And There I’ll Be a Soldier

by Johnny D. Boggs

  He was climbing up Battery Robinett, saw an artillery major reaching down to help him up the last few steps. Their hands locked. He stood on the top.

  And felt the bullet slam into his chest.

  Chapter

  Twenty-Seven

  October 4, 1862

  Corinth, Mississippi

  She awoke freezing and shaking to the deafening roar of Yankee and Confederate cannon. Yesterday had been like stepping inside a blast furnace, but the predawn hours of Saturday had turned bitterly cold. Grace Dehner had slept in her clothes. She pulled a blanket off the bed and draped it over her shivering body. After lighting a candle, she moved out of the bedroom and descended the stairs of Miss Prudence Caxton’s house on Fillmore Street.

  Musketry began accenting the roaring artillery. Her hand slid across the balustrade, and she caught a breath as her pathetic little candle illuminated the first floor of the home. Most of Miss Prudence’s stained-glass windows had been shattered, probably from the concussions of artillery rather than Minié balls. Another match flared, lighting another wick. Then another as the guests in Miss Prudence’s abandoned home began to stir. She had to be careful where she stepped, maneuvering around the forms of sleeping slave children before she slid into the family parlor.

  There familiar smells greeted her. Alcohol and quinine, blood and bourbon, vomit and human waste.

  The Yankee surgeon—she hadn’t caught his name, or had already forgotten it—lay asleep on Miss Prudence’s divan. She used her candle to light a lamp, and moved to the parlor sofa, kneeling to check on the Ohio teen who had been shot in the stomach.

  “Mister Benson?” she asked quietly, but he did not stir. Lowering the candle, she found the broken piece of mirror, and held it underneath his nostrils, although she already guessed that he was dead.

  The doctor’s boots plopped on the hardwood floor, and he snorted, cursed, and moved wearily. Grace bit her trembling lip.

  “He dead?” the doctor asked.

  She could only nod.

  “Hey!” His shout caused her to jump. “A couple of you darkies come haul this body out of here.” The Yankee fired up a cigar. “We’ll have need of this bed before too long, I warrant.”

  Grace had moved to another wounded Yankee, busying herself by removing his foul-smelling bandage. Behind her, she heard an old slave’s timid voice: “Where we put this boy, Capt’n?”

  “Stack him on the porch,” came the answer, “with the others.”

  * * * * *

  All that morning she worked, as she had all yesterday, never stopping to relieve her bladder, fill her stomach, or even wonder what Miss Prudence Caxton would think if she could see her beautiful home today.

  Black children sat in the winter kitchen, singing spirituals with their grandmothers. Mothers and fathers helped bring in the wounded, or carry out the dead to the porch.

  The grandfather clock had stopped chiming. Musketry sounded closer. The front door burst open, and a bluecoat captain screamed something Grace couldn’t understand. A nearby slave’s eyes widened in fear. As the officer turned, stepping through the threshold, his head exploded, and he crashed into the foyer. More window panes shattered. A white-haired slave cried out, clutching his shoulder, dropping to his knees. A bullet thudded into the portrait of Andrew Jackson Caxton above the mantle. The songs had stopped in the kitchen, replaced by terrified screams. Another bullet smashed another window.

  “Get down!” The Yankee surgeon pushed Grace behind the staircase landing.

  “My God,” he said, softer now, dropping a bloody metacarpal saw onto the rug. “The Rebs have burst through.”

  Through the broken windows and front door blocked open by the dead captain’s body, she made out figures in butternut and gray moving down Fillmore, through the empty lot across the street, firing muskets, pistols, cutting loose with Rebel yells.

  A raw-boned figure appeared in the doorway, stepped over the Yankee officer’s corpse, and Grace saw his horrible face, blackened by powder, blood, dirt, grime, his grim eyes locked on her like death.

  The bluecoat surgeon blocked the black-bearded figure.

  “This is a hospital, you cur, so …”

  The musket the Confederate held roared, and Grace shrieked as the surgeon fell atop her. She kept screaming. Couldn’t shut up. Refused to open her eyes. Yelled and cried until she could no longer hear the sobbing children, the din of battle, the howls of dying men.

  “Stop it! STOP IT!”

