“Sir, I just come to bring Colonel Rogers’s returns an’ request our order of march. If it begs the general’s pardon, the colonel requests I march with the brigade and division staff as liaison with the 2nd,” Michael replied, taking the general’s hand with a hearty return shake.
General Moore raised an eyebrow. “Certainly, Major. You two,” Moore said, nodding to the lieutenant, “can march with my staff. The captain will send you with your orders. Have you had your coffee?”
Michael had not; no one had.
“No sir, our rations were lost at Iuka, and the men have not had any coffee for several days; even the substitute we had has been consumed or gladly discarded. If you have any, I would be obliged to have a gulp.”
The general retrieved a rough-looking coffee boiler from the small kitchen and poured them all a cup, and the three of them stood for some moments taking in a long whiff of the aroma. The command staff always had better rations.
After some moments of rapturous enjoyment, Moore said, “Colonel Rogers had nothing but praise for you and the 2nd at Iuka.”
Michael stood a moment before finishing his sip. “I am grateful he did.” What he couldn’t outright lie about, he thought.
Hoff smiled slightly but said nothing.
“Your handling of the left wing was superlative, in his words. High praise from the colonel. He’s not a man who praises many,” Moore added.
“I was in a pinch, but the regiment was safely retired after dark. We certainly stubbed the enemy’s toe that day. Pity we left our stores behind.”
“Price got his army out; that’s what counted. It was a bold if not risky move to attack Rosecrans like that. I say we will do that once again, and this time with more success.” Moore raised his cup in salute.
Michael and Hoff nodded in agreement, and each took another drink.
“Do you have the brigade order of march?” Michael asked.
“Spurls, write up Roger’s movement orders for the major,” Moore commanded the man seated at the desk.
“It has been a good many days since Shiloh, Major. A good many setbacks and small victories in between. How are you getting on with the colonel? I promised Captain Polk after Shiloh I’d take care of your Texans when they melded Polk’s old battery into Captain Carne’s Tennesseans. I see you haven’t betrayed the trust I put in you and your promotion,” Moore said with an approving nod.
“As best as can be expected. Rogers doesn’t cotton to what he sees as your continued interference with his regiment, namely being your patronage of me. But if he was that charitable in the reports, then I’d say he at least knows when to be fair.” Michael looked over at Hoff, who shrugged in reply. Michael was beyond the brotherhood of officers thing; if Braxton Bragg could undermine whoever he didn’t like, Michael could get in a few licks of his own on Rogers if the occasion warranted.
Moore took a sip and nodded. “Anything to keep you out of his hair, is it?”
“Sir, I do not know. If I might speak openly, sir, I think the colonel did not like having anyone thrust upon him whom he didn’t personally select or have say in. I think he prefers his own council and his own choices for command staff.”
Hoff looked on with a flicker of his brow and a look of recognition in his eye, as if he knew something Michael didn’t.
“We can’t always choose who our subordinates are, Grierson, and that goes for Rogers. With Ashbel Smith absent, you’ve got to walk a fine line; you’re one step away from command now. Don’t overplay your hand.” Moore motioned for his adjutant and Rogers’s orders. “Don’t let an officer’s favorite pastime get in the way of duty; Rogers is a fighter, and the 2nd respects him for it. Shiloh was a lifetime ago. Let go of that too.”
Michael nodded. With the coffee finished and the movement order in hand, he bade General Moore good-bye and left the room. Outside, the same crowd of hangers-on lolled about the porch, smoking and indicating very little in appearance that the brigade was about to march.
Hoff was silent as the two rode back to the camp of the 2nd Texas after another delay in reporting to General Maury’s HQ with Moore’s order of march. He was one of those chosen by Rogers for a commission. The Griersons had missed the struggle for Texan independence and the Mexican-American War. Rogers seemed to prefer a purer Texan blood. Michael found himself worried. Word would certainly get back to the colonel, from Hoff’s own lips or through one of the other officers, that Major Grierson, that son of an Irish immigrant, had been speaking ill of the colonel. It mattered but little, but the word would certainly get out. Hoff was also an opportunist, as all young lieutenants were, and he still had to take orders and detail from Michael.
