Show A WOMAN FAITH ft Story for Memorial Day by Nym Crinkle FOB THE SUNDAY HEHAUJ Copyriplited1 How chipper we boys wore when we heard that first drum calL It was associated asso-ciated in our minds with dross parade We had a general notion that it would be a jolly spree to volunteer and help thrash the south and come back with the brass band What did we know about war It was braided up In our minds with Fourth of July rhetoric and star spangled glittter The whole thing was going to be a walkover walk-over Wait till the rebels saw the Invin cibles in their new bearskin hats 100 strong Ah what a deal we had to learn about war I We saw the Invincibles melt from L their local glory into the blue battalions of Uncle Sam They were swallowed up in THE IXVINCIBLES the great armies that were marshling along the southern line and our pride could no longer pick them out of the great masse that were only reported to us as division and corps How many of themhandsome bravo exultant boysdropped by the way in desolate des-olate graves along deserted rivers and in dark morasses swept beyond the memorials memo-rials of lova and patriotism by the hurry and shock ot the contcst A great many things were swept away by that throe years convulsion not only precious lives and hopes but some prejudices preju-dices and illusions And some things staid and took new root in the disturbed soil and shone on afterward by clearer skies disclosed themselves and beautifully grow Among the Invincibles of our little Wisconsin Wis-consin town when they impulsively offered I themselves to the government with a hip hip I was a farmer about thirtyfive yearn olda serious plodding conscientious with an inheritance of a hundred hard acres over there in Bellona and a wife and child who wero both born in Sauk county but who had in their veins some of the fluid granite that had for a century flowed out of Massachusetts We all wondered a little when he stuck to the boys and said II I in his quiet way that he went where they did for the most of them were young fellows fel-lows with no obligations who had so jered In an amateur way for the fun of it but he was one of those men who never see any fun in anything dead serious methodical and deeply religious but never obtruding his convictions or beliefs upon anybody Some of the boys told him when the company was ordered to Milwaukee that it was all nonsensehis leaving Jenny and the girl There were lots of fellows who would take his place Ho is reported to have said that Jenny would despise him if ho went back From what I learned of Jenny afterward I think she would What was odd to most of his acquaintances acquaint-ances was the air oi earnest duty that both ho and Jenny cast over the whole proceed inc They appeared to have quietly come to S the conclusion that some kind of a birthright birth-right was in danger and they must uncomplainingly un-complainingly face some self sacrifice and I I suffering to defend it Such an attitude II and disposition were not at all like the I i reckless conduct of most of the fellows who felt like urchins loosed for a long picniC I This typical American farmer lad had had a pretty little lova episode in which Jenny played a part She had been wooed xnost issiduously by a well to do state official offi-cial who came from Madison to do his courting court-ing and who offered to lay at her feet quite enough of this worlds goods to have tempted any girl brought up to the toil of a western farm I was told at the state capital that tho suitor had tried by every ipeans in his power to get Jenny and only ono obstacle was in his wayit was this sad faced farmer boy C I saw the Invincibles march through the streets of Milwaukee headed by the Bara boo brass band Very imposing and proud hey looked in their shakos and old fashioned fash-ioned pipe clay belts and scarlet trimmings and very gorgeous were tile company colors col-ors that the girls of Bellona had stitched and embroidered during the long winter nights up there in cold Sauk county I even aw the sad face of the young farmer < that wore I thought a pale resolution in spite of its tan that was strangely unlike the jaunty exultation and careless pride of the restof them when the people applauded along East Water street and ladies waved their handkerchiefs at them from the windows Well the Invincibles went out to the state camp and melted into the th Wisconsin regiment When I saw them again they 1 had been assimilated All their local ais I tinctivncss was gone They had been sworn into the service theUnitedStates and you couldnt tell the Bellona boys in their unassuming blue surtouts andun L f dress caps from the other 900 boys unless you know the letter of the company yh Up in the little Wisconsin hamlet Jenny hung a shako on tho wall of the sitting oom with a wreath of mountain laurel ver > it and a photograph of her man under it In Madison a man sitting in the state omptrollers office heard of it all with con flicting feelings Jenny respects me ho aid and perhaps war will do what love cannot accomplish Ho was ono of those persistent fellows who make one affair last a i lifetime itIf If there is any more disconsulate place in he United States than the upper Tennessee vas