“Road passing left to right is the old River Road. Also called the Hamburg Road. Look way over yonder and see the little spire. That’s a church stands on the same spot as the meeting house of Shiloh.”
“The heart of the fight was ahead, wasn’t it?” J.B. asked eagerly. “I recall places called the Peach Orchard and the Hornet’s Nest.”
Portillo scowled. “Want me to tell you or not? I’d just as like go sit on the porch and sip moonshine.”
The Armorer sniffed. “You go right ahead. Tell us like it was.”
The guide adopted a strange singsong recitation as he began to tell the bloody saga of Shiloh.
“April 6 and 7 of 1862 saw the first major battle of the western campaign of the series of fights called either the Civil War or the War between the States, depending on where you come from. During the Battle of Shiloh, the Northerners lost over thirteen thousand men, while we only lost a tad over ten thousand good old boys.”
“So the Confederacy won?” Krysty asked.
Portillo hesitated, his love of the South fighting with his desire for truth. “Well the South failed to push home and beat the Yankees, and that opened up the trouble at Vicksburg. Guess the fact is that Shiloh was like a poisoned arrow straight in the heart of the Stars and Bars. But Grant took the losses hard, and it kind of slowed down the war for a while.”
Ryan shifted position, trying to take a little weight off the injured thigh. The good news was that it definitely felt a lot better than it had the previous day. He looked across the green, undulating fields, trying to imagine them scattered with lines of weary men in blue and gray.
“I got here a plan,” Portillo said, reaching into his pocket and pulling out a tattered piece of paper that he unfolded and laid carefully on the ground, smoothing it.
There were rectangles and arrows in different colors, mainly either blue or red.
“Yankees is blue,” Portillo said, pointing with a long twig he’d picked up. “South’s red.”
“Not gray?” Doc asked. “Why red?”
“Gray faded and got kind of dirty,” their guide replied, pulling a sullen face. “So’s I had to go to red. Look here. Reading from the north, the Army of Tennessee, as they called themselvesI says the blue-bellieswas commanded by Sherman here, with McLernand, Prentiss, Wallace and Stuart. On the other side we got Hardee in the middle with Number Three Corps of the Confederate Army of the Mississippi. Bragg with Two Corps is here, just behind him. Major-General Leonidas Polk with One Corps is in the third rank, and Brigadier-General Bieckenridge at the rear with the gallant lads of the reserve.”
Ryan looked at the fields, with their gentle curves. The coppices of young trees, leaves bright green, turning and shifting in the light breeze. And he tried to imagine the battle unfolding in front of him as Judas Portillo droned on the damp, muddy ground, churned by hooves and boots and the wheels of the heavy artillery; the swirling masses of men, their uniforms streaked with dirt, wreathed in huge, blinding clouds of black powder smoke, many of them terrified and utterly, hopelessly confused, praying for the noise and the slaughter to stop so they could go home to their farms and families.
Ryan knew enough of military history to be aware that muskets collected after the fighting would often carry multiple charges. A soldier, mind blanked in panic, would ram home minie ball after ball, until the blaster was totally blocked with up to a dozen unfired rounds.
Or they might use their ramrod to force down powder, shot and wadding, then let panic win the day, squeeze the trigger and shoot off their ramrod, as well, leaving themselves with a totally useless weapon.
“To put it simply, the battle of Shiloh was a battle of six big mistakes. Huge, triple-stupe ones. Some on one side and some on the other.”
He led them away, his folded map tucked under his arm, taking them across the scene of the great fight, stopping here and there, in the Hornet’s Nest and the setting of the old Peach Orchard, unrolling his plan again, using his long willow twig to point out the salient details of the field.