They Met at Shiloh (22 page)

“We should have done it right away,” a man named Henderson said.

“That first sergeant would have shot one of us for sure,” Robert told him. “We just need to keep heading toward the river. We’ll see him.”

“Ve be lucky to make it back to der Kompanie,” Piper said.

“Doesn’t matter,” Robert snapped. “We couldn’t bury Hilde, but we’re going to bury Gustavson before those infernal hogs get to him!”

Huebner stopped and leaned on his shovel. “Can’t we stop? I’m tired.”

Without looking back, Piper hissed, “Hube, get moving und look for Gustavson.”

A sudden flopping sound reached Robert’s ears, and he turned in time to see Huebner hit the ground hard.

“Hube, ya’ need to get those feet straightened out. Ya’ know, one in front of the other?” He backtracked to where Huebner lay.

“Tripped over something,” Huebner said. He rolled onto his hands and knees and gasped when he saw whom he had tripped over.

Robert froze. He knelt down next to Huebner. Crumpled upon the ground where Huebner had fallen was Gustavson.

“Shhh,” Robert whispered. “Hube, found him! We found Gus.”

Huebner sat trembling. “Tripped ich über. . . .”

Robert put his hand on Huebner’s shoulder. “Shh. No harm done, Hube. Forget about it. I won’t tell anyone.”

The others gathered around. Each man stared at the corpse who had been their companion since the company had mustered in St. Louis a few months before. Gustavson and Hildebrande had been with the 13th Missouri when Colonel Peabody surrendered the command after Lexington, Missouri, was captured by the Confederate General Price. He had borne the marches and the bitter early engagements at the beginning of the war in Missouri. He had stood with them before the battle that morning, only to fall at last light.

None of them knew what to do next, nor had they planned any ceremony for burial. It was raining, and they were five men gathered around a fallen comrade. Thoughts of their own comfort had taken second place to the proper treatment of their pard in his passing.

“Let’s carry him over there by those trees. Seems wrong to bury him here in the open,” Henderson said.

“Let’s get his traps off,” Robert said, “and cover him with the blanket.”

Huebner looked at the cold body as the others discussed how to disposition the burial. Robert sensed the youth was about to lose it again, just as he had that morning.

“Hube, go pick a spot over by those trees while we get ready to carry him over,” Robert said.

“Huh?”

“Go pick a spot to bury Gus,” Robert repeated.

“Oh. Ja, gut,” Huebner responded, slowly gaining his feet.

“So, we just dig a hole and put him in it?” Henderson asked.

Piper nodded. “Ja. Carve his name and date on der tree.”

The others commenced to removing the traps from Gustavson’s body. Soon, Gustavson lay in state with the wool blanket for a shroud. The body had begun to stiffen, and righting him took no little effort.

“Come, I find perfect spot,” Huebner yelled from the darkness.

“Shtay z’ere,” Piper yelled back.

“Well, let’s try to carry him best we can,” Robert said. The men looked at the shrouded form and hesitated, unable to figure how to carry their pard in the most appropriate manner.

“Let’s do it,” Henderson said. “I don’t think there is any way to do it with the dignity we seek. We just gonna have to pick him up by the shoulders and legs. Someone get the middle. Maybe wrap him in the blanket. Might help.”

“We’ll come back for the shovels,” Robert said.

After the effort to wrap and transport the corpse of their friend, they rested at the foot of a great oak that Huebner had selected. The tree’s limbs and overgrowth sheltered them from the rain, and they agreed that the spot was the most appropriate for a burial plot, given the circumstances. Soon, they had excavated a hole large enough to accommodate Gustavson and placed the body lovingly within. After Piper finished chiseling the name, regiment, and date upon the tree, the five miserable-looking men stood around the grave.

“What we say?” Huebner asked.

“We said it by what we did,” Henderson replied.

“What about Hilde?” Huebner asked.

“Tomorrow,” Robert replied. “Maybe tomorrow.”

No one wanted to cast the moment with anything trite or irreverent. They had laid a friend to rest upon the field in which his life had been purchased for their cause. Anything to be said would not begin to describe their sorrow or their relief at the act thus accomplished. They were dripping wet and fatigued. There was no time to don mourning cloth or to observe more than a moment of silence. They knew there was still more war to make upon the enemy and more work to be done. One by one, they peeled off into the field in the direction whence they had come.

“C’mon, Hube, time to go back,” Robert said when only he and Huebner remained.

