won through hard fighting.