Part 3 (1/2)
”As if all the fiends from heaven that fell Had pealed the banner-cry of h.e.l.l.”
That comparison leaves much for the imagination, but, speaking from experience, I will say that of all the blood-curdling sounds I ever heard, the worst is the terrific scream of a cannon ball or sh.e.l.l pa.s.sing close over one's head; especially that kind with a cavity in the base that sucks in air. At least, they sounded that way till I got used to them. As a matter of fact, artillery in my time was not near as dangerous as musketry. It was noisy, but didn't kill often unless at close range and firing grape and canister.
As stated in the preceding sketch, sometime during the forenoon the regiment was sent to the support of a battery, and remained there for some hours. The most trying situation in battle is one where you have to lie flat on the ground, under fire more or less, and without any opportunity to return it. The constant strain on the nerves is almost intolerable. So it was with feelings of grim but heart-felt relief that we finally heard the Colonel command, ”Attention, battalion!” Our turn had come at last. We sprang to our feet with alacrity, and were soon in motion, marching by the flank diagonally towards the left, from whence, for some hours, had been proceeding heavy firing. We had not gone far before I saw something which hardly had an inspiring effect. We were marching along an old, gra.s.s-grown country road, with a rail-fence on the right which enclosed a sort of woods pasture, and with a dense forest on our left, when I saw a soldier on our left, slowly making his way to the rear. He had been struck a sort of glancing shot on the left side of his face, and the skin and flesh of his cheek were hanging in shreds. His face and neck were covered with blood and he was a frightful sight. Yet he seemed to be perfectly cool and composed and wasn't ”taking on” a bit. As he came opposite my company, he looked up at us and said, ”Give 'em h.e.l.l, boys! They've spoiled my beauty.” It was manifest that he was not exaggerating.
When we were thrown into line on our new position and began firing, I was in the front rank, and my rear rank man was Philip Potter, a young Irishman, who was some years my senior. When he fired his first shot, he came very near putting me out of action. I think that the muzzle of his gun could not have been more than two or three inches from my right ear.
The shock of the report almost deafened me at the time, and my neck and right cheek were peppered with powder grains, which remained there for years until finally absorbed in the system. I turned to Phil in a fury, exclaiming, ”What in the h.e.l.l and d.a.m.nation do you mean?” Just then down went the man on my right with a sharp cry, and followed by the one on the left, both apparently severely wounded. The thought of my shocking conduct, in thus indulging in wicked profanity at such a time, flashed upon me, and I almost held my breath, expecting summary punishment on the spot. But nothing of the kind happened. And, according to history, Was.h.i.+ngton swore a good deal worse at the battle of Monmouth,--and Potter was more careful thereafter.
Poor Phil! On December 7, 1864, while fighting on the skirmish line near Murfreesboro, Tennessee, and just a few paces to my left, he was mortally wounded by a gun-shot in the bowels and died in the hospital a few days later. He was a Catholic, and in his last hours was almost frantic because no priest was at hand to grant him absolution.
Right after we began firing on this line I noticed, directly in my front and not more than two hundred yards away, a large Confederate flag flapping defiantly in the breeze. The smoke was too dense to enable me to see the bearer, but the banner was distinctly visible. It looked hateful to me, and I wanted to see it come down. So I held on it, let my gun slowly fall until I thought the sights were about on a waist line, and then fired. I peered eagerly under the smoke to see the effect of my shot,--but the blamed thing was still flying. I fired three or four more shots on the same line as the first, but with no apparent results. I then concluded that the bearer was probably squatted behind a stump, or something, and that it was useless to waste ammunition on him.