“You think Gus mit Jesus?” Huebner asked.

“Sure, Hube, Gus is with Jesus now.” The thought suddenly troubled Robert. Amid the struggle and the call of the long roll and the thunder of the guns, he had forgotten the soldiers’ one companion: death. A soldier only has death to look forward to, and if not death, then a life of maimed existence. But with death comes the question that man will ever ask of himself: What fate awaits his passing?

“Ja, he mit Jesus now,” Huebner said. He managed a weak smile.

Robert looked at Huebner’s boyish face and felt a chill run down his back at the surety of those words. There was something dead serious in Huebner’s tone, just as it was earlier when he trotted off toward their adopted regiment. It was the tone of conviction.

“Let’s get going, Hube. Gus is resting proper now.” Robert said.

“Ja. Gute Nacht, Gus,” Huebner said. He turned from the grave, and the two men walked into the gloom.

Polk’s Battery

Hamburg - Purdy Road, PM April 6th, 1862

T
he rain was chilly and fell in a continuous drizzle. It wasn’t enough to soak a man but was enough to keep him damp and uncomfortable. Those who had them donned their gum blankets or wrapped their woolen blankets about their shoulders. They stood in groups to share the misery of a rainy night without shelter. Rest was the hardest thing to find, despite the mutual exhaustion, and the drizzle was annoying enough to keep the hardest sleepers awake. Those men who had been enterprising enough to scavenge the Federal’s camp had found a supply of ponchos. The captured vulcanized canvas ponchos kept the upper torso dry but did nothing for the legs and feet. Michael convinced Mahoney to turn a blind eye to the pilfering; at least they were pilfering the spoils of the enemy and not his dead. Behind where the battery had taken station was a Federal camp with tents and food and equipment just begging to be “liberated,” as one private commented.

Indeed, all sorts of equipment were available if one looked hard enough in the darkness. Also to be found were wounded of both sides seeking shelter. To some, including Michael’s men, those wounded hampered any scavenging. Out of respect, Michael’s men left those tents alone, though others of their kind were not so polite.

Michael sat leaning against a tree and huddled under a captured gum blanket one of his men had given him. There were the day’s reports to send up the chain of command, and the gum blanket helped keep the drizzle from falling upon the pages of his notebook as he penciled in the returns. The battery had expended twenty-five cases of grape shot and seventy-five of solid, or round, shot. Three men were carried from the field injured, and two had been killed outright. Ten horses were disabled. The caissons were replenished from stores twice, and the battery moved and fought with the progress of the infantry and covered territory won through hard fighting.

All of these things were described in the return. The numbers were necessary, but they did not belie the memory of their consequences. Union men had been maimed and killed by the expenditures. But a report was not time to wax philosophic about war or those enemy soldiers rent by his fire. They would become expenditures upon the enemy battery’s returns and reduced to a solitary column of dead and missing. Later, they would become part of the greater numbers to be calculated at brigade, division, corps, and, finally, army level. In the end, the returns would be someone’s success or failure by ground won or lost by rod.

Fires flickered where the enterprise of men kept them lit in the wetness, and men gathered around them to stare into the flickering dance. Looking up, Michael saw his guns covered in canvas to keep the fittings dry and oiled and the large tampions stuffed into the barrels to keep the moisture out. The men of the battery lolled about aimlessly in the mist, and some few huddled underneath the caissons for shelter and shut-eye.

“Grierson, I see your men made it through the rest of the day,” Captain Polk said as he gingerly sat down next to Michael. His leg was set in a splint and wrapped by a bloody bandage.

“That they did, Polk. That they did. We didn’t see much of the rest of the goings on after that big surrender.” Michael nodded toward Polk’s leg and asked, “Shouldn’t you go to an aid station?”

“I’m putting that off for as long as I can stand it, Grierson. We pressed ‘em to the landing, as far as I could tell, but it was like the wind had been spent in the army, and the men couldn’t press on with vigor as they had previously. We had them against the river but lacked the power to do anything else.” Polk grimaced as he shifted his leg.

Michael stuffed his notebook into his jacket pocket. Polk’s words were not welcome, for they meant what Michael sensed: failure of the whole enterprise to destroy the enemy army in Tennessee.

“Pickets say there’s chopping and lots of traffic noise up ahead, and it’s all local, not headed away. What happened?” asked Michael, motioning to Polk’s bandage.