in the early spring of 1SG2 have never seen it General Halleck with his headquarters head-quarters at St Louis had determined to break up if possible the rebel communica tion between the Mississippi and the Tennessee Ten-nessee rivers and General Sherman with a number of brigades of Ohio troops had gone up the Tennessee for that purpose But in spite of the monotonous country with its burned bridges and starved in habitants and unending river bottoms our fleet of steamboats contained a very oily j army Those desolate shores echoed at night to tha lusty songs of John Browns Body and kindred melodies of the time The river was unusually high and the t spring was unusually early and with that I strange and noisy party of invader it seemed a very pleasant trip Some miles S above the then miserable town of Savannah our boats poked their noses into the mud of tho banks and wo disembarked in the S woods This was Pittsburg Landing Up S to that time history records nothing of it There was not a house in view A few early birds chirped in the trees here and I there a gray squirrel ran before us or a rabbit darted frightened out of the jungle at the top of the banks On one side the forests at the top of the river bottom seemed interminable and almost impassable impass-able On the other side was a partial clear ing in which a miserable crop of rye or oats was coming up among the stumps The wilderness echoed with astonishment at this sudden appearance of 10000 men land ing with extraordinary tumult where thore was no enemy and where desolation had reigned so long Idontthrnk any of us newspaper men had a very clear idea of the campaign General Sherman at that time was not communicative with us He had been abused like a good many other of oar generals gen-erals in the impatient newspapers and ho chafed under it considerably Somewhere to the west of this wilderness welrnew was the town of Corinth and that there had gathered a large rebel army That it was our objective point seemed certain but by what route or in what combination was not clear to us Our cantonments were made in the woods and there we remained for three weeks There was not an intrenchmen thrown up or any attempt made to protect our position General Sherman says in his account that he did not intrench his force because he was not ordered to do so and believed that it was a campaign of invasion inva-sion Something of his buoyant confidence spread through the camp When we got a good ready wed take a bright morning and go over and capture Corinth and gob ble up General Beauregard who was mat ing himself entirely too fresh I think the teamsters and crowds of stragglers around the landing had some sort of a notion that that would settle things You see we had a very narrow war perspective per-spective at that time There was a feeling rather than a knowledge that Buell was to make a junction with us and then wed I start but he was picnicking somewhere S between Nashville and Savannah So the S boys made themselves as comfortable as I they could There was not mucb chance S for dress parade and picket duty for quiet awhile was not dangerous and excep for the mud not very uncomfortable There was some pretty good fish in the river and some small game down at Ow I creek Oa the whole it was detail duty and little else and pretty much everybody r was hauling supplies and consuming them The fact is we wore not to be graduall initiated into war we were to have it fa Ion I-on us like IOn avalanche All the bivoua stories around the wood fires were to bi 3 cut short and a great many of the pleasan acquaintances made thero in the drama o f As You Like It were to be snapped off over night So we rolled over in our blue i surtouts and went to sleep with the merry sound of the card players in our ears and the mellowed sound of a comfortable host coming to us through the sprouting aisles of that forest S At least that was my experience and it was headquarters experience I was mess ing with as fine a lot of follow as ever dreamed of drawing a sword and on the 5th wo made a night of it over a hamper of wine that had come from Crumps where Wallace was There was Blaisdell of the Fiftyfifth Illinois and Caruthers and Mason an or dinary of the Seventyfirst Ohio and Ban ister of the Fiftfourth Nn mn nD n u thoroughbreds ever came exultant out of the north aflame with the ambition and the promise of youth I remember I threw myself down about 1 oclock in the morning with the refrain of an old college song on my lips and heavy with wine was curling myself for a snooze when an orderly came to the door of the tent and handed a note to Ordway I just got a glimpse of the fellows face at the parting of the canvas lit by the glow of a camp fire somewhere outside and I saw it was my farmer boy of the Invinci blps Then 1 went off into a heavy sleep with that sad determined face flickering vaguely in and out of confused fancies of home and echoing strains of old songs It seemed to me I had not been asleep more than ten minutes when I became conscious of something unusual going on Its strange dull clamor was annoying for I wanted to sleep At first I thought it was the reckless hilarity of my compan ions and I chink I shouted for them to turn in