Shiloh
Will had heard that some were calling this place Shiloh after a church nearby. However, from his vantage point, Will could see nothing peaceful about it. The day before, he and the rest of Grant’s men had been bivouacked near the river, waiting for reinforcements from Ohio. They knew that P.G.T. Beauregard and his troops were in the area; however, they had no idea that they were so incredibly close.
The Rebs had been successful that first day, pushing them back toward Owl Creek. The ground had been terrible, like fighting in a pile of fresh horse manure, the mud clinging to their shoes and their pants, weighing them down and making any sort of a hasty retreat impossible. Luckily, the enemy had seemed confused, and Will and the men he was fighting with were able to drop back to a better position. It seemed like the Sunken Road they chose for cover was good ground, and it proved to be so when the Confederate Army could not make its way through what they were now calling the “Hornet’s Nest.”
Despite being caught off-guard, the Union Army was able to hold the field that first day, and with the arrival of reinforcements the next morning, General Don Carlos Buell of Ohio and his additional men, Grant’s forces were victorious. Though Will’s unit had seen some tremendous action the first day, they were able to fall back the next day into reserve and let the new arrivals feel the brunt of the burden of war.
The following morning, when the fighting was over and Beauregard had taken his Confederate forces and disappeared, Will heard the sound of bugles, letting them know it was time to move out. The carnage left in the wake of the battle was like nothing he had ever seen before. There was nary a sound from those troops considering themselves lucky to still be marching, despite the number of their comrades who littered the ground around them.
One sight in particular was especially disheartening to Will. As they continued along their way, they eventually came to a small pond. The bodies of the dead and wounded lay so thick around this shallow vessel of water that the blood had tinged the surface a sickening red color. For these poor souls, the pond had been their one hope for relief from their agonizing wounds. Most of them would find solace here eventually, as they faded out of this world and into the next.
As they passed through this dismal place, Will overheard one of his companions say, “War is hell.”
“Yes, it is,” he thought to himself. “Yes, it is indeed.”
* * *
The remainder of 1862 included several more major engagements for the Union Army of the Tennessee. Gen. U. S. Grant realized that, if he was going to be successful in securing the Mississippi River for the Union, therefore cutting off a major artery to the Confederates, he would have to capture the fort city of Vicksburg. Will saw action at several battles and skirmishes along the river, some successful, though many only resulting in high casualties, particularly for the North. It wasn’t until the spring of 1863 that Grant began to make significant progress toward his goal. By then, Will had become quite the veteran soldier, though he still refused any offer of promotion. He had earned a reputation as one of the most reliable gunmen in his regiment and was occasionally called upon as a makeshift sharpshooter when needed. He wrote to Julia and Cordia as often as possible and relied on letters from home to soften the hardships of war. The horrendous sights of the battlefield cast images his mind would not soon forget, memories he knew he would carry with him long after the cruel war was over, should he be so fortunate as to find his way back home.
The summer and fall were particularly difficult for Julia who spent much of her time in bed, tuberculosis consuming her lungs. Cordia visited as often as possible, but many times Margaret advised against a lengthy stay since Julia needed to rest, and Cordia was helpless to ease the debilitating cough. Dr. Walters frequented her bedside and prescribed laudanum to help Julia sleep. As far as curing the illness, there was little he could do. She fared better in the winter when the cool air helped to open her lungs, but even then, she was not herself, and Cordia began to fear the worse. She wrote to Will to let him know that his sister was doing her best to contend with the sickness but that she was legitimately concerned for Julia. When he acknowledged her apprehensions, he did so as positively as possible, though the health of his sister was consistently on his mind.
Over the course of the year, Carey Adams made both his presence and his intentions well known. He had started off slowly, catching Cordia after church or at social events, speaking to her briefly, flashing her his charming Southern-gentleman smile. Cordia was neither impressed nor amused. She wasn’t sure what made him think that a few kind words now could make up for years of verbal abuse and ill-well. He may have fooled the rest of the citizenry into thinking he was an upstanding young man, but Cordia had seen him do the unthinkable—cruelly kill small animals, leave insects in precarious positions to die, not to mention all of the horrific ways he had tormented her over the years. She knew that, deep down inside, he would always be the same degenerate, self-centered boy who loved to torture her as a child.
Yet, the more visible he became in the community, the more pleasantries he spoke to her parents, the more he began to wind his way into her everyday life. In fact, her mother began to grow quite fond of him. She would even go out of her way to speak to him whenever she had the opportunity to do so. It wasn’t long before Cordia found herself sitting across from Carey at her very own dinner table, an occurrence that simply made her lose her appetite.
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