“I hope Stephen survived this; shame for him to escape and get out of Ohio only to die here today,” Philip said and gave one final glance at the enemy dead.
Seth nodded. Though eventually sympathetic to him, Stephen had still been a white man in Rebel uniform and did not stand for anything that might elicit Seth’s real sympathy. He didn’t really care if the boy was killed, wounded, or marching away. He was just glad to be away from the whole host of Rebels.
Chapter 15
Mississippi Falls In
Everyone but Stephen was dispirited and in a state of high anxiety. Stephen was just glad to still be alive and back with his former comrades. He was also glad to be away from the lieutenant. Though he’d enjoyed the comfort of having Will Hunter leading the way and using his talent for getting out of tight spots, he was also glad to be away from Hunter’s single-mindedness of purpose and devil-take-all commitment to getting away with his runaway.
The morning’s fighting had been lopsided and nothing like what they had all expected. They had sprung forward and taken the enemy positions briefly and then retreated, only to keep retreating. They had lost more men and were that much smaller in number. The wounded and dead had been left behind again, and this time there would be no going back to retrieve any of them. There was a bitterness evident as well. Bitterness at men, commanders he didn’t know or had never heard of before. So much change, so many of those he knew gone or elevated in command and no longer exercising control, that he did not feel very at home even amidst his own.
When he’d rejoined his regiment and found a place in his old company, the time away had made him feel like a new volunteer again, meeting new faces and having to find his way once more in a strange environment. He was older and wiser now, as were all who were still alive and carrying a musket in the ranks. He realized how much he’d relied on William Banks to keep him grounded. When Willie fell, he had moved heaven and earth to find him, and without him now, he was just another face in a crowd of faces. This was what war was: a daily service and a daily obeying of orders and doing what one was told to do. Yet this morning, rising before dawn to take up arms was just the punctuated excitement that the boring life of the soldier saw mere moments of. He fell into his training, the movements of the school of the soldier drummed in after hours and hours of repetition, as if he’d only been away a day from the ranks. His fellows accepted him easily enough as an old hand, but he still felt lost.
The morning’s bombardment of the enemy lines was thrilling to hear, but all too short, and for the next several hours only the skirmishing was to be heard—that and a long waiting, a waiting that was baffling to all.
Stephen fell in beside two men he’d recognized as reliable men in the company, Festus Starks and a man from Carthage whom he’d grown up with the name of Earl White, with a nervous habit of picking at this fingernails even to this day.
The elder Festus, whose weather-beaten face and leathery skin told of a life of hard farm labor, was ten years his senior, and while not the oldest of the company, had acquired the appellation of “Pops” by the men. He preferred a life of seeing to everyone else’s business other than his own, and was always ready with a tale of woe or wonder from a long life of wisdom. He was reliable in fatigue detail and not a shirker of duty, so he was one to be around. As they stood in the ranks behind an embankment of hills, shielded from the guns and the skirmishing going on, he projected an aura of fatherly guidance.
Earl was one of the boys whom Stephen had often avoided when church was out and the boys went to run wild in the yard, tormenting those girls who were bold enough to hang about out of the direct line of sight of mothers and fathers. A boy who would throw a blind punch into anyone he thought deserving of besting when he could do it without detection. It wasn’t that Stephen disliked the boy, now a man, but that there was that lingering memory of behavior from boyhood to color his view of the man now. Earl had lost his penchant for sneak attacks, but not for nervous ticks, and they were evident now.
“Wish we’d get out from behind these hills, I want to see what’s goin’ on,” Earl was saying, about every few moments.
They were standing in line of battle, out from view of the missiles that were sailing overhead, and for once in a place where all the fire in the world could be directed overhead and they would be safe and sound from it. It was difficult to stand thus, however, without being able to see what was going on with the racket of battle just beyond the hilltop. The curious needed satiating.
“Shut up, Earl,” groused Pops. “You going to see soon enough what it is goin’ on over them hills.”
“Stay put, White,” whispered Lieutenant Beeman, their squad leader.
“Just sayin’, can’t we jus’ get this over with?” Earl asked.
“Grousing about it won’t get it done any sooner. They order us forward soon enough so you can die,” Pops said.
“Don’t want to die, just want to get this over. Standing here hiding behind the hills, no way to get an end to this war, be it?”
Stephen shrugged and held his tongue.
No one was really eager to move forward, in the sense of adventure or of killing. There was just the urge to let loose with the energy and nervousness that was tingling their fingers and toes. They knew they were in for it anyhow; why wait? The veterans who stood in the ranks knew what it was all about. It was a grim determination to go forward once more, to realize that the moment was at hand that all of the privation, marching, and moments of fear had led them to once more.
The sun had risen, and the anticipated movement forward had been delayed for reasons that only the big bugs knew about. It didn’t matter to the soldiers of the 6th Mississippi; it was just another hour to wait.
