They Met at Shiloh (37 page)

“You men don’t happen to have some food on you? The wounded down there are pretty hungry, and I’m collecting canteens and hard tack for a communion of sorts,” the man said as he approached.

“We have a little of both,” Robert replied.

“Pards of yours?” They saw he was ashamed to ask.

“Were,” Robert replied.

“Communion?” Huebner asked.

“Yes, some of the mortally wounded insisted I give them something of a last hope,” the man replied.

“I’m Robert Mitchell, 25th Missouri, and this is my pard, Josef Huebner. We came looking for some of our missing.” Robert extended his hand, and the man took it.

“Philip Pearson, 24th Ohio,” the man replied. “I don’t mean to be ghoulish, but those men down there are dying for water. Can I have those canteens?” Philip motioned to the deceased. The expression on his face combined pain and expectation.

“I don’t think anything is still useable from them after that solid shot did its work. But you can have mine,” Robert said as he un-slung his canteen and handed it to Philip.

“You give last rites?” Huebner asked.

“No, I’m not a minister any longer. Nothing I can say is any more meaningful than what you yourself can say to the Almighty.”

“So you won’t do it?” Huebner pressed.

“I . . . I can’t.”

Huebner looked from Robert to Philip and then back to the bodies. His downcast face said what he refused to.

“All right, I’ll do my best, but I’m going to do the Protestant version as I don’t know the Catholic,” Philip stated. He knelt down beside the torn bodies. “What are their names?”

“Georg Primble und Johan Piper,” Huebner replied. “They Lutheran.”

“Oh,” Philip started. “Well, they are dead anyhow, so I suppose it don’t matter much.”

“We don’t know these other men from the Indiana regiment,” Robert added.

“Indiana, you say?” Philip asked.

“Ja, 36th Indiana. We join them yesterday,” Huebner answered.

Philip muddled through an unconvincing prayer for the dead and their families. He apologized sheepishly for his unprepared delivery, but Huebner seemed relieved.

“It’s over. They rest now.”

“Yes, Hube. They rest now,” Robert agreed.

“Over for this life,” Philip added.

“Ja, this life.”

“What other life is there?” Robert asked, knowing full well the reply he could expect from the former preacher.

“Would that it was only that,” Philip replied, “to live and then to die and fade into nothing. No, it is not that easy.”

“Heaven or Hell, do they really exist, or is it just something we came up with because we want the one to avoid the other?” Robert sighed. “I’m no blasphemer, but this day brings me to question that there is anything good or waiting for me should I draw my last breath.”

“If it were not so,” Philip explained, “then many of us are deceived and to be pitied.” Philip pursed his lips and shook his head. “We all believe in something and know something else exists beyond the corporeal existence we know now. Every society encountered around the world believes in something of the afterlife. Either they are all deceived, or there is something of the truth in it. I believe there is the truth in it and a God who communicates with us about it.”

“It’s what to live for,” Huebner said. “No life after, no life now.”

“Did Piper and Primble believe in Heaven? Who’s to say they are there now?” Robert said.

Questions of life and death always disturbed him. It meant admitting that he did not really believe in what he’d grown up hearing from the pulpits of the Lutheran church. It all sounded like convenient, wishful thinking. The hope that something was there that one could neither see nor know for certain always challenged his beliefs. It was always good to hope for the good and avoid the bad, but who was to say who was to go where and why?

“Don’t matter,” Philip said. “We see the Moon in the sky, but we don’t know that it is not made of cheese. We believe that it is not by intuition and fact. We believe there is a Heaven and a Hell out of intuition and fact from the Good Book itself. One day, someone might journey to the Moon to discover what it is exactly and why. No one will venture back from Heaven or Hell to confirm them, but we believe that they are there and earnestly hope for the one while despising the other.”

“So, in the long run, no one knows where they will end up, do they?” Robert asked and looked hard at his companion.

“No, not true, Robert!” Huebner protested. “I know.”

“Hube, how can you know? What rules did you break or how many confessions did you give before you broke some more rules? To know is impossible, for sure.” He was feeling uncomfortable, given the ghastly tumble of bodies in front of them.