“Leg’s broke. Spent shell fragment. Got some Yank whiskey fer the pain. Grant got help from Buell toward dusk. That and Johnston’s dead,” Polk said dryly.

“Dead?” Michael turned.

“Happened this afternoon, least that’s what the word is and seems to be truth. Something happened as you sort of get this sense that someone’s changed drivers mid-stream, and the horses ain’t being steered at all. Like the hand that guided and directed this army suddenly fell limp and left it to its own devices.”

Polk paused to stare at the wet grass and dirt at his feet. “I got this feeling somehow after Prentiss’s division surrendered in that wood earlier today. We took an entire division of the enemy, and then some, in that wood. Eight thousand Yankees surrendered, or so I’m told. You know those moments of success where it would seem that one need only reach out and pluck that sweetest of plums from the tree limbs? Where one would swear there was nothing to stop you from those fruits of victory, and then you pause to wait for the other boot to drop?”

“It did seem like we’d slowed down a bit,” Michael conceded. “Though I confess I didn’t look for that other thing to happen to counter our successes, and what was done today was fairly won. You know how a victory can disorganize the victor as much as the defeated.”

“We were there, Grierson.” Polk’s voice quivered in anger and disappointment. “We were there and could see the river bank through the trees teeming with disorganized Yankees and the gunboats and transports on the river, and nothing but a line of guns stood between us and shoving all them Yanks to drown in the water. That plum was never closer to our reach than it was before dusk.”

“You think we’ve lost?” Michael asked, surprised.

“We command the field, but if we couldn’t push a few thousand fugitives into the river because we lacked the energy and drive to do it, then we’ve lost the initiative at the least.” Polk tried to stand, in response to the emotion he felt, but the pain in his leg made him gasp and sit hard. He took a swallow of whisky before he could continue. “Buell is adding his numbers to that of Grant now, and we knew we might be able to defeat Grant if we were bold enough. But we are a day too late to do that, I fear, and tomorrow we will be assailed by fresh battalions.”

“The infantry is exhausted, as is our own battery, but they are flush with victory. Perhaps that will mean the difference on the morrow,” Michael said.

“Indeed, the morale is high, and perhaps that will carry us to the river in the end, despite the reinforcements we’ll face soon. But you should have seen it, Grierson.” He grabbed Michael’s arm and stared into his eyes. “All was confusion in the enemy’s rear, and we were on the brink of it all.”

Polk’s frankness was unnerving, and Michael had never seen him so open and disconcerted. “We’re still on it, Polk. We own his camps, and we need but one more push to own his point of supply at the river. We take the landing, and Grant and Buell will have the swampy lowlands in their rear and our army in their front. They’ll have to surrender.”

“I’m not one for gloom, but I don’t see what good will come of tomorrow,” Polk said.

“You’re not ever wrong. You’ve kept the battery from a world of hurt following that intuition of yours. I just hope you are wrong on this one count,” Michael said.

“Well, Grierson, a commanding officer is never wrong as far as his men are concerned. He’s always right even when he consigns them to their sure death. Only you and I can be wrong to the other. Between you and me, I do hope I’m wrong, or a lot of men were killed today for no result.” Again, Polk struggled to stand, swinging his splinted leg around until he was steadied. Without further word he limped out into the dark.

Michael felt uneasy. Had his own eyes deceived him? He’d seen the columns of enemy prisoners filing to the rear in dejection. He’d seen the infantry of General Polk’s corps advancing and beating the enemy back. Could so much have been changed in so few hours? Johnston’s death was another blow—and one that would not be kept silent for long. If an army did one thing for sure, it took on the imprint of its commander. Whether they loved or hated him, the army rose or fell with its commander. If Johnston was gone, so was his drive and plan.

While the eastern armies had tasted a seemingly endless run of victories over their numerically superior enemies, the western armies had not been so fortunate. Fort Henry was taken with ease, and Fort Donelson was an embarrassment for Western arms. General Pillow surrendered the ten thousand-man garrison after a break-out nearly succeeded. With access to the Tennessee River denied to him, Johnston was forced to abandon Tennessee. Kentucky was also lost. Yet only a few days ago, as they marched out of Corinth to meet Grant at Pittsburg Landing, all seemed to have changed in their fortunes. Michael longed for some great success of arms to justify the expense of men and material. It had seemed within grasp that morning, though Captain Polk wasn’t so optimistic.