Читать книгу Recollections of Thomas D. Duncan, a Confederate Soldier - Thomas D. Duncan - Страница 7

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UR company left Corinth in September and went through North Alabama and Middle Tennessee, and I joined Forrest and arrived in the vicinity of Nashville in November. After scouting and guarding some convoys down the Cumberland River, we were ordered to support the defenses of Forts Henry and Donelson, on the Tennessee and Cumberland Rivers, respectively, just ten miles apart, where the two rivers parallel each other in their northward courses across Tennessee.

I was now to realize, in my first actual experience, the fullness of the horrors that wait upon the tinsel glory of that long-worshiped art of human destruction which men call “war.”

General Forrest had secured, early in the war, several hundred old-style cap-and-ball navy pistols, most valuable weapons for cavalry.

On December 28, 1861, at Sacramento, Ky., we had our first fight with a troop of Union cavalry, about equal in number of men to ours. After a sharp engagement, we succeeded in putting the enemy to flight. The Union troopers lost Captain Bacon, killed, and several men killed and wounded, and we lost two men, killed, and several wounded.

After this skirmish, we retired within the lines at Fort Donelson.

On February 6, 1862, General Grant, assisted by the gunboat fleet under Commodore Foote, vigorously attacked and captured Fort Henry, defended by Gen. Lloyd Tilghman.

With the opening of the bombardment, General Grant hurriedly threw his army across the road leading from Fort Henry to Fort Donelson to cut off the possible retreat of Tilghman’s command of about three thousand men; but Tilghman, foreseeing the almost certainty of defeat, had kept only enough men to man and handle the guns of the fort and marched his troops in double-quick on toward Donelson, just escaping the Union line by a few hundred yards.

This was the first experience under fire of nearly all the soldiers of both sides, and the all-absorbing topic around the camp fires was the exaggerated danger of the gunboats, then a new instrument of war. It was believed by many that they were both indestructible and irresistible; that, once within range of the enemy, he had no chance of escape; and the soldiers who had been under their fire at Fort Henry gave descriptions of their terror and havoc which did not tend to allay the fears of the uninitiated. We were told that our cannon balls would fall harmless from their steel armor, and that the gunners of these boats were so protected that they could take deliberate aim and deliver their shots into our port holes. In fact, these tales were so enlarged upon that many of our men were paralyzed with fear, and became so timid that they did not want to fight when the gunboat was a factor. I shall always believe that this sentiment played a large part in the surrender of Fort Donelson, although when the actual test came at Donelson the Confederate shore batteries outfought the gunboats and gave them a very decisive drubbing; but the one fatal defect in the mechanism of the old-style batteries, which provided no way of depressing the guns to a sufficient angle to bring them in line with a near and lower target, placed our gunners at a great disadvantage here.

I am giving rather liberal space to my comment on this battle, because it was the greatest battle of the war up to that time and because of the supreme confidence of the people, the army and the commanders, in the impregnability of this fort and their consequent disappointment when it fell.

The Confederates successfully repulsed the combined attack of General Grant and Commodore Foote on the first day.

On February 15 another attack was made; and General Forrest, with all the cavalry, and General Pillow, with the infantry and artillery, repelled the land attack, and pushed back the Union Army on the right until this wing was doubled on its center; and if the movement had been given support from the other parts of the Confederate lines, there might have been a different story to tell of Fort Donelson. But it may be that all the “ifs” that have changed the fate of the world belong to the God of battles, who alone knows where to set them in the little affairs of men that they may serve the ultimate good of all his people.

In this engagement Gen. N. B. Forrest displayed, for the first time, that tremendous energy and marvelous generalship which were so prominently and successfully employed in all his future career.

This fight was the most appalling sight I had ever witnessed. I was a mere boy engaged in a struggle wherein men were seeking to destroy each other, and yet I dare say that the common soldiers of those two militant hosts had no real and clear conception of the cause of their deadly antagonism.

May the politician and the agitator ponder well this terrible fact and beware of the keen word that may open the veins of a nation!

The sky of my memory must forever hold the shriek of those shells; nor can I forget the muffled crash of grapeshot and minnie balls as they literally tore the ranks of the combatants.

At one point in our advance we were ordered to charge a battery of field guns. In this charge I lost control of my horse, and he carried me beyond the battery into the infantry support of the enemy. I made a circuit, and on my return a Federal soldier fired at me when I was not more than twenty paces from him. I was mounted on a spirited animal, and it was running and jumping so unevenly that I happily made a very evasive target, and the soldier missed his aim, just grazing my right shoulder, taking the width of the ball out of my coat and cutting a crease in the flesh. The shot was fired as I was approaching the man; and as I passed within a few feet of him, I shot at him twice with my six-shooter, but could not tell whether or not my shots struck him. I was a good marksman, and under ordinary circumstances I would have been sure of my aim; but it behooves me to tell you that I was far more bent on getting out of this dangerous situation than on killing an enemy.

I had many narrow escapes that day, but this was my closest “call” as a soldier of the C. S. A.

On our part of the field our forces had been successful, but the remainder of our lines had been defeated, and the fort had been so battered that those in command—Generals Floyd, Buckner, and Pillow—decided to surrender on the following morning.

General Forrest was advised of the plan, and he informed the commanders that he did not become a soldier to surrender and that he was going out that night and take as many of his men as would follow him. The backwater was from two to six feet deep, but this had no terror for our leader. We secured the service of a native to guide us, and by going in close to the Union line we found shallow water and no obstruction, and so we escaped to safety. The ground was covered with snow and the water was very cold.

Forrest led his troops to safety on this occasion under conditions which would have broken the will of any ordinary man, as he was to do many times in the years that followed.