“Not true!”

Philip cleared his throat. “There is a way, but I think you are inferring that it is impossible to know empirically, in which you would be correct. Faith must know when the mind cannot. It is faith that saves us from Hell and faith that instructs us to know where we go when we depart this earth. Huebner here believes where he is bound and, if I may be so bold, you do not.”

“No, I guess right now, I don’t know for sure what is going to happen to me, or them, or you, for that matter,” Robert said, chaffing and uncomfortable at the turn of the conversation.

“Well,” Philip said, standing, “I got men of my regiment dying for this water. I thank you for allowing me to take it. Enjoy the life you have right now, for days like this one show us how short life can be.”

Philip walked slowly down the hill to the throng of wounded. Robert brooded to himself and tried not to provoke Huebner into more needling over issues of faith and the afterlife. He believed what he believed and wanted to keep it that way.

At last Huebner whispered, “Not know if Piper und Primble mit Gott, only hope they are.”

“Sorry, Hube. I didn’t mean to put that all in doubt, just wondering as to the reality of it all,” Robert replied stiffly.

“Du believe what want. I believe Primble mit Gott. Piper only hope,” Huebner said and stood up.

“Why Primble?” Robert asked and stood as well, dusting the grass off of his Kerseys.

“Because Primble believed in Gott und Jesus,” Huebner replied with an air of fact and conviction.

“How did he know? How do you know?” Robert asked.

“Because Jesus mit inside,” Huebner said and motioned to his chest. “Primble, too.”

“We heard the same stories and sermons from the same ministers growing up, Hube, yet I do not believe, nor am I any more convinced now. I suppose it is not my time yet.”

“Suppose,” Huebner said sadly.

“We’d better get back before dark,” Robert said and stepped away from the corpses of their friends.

“Ja, get back.”

It was getting dark, and the sun was dipping in the western skyline behind the trees beyond the river. All was at peace, and the birds returned to their evening song. But for the distant booming of cannon, all seemed right with the world. Burial parties moved about and started a grisly work that would take many days to complete with clumps of earth and crude head boards growing out of the reddened soil like weeds. It was not work Robert relished.

Huebner was quiet the rest of the walk back to their camp. Fires danced in company fire pits, and something of the normality of army life crept back into the Union tents. Coffee boiled. Cook fires heated evening meals of scrounged hard tack and greasy salt pork that had not been hauled away by a jubilant enemy.

More of their pards had found their way back to the regimental camp with tales similar to Robert’s. Some stood quietly, trying to hide their shame in cowering under the bluffs of the landing all day and night. Robert was surprised that so many made their way back, even some who had been prisoners until they managed to escape. It was still a pitiful few, but Robert felt good about seeing so many familiar faces rejoin the company. The dead had to be moved out of the tents, and the parade ground quickly turned into a grave yard as the work to inter the corpses went into the night. Those who had died from Robert’s company joined ranks next to the grave of First Sergeant Hammel. The others, Confederates and a mingling of union men no one recognized, were buried in mass graves. It was pitch dark by the time the last grave was dug.

By the firelight, Robert sat as he always did before taps, watching the flames dance. Huebner sat nearby with the others who had survived the day, and no one spoke. Nothing needed to be said. Huebner hadn’t stumbled, bumbled, or caused his usual mayhem. No one teased or joked, and Robert felt queer about the change. He’d lost his simpleton friend. Had it not been a victory? Robert wondered. But he was to weary too give the question much thought.

Confederate POWs

Pittsburg Landing April 8th, 1862

S
tephen Murdoch sat among a sullen group of his compatriots under the watchful eye of several Federal soldiers. The silence was more from exhaustion than from defeat, but both weighed heavily upon each man. No longer soldiers but prisoners of war, they felt naked without their weapons and traps. Only the uniform and the guards reminded them of their former avocation. They were all enlisted men, with a smattering of non-commissioned officers, but no one felt compelled to take charge. They just sat and brooded.