Their new brigade commander was General John Bowen, a man who struck Stephen as someone who did not suffer the company of fools gladly. This morning he was angrily riding the line of his Mississippi regiments and constantly looking to the left of the brigade line for any movement to start the attack. The brigade of Villepigue was on their right, also waiting impatiently for the order to move forward, and the brigade of Rust laying down on arms behind them, forming a line that overlapped those of the other two. Two artillery batteries stood idly by, their teams drawn up and cannoneers sitting to their posts, ready to dash forward and go into battery when called.
General Bowen and staff were ahead of them on a gentle rise that Stephen assumed gave them a view of the Corinth defenses in front, the defenses they would soon be ordered to advance against. The general was riding to and fro and stopping for moments to take in something through his glasses before shouting orders to his staff, who would be sent scurrying off on horseback to points unknown.
Perhaps it was the way with generals, Stephen thought. In the attack on Pittsburg Landing, General Cleburne was constantly in the van of his brigade, shouting orders in his thick Irish brogue and flitting about like a fly from this point to that point. He always had something kind to say to his soldiers. Watching Bowen skitter back and forth had Stephen wondering what kind of man he was.
“That Bowen?” Stephen asked.
“Yep; West Point man. Used to be the 1st Missouri’s commander,” said Pops, glancing over to the 1st Missouri’s position in the brigade line of battle.
“He a good commander?” Stephen asked.
“He fair, not as good as Cleburne were an’ not as entertainin’, but a good bug,” Earl said.
“He wounded at Pittsburg Landing, see how he favors his left side there.” Pops pointed as again Bowen rode down the line in front of them and halted, pressing his arm to his left side as if holding something in. “He just come back from hospital few months ago an’ took over the brigade.”
John S. Bowen was not pleased with what he was seeing, which was nothing in particular. The early morning sunrise did not reveal what he wanted to see. The ring of fortifications was clear enough: every thousand yards or so was a huge earthwork with gun ports for heavy cannon. But as for what w
as in between Bowen could not make out. Further, his commander, General Lovell, was no help. No indication had been given him about what lay in front, only that he was to advance when he saw the left of the army, that being the brigades of Hébert’s division under General Price; advance at dawn. Only Hébert wasn’t advancing, and it was already an hour after sunrise. Heavy skirmishing was happening in that direction, but no advance. Villepigue was still in position and waiting for Bowen’s brigade next to him to step off, and so on down the line. The early morning bombardment had raised a ruckus from their quarter, but that was only too short and heralded absolutely nothing.
The brigades were still sheltering a thousand yards out and away from the enemy, but something would have to be done soon if anything were to be accomplished this day.
“Send to General Lovell, no movement from Hébert’s brigades on left, should I advance? With my compliments!” Bowen shouted, though there was little reason to shout as the noise was all coming from further down to the left. The excitement and agitation at the delay was causing more animation from him than might have been necessary. But he was a general, and a general had to keep decorum when necessary and be passionate in all other circumstances.
“Sir, ‘sides from those works, there’s a line of barricades out front and between but no idea how many guns,” said an aide between glances through his glasses.
“Damnit, I need to know how many batteries they have in front of me!” The haze and distance were making anything in front of the town, whose buildings and houses ranged behind the enemy works, visible but not detailed. There was just nothing to indicate that the enemy had anything in his front, though experience and foresight told them all that the enemy had to have guns there. How many and where was the question that was agitating Bowen’s mind.
That same experience told him that behind the barricades and lying down under cover were regiments of enemy infantry and skirmishers out in front of them, lying down in the tall grass and waiting to give the alarm that an enemy was approaching. He didn’t need to count noses to know they were out there. Even so, at the moment it wasn’t the infantry he was worried about, but how many cannon lay before him.
His messenger to Lovell rode up and saluted. “Sir, General Lovell orders you to develop the enemy in your front. Villepigue will also advance to cover our flank. He has no intel on what is in our front.”
“I don’t like this, Major,” Bowen said to his aide-de-camp. “This is no means of conducting war. No idea what is in your front, generals who don’t advance, commanders who don’t do reconnaissance . . . if we carry the day today it will be because we were bold, not because we were prepared. Get the brigade moving forward; send to the commanders to get their men up and moving.” General Bowen took one more look through his glasses. The earthwork in his front was massive, and it anchored the left of the enemy’s fortifications around Corinth. Out in front of it, the enemy had a battalion or a whole army. His orders had been to advance when the attack was developed on his right by divisions under Price. Since that hadn’t happened, he could only assume that it soon would, but that an advance in his own front might draw attention away from the center of the planned assault . . . or might draw the entire enemy army upon him if no one else advanced as they were to have. He might have an easy time of it; he might have a rough time of it. He wasn’t going to know until he went forward.
“Send to General Lovell; advancing on my front, will guide on Villepigue. Will Rust’s brigade stay in reserve? Will Rust advance behind?” Bowen led his staff off of the rise and took a position behind the brigade line. The regiments were making ready to advance.
“Them’s the Mississippi sharpshooter battalion headed out,” Earl said as a cloud of men spread out in front of them at five-pace intervals to act as skirmishers for the advancing of the brigade.
