They Met at Shiloh by Phillip Bryant Read Free Book Online

a revulsion that told him the man was a menace. What was worse, Huebner was part of his Comrades in Battle, along with Hildebrande and Gustavson. Together, they made the four-man team who marched and fought next to one another in formation.
    Robert walked slowly past Huebner. Huebner smiled at him as he passed, an idiotic grimace marred by chunks of hardtack and glistening moisture. Robert stared straight ahead of him and passed Huebner, hoping that Huebner wouldn’t take eye contact as an invitation to follow. When he ducked into the Sibley, he gathered his traps and exited quickly, escaping the quickly warming and stuffy atmosphere of the tent. Huebner was still in the same spot, totally lost in his breakfast.
    Robert brushed the grass from his sack coat and donned it, proceeding to sling his cartridge box and haversack before securing his belt about his waist and adding his canteen. Robert’s haversack held everything that he might need during the day. It held his daily rations, his pipe and tobacco, his plate and fork, and anything else he considered indispensable. His mucket, that fire-blackened tin cup, dangled from the strap of the haversack. Fully accoutered now, he reluctantly walked behind Huebner.
    “Hube, get your traps, or you’re going to be late for formation.”
    Huebner turned and smiled at him. “Ja, get traps, right, get traps.” Huebner started to run for the Sibley but sloshed coffee from his mucket down his hand and kerseys. Trying to maintain his pace, yet holding his upper body motionless while cradling the coffee, only made him start and stop in comic fashion, neither hurrying his pace nor holding coffee in the cup. Robert watched him disappear into the Sibley and waited. The company street began to fill with privates completing their kit and lining up in order. Robert glanced back at the Sibley, noting the absence of his erstwhile charge.
    “Hube!” he shouted toward the tent, “double quick!”
    Huebner burst from the tent, cradling his traps and coffee with his sack coat flapping from behind and only secured by one arm. Hurrying, he tripped and sprawled upon the grass, his coffee and armload of leathers spilling outward, his mucket coming to rest at Robert’s feet. Robert glared in Huebner’s direction and bent down to pick up the mucket. Huebner managed to push himself up from his prone position and sheepishly grinned at Robert.
    “I fell,” he said. He tried to scramble for his equipment on all fours but became caught in the haversack strap coiled about his legs.
    “Hube! Hube! Stop, just stop, will you? Here, just stop, and I’ll untangle you.” Huebner lay on his belly and tried to reach his mucket that was half an arm length away while Robert unwound the haversack strap from his legs. Finally freed, Huebner stood and finished putting on his sack coat and equipment as Robert handed it to him.
    “C’mon, Hube, they’re waiting!”
    Robert took Huebner’s arm and hustled over to the company formation, where he shoved him into his spot. Gustavson rolled his eyes and shook his head. Hammel looked at his time piece and then at the company lined up in front of him.
    “In one rank, count twos!” Hammel’s command echoed off the wall of neatly ordered Sibley tents that demarked D Company’s street. The ordered routine of army life marched on. Robert scarce could remember a moment without it.
    He had lived a childhood mixed between the decidedly unique American culture and that of the German enclaves of St. Louis—dual tongued and European. His father was a merchant and community figure whose father before him moved the family to the bustling trade town connecting the East with the West along the Santa Fe Trail. The elder Mitchell chose early on to cultivate his business and social ties to the growing population of Dutchman. The term was a misnomer and accidental mangling of the German tongue from Deutsch to Dutch.
    This decision to associate with the growing community of German