Stephen was scooped up by a roving provost marshal’s patrol soon after sundown and made the lonely trek to Pittsburg Landing with a collection of other sad-looking and disheveled Confederates. They exchanged names and unit affiliations, but that was the total of the conversation. Stephen might as well have been alone. He knew the questions on everyone’s minds. Would they be paroled, or would they be marched off to some prison camp? And which would be worse? To be paroled and face his father as a defeated warrior or to suffer some other fate in a vermin-infested stockade like the one at Johnson’s Island in Ohio? Starvation or ignominy, it was a tough call. His mother would be relieved to see him still alive, but what of father? Would Stephen be welcomed to the table? The elder Murdoch opposed secession, but when it came, he had little choice but to become a patriot.

The paddle steamers took turns disgorging supplies and troops from the landing, and a constant parade of people marched up the slope through a fire-lit path. The Union army they had once defeated in battle was looking very alive and ready for more. Some of the prisoners were wounded in the extremities and tried to find some comfort on the hard ground. Others were being cared for by a motley collection of Federal and Confederate medical personnel. Stephen sat cross-legged and watched another column wind its way down the road and out of sight. After constant activity, the inaction was unnerving.

Stephen remembered the young Dutchman and his American pard he’d met after burying Willie. He wondered at the Yankees’ surprise that he had interred their company first sergeant. Would not they have done the same for him? Hammel had suffered so all through the night, and his last vigil with Stephen as he searched the tents had been a comfort. There were so many to bury, so many whose last moments were filled with pain or hallucinations of home. Stephen had ended his search of the camp in sorrow. Without understanding why, Stephen was compelled to bury this man whose company had calmed and steadied his nerves.

That Dutch boy and the older soldier made small talk with him as strangers often do. They were both from Missouri and had stood their ground on that very hill earlier the other morning. There was a familiarity born of common tragedy and respect, nonetheless, when combatant enemies met in truce. Stephen hitherto had never been in close proximity to an enemy upon such terms. He was now beholden to these people, and he could hope in nothing more than their sense of decency and lenient treatment.

The few guards that stood about with bored expressions were not even needed as many in their group had wandered up and surrendered earlier in the day. These enemy guards gave freely of their water to the wounded, and, but for the loaded weapons at shoulder arms, the assembled mass of men could have been mistaken for a friendly gathering. Stephen appreciated the graciousness in victory these men exhibited. Perhaps they were just as tired as their prisoners, but even the officers spoke with quietude to them. The orderlies gingerly began carting over the more seriously wounded prisoners from the aid stations, swelling their numbers. In the dark, Stephen recognized no one. A companion at this moment, even that Yankee first sergeant, would have greatly raised his spirits.

*****

Polk’s Battery

West Corinth Road April 9th, 1862

Michael slumped in the saddle with a weak hold on the reins and his head nodding jarringly with each downward clop of the horse’s hooves. It was three a.m. the last time he had looked at his time piece. Michie’s Crossroads stood once again in a tumultuous sea of moving bodies. Despite the need, the men moved lazily like a slow stream down the road and past the crossroads tavern. The windows were all still lit, and men lounged on its steps. Polk’s Battery lumbered noisily down the road, and its crews tried both to maintain balance and to drift off to sleep, doing neither for more than a few precious minutes at a time.

Three days before, Michael was a subordinate, but at this early hour moving back to Corinth in defeat, he was in command of the whole battery. They were down a few guns and minus about as many in crews from injury, capture, and death. Comrades and friends were missing, some never to return. He felt the absence of so many comrades, but the absence of Mahoney was the hardest to bear. The next man in line would fulfill Mahoney’s role in the command structure, but he could not fill the hole in the relationship with Michael. The battle all over but the final retreat and rearguard, an unlucky shot had snuffed out this man of piety. Michael, grieving, had been forced to appoint another to his place almost immediately.

“Sergeant Wilson, assume the post of first sergeant and get the guns limbered up,” Michael had said to the man.

“Sir,” Wilson had replied in a voice broken by dryness and fatigue.

“It’ll be official when we get back to Corinth.”