  Something popped, and her cheek stung. Her eyes opened, focusing on the hollow face of a Negress. Blinking, Grace tentatively touched her cheek. The slave glared at her without fear, even though she had just struck a white woman. In Corinth, Mississippi.

  “You gots to be strong, missy,” the slave was saying. “That doctor, he be dead. You’s all these boys got left. You gots to get your strength from the Lord.”

  Grace was moving now, retrieving the metacarpal saw, although she had no idea how to use it. She thought about Dr. Landon, wondered if he remained in Iuka, if he were dead. She looked through the door. A shell exploded in the street, sending gray soldiers in every direction.

  The ringing left her ears. She peeked inside the parlor, then stepped over the dead captain and onto the porch. A man held his right arm in his left, blood spurting from the empty socket. Waving a saber over his head, a Confederate officer screamed at him, and she caught a few words: “… not hurt bad … keep goin’ …” The wounded soldier stumbled forward, carrying his right arm, and collapsed a few yards later.

  “Come on!” Dropping the surgical saw, Grace hurried down the steps, through the white gate torn off its hinges. She reached a Confederate soldier crawling through blood and body parts. Her mouth trembled.

  “Ryan.”

  The soldier looked up, blood trickling through split lips. She let out a breath.

  It’s not Ryan McCalla.

  Looking back toward Miss Prudence’s house, she shouted: “Come on! Help me get these men inside! Come on!”

  She reached down, gripping the wounded Confederate’s shell jacket, jerked him forward. “Come on!”

  The slave who had slapped her came out first, helping Grace with the wounded Confederate, yelling in some language Grace couldn’t comprehend. The slave who had been shot in the shoulder staggered out, taking the burden from Grace. She ran back to the street, and this time several black men and women came with her, to help gather up the wounded.

  She stooped to roll over another Confederate. Two slaves, maybe her age, stopped to help. “Leave him,” she snapped. “He’s dead.”

  Moving to another. And another.

  “This one!” she barked. She grabbed the Confederate’s legs. A husky slave with a bald head took his shoulders. As they moved toward the house, a musket ball buzzed her ear. She didn’t flinch, but, as they stepped through the broken gate, she looked up the street.

  The Confederates were coming back. Retreating.

  Somewhere, a church bell began chiming.

  It was only noon.

  Chapter

  Twenty-Eight

  October 4, 1862

  Corinth, Mississippi

  Hell came with dawn.

  Federals unleashed their wrath from the myriad batteries erected around Corinth, and Ryan McCalla pressed his face closer to the earth. Beside him, he heard Sergeant Rutherford whisper: “Fool officers. We never should’ve stopped last night. Would have the Yanks whipped by now.”

  “Just like Shiloh.” Gibb Gideon chuckled.

  The night had been spent in misery, the temperature dropping. No fires. Not even to light pipes or cigars. No songs, unless you counted the wails and groans of the wounded Rebels and Yankees who lay scattered across the battlefield like autumn leaves.

  Rolling onto his belly, Ryan dared to lift his head. Solid shot roared, the hot air
rushing maybe a foot above his hat. He thought he could make out that three-story college building for females, where that kind, tall nurse had cared for him just a few months back.

  “String Bean,” he said, and lowered his head before another Yankee shell took it off.

  “You say something?” Gideon asked.

  Instead of answering, Ryan chanced another look. One of those murderous redoubts lay four hundred, maybe five hundred yards ahead. A Parrott roared, blowing off the tops of trees a half mile behind him. Rifles sang out from pits and redoubts, from trees and rosebushes. One of the Germans from Company F sat up, swatting his chest as if stung by a bee, then toppled over.

  Thud.

  Thud.

  Thud.

  “Lieutenant!” Sergeant Rutherford roared. “We stay here, we’ll all be dead in an hour!”

  They had charged yesterday toward the massive battery with Texians from the Sixth and Ninth regiments, alongside some Mississippi boys from the Thirty-Fifth and the Forty-Second Alabama. Now, an Alabama captain rose to his feet, waving his kepi, motioning his men forward.

  “Forward Alabamans!” he shouted. “Texians sha’n’t beat us to those breastworks.”

  His troops answered with Confederate yells, and they started surging ahead.

