Three Days in Hell: The O'Sullivan Chronicles, #3

By Blair Howard

If You Love Civil War Stories, you'll love this fact-based novel of the bloodiest two days at Chickamauga as told by Major Chester Rigby CSA, ADC to General Bushrod Johnson

For more than two months, Union General William Rosecrans and his Army of the Cumberland pursued General Braxton Bragg's Confederate Army of Tennessee from Murfreesboro to Chattanooga. Finally, on September 18, 1863, on the banks of a small river in Northwest Georgia, the two great armies came face to face, and so began three days of hell, including the two bloodiest days of our nation's Civil War.

 

Three Days in Hell is a novel, a work of fiction, based on actual historical events. The characters, with one exception, were all real people. The words they speak throughout the story are the author's, the deeds they did, their success and failures, are their own. Drawing on many years of meticulous research, Blair Howard dramatizes one man's contribution to the stunning Confederate victory at Chickamauga. Brigadier General Bushrod R. Johnson was the key player for the army in gray.

 

This is the story of Confederate General Johnson's three days at Chickamauga, and his grand and glorious charge of more than a mile that smashed through the enemy lines and resulted in a resounding victory for the Confederate cause and an ignominious defeat for General Rosecrans. Even Johnson's enemies praised what he did that day. Some compared it to Pickett's Charge at Gettