Shiloh by Shelby Foote Read Free Book Online

fair in the first place. All my clerks complained, and some of
them even applied for transfer. One or the other, they said; not both.
    So I went to the colonel and put my cards on the table. He
was angry and began to bluster, complaining that he could never get his orders
carried out without a lot of grousing. He said all headquarters personnel were
born lazy—and he looked straight at me as he said it. Finally he began to hint
that maybe I didn’t like being shot at. Well, truth to tell, I had no more
fondness for being shot at than the next man, but I wasn’t going to stand there
and take that kind of talk, even if he was my regimental commander. I saluted
and left. Next morning when I checked the bulletin board I saw that I'd been
put on O D for the night.
    If this had been an ordinary, personal sort of feud I would
have been enjoying my revenge already. Colonel Appier had been making a fool of
himself, the laughingstock of the whole army, for the past three days. He was a
highstrung sort of person anyhow, jumpy, given to imagining the whole Rebel
army was right outside his tent-flap. Friday afternoon, April fourth, a
regiment on our left lost a picket guard of seven men and an officer, gobbled
up by the grayback cavalry, and when the colonel advanced a company to develop
the situation they ran into scattered firing, nothing serious, and came back
without recovering the men.
    All day Saturday Colonel Appier was on tenterhooks. We felt
really ashamed for him. Other outfits began to call us the Long Roll regiment
because we had sounded the alarm so often. The last straw came that afternoon.
A scouting party ran into the usual Rebel horsemen and the colonel sent me back
with a message to General Sherman that a large force of the enemy was moving
upon us. I was angry anyhow because I had found just that morning that he'd put
me on O D that night, and then after dinner he'd made me accompany him on the
scout so I wouldn’t have time to get properly ready for guard mount. Now he was
adding the crowning indignity by making me carry one of his wild alarms, crying
Wolf again for the God-knows- whatth time, back to the
general himself. I knew the reception I'd get at division headquarters,
especially if Sherman turned that redheaded temper on me. My hope was that he
would be away on inspection or something. Then all I would have to put up with
would be the jeers of the adjutant and the clerks.
    As luck would have it, I met the general riding down the
road toward our position, accompanied by an aide and an orderly. When I told
him what Colonel Appier had said, he clamped his mouth in a line. I could see
he was angry—he'd received that message from the colonel too many times
already. But he didn’t say anything to me; he clapped the spurs to his horse,
and soon we came to a clearing where Colonel Appier and some of his staff were
standing beside the road with their horses' reins in their hands.
    Colonel Appier began to tell Sherman how many Rebs there
were in the woods out front. He was excited; he flung his arms around and
stretched his eyes. Sherman sat there patiently, hearing him through and
looking into the empty woods. When the colonel had finished, Sherman looked
down at him for almost a full minute, saying nothing. Then he jerked the reins,
turning his horse toward camp. As he turned he spoke to Colonel Appier
directly.
    "Take your damned regiment back to Ohio," he said,
snapping the words. "Beauregard is not such a fool as to leave his base of
operations and attack us in ours. There is no enemy nearer than Corinth."
    And he rode away. It was certainly a rebuke to Colonel
Appier, administered in the presence of his men. I heard at least one of them
snigger.
    Charley
Gregg has been promoted First Lieut. in Co G. He bought himself an armored vest
in Saint Louis & clanks when he walks. The man who sold it to him said if
it did not stop bulLet’s , bring it back & he would
give him another. Ha Ha ! You would not catch