Shiloh (9 page)

They came down the ridge and stopped under a big oak at the
bottom, near where I was, and Governor Harris got off between the horses and
eased the general down to the ground. He began to ask questions, trying to make
him answer, but he wouldn’t —couldn’t. He undid the general's collar and unfastened
his clothes, trying to find where he was shot, but he couldn’t find it. He took
out a bottle and tried to make him drink (it was brandy; I could smell it) but
he wouldn’t swallow, and when Governor Harris turned his head the brandy ran
out of his mouth.

Then a tall man, wearing the three stars of a colonel, came
hurrying down the slope, making straight for where General Johnston was laid
out on the ground. He knelt down by his side, leaning forward so that their
faces were close together, eye to eye, and begun to nudge him on the shoulder
and speak to him in a shaky voice: "Johnston, do you know me. Johnston, do
you know me?"

But the general didn’t know him; the general was dead. He
still looked handsome, lying there with his eyes glazing over.

4

Private Otto Flickner

Cannoneer, 1st Minnesota Battery

He would have reached about to my chin if he'd stood up, but
he wouldn’t; he just sat there. When I asked him to rise and take his
punishment for calling me a coward, he said: "If you’re so
allfired
brave, sonny, what you doing back here with us
skulkers then?"

"I ain’t scared the way you made out," I said.
"I'm what they call demoralized."

"Yair?"

"It's just I lost my confidence."

"Yair?" He kept saying that.

"Get up here, I'll show you."

But he wouldn’t. He just sat there hugging his knees and
looking at me with a lop-sided grin on his face. "If what you want's a
fight, go up the bluff. That’s where the fighting is." Then he said, still
grinning:

"I’ve already showed the whole wide world I'm
yellow."

I intended to jump him, sitting or no, but what can you do
when a man talks like that? saying right out in front of God and everybody that
he's scared; it would be the same as fighting something you found when you
picked up a rotted log. The others thought it was fun, guffawed at hearing him
talk that way. They could laugh about it now—they had got used to being scared
and now they made jokes about it.

They would come down from above looking shamefaced but after
a while, when they’d been down here an hour, they’d brighten up and begin to
bluster, bragging about how long they held their ground before they broke.
"I’ve done
my
part," they’d
say, wagging their heads. But they were all thinking the selfsame thing:
I might be a disgrace to my country. I might
be a coward, even. But I’m not up there in those woods getting shot at.

And I must admit I had it reasoned the same way. You would
form at the warning and get set for some honest fighting, stand up and slug,
and they’d come squalling that wild crazy yell—not even human, hardly—and you
would stand there at the guns throwing solid shot, then canister and grape,
holding them good. And then, sure enough, word would come to bring up the
horses: it was time to retire to a new position because some paddle-foot outfit
on your left or right was giving way and you had to fall back to keep from
getting captured. Twice was all right—you thought maybe that was the way it was
supposed to be. But three times was once too often. Men began to walk away,
making for the rear. When Lieutenant Pfaender called to them to stand-to they’d
just keep walking, not even looking round. So finally, after the third time, I
walked too. So much is enough but a little bit more is too much.

There were ten thousand of us under the bluff before the day
was through (—that’s the number I heard told and I believe it) —some scrunched
down on the sand where the bluff reared up a hundred feet in the air, others
going along the riverbank downstream to where they could wade or swim the creek
and get away. "I killed as many of them as they did of me," some
said, and laughed. All the time there was this thumping of guns and this
ripping sound of rifles from up above, and every now and then the rebel cheering
would get louder when they took another camp.

We were all ranks down here, though you couldn’t tell just
which in most cases because they had torn off their chevrons and shoulder
straps and all you could see was the broken threads that had held them on. In
some cases you couldn’t even tell that, for they’d even picked the threads out,
those that had the time. But that didn’t work either because you could still
see the darker patches where the sun and rain had weathered the cloth around
the place where they’d been sewed.

They made a complaint, blaming their officers and telling
how the lieutenants and captains didn’t know any more about soldiering than the
privates. When they first came down they would keep their backs turned, not
speaking to anybody, still trembling from the scare. But after a while they’d
look around and begin to feel better. Then they would start talking, just a Little
at first, sort of feeling the others out, then all together, every man trying
to tell his story at the same time. They collected in groups of anywhere from
three to thirty, hunkered up side by side and talking or just sitting there
looking to see who they could recognize in the crowd. When they saw somebody
they knew, their eyes would say
: If you won’t
tell on me I won’t on you
, but not out loud.

There were five in the group I joined, not counting the dog.
The man that had him said he was a Tennessee hound, a redbone, but he looked
more like a Tennessee walking-horse. At first I thought he was shot up bad:
there was clotted blood and patches of torn skin all over his hide. But the
fellow said he wasn’t even scratched. "He's demoralized—like you," the
fellow said, grinning. Then he told how it happened.

"I was on Guard last night," he said. He had that
Ohio way of talking, bearing down hard on the R's. "We come off post at
four and went to our bunks at the back of the guard tent. Just before dawn my
Tennessee quickstep signaled me a hurry-up call for the bushes, and when I went
out I saw the officer of the day (Captain Fountain, from up at Regimental)
sitting at the table out front, writing a letter by lamp-light. The dog was at
his feet, asleep, but when I went past he raised his head and looked at me with
those big round yellow eyes, then dropped his jaw back on his paws and went to
sleep again. When I come back he didn’t even look up. He was our mascot, knew
every man in the 53d by sight. We named him Bango the day he joined up. —Well,
I woke up it was daylight and all outside the tent there was a racket and a
booming. 'That’s cannon,' I said to myself, still half asleep; 'we're attacked!'
and grabbed my gun and started for the front of the tent. But there was a
terrible bang and a flash before I got there, smoke enough to blind you. It
cleared some then and I saw what had happened. A rebel shell had come through
the tent fly and landed square on top of Captain Fountain. It went off in his
lap before he had time to so much as know what hit him. There wasn’t much of
him left.