Diagonally to my left, perhaps two hundred and fifty yards away, the Confederate line of battle was in plain sight. It was in the open, in the edge of an old field, with woods to the rear. It afforded a splendid mark. Even the ramrods could be seen flas.h.i.+ng in the air, as the men, while in the act of loading, drew and returned the rammers. Thereupon I began firing at the enemy on that part of the line, and the balance of the contents of my cartridge box went in that direction. It was impossible to tell if any of my shots took effect, but after the battle I went to the spot and looked over the ground. The Confederate dead lay there thick, and I wondered, as I looked at them, if I had killed any of those poor fellows. Of course I didn't know, and am glad now that I didn't. And I will say here that I do not now have any conclusive knowledge that during my entire term of service I ever killed, or even wounded, a single man. It is more than probable that some of my shots were fatal, but I don't know it, and am thankful for the ignorance. You see, after all, the common soldiers of the Confederate Armies were American boys, just like us, and conscientiously believed that they were right. Had they been soldiers of a foreign nation,--Spaniards, for instance,--I might feel differently.
When we ”went in” on the above mentioned position old Capt. Reddish took his place in the ranks, and fought like a common soldier. He had picked up the musket of some dead or wounded man, and filled his pockets with cartridges and gun caps, and so was well provided with ammunition. He unbuckled his sword from the belt, and laid it in the scabbard at his feet, and proceeded to give his undivided attention to the enemy. I can now see the old man in my mind's eye, as he stood in ranks, loading and firing, his blue-gray eyes flas.h.i.+ng, and his face lighted up with the flame of battle. Col. Fry happened to be near us at one time, and I heard old Capt. John yell at him: ”Injun fightin,' Colonel! Jest like Injun fightin'!” When we finally retired, the Captain shouldered his musket and trotted off with the rest of us, oblivious of his ”cheese-knife,” as he called it, left it lying on the ground, and never saw it again.
There was a battery of light artillery on this line, about a quarter of a mile to our right, on a slight elevation of the ground. It was right flush up with the infantry line of battle, and oh, how those artillery men handled their guns! It seemed to me that there was the roar of a cannon from that battery about every other second. When ramming cartridge, I sometimes glanced in that direction. The men were big fellows, stripped to the waist, their white skins flas.h.i.+ng in the sunlight, and they were working like I have seen men doing when fighting a big fire in the woods. I fairly gloated over the fire of that battery.
”Give it to them, my sons of thunder!” I would say to myself; ”Knock the ever-lastin' stuffin' out of 'em!” And, as I ascertained after the battle, they did do frightful execution.
In consideration of the fact that now-a-days, as you know, I refuse to even kill a chicken, some of the above expressions may sound rather strange. But the fact is, a soldier on the fighting line is possessed by the demon of destruction. He wants to kill, and the more of his adversaries he can see killed, the more intense his gratification. Gen.
Grant somewhere in his Memoirs expresses the idea (only in milder language than mine) when he says:
”While a battle is raging one can see his enemy mowed down by the thousand, or the ten thousand, with great composure.”
The regiment bivouacked for the night on the bluff, not far from the historic ”log house.” Rain set in about dark, and not wanting to lie in the water, I hunted around and found a little brush-pile evidently made by some man from a sapling he had cut down and trimmed up some time past when the leaves were on the trees. I made a sort of pillow out of my gun, cartridge box, haversack and canteen, and stretched myself out on the brush-pile, tired to death, and rather discouraged over the events of the day. The main body of Buell's men,--”the army of the Ohio,”--soon after dark began ascending the bluff at a point a little above the landing, and forming in line in the darkness a short distance beyond. I have a shadowy impression that this lasted the greater part of the night. Their regimental bands played continuously and it seemed to me that they all played the tune of ”The Girl I Left Behind Me.” And the rain drizzled down, while every fifteen minutes one of the big navy guns roared and sent a ponderous sh.e.l.l shrieking up the ravine above in the direction of the enemy. To this day, whenever I hear an instrumental band playing ”The Girl I Left Behind Me,” there come to me the memories of that gloomy Sunday night at Pittsburg Landing. I again hear the ceaseless patter of the rain, the dull, heavy tread of Buell's marching columns, the thunderous roar of the navy guns, the demoniacal scream of the projectile, and mingled with it all is the sweet, plaintive music of that old song. We had an army version of it I have never seen in print, altogether different from the original ballad. The last stanza of this army production was as follows:
”If ever I get through this war, And a Rebel ball don't find me, I'll shape my course by the northern star, To the girl I left behind me.”