The real surprise was Rogers’s report of the skirmishing, something Michael had not been privy to before it was sent up the chain of command. Obviously not all the reports were shown to the staff before being sent. That Rogers was complimentary of anyone at all was a surprise; doubly so that he was complimentary of Michael. He didn’t feel guilty.
The whole of two armies was scattered about and occupying every inch of free space, eating every chicken or hog the men could catch and burning every fence rail for miles for its cook fires. This was not the first time this army had stayed for the night or even days; the armies were cleaning the countryside of anything of edible value and burning any wood that was easily laid hands on aside from having to swing an ax to fell a tree. The countryside was being picked lean by the locusts.
Michael reported back to Colonel Rogers in his tent. Like the man, the tent was lean and sparsely accoutered. A folding bed and valise, plus the colonel’s uniforms, were the only things in evidence. He didn’t even have a foldable desk, something other officers could not do without. Instead, he sat at the end of his cot and scribbled his instructions to his company commanders on a sheet of paper, handing each to his adjutant to transcribe for each commander in turn.
“Sir, General Moore’s orders of march,” Michael said curtly.
Rogers took the paper and studied it, his eyes flicking back and forth line by line. Without a word, he set the paper down on his bunk and went back to his scribbling.
Finally, he spoke. “Major, you will keep me informed as to developments in the vanguard. Since Lieutenant Colonel Smith is absent, you will have Captain Wyrich take command of the left wing in your absence; report back to me once we arrive in front of Corinth.”
“Sir, I will take Hoff with me for the march,” Michael stated and waited again for some acknowledgment. Having Wyrich command the left battalion was tantamount to cutting Michael out of the chain of command altogether. Michael would square this with Wyrich; he wasn’t going to let Rogers cut him out of any action.
“Very well,” Rogers replied.
“Sir,” Michael replied and saluted.
Colonel Rogers nodded in return without returning the salute.
Captain Wyrich of Company K was the senior captain in the regiment, an officer whose position was next in line to Michael in command should the colonel, lieutenant colonel, and major all be incapacitated. A genial man of soft-spoken nature, which at times made it difficult to hear his orders unless he was shouting, Wyrich was the closest thing to a friend Michael now had. Mahoney, his confidant and friend from his artillery days, had almost survived Shiloh, but was killed while eating by a chance shelling of their rearguard position at a place called Fallen Timbers a day after. There were few people whom Michael trusted more, or who trusted more in the 2nd Texas, than Wyrich.
“Hoff, meet me at Moore’s headquarters at four-thirty o’clock before we take line of march,” Michael said as he walked his mount back to the picket line.
“Yes sir,” Hoff replied with a crisp salute.
Michael found Wyrich pouring over a book in the fading light of the day as the shadows were casting long, cool patches of dark across the landscape. A fire crackled nearby, and a company cook fussed over a tin pot of something boiling over the coals, dark and greasy-looking by the unappetizing foam gathe
ring on the surface.
“You get some coffee?” Wyrich asked, looking up from his book.
“Yes, at General Moore’s HQ. How’d you know?” Michael asked, surprised.
“You look awake,” Wyrich said with a wry smile.
“The general gets everything, even real coffee.”
“Don’t let the boys near enough to smell your breath; might give the officers a row. The boiled rye is not worth drinking. Damn blockade!”
“Well, now that we got the officer priority on luxuries out of the way,” Michael chided, “Rogers is sending me to brigade for the march; you’ll be in command of the left wing again.”
“Why he always do that? He knows Lieutenant Colonel Smith is wounded and away. Punishment for your relationship with the general?”
Michael raised an eyebrow. “Just affords me more opportunities to get in good with Moore and Maury. If Rogers should suffer from that . . .” Michael shrugged and held his hands out, palm up. “The colonel can like whom he wishes. I suppose he wishes he could make you major and send me off to some other command. He only takes to homegrown Texans, not us transplants from Mississippi. Just send me word if you run into a situation, and I’ll beg to return to the 2nd; I don’t want Rogers to think he can get away with shunting me off on messenger detail.”