Then the character ofthe dis turbance grow upon me as I regained my consciousness Out of the steady wave of sound I could hear the conflicting rattlo of far away drums the call of voices the rumble of wheels the crash of timber and then the sharp but distinct crack of mus ketry In a second I was on my feet A dull wet gray light sbono through the open entrance Ordways coat and belt lay across the camp table and the chain of his watch hung down I pulled the apiece a-piece out and looked at it It was half past 5 and a battle was raging It does enot take the faculties of oven the 1 amateur soldier long to assert themsflves i n such a crisis Even while I stood thero ulling myself together the wave of battle grew and rolled around mom unmistakable distinctness and appaling reach and I heard he echoing boom and answering crash of rtillery I felt then and I feel now after tho long lapse of time that the stroke of actual war must have come that gray morning like tho troko of doom to many of the inexperi nced boys None of the acute realities of war ever get into tho accounts of it and are never anticipated What is rhetorically eferred to as the baptism of tiro and lood has no other than a gallant meaning ta o him who has not passed through the wful ceremony You might as well ex p iect the operating surgeon to give way to his natural sensibilities as to pxpect for i mo moment that the officer who has to keep general results in view will stop to onsider the emotional particular In I official reports there is no psychological analysis The human unit is swept in a n oment by the blat of death into a fierce writhing generality The individual is annihilated by the Cause But nevertheless all the units are emo ional centres and nobody has ever dared t o picture the subjective hell that scorches and consumes in a few moments of delirium all that is best and tenderest in tho consciousness ciousness of the inexperienced man when his hell flames forth all around him You see I am trying to write this from the point of view of the boys who had to be baptized before they could become veterans veter-ans and I am trying to place before you something of the effect of the ordeal upon them My own experience must have been that of thousands 1 have a strong but con C IN CAMP fused recollection of my dash into the woods as I tried to make my way to the front Only the incidents that made their impression in shock remain The din had grown more terrible and more acute I was nearly torn to pieces by a flying artillery horse that swept past me blind with agony and fear and dashing himself against the tree fell with a wild scream Twice I was knocked down as a shell exploded in the dense network of branches above me with deafening crash and hurled upon me a mass of limbs and splinters Ordinarily I could huvegot to Shermans headquarters in ten minutes but in the confusion I must have deviated from the straight course At all events I got tangled presently in a mass of panic stricken men nil making empty handed to tho river I shouted to them and even abused them but they plunged heedlessly by As this stampede grew and confused me I felt for the first time in my life the awful nnd irresistible influence of panic I can recall now exactly ex-actly what that sense was It was simply the destruction of order and the substitu tion of chaos The moment tho mmd of the soldier feels that the centres of organization organi-zation are gone and the controlling minds cannot formulate or influence tho mass upon which everything depends tho unit feels a wild impulse to save itself from the accidents of disorganization 1 ilIlJ II k Ii J b t f K crJ wlfiu im j > t t f 7 I ijII T l f ifY I I J j5F I j5Fj I iY I l cfl ll 7 f 7 J I r l ry 2f > < i f 7 k lJ I > 1J qr l v = = f2o I y J THE STAMPEDE From the headquarters point of view one is necessarily saved from this catas trophe But to bo involved in one of the S vortexes means to tho novice a sudden breakdown of all the moral elements of courage and heroism in hopeless bewilder ment By the merest accident Blaisdell encoun tered me Ho was mounted and with his sword in his hand and bareheaded was try Ing to make his way through the timbers bellowIng at tho top of his voice in an ex traordinary state of excitement at the fly imr men I From him 1 learned in gasps that Roth I was doubled up on the left Hildebranao was wiped out Hurlbert had been driven I into the Tennessee McDowells brigade had melted like wax Our line had caved in on the loft I like sand Get a horse and II help me head off some of these dd pol troons I It is npt my intention or desire to discuss tho battle of Shiloh It has been a fruitful and vexed theme of angry military argu mtirit ever since it was fought Mr Jefferson Jeffer-son Davis and other southern historians have made it the turning point in the secession seces-sion war and rested the point of disaster on the death of General Albert Sydney Johnston It was that death says Mr Davis which robbed tho south of tho great results that would have followed tho t complete victory impending at Shilob He was killed just as the confederate army was so fully victorious that had the at tack been pressed General Grant and hi < army would have been