Shiloh (11 page)

"Get out the way," they said, shoving.
"We'll fight your damned battle for you."

But the men under the bluff jeered right back. ''
You
’ll catch it," they hollered,
all of them yelling at once. ''
You
’ll
see! They’ll cut you to ribbons up there!"

Mostly we had been let alone. Not even the high-rank
officers on Grant's staff, moving along the bluff road to and from Army
headquarters on a steamboat, made any try at getting us back into the fight.
They would just look at us and go on. I suppose they knew that even if they
managed to get us back up the bluff and into the wood again, we would melt away
as soon as they turned their heads. Or maybe they figured being scared was
catching and they didn’t want us up there spreading it amongst the men who had held.

But there was one fellow who didn’t feel that way about it.
He was a chaplain, tall and raw-boned, and he ranted at us in a hard New
England voice. You’d have thought he was back in the pulpit, the way he ranted.
He stood in the middle of the road, halfway up the bluff, waving his arms at a
group of men who sat on the sand and watched him with leers on their faces.
Then the head of a column of Buell's men off the steamboat came up to where he
was.

"Rally for God and country!" he was saying.
"Oh rally round the flag!"

He was square in the middle of the road, blocking it and
calling the skulkers to rally oh rally, when the colonel heading the column
came up behind him.

"Shut up, you goddam old fool," the colonel said.
"Get out the way!"

And the column brushed him aside and went up the bluff while
the group of skulkers sat there laughing at the parson and calling him to rally
oh rally, rally. They whistled and hooted at him till he stomped off fuming mad
and didn’t come back.

Night was closing in, first a blue dusk darkening, then just
blackness, the big stretch of sky across the river sprinkled with stars winking
at us through rifts in the smoke blown back from the battlefield. The firing
had died to occasional sputters, sounding dull in the darkness, but every ten
or fifteen minutes the gunboats would throw two shells up over the bluff. They
went past with a noise like freight cars in the night, their
fuzes
drawing long curved lines across the sky. The
explosions sounded faint and far in the woods above, the way it is back home
when a farmer two fields off is blowing stumps.

Torches were burning down by the Landing where Buell's men
were still unloading. They came up the bluff in a steady column, cheering with
hoarse voices when they reached the top. Nobody hooted at them now. We just sat
there watching them. Their faces looked strange in the torchlight, eyes glinting
out of hollow sockets, teeth flashing white against mouths like deep black
holes when they cheered. From sundown until the stars burned clear with no
smoke to fog them, Buell's men went on unloading and marching up that steep
road to the woods above. When they reached the overlook, they would put their
caps on the tips of their bayonets and raise them, cheering. Out over the water
we heard the voices of the sailors as they took the steamboats across again,
going back for more.

Then the stars went out and the sky across the river was
only blackness. There began to be a sound of sighing in the air—the wind was
rising. Then the rain came. First it was only a patter, little gusts of it as
if somebody up on the bluff was dropping handfuls of birdshot down on us. Then
the wind died; the rain turned to a steady, fine drizzle almost like mist. You
could see it against the torches, falling slantwise on the men marching up the
slope and the retreaters huddled on the sand with their faces to the bluff and
their backs to the rain.

Sitting there getting wetter and wetter I began to think
about the long day that was past. I saw it from then to now; I went back over
it, beginning with three o’clock in the morning when I lay warm in my blankets
and heard the infantry going out, then back to sleep again and the long roll
sounding and we stood to the guns, anxious for the johnnies to come because we
still didn’t know what it was going to be like. I saw Captain Munch getting
bowled over by a cannon-ball. I looked at myself in my mind, watching myself as
if I was another person—God, maybe—looking down and seeing Otto Flickner
fighting the rebels on Shiloh battlefield.

He did all right, considering. He was scared from time to
time, no different from the others, but he did all right until word came down
to retreat from the sunken road. That broke it. That was when the spark went
out of him. I heard Lieutenant Pfaender calling Flickner! Flickner! and saw
myself going back through the blackjack scrubs without even looking round. I
saw again the things I'd seen at the Landing, the hangdog faces of the skulkers
turning to jeer, the wounded laid out in rows on the wharf all bloody, muddy
from being
tramped
on; Buell's army coming off the
steamboats, calling us cowards to our faces— and us taking it; and finally I
saw myself the way I was now, sitting in the rain and telling myself that
Buterbaugh was wrong. I wasn’t demoralized back there at the sunken road: I hadn’t
even lost confidence. I was just plain scared, as scared as a man can be, and
that was why I walked away from the fight.

Just thinking it, I was panting like the dog. And soon as I
thought it—You were just plain scared, I thought—I wished I had let it alone.
Because being demoralized or losing confidence was all right. Like Buterbaugh
said, it was a thing that closed in on you from outside, a thing you couldn’t
help. But being scared was different. It was inside you, just you yourself, and
that was a horse of a different color. That meant I would have to do something
about it, or live with it for the balance of my life. So I went up the bluff.

I didn’t say anything to the others, and only the
Michigander looked up as I walked away. I thought maybe it would be a good idea
to take a poke at him before I left, but what was the use after all? Bango was
sleeping—anyhow he hadn’t moved. The rain was coming down harder now; when I
cleared the top of the bluff it came against me in sheets, driven by the wind,
and there was a steady moaning sound in the limbs of the trees. Then I saw
campfires. They followed a ridge and overlooked a gully, drawing a wide low
half-mile semicircle against the night. Siege guns, big ones long and black
against the firelight, were ranged along that ridge with their muzzles reaching
out toward the rebel lines. Later I heard that a colonel by the name of
Webster—he was on Grant's staff— had placed them there, and with the help of
some of the light artillery and rallied infantry, they formed the line that
broke the final charge that evening. But I didn’t know this now; I just saw the
siege guns against the campfires strung out along the ridge.

Then I passed a log house with lanterns burning and wounded
men lying half-naked on sawhorse tables, being held down by attendants while
the surgeons worked on them. The surgeons wore their sleeves rolled up, arms
bloody past the elbows; from time to time one would stop and take a pull at a
bottle. The wounded screamed like women, high and
trembly
,
and the attendants had to hold them tight to keep them from bucking off the
tables.

I went past in a hurry, picking my way among those laid out
to wait their turn in the house. It was pitch black dark and the rain was
coming down harder, blowing up for a storm. Everywhere I went there were men on
the ground, singly or in groups, and most of them sleeping. But no matter who I
asked, not a one of them could tell me how to find my outfit.