“If it comes to that, you’ll probably know before we will if we coming up on an engagement.” Wyrich paused a moment. “I’d watch how you play your hand, sir. Don’t want something to come back and find yourself standing alone. Colonel Rogers don’t like no one, and that’s a fact. He don’t have to like you, but it strikes me in a way that he don’t reckon to have you about when things get rough. I don’t see him taking any shine to any of the company commanders, leastwise me. I don’t want to command the left wing any more than he wants Smith to command it. He got the command he wanted when Moore got promoted, but he ain’t been keen on anyone else neither.” Wyrich stretched, giving a long, drawn-out yawn.
“Fair enough, don’t want to deprive you of any chance at getting into the reports.” Michael realized his asking was putting Wyrich in a tough spot, one that might war against his own vanity. Taking a different tack, he asked, “Your granddad marched with Houston in the War of Independence, no?”
“Yes, he did, and my father volunteered in the war with Mexico too. Truth be told, Rogers isn’t any more Texan than your father is; he just likes to style himself like he was the first settler. He come over from Mississippi too.”
“Well, they’s something with some officers and not others in his recollecting that makes them more fit. He still has that black mark when he cut and run at Shiloh,” Michael said and tapped a stick against his boot.
“I was there, remember? It happened, and Rogers was in the middle of it trying to stem the tide. I may have just been a lieutenant, but I had to run with the lot in the end. With Lieutenant Colonel Smith gone, you in command should Rogers fall. He prolly don’t take kindly to that fact neither.”
Michael pursed his lips and tapped a rhythm with the stick. That he had neither liking nor respect for his superior officer and that it was evidently mutual was not a problem. Major was almost as bad a rank as second lieutenant—just in between positions that carried real command. As regimental major he was above the company commanders, but they had the benefit of commanding men in battle. He was there to do the work that the lieutenant colonel didn’t want to do, and though he was in the chain of command, he had little direct authority. He didn’t command anything and was supernumerary at times, taking charge of the commissary and the colonel’s aide-de-camp officers, communications with the brigade, and anything else that needed to be done. His first time in command was at Iuka, when the command split in two wings, at the skirmishing outside of Burnsville, Mississippi, and the ambush organized by General Maury’s chief of cavalry, Colonel Wirt Adams. Drawing the cavalry of their opposite number into ambuscade and driving them into the waiting guns of Michael’s battalion and then back through Burnsville was their only excitement, but deadly enough that both sides were bloodied. Michael had command and performed well, the 2nd Texas obstinate in their refusal to be pushed by the probing of Union General Ord’s tentative march toward Iuka.
“Maybe Colonel Rogers sees you as some sort of threat; you did take command from Smith at Burnsville,” Wyrich said. “Maybe he’s sniffed something out between you and the general.”
Michael laughed. “General Moore relayed that Rogers complimented me in his report; if he’s thinking I’m using my position to thwart him, he’s not letting on in reports.”
“It was a little conspicuous, he probably had to. If the colonel distrusts you so much, why doesn’t he request you be transferred?”
“Rogers has to answer to Moore, and I’ve not done anything worthy of such a request, at least yet. He can’t prove incompetence or a flagrant shirking of duty, least not while the report on the action at Burnsville is still fresh. In the end, we may have had to leave Burnsville behind, but we did keep Ord from joining Rosecrans.” he conceded.
Michael wondered if the running feud with Rogers was going to amount to anything but a problem. All he had to do was prove a capable officer and make Rogers look bad when opportunity arose. Bragg was turning it into an art form, but he was paying a price for it as rumors of an open feud between himself and General Leonidas Polk ranged in the papers and through the gossips. Orders were orders; if Rogers said go here, he had to go. Could he help it if Moore or Maury got a different idea about the man when Michael was around?
