RETREAT.
The word is not reassuring to seasoned soldiers. To new troops it is
very depressing. Johnston’s line was broken on the right at Fishing
Creek, and was threatened on the left at Donelson. Bowling Green was,
therefore, untenable, and now we must fall back behind the Cumberland.
The Rangers must cover the retreat. It was snowing the morning we
left, and the enemy were throwing shells into the place. Our march to
Nashville was without incident. We crossed the Cumberland in the night
and camped just outside the city. We now learned that Donelson had
fallen, and the retreat must be continued. We were ordered down toward
Donelson to guard in that direction, and to afford succor to such as
had escaped the surrender and might be making their way south.
Returning, we found the army at Murfreesboro, but it moved on by
Shelbyville, Huntsville and Decatur to Corinth, Mississippi, the
Rangers guarding the rear. The weather was bad and the progress slow,
but the enemy did not press us. We crossed the Tennessee river on the
railroad bridge, which had been floored for the purpose. When we went
into camp rations of bacon and flour were issued to us. Our wagons
and camp equipment being somewhere else, we were confronted with the
problem of preparing this flour for the immediate consumption of the
chronically hungry soldier. If necessity is the mother of invention,
hunger is a most capable handmaid of the good dame. An oilcloth is
spread on the ground, and on this the flour is kneaded, but how to bake
it was the question. Some rolled the dough around a stake or ramrod,
which they stuck in the ground by the fire, but the stuff would slip
down. Some of us tried a flat rail, and that answered very well. First
heating the rail thoroughly, we stuck our biscuits on it, set them
before the fire, and watched them brown, our appetites growing keener
all the while. The treatment of the bacon was easy. We broiled it on a
stick held before the fire or above the coals, and that is the best way
it was ever cooked.
At Corinth we had a few days’ rest. Absentees came in, and the _morale_
improved.
Buell did not follow our line of march, but moved by the more direct
route through Franklin, Columbus and Pulaski, intending to unite with
Grant at Pittsburg Landing.