  “Come on, Texas!” Colonel Rogers rode forward on a bay horse.

  “Mississippians, let’s give them …”

  Ryan couldn’t hear anything else now, for he was yelling, too, charging alongside Sergeant Rutherford and Gibb Gideon. A Texas soldier fell, dropping the colors, but Gibb Gideon picked up the flag, kept going. Glancing to his left, Ryan saw an endless stream of Confederates racing, firing, dying, yelling, breaking through.

  He leaped over two dead men, almost lost his footing. Lead spit up bark, and he found himself weaving between the tree trunks that lined the field like tombstones in a cemetery. Round shot decapitated a lieutenant. Ryan ground his teeth.

  What was left of a patch of woods slowed their progress, and by the time they had cleared the remnants of trees, the Yanks had switched to grapeshot. Buckshot cut down Mississippians, Alabamans, and Texians by the dozens. A bullet pierced his canteen, but it had been empty since yesterday afternoon. It reminded him, however, of how thirsty he was. Then another memory flashed through his brain: Shiloh, his canteen also pierced by Union lead.

  “Boys, give them a volley!”

  He almost stopped to fire, only to realize the order had come from a Yankee. They were that close now.

  Shots rang out. Grapeshot ripped through the ranks. His eyes burned with sweat. The frigid morning was now an ancient blur.

  He spotted the colors on the ground, and slowed. Gibb Gideon was crawling away, holding a bloody left leg. “Go on, Ryan!” he yelled. “Don’t you pick up that flag!”

  Ryan shifted his Enfield to his left hand, but Colonel Rogers beat him to it. He rode forward, leaning in the saddle, picking up the colors, then stood in the stirrups, waving that Lone Star flag, yelling something Ryan couldn’t hear, daring the Yankees to try to kill him.

  “Hurrah!” Gibb Gideon was yelling. “Hurrah for Texas. Hurrah for Colonel Rogers!”

  “Keep your head down, Gibb!” Ryan yelled as he raced past his friend.

  They were leaping into the ditch now at the bottom of the battery. Colonel Rogers swung from the saddle, leaped over the ditch, planted the flagpole into the dirt on the side of the battery.

  A bullet killed his horse. Another tore off his hat.

  “Come on, you Texas devils!” Rogers started climbing up the earth.

  Ryan followed, yelling, too ashamed not to follow his commander, his friends. No one would ever accuse the Second Texas of cowardice again. Not after this day.

  Onward, upward. His feet slipped. He stumbled, climbed back up, pushing his way forward, using the dead and wounded as steps.

  A grenade landed at his feet, fuse smoking. He knelt, picked it up, tossed it over the top, heard the explosion a second later. Other explosions echoed. He stopped, grabbed another grenade, heaved it over the wall.

  He came up, inside the battery now, ducked a bayonet thrust. Instead of firing, he rammed the Enfield’s stock into the Yank’s face. A ball grazed his neck. He clubbed a Union officer. Another Yank struck him like a bull, wrapping massive arms around Ryan’s chest and back, squeezing. Air exploded from Ryan’s lungs. He tried to butt the soldier’s head, but couldn’t, then, through blurring vision, made out Sergeant Rutherford thrusting his bayonet through the big bluecoat’s back.

  Like dead weight, the Yank fell against Ryan. It took a moment for Ryan to regain enough strength to push the corpse away. He grabbed his Enfield, stopped, fired.

  There was no time to reload. He clubbed one man, stopped, and jerked a revolver out of the unconscious officer’s holster.

  “Our boys are in town!”

  “Billy Yank’s on the run, fellas!”

  Ryan moved forward, firing the pistol twice. Leaped over a dead bluebelly. Another. Pulled the trigger again. A hand reached out, caught his right foot, sent him falling headfirst. He landed, tasting blood in his mouth, rolled over, cocking the revolver, finger tightening on the trigger as he found the bluecoat’s face.

  His finger relaxed, and he lowered the pistol, letting it fall into the dirt.

  “Missouri,” he said.

  “Texas.” Caleb Cole grinned.

  The Yank was bleeding from his left shoulder, but his left hand pressed tightly against his ribcage. Ryan rose, walking on his knees, hands reaching down, grabbing Caleb Cole under his arms. He inched his way back toward one of the abandoned Parrotts, dragging the wounded Yankee behind him.