It blew blood and guts all over the dog, scared him so bad
he wasn’t even howling—he was just
laying
there
making little whimpering sounds, bloody as a stuck hog, trembling all over and
breathing in shallow pants. I went out and formed with the others. But soon as
Colonel Appier seen the johnnies coming across the field, he got down behind a
log and hollered: 'Retreat! Save yourselves!' Well, I know a sensible order
when I hear one, and if anybody asks me what I'm doing back here, I'll say I'm
where my colonel sent me. Which is more than most of you can say.—On the way to
the rear I passed the guard tent again and there was Bango the same as before,
laying there whimpering with the captain's blood all over him. So I brought him
back here with me to see could he get himself together again. But he don’t seem
to be doing so good, does he?"

He reached down and stroked the dog on the muzzle, but Bango
didn’t pay him any heed. He just lay there, belly close to the sand, breathing
quick Little breaths up high in his throat, eyes all rimmed with red. I could see
his hide quiver under the dried blood.

I said, “
Whyn’t
you take him down
to the river and wash him off?"

"Well, I Don’t know," the Ohio man said. "I
think maybe if he gets another shock he might start snap-

Seeing the size of those jaws, I couldn’t blame him. After
all, when you came right down to it, he was a Rebel dog anyhow. There was no
telling
what
he'd do.

The other three men had told their stories, and they were
all three pretty much the same. They told how they had stayed in line and
fought till they saw it was no use staying, and went. I told how it had been
with me, how I hung on till things came to pieces that third time, and then
walked off the same as the others had done. I told them what Sergeant
Buterbaugh had said about the men that were walking away, that they weren’t
necessarily cowards; they were just demoralized from losing their confidence.
That was when this Michigander said it was all hogwash. We were
all
cowards back here, he said—and then wouldn’t
get up and fight.

When it began we were in position on the right of the
Corinth road at the edge of a strip of woods where our tents were pitched.
There was a big open field on the left of the road. Captain Hickenlooper's Ohio
battery was advanced into the field. The infantry was in camp along our front
and some more were in our rear. We'd been there two days.

At three o’clock that morning I lay warm in my blankets and
heard the advance party going out on a scout. I knew the time for I took out
granddaddy's watch and looked at it. This party was going out because General
Prentiss had had a feeling all the day before that something spooky was going
on out front. I went back to sleep then, feeling glad I was in the artillery
and didn’t have to be up beating the bushes for rebs at blue o’clock in the
morning. Almost before I had time to know I was asleep I heard them coming back
and the long roll sounding.

By sunup we were posted at the guns, watching the infantry
come past. They had a serious look on their faces but they still could Joke
with us. "You easy-living boys had better get set," they said.
"There's johnnies out there thicker than fleas on a
billy
goat in a barnlot."

We didn’t see them, though, for a long time. This was what
we'd been training for all those weeks of rollcall and drill, greasing caissons
and gun carriages, tending the horses and standing inspection, cleaning limber
chests and
sorting
ammunition. We were downright glad
it had come, and all the fellows began making jokes at one another about who
was going to funk it. The Hickenlooper boys would call over to us, wanting to
know how Minnesota was feeling today, and we'd call back, telling them they’d
better be worrying about Ohio; Minnesota was all right; Minnesota could take
care of herself.

All this time there was a ruckus over on the right. It
rolled back and forth, getting louder and more furious with yelling mixed up in
it. But still they didn’t come. We kept expecting word to limber and move in
the direction of the firing. We didn’t like it, waiting that way. It was the
same old story—hurry up; wait —while the sound of the shooting swelled and died
and swelled again. Everybody began asking questions:

"Ain’t they coming this way, Butterball?"

"Yair, sergeant: when are they coming
this
way?"

"Bide your time," he said. "They’ll be here
all right."

"I wish if they was coming they’d come on."

"They’ll be here," Sergeant Buterbaugh said.

He was a college man, up for a commission, and to tell the
truth I never liked him. But he had a way of saying things—he knew all the
stars, for instance, and could tell you their names.

Sure enough, soon as the words were out of his mouth the
infantry began popping away and smoke began lazing up from the bushes out
front. I couldn’t see what they were shooting at. Far as I could tell, they
were banging away at nothing to keep themselves amused the way pickets
sometimes do. Captain Munch walked up and down, going from gun to gun and
saying, "Steady. Steady, men," like he thought we might take a notion
to go into a dance or something. We stood at cannoneers' posts, ready to fire
whenever he gave us a target. I was on the handspike because of my size. Then
the firing stepped up. Smoke began to roll and drift back against us. There was
a high yip-ping sound somewhere out in front of the smoke, like a cage full of
beagles at feeding time.

They didn’t come the way I thought at all. I thought it
would be the same as on parade, long lines of men marching with their flags
spanking the wind, sleeves and pants legs flapping in cadence, and us standing
at our posts the way it was in gun drill, mowing them down. But they didn’t
come Like that. They came in
dribLet’s
, scattered all
across the front and through the woods, no two of them moving the same way,
running from bush to bush like mice or rabbits. No sooner I'd see a man than he
would be gone again. The only thing that stayed put was the smoke—it boiled up
a dirty gray and rolled along the ground with little stabs of yellow and pink
flicking in it where the muzzles flashed. There was a humming in the air like
in the orchard back home when the bees swarmed, only more so.