UP A CREEK
After the resounding Union victory at Chattanooga, Tenn., in November 1863, Maj. Gen. Ulysses S. Grant, commander of the Military Division of the Mississippi, ordered Maj. Gen. William T. Sherman to rush a relief force 100 miles north to Knoxville, where a Union force under Maj. Gen. Ambrose Burnside was penned in by Confederates. For the expedition, Sherman established a command composed of elements of the 11th, 14th, and 15th Corps and also assigned two 11th Corps soldiers to perform a special mission. Had those soldiers not reminisced about it 30 years later, their subsequent adventure likely would have been lost to history.
The recollections of Charles A. “Charley” McIntosh and George C. “Guy” Waterman offer a prime example of the vagueness of memory. In 1863, both men were corporals in the 154th New York Infantry—McIntosh in Company C and Waterman in Company H. By 1893, McIntosh was working as a “stationary engineer” in Olean, N.Y.; Waterman for the Central Gas Light Company of New York City. That year, both men were corresponding with Edwin