I have said elsewhere that the regiment was not engaged on Monday. We remained all that day at the place where we bivouacked Sunday night. The ends of the staffs of our regimental flags were driven in the ground, the banners flapping idly in the breeze, while the men sat or lay around with their guns in their hands or lying by them, their cartridge-boxes buckled on, and all ready to fall in line at the tap of the drum. But for some reason that I never knew, we were not called on. Our division commander, General B. M. Prentiss, and our brigade commander, Col.
Madison Miller, were both captured on Sunday with the bulk of Prentiss'
division, so I reckon we were sort of ”lost children.” But we were not alone. There were also other regiments of Grant's command which were held in reserve and did not fire a shot on Monday.
After the battle I roamed around over the field, the most of the following two days, looking at what was to be seen. The fearful sights apparent on a b.l.o.o.d.y battlefield simply cannot be described in all their horror. They must be seen in order to be fully realized. As Byron, somewhere in ”Don Juan,” truly says:
”Mortality! Thou hast thy monthly bills, Thy plagues, thy famines, thy physicians, yet tick, Like the death-watch, within our ears the ills Past, present, and to come; but all may yield To the true portrait of one battlefield.”
There was a small clearing on the battlefield called the ”Peach Orchard”
field. It was of irregular shape, and about fifteen or twenty acres in extent, as I remember. However, I cannot now be sure as to the exact size. It got its name, probably, from the fact that there were on it a few scraggy peach trees. The Union troops on Sunday had a strong line in the woods just north of the field, and the Confederates made four successive charges across this open s.p.a.ce on our line, all of which were repulsed with frightful slaughter. I walked all over this piece of ground the day after the close of the battle, and before the dead had been buried. It is the simple truth to say that this s.p.a.ce was literally covered with the Confederate dead, and one could have walked all over it on their bodies. Gen. Grant, in substance, makes the same statement in his Memoirs. It was a fearful sight. But not far from the Peach Orchard field, in a westerly direction, was a still more gruesome spectacle.
Some of our forces were in line on an old, gra.s.s-grown country road that ran through thick woods. The wheels of wagons, running for many years right in the same ruts, had cut through the turf, so that the surface of the road was somewhat lower than the adjacent ground. To men firing on their knees this afforded a slight natural breast-work, which was substantial protection. In front of this position, in addition to the large timber, was a dense growth of small under-brush, post-oak and the like, which had not yet shed their leaves, and the ground also was covered with layers of dead leaves. There was desperate fighting at this point, and during its progress exploding sh.e.l.ls set the woods on fire.
The clothing of the dead Confederates lying in these woods caught fire, and their bodies were burned to a crisp. I have read, somewhere, that some wounded men were burned to death, but I doubt that. I walked all over the ground looking at these poor fellows, and scrutinized them carefully to see the nature of their hurts and they had evidently been shot dead, or expired in a few seconds after being struck. But, in any event, the sight was horrible. I will not go into details, but leave it to your imagination.