prisoners or fugitives fugi-tives before the setting of the sun Then what The successful Johnston would have S led his troops to the north The enemy would have sought safety on the other side of tho Ohio Tennessee Kentucky and I Missouri would have been recovered tho S northwest disaffected and the southern C armies filled with the men of the southwest south-west end pcrhas of the nortbwost also 1 Roseate post mortem possibilities but neither Grant nor Sherman admits for a I moment the postulate upon which they are built Our men were not surprised wo were not discomfitte and the next day we took the initiative with Buells fresh troops and Beauregard fell back But that battle of tho Oth raging all day left its immediate impact of disaster on the whole north If General Sherman could nave got from tno frOnt to toe river Danit for a few moments he would have recog nized the point of view from which the astonished north got its news of disaster Later in tho day 1 got there and saw the frantic fragments of battalions huddled in impatient terror upon the river bottom and making their way across tho swollen river To look at this unreasoning stampede in which men suddenjy moved by the ungov ern able instinct of selfprotection not only forget that they are soldiers but that they are men was in its unexpected exper iences disheartening and infectious I can now see lion much we had to learn how we giew with the awful lessons to know that this outlying chaos was not the heart of the battle its mere periphery of incidental disorder But then it was tar rible The avalanche of terror brought with it to the river its burden of constormi tion and excitement All was lost Have yourselves save yolarselves The muddy reaches strewn with arms accouterments and clothing and heaped with wounded and dj ing soldiers j the river dotted with struggling men and animals in inextricable paroxysms the sharp wild jargon of human sounds and the approaching wave of battle rolling up through the woods with its unmistakable yells of rebel triumph The whole heart of the north seemed here to melt into abject futility and craven apprehension and the army that stood be C I I tween tho south and the Ohio was stream 1 ling through this cr vasso in pitiable self destruction Nothing in all this scene upon which the sense could rest with any feeling of reliance rellllnceand assurance of organ ized power but those two gun boats a little farther up the river steadily pouring their shells aimlessly into tho woods and strik ing their bolls uninterruptedly as if not even the day of judgment could make discipline dis-cipline intermit So this terrible day went by until Buells r men appeared In that field of stumps and I grain and Buell himself looked on at the out with more of tho apprehension of nan man than the determination of u soldier No one slept that night who did not drop down from sheer exhaustion and the next morning I got boat along with other nows aper men chiefly anxious to get to Paducah or Cairo where we could lay hold of a wire I You can imagine our impatience as v rent w r-ent down the lone and winding Tennessee i n an ecu stern wheeler it seemed an ago efore we got to Cairo and when we got hero wo encountered the great wave of excitement indignation and sympathy roll b ng down from the northwest ilon thousand thou-sand of our boys hnd been killed or wounded wound-ed and were lying in the woods without hospital service It seemed only yen tor day that they went gayly away with new colors and exultant music Somehow as I i encountered the excited crowds in Cairo I thought of the Invincibles and there came up before me the saddetermined face cameo Wisconsin boy lit as I had seen it by the glow of a camp fire And then as if this thought had been telepathic I came across a woman standing alone on the levee wrapped in a faded shawl She turned around and the white face was that ot Jenny She looked desolate nud cold but she was calm und selfool iccted I am going to Pittsburg Landing l Land-ing she said on the Wisconsin hospital boat I promised Dick if anything hap pened Id como and bring bin home Have you heard anything I nsked clumsily and hesitatingly Nothing she said except from the newspapers Our boys were terribly cutup cut-up and I started at once ui She did not know what division ho was in i and I had an undefined notion that he was not in the fight Days went by The north had poured its resources and its malestic succor unon the scene and the vast energies of the government govern-ment had been directed to that strip of muddy bank alongthe Tennessee When 1 stood thoro again an indescribable trans formation scene had taken place Beaure gard had shut himself up in Corinth and Halleck was approaching him with cautious sIege movements The river bank was i now a populous base of operations As far as I could see the steamboats lay side by side diagonally to tho shore with their noses in the mud Hospital boats transports trans-ports barges gunboats forage enormous I commissary supplies artllery horses recruits re-cruits tho bustle and urgency of a city front and all tho recklessness the waste and tile abandonment of the war And there upon the second bottcm was a long raw mound out of which