“Price knew he couldn’t hold Iuka against Rosecrans; hitting him before he could develop us in the town was a plucky call by the commanding general. Just didn’t work out the way he’d have wanted it to,” Wyrich said, weariness in his tone. “We just lucky Rosecrans’s nose was bloodied enough to let us get clear.”
“That’s been the problem all along; we spend all our manpower on keeping the enemy off balance, but they always back with more while we whittle away. I don’t know that we’re not doing it again in attacking Corinth.” Visions of Shiloh came back to Michael—the march in the rain, the confusion that first night, the ignominious retreat back the way they’d come and that awful loss of his guns and men to capture thanks to Rogers.
“General Van Dorn thinks he can push the Federals out of West Tennessee, at least if we can take Corinth back. Would certainly put our supply problem to rest. Could get us some real coffee then,” Wyrich added with a wry smile. The sun had set, and the campfires lit the countryside and shone through innumerable tents in a yellow glow. Candle lights added to the evening aura, and their flames danced shadows on tent walls.
“Take Corinth, Sherman leaves Memphis and has to retreat north or risk having himself cut off in the city. Grant has to fortify Nashville and draw his line east. We might even retake the rivers.”
“We’d never hold on to any of it, but getting the Yankees out of West Tennessee will give us back some room to push them across the Tennessee again. Them railroads in Corinth will bring us food and give us room to move about without wearing our shoe leather out. It do seem fantastic, don’t it?”
Michael nodded in assent. Fantastic—anything that defied reason and assumption. Fantastic that they could force Rosecrans out of Corinth. Fantastic that they could reverse the trend of failure. No matter where they marched or under whom, their armies always met with some reverse. Braxton Bragg marched into Kentucky with confidence, but the enemy was still maneuvering about as if they were unconcerned in the least. Bragg boasted he would raise another army from the volunteers who would flock to his army in Kentucky, but word was that wasn’t happening either. It was not easy being a Confederate in the west.
Wyrich was looking a little worse for wear since they’d arrived in Ripley to sit and wait. The whole army was looking ragged and hungry. Ripley, Mississippi, was a good staging point between Price’s army and Van Dorn’s, but it was not exceptional for its connectivity for supply by rail. Little food was making
it into the town.
Michael himself was hungry. The cracker and coffee had done much to revive his spirits, but his energy was still that of a starving man after a morsel. It had warmed the pit of the stomach some, but he wanted more.
“I delivered the 2nd’s returns to Moore; too many men reporting sick,” Michael broke the silence. “We got off a little light at Iuka casualty-wise, but some of the men reporting to sick call look a little too healthy to be ill. Think the retreat from Iuka was a blow.”
“They’ll march, no one wants to be left behind here. There’s food in Corinth. We’ll eat well once we brush the Yanks out of the way.” Wyrich swept a grimy hand over his sleeve.
“I think we said that once before—when we’d brush Grant into the Tennessee.”
“We did eat! We come across many a camp with food waiting to be et. Trouble was, we din’t have time to eat it all. I carried a wrap of fine-cooked bacon and pone around all day in my pockets and nibbled as we went. That was a fine time . . .” Wyrich trailed off in reverie.
“You had it better than me. We never come across any camps; we stuck to the roads and come near several, but no time to partake. We did liberate a good cachet of gum blankets from camps that night, come in handy in the rain. Still have one,” Michael said.
The two men dropped into memory. Despite all that came after the battle at Pittsburg Landing, they were drawn to those two days as if they were the most important to have lived.
“If it had all ended that day, where would we have come?” Wyrich asked suddenly.
“Not hungry at the moment; sitting high and pretty in Corinth still, or even Nashville,” came Michael’s immediate reply.
“We come to today by some other will, but it pains me to think on that day without some anguish for all the days after. Not that we failed, but that we failed with such great promise for the dawn of the coming days. We come to a place where we still look with hope for the next march. I find I cannot drum up that hope much longer for each new possibility. We are going to fight for something that will not appear. The boys are hardy and will always march to the drum toward the enemy; I just fear we have built up a hope that cannot be.”
The Shiloh Series: Books 1-3 Page 74
