2. Into the Hornet’s Nest

Go back to the Young Apprentice.

Winslow Homer, “The Surgeon at Work at the Rear During an Engagement”

Young apprentice surgeon A.A. was no stranger to frontier medicine; yet the surgeon’s tent in the awful days following a bloody battle must have been a shocking introduction to wartime medicine. The carnage at the Battle of Stones River, at the end of 1862, must have made the October skirmish back at Perryville seem like a walk in the park. Two huge armies clashed over control of middle Tennessee. A soldier in A.A.’s regiment recalled:

The battle for the day was over. But who can describe the sufferings which followed. The night air was pinching cold, and in the midst of those gloomy forests of pine and cedars on the right, numbers of men lay freezing, bleeding, dying; whom no human hand would ever succor.

… the mangled hero, laying in the field or hospital, knew no repose. Pain drove sleep away, and to those who felt themselves maimed, crippled for life, the keen mental anguish must have been more intolerable than physical pain. And there were the faithful surgeons, too, who knew no rest from their dreadful labors, and toiled on through the long and weary night.

Robert Rogers

More was to come in the summer, after the regiment’s assault on the Confederate fortress of Chattanooga, a strategic rail hub lying along the Tennessee River near the borders of Alabama and Georgia. After a diversionary attack from A.A.’s brigade, the rebels strategically abandoned the city, leading to a series of bloody battles to determine the fate of Tennessee as they attempted to re-take it.

The Bloodbath of Chickamauga Creek

This led to the living hell that became known as the Battle of Chickamauga Creek. Wave after wave of troops from both sides walked into the “hornet’s nest” – how one soldier described precision rifle fire from a distant enemy. It stretched on for days, producing the second-highest number of casualties of any battle of the war, second only to Gettysburg. A staggering 34,000 men were killed, wounded, captured, or went missing as a result of this single battle, almost a third of the soldiers involved. A.A.’s medical baptism by fire may well have occurred in the surgical tent at Chickamauga.

Soon afterward, the 125th was detached and redeployed on the outskirts of the city to guard a crossing place on the Tennessee River known as Caldwell’s Ford. Supplies were so low that the officers’ horse feed had to be carefully guarded, and the men began to openly grumble about the lack of food. They were constantly under various kinds of sporadic gunfire, to which they were mostly accustomed. One morning, the popular regimental chaplain, named Saunders, was sitting on his bed tying his shoe when a cannon ball ripped through his tent, killing him instantly. There wasn’t much Dr. McElroy, or A.A., could do for him other than to send his body North.

I can only imagine the huge psychological toll on the men. In the field, soldiers led a life of boredom punctuated with incredible hardship and stress, inducing acute anxiety and even periods of outright terror. There was prolonged exposure to the elements with completely inadequate clothing and footwear, the constant threat of artillery, snipers, guerrilla warfare, and the horror show of battle’s aftermath.

To make it worse, the Confederates famously unnerved the Union forces with their “rebel yell”, described by Shelby Foote as “a foxhunt yip mixed up with sort of a banshee squall”, and according to someone on Union General Rosecrans’ staff at Chickamauga, “the ugliest sound that any mortal ever heard”. Perhaps it was also a way for the rebel soldiers to manage their own terror. You can actually listen to Confederate veterans recreate the yell here.

Although psychic trauma is often associated with modern warfare starting in the 20th century, it’s clear that Civil War veterans also suffered from the now-classic symptoms of combat trauma: involuntary trembling, outbursts of anger, flashbacks, and alcoholism. Adding to the problem, men who became unable to fight were liable to be charged with “cowardice”. Discipline was maintained by having the men witness execution of their such comrades by firing squad, followed by their burial on the spot in an unmarked grave.

Although it must have affected him, A.A. never wrote directly about his war experiences; perhaps like many combat veterans he preferred not to talk about them. No one yet used terms like “shell-shock” and “post-traumatic stress disorder”; “psychic damage” was not officially recognized as a legitimate service-related injury until the 1980s. Personally I believe A.A. suffered from PTSD throughout his life, and I can only imagine how this must have affected him as he encountered tragedy later in his life.

The Attack on Kennesaw Mountain, Georgia

There was still one last major campaign for the 125h regiment. Eventually, the forces under Sherman arrived and the push toward Atlanta began. The city was considered such a critical rail crossroad and munitions manufactory that many believed it was the key to ending the war.

Skirmishes dragged on into the spring of 1864, while both sides positioned massive armies against each other in northern Georgia. By June, Sherman grew frustrated with the slow progress at the cost of bloody battles, in which the 125th was there on the front lines: Resaca; Rome; Dallas; Pine Hill, Lost Mountain. He reported back to the President,

The whole country is one vast fort, and Johnston must have at least 50 miles of connected trenches with abatis and finished batteries. We gain ground daily, fighting all the time. … Our lines are now in close contact and the fighting incessant, with a good deal of artillery. As fast as we gain one position the enemy has another all ready. … Kennesaw … is the key to the whole country.

General William Tecumseh Sherman

The attack was set for June 27. The Army of the Cumberland was in the thick of it, led by their officers, attacking the Confederate guns behind the parapet on Cheatham Hill, at a narrow place known by both sides as the “Dead Angle”. One soldier remembered,

Colonel McCook at the head of the brigade waved his sword and gave the command: “Attention, battalions, charge bayonets”, and with a rush and cheer away we go. And now the battle commences. We have reached the wheat field, and at yon side are the rebel breast works. At the double quick we cross the field with a storm of lead and iron in our faces; men are falling on all sides; there goes McCook down – quickly following him, Harmon, who was bravely urging his men on, falls pierced through the heart… they are dropping as the leaves in the autumn, and ho! How that fire of hell beats in our faces. It is too much, the works cannot be carried by assault, and our line, mangled, torn and bleeding, falls back.

Thus they lost the man who had led them from Danville, and most of the other officers as well. To recover them for burial, the new commander called for a truce with the enemy, but no kind of cloth could be found that still looked white. Finally he raised a tattered copy of the Chicago Tribune into the air to arrange the armistice.

The Union lost three times the number of men as the defenders that day, but the battle was considered a success for the North because it led to the abandonment of Atlanta. The depletion of forces from the volunteer regiments required much re-organization to create units of fighting strength.

A.A. undoubtedly came out of it a changed man. He was recalled to Chicago, examined by the Illinois Medical Board, and finally promoted to be an Assistant Surgeon, assigned to the Department of the Gulf with the 113th Illinois Regiment where he was stationed in Memphis until his muster out in June of 1865, in the waning days of the war. For millions of men like A.A, real peace may have proved to be hard to find in the aftermath of the bloody war.

Go on to read about A.A’s difficult transition to peace time.

Sources

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