In subordination to the design of this narrative, as defined by its title,
the incidents related necessarily group themselves about my own
personality as a center; and, as this center, during the few terrible
hours of the engagement, maintained a variably constant relation to the
open field already mentioned, it is important that the reader should bear
in mind the topographical and tactical features of the local situation.
The hither side of the field was occupied by the front of my brigade--a
length of two regiments in line, with proper intervals for field
batteries. During the entire fight the enemy held the slight wooded
acclivity beyond. The debatable ground to the right and left of the open
was broken and thickly wooded for miles, in some places quite inaccessible
to artillery and at very few points offering opportunities for its
successful employment. As a consequence of this the two sides of the field
were soon studded thickly with confronting guns, which flamed away at one
another with amazing zeal and rather startling effect. Of course, an
infantry attack delivered from either side was not to be thought of when
the covered flanks offered inducements so unquestionably superior; and I
believe the riddled bodies of my poor skirmishers were the only ones left
on this "neutral ground" that day. But there was a very pretty line of
dead continually growing in our rear, and doubtless the enemy had at his
back a similar encouragement.
The configuration of the ground offered us no protection. By lying flat on
our faces between the guns we were screened from view by a straggling row
of brambles, which marked the course of an obsolete fence; but the enemy's
grape was sharper than his eyes, and it was poor consolation to know that
his gunners could not see what they were doing, so long as they did it.
The shock of our own pieces nearly deafened us, but in the brief intervals
we could hear the battle roaring and stammering in the dark reaches of the
forest to the right and left, where our other divisions were dashing
themselves again and again into the smoking jungle. What would we not have
given to join them in their brave, hopeless task! But to lie inglorious
beneath showers of shrapnel darting divergent from the unassailable
sky--meekly to be blown out of life by level gusts of grape--to clench our
teeth and shrink helpless before big shot pushing noisily through the
consenting air--this was horrible! "Lie down, there!" a captain would
shout, and then get up himself to see that his order was obeyed. "Captain,
take cover, sir!" the lieutenant-colonel would shriek, pacing up and down
in the most exposed position that he could find.
O those cursed guns!--not the enemy's, but our own. Had it not been for
them, we might have died like men. They must be supported, forsooth, the
feeble, boasting bullies! It was impossible to conceive that these pieces
were doing the enemy as excellent a mischief as his were doing us; they
seemed to raise their "cloud by day" solely to direct aright the streaming
procession of Confederate missiles. They no longer inspired confidence,
but begot apprehension; and it was with grim satisfaction that I saw the
carriage of one and another smashed into matchwood by a whooping shot and
bundled out of the line.
X
The dense forests wholly or partly in which were fought so many battles of
the Civil War, lay upon the earth in each autumn a thick deposit of dead
leaves and stems, the decay of which forms a soil of surprising depth and
richness. In dry weather the upper stratum is as inflammable as tinder. A
fire once kindled in it will spread with a slow, persistent advance as far
as local conditions permit, leaving a bed of light ashes beneath which the
less combustible accretions of previous years will smolder until
extinguished by rains. In many of the engagements of the war the fallen
leaves took fire and roasted the fallen men. At Shiloh, during the first
day's fighting, wide tracts of woodland were burned over in this way and
scores of wounded who might have recovered perished in slow torture. I
remember a deep ravine a little to the left and rear of the field I have
described, in which, by some mad freak of heroic incompetence, a part of
an Illinois regiment had been surrounded, and refusing to surrender was
destroyed, as it very well deserved. My regiment having at last been
relieved at the guns and moved over to the heights above this ravine for
no obvious purpose, I obtained leave to go down into the valley of death
and gratify a reprehensible curiosity.
Forbidding enough it was in every way. The fire had swept every
superficial foot of it, and at every step I sank into ashes to the ankle.
It had contained a thick undergrowth of young saplings, every one of which
had been severed by a bullet, the foliage of the prostrate tops being
afterward burnt and the stumps charred. Death had put his sickle into this
thicket and fire had gleaned the field. Along a line which was not that of
extreme depression, but was at every point significantly equidistant from
the heights on either hand, lay the bodies, half buried in ashes; some in
the unlovely looseness of attitude denoting sudden death by the bullet,
but by far the greater number in postures of agony that told of the
tormenting flame. Their clothing was half burnt away--their hair and beard
entirely; the rain had come too late to save their nails. Some were
swollen to double girth; others shriveled to manikins. According to degree
of exposure, their faces were bloated and black or yellow and shrunken.
The contraction of muscles which had given them claws for hands had cursed
each countenance with a hideous grin. Faugh! I cannot catalogue the charms
of these gallant gentlemen who had got what they enlisted for.