There was nothing of the bravado or the heroic advance that Stephen had once envisioned battle to be, when the days of volunteering were still fresh and the change in lifestyle was still adventure. The sharpshooter battalion walked forward, and then the brigade stepped off in a serpentine double line that crested the rise where Bowen had been maddeningly traversing just minutes before. The town of Corinth ranged in front of them, a cloud of haze hanging over the right of the town where the skirmishing and cannon fire were the sharpest. It was full morning, and the light of the sun was beginning to bathe the whole area with early morning warmth. The chill of the night and the dew of moisture still clung to the grass and lightly to the clothing, and the early morning brought with it a portent of something dreadful.
It was the beginning of another engagement, just another one of a long list of engagements both large and small that each man in the ranks had experienced already. There was excitement animated by fear and energy, but it was not the excitement of the newness or novelty of the happening, just the dread of what might happen. Marching at shoulder arms, Stephen jostled alongside his fellows, keeping the touch of elbows and arms with the man to his right, a sensation that he’d not experienced since the end of his fighting at Shiloh. There was power in the advance of hundreds of men, with your position in the line and the touch of those arms, with each man staring straight ahead and motivated as much by the man next to him as by the sense of duty that drove them all to walk calmly into a waiting inferno.
Earl was treated finally to his view as the double lines crested the little rise they were sheltering behind and over. There was little about the vista to look threatening. They were still far out; not even the skirmishers were engaged yet as they poked forward a hundred yards ahead of the main line. Nothing special came of the look ahead. The enemy was there, had to be there. Their own artillery batteries were waiting for better ground to be taken before coming forward. For now they were left in the rear. All hoped they would come forward at some point to soften up the enemy defenses.
In the distance, ranging on hills that dotted the landscape, were little objects, barely discernible in the morning sunrise, that had to be enemy positions. The buildings of Corinth, its houses and businesses, were silent and dark, their occupants forced out by the Yankee horde that had descended upon them in the dark of the night previous to set up a last-moment defense of streets and street corners, forcing occupants into cellars and out of the town for the duration of what was to come. To the Mississippians the goal was to just get the enemy out of the town, to reclaim what had been lost months before and claim some small victory for all the blood spilled since Pittsburg Landing. Though nine months had passed since that battle on the shores of the Tennessee River, the men of the 6th Mississippi were not dissuaded from their conviction that the grand object of that attack had been left unfinished and this very army that stood before them was the same one that had a hand in the defeat in April. They would move heaven and earth to avenge the ground paid for but lost.
The familiar sensations returned. Marching in formation and the jostling of bodies in close order, the rattle of tin cups and the stomping of feet on tall grass, the shouts of the noncommissioned officers in the rear ranks to watch the guide and to slow down or speed up to keep the formation’s progress even along a line of hundreds of men all attempting to keep up with one another. Corinth did not look like much from where Stephen was. It was small, not unlike Carthage, Mississippi. It had its churches, its homes, its streets laid out in even lines and thoroughfares. It had its trees and yards, and cutting through it railroad lines and roads that led out into once-pristine countryside ruined now by war.
There was no cheering address by the brigade commander and no momentous word from the commander of the regiment as the men stepped off. There was no ring of hope or declaration to push the enemy into the river or out of the town. The stepping off was anticlimatic and the men obedient to the order. Stephen did not know why they had to take the town, only that doing so was the object of the movement forward.
The enemy’s skirmishers were found, and the popping of musketry added to the tromping of feet and the clanging of tin.
General Bowen and his staff were confidently riding in front of the brigade advance, the brigade colors trooping forward conspicuously in front of the riders. A racket was being raised further to their left as the assault lines bent around the town, the belated advance perhaps finally beginning. On their own front, all was quiet. The enemy had to be there, had to be in some force, unless the enemy had already abandoned the town as all had hoped. Perhaps they were going to shove the enemy out of the town and trap him between two great wings of their army as they closed in, just as General Van Dorn had hoped.
They were approaching a spot four hundred yards away from the earthen mound fortress, and not a single weapon was contesting their advance. There were enemy banners standing limp on their stands and visible guidons marking the positions of regiments and commanders, but no fiery reception. They were too far away for the infantry to fire, but the artillery? Where was the enemy artillery?
General Bowen was thinking the same thing. Where was it? The enemy was waiting—waiting for what, though? Waiting for his brigade to enter the field of slaughter before they all cut loose upon them? He was not a stupid or impetuous man; he knew the enemy had batteries in his front. What position would not be buttressed with artillery? They were there, but where and how many?
He was getting impatient with this silence. Still riding in front of his brigade’s advance, the skirmishers ranged out in front and moved steadily forward. Another one hundred yards and they would be in that zone, where the enemy infantry would rise up and start volley firing and the engagement would be on, but he did not want to march blindly into engagement without knowing how many guns he was facing.
“It’s ready-made; they’re waiting to draw us in and then cut loose on us, damn them!” Bowen groused as he tried to steady his glasses for a look at the defenses. Villepigue’s advance on his right was also steadily moving forward and unengaged in similar fashion. This was all too irregular. He didn’t like marching into the unknown.
The Shiloh Series: Books 1-3 Page 98