  A Mississippi sergeant stopped, stared, began to lunge with his bayonet.

  “Get out of here!” Ryan snapped. “Go kill a Yank who’s trying to kill you!”

  That, somehow, stopped the sergeant. The hard-faced man in butternut swore, spit, and moved away.

  After a minute, Ryan stopped, biting back pain, and eased Caleb Cole against an empty box of shot.

  “See you around, Yank,” he said, and took off, forgetting that he had no weapon.

  They had the Yanks driven out of the battery. Almost. Suddenly ten Rebs in front of him cried out, falling into heaps. A bullet parted his hair. Ryan slid to a stop, pried a Mississippi Rifle from a dead Texian’s hands. He opened the cartridge box, rammed home a load, looked around him. Blue and gray and butternut lying together. Blood and blood and blood.

  “Boys!”

  Shots.

  “Boys!”

  Thud.

  Thud.

  Thud.

  He coughed from the thick smoke. Had to use the rifle to push himself up.

  “Hold your fire, Texas!” Above the din, he recognized Colonel Rogers’ voice. Somehow, he made out a white flag.

  “NO!” Ryan stopped.

  Muskets roared. The Yankees answered. Colonel Rogers, dropping the handkerchief he had been waving over his head, pitched backward.

  Yanks streamed into the battery. Fresh troops or ornery soldiers who refused to yield to the Confederates—Ryan couldn’t tell. What did it matter? Ryan fired. Tossed away the empty rifle, tried to find another gun. All around him he heard Southern accents. “Hold your fire.” “Surrender!” “Save yourselves!”

  “McCalla!”

  Sergeant Rutherford pointed as he ran past Ryan. Back toward the breastworks, the Parrotts, and cannon, the dead and dying, the colors of the Second Texas.

  He swore, fighting back tears, and staggered away.

  “McCalla.”

  Another voice stopped Ryan. A ball raced over his head, and he ducked, looking behind him as he veered toward the wounded Missourian.

  Caleb Cole held out a canteen, and Ryan took it, gulped down tepid, wretched water, and tossed the blue-woolen-w
rapped container back to the Yank.

  “You hurt bad?” Ryan asked.

  Cole smiled. “Busted a rib or two. And took a ball.” His left hand moved away from his ribs, and disappeared inside his blouse. Confederates raced past Ryan, but no one stopped.

  “Be seeing you, Yank,” Ryan said. He had to get out of here. Else get killed or be captured.

  “Wait.”

  Looking back, Ryan saw the Missouri boy’s hand reappear, holding a brown plug of tobacco. Ryan could just make out a flattened piece of gray lead in the center of the quid Governor Sam Houston had given him before the Second left Houston. Vaguely Ryan remembered handing this Yankee that plug at that pond back at Shiloh.

  “Best take this, McCalla,” the Missouri kid said. He laughed, more from fever and pain than humor. “I don’t chew.”

  Ryan took the quid, ramming it into his pants pocket. He rose, and began helping a limping Alabaman out of the battery.

  Before disappearing in the smoke, he shot Caleb Cole a glance and a smile.

  “Neither do I,” he said.

  Epilogue

  April 6, 1895

  Shiloh, Tennessee

  “Friends of the South,” General Prentiss began, “particularly American citizens, I came, I saw, and I was conquered.” When the crowd’s laughter died, the aging bluecoat general went on. “We came here to go to Corinth, but Corinth came to us.”

  Ryan McCalla moved his way through the throng as the Yankee general continued his history of the Battle of Shiloh. At least that was a Southern victory, an Alabaman had said yesterday. Yankees had called the battle “Pittsburg Landing,” but it was the Confederate name, “Shiloh,” that had stuck.

  By any name, Ryan didn’t need to hear a bluecoat general’s version of the battle. For two days, he had lived it. Reporters and historians took notes, and, finding daylight, Ryan walked along the path in what was now a park, starting toward the cemetery, then veering off. Not that he could find Matt Bryson’s grave. The Yankees had given their dead proper burials, but most Confederates had been dumped unceremoniously in shallow pits, their bodies barely covered with mud.