stuck the bits of blue army cloth where our boys had been tumbled hurriedly in four or five deepa gray scar a hundred feet long into whose raw edces the early swamp clematis was already striking its fresh fibers And somewhere in that packed ditch with the dirt filling a great wound in his breast and the blue cape of his surtou wrapped I around his face lying in the stiff I I L1it tr < platoon of death was the boy from Sauk county I wantea to get to the front and it was not an easy mattertwenty miles at least before one could come up to the lineand seo the augmented forcrs that were now closing about Corinth Major Pond commanding com-manding a Wisconsin battery gave me a horse and an army blouse and I started for headquarters only to learn the next lesson of the immeasurable waste of war That road was the single quartermasters channel chan-nel through which the improvised city of 60000 soldiers was toba fed and clothed and kept in fighting order It presented the appearance of a long douple caravan made up of mule teams and blaspheming teamsters It was lined with dead animals and strewn with debrisoverturned wag ons and heaps of rain soaked hardtack broken barrels of pork and damaged acconterments fringed it with destruc ionGullies Gullies in the road hod been filled up level with this kind of ballast The air was loaded with strango septic odors und a horrible vocabulary of oaths newly invented in-vented Long afterwards we got to do those thIngs better when tho commissary departments depart-ments fell into organizing hands and discipline dis-cipline was enforced I came back to the Landing over this same crowded track strangely sensible I it J I I i AH GOIXGTO piTTSRtms LANDING SHE SlID that throuch all the brutality and noisome ness and cruelty and destruction of it spring tons struggling with her blue skies and blossoms and her scents and songs Sitting one starlight night on the brow of a hospital boat smoking one of Major Bonds cigars he said to me What do you suppose they are doing down at that trench Theres been a lantern thorn for half an hour I proposed that wo walk down and see We found a detail of three men there opening tho trench Oa the bank of earth which their shovels had made stood a woman wranped in a faded shawl and holding hold-ing a lantern by whose light the men worked It was Jenny The ghastliness and hopelessness of her task must have struck us both at once for the majors look of astonishment reflected my feelings We returned to the boat About 10 I oclock tho light disappeared and I turned in with a vague sense of pity for a womans incapacity to measure physical obstacles I She next morning she was there with a fresh detail Then it was that I heard and gathered he story of her persistency She had gone to headquarters for a permit to open the rench and had been peremptorily refused tier only appeal was I want my man Sanitary conditions alone independently ho futility ot the task she was told at the surgeons headquarters forbade it Noth ing l daunted she went from general to general gen-eral making no argument only saying I ant my manU and finally she got the rder from Halleck I saw the note hastily scrawled on a half sheet of note paper and addressed to some one in command among the reserves at the river Give this woman a detail There is no other way to get rid of her She is from Wisconsin She had accepted that rather ungracious order without a word and set to work The triumph of a womans devotion was something very grand when you come to think of it She got her man and took him back to Sauk county The tide of war rolled on but there was a dead calm in one northern home No that isnt quite all May came along She didnt know it that staunch girl but she had dropped her tears and they made with the flowers thoy bedewed the first Memorial Day Yet another May came A man was horryic across the state and some kind of spring influence made him turn aside to see Jenny Somehow in all tho waste and wreck of war he remem bered her as something that staid in spite of death itself He caught her at her own door with her arms full of the spring wild flowers and through the chink ho got a glimpse of the shako on the wall She was going to the graveyard with her little girl and so he helped her carry the flowers It was the 31st of May Bravo little Amaranth herself there wa no flower in Sauk county with her hear bloom and be thought if he could only decorate her hed go away with a cleare sense of having performed duty So be fore he left her he pulled a wreath of the wild janmino down threw it over her and lifted his hat Jenny he said I have waited aU l theao years and I havo never ceased to lov you Promise me now that you will som day give me what is left of your heart Let me tell you how I happen to know the sequel I saw a letter from Bellona It came al l tHe way to New York Somehow when I read it it brought back the swirl of th e muddy Tennessee the regular chime of the bells on the gunboat a white face in the r door of a tent and a subtle odor of wild honeysuckle Jenny is dead it said and her daughter keeps two graves green No she was never married again Did you from what you knew of her think she would be 1 1Before Before I know it I had said No |