I noticed, at other places on the field, the bodies of two Confederate soldiers, whose appearance I shall never forget. They presented a remarkable contrast of death in battle. One was a full grown man, seemingly about thirty years of age, with sandy, reddish hair, and a scrubby beard and mustache of the same color. He had been firing from behind a tree, had exposed his head, and had been struck square in the forehead by a musket ball, killed instantly, and had dropped at the foot of the tree in a heap. He was in the act of biting a cartridge when struck, his teeth were still fastened on the paper extremity, while his right hand clutched the bullet end. His teeth were long and snaggy, and discolored by tobacco juice. As just stated, he had been struck dead seemingly instantaneously. His eyes were wide open and gleaming with Satanic fury. His transition from life to death had been immediate, with the result that there was indelibly stamped on his face all the furious rage and l.u.s.t of battle. He was an ill-looking fellow, and all in all was not an agreeable object to contemplate. The other was a far different case. He was lying on a sloping ridge, where the Confederates had charged a battery, and had suffered fearfully. He was a mere boy, not over eighteen, with regular features, light brown hair, blue eyes, and, generally speaking, was strikingly handsome. He had been struck on his right leg, above the knee, about mid-way the thigh, by a cannon ball, which had cut off the limb, except a small strip of skin. He was lying on his back, at full length, his right arm straight up in the air, rigid as a stake, and his fist tightly clinched. His eyes were wide open, but their expression was calm and natural. The shock and the loss of blood doubtless brought death to his relief in a short time. As I stood looking at the unfortunate boy, I thought of how some poor mother's heart would be well-nigh broken when she heard of the sad, untimely fate of her darling son. But, before the war was over, doubtless thousands of similar cases occurred in both the Union and Confederate armies.
I believe I will here speak of a notion of mine, to be considered for whatever you may think it worth. As you know, I am not a religious man, in the theological sense of the term, having never belonged to a church in my life. Have just tried, to the best of my ability, to act according to the Golden Rule, and let it go at that. But, from my earliest youth, I have had a peculiar reverence for Sunday. I hunted much with a gun when a boy, and so did the people generally of my neighborhood. Small game in that backwoods region was very plentiful, and even deer were not uncommon. Well, it was a settled conviction with us primitive people that if one went hunting on Sunday, he would not only have bad luck in that regard that day, but also all the rest of the week. So, when the Confederates began the battle on Sunday, I would keep thinking, throughout its entire progress, ”You fellows started this on Sunday, and you'll get licked.” I'll admit that there were a few occasions when things looked so awful bad that I became discouraged, but I quickly rallied, and my Sunday superst.i.tion--or whatever it may be called--was justified in the end. In addition to s.h.i.+loh, the battles of New Orleans in 1815, Waterloo, and Bull Run were fought on a Sunday, and in each case the attacking party was signally defeated. These results may have been mere coincidences, but I don't think so. I have read somewhere an authentic statement that President Lincoln entertained this same belief, and always was opposed to aggressive movements on Sundays by the Union troops.
The wildest possible rumors got into circulation at home, about some of the results of the battle. I have now lying before me an old letter from my father of date April 19th, in answer to mine (which I will mention later) giving him the first definite intelligence about our regiment and the neighborhood boys. Among other things he said: ”We have had it here that Fry's regiment was all captured that was not killed; pretty much all given up as lost. That Beauregard had run you all down a steep place into the Tennessee river, * * * that Captain Reddish had his arm shot off, that Enoch Wallace was also wounded;”--and here followed the names of some others who (the same as Reddish and Wallace) hadn't received even a scratch. My letter to my father, mentioned above, was dated April 10, and was received by him on the 18th. It was brief, occupying only about four pages of the small, sleazy note paper that we bought in those days of the sutlers. I don't remember why I didn't write sooner, but it was probably because no mail-boat left the landing until about that time. The old mail hack ordinarily arrived at the Otter Creek post-office from the outside world an hour or so before sundown, and the evening my letter came, the little old post-office and general store was crowded with people intensely anxious to hear from their boys or other relatives in the 61st Illinois. The distribution of letters in that office in those times was a proceeding of much simplicity. The old clerk who attended to that would call out in a stentorian tone the name of the addressee of each letter, who, if present, would respond ”Here!” and then the letter would be given a dexterous flip, and went flying to him across the room. But on this occasion there were no letters from the regiment, until just at the last the clerk called my father's name--”J. O.
Stillwell!” and again, still louder, but there was no response.
Whereupon the clerk held the letter at arm's length, and carefully scrutinized the address. ”Well,” said he finally, ”this is from Jerry Stillwell's boy, in the 61st, so I reckon he's not killed, anyhow.” A murmur of excitement went through the room at this, and the people crowded up to get a glimpse of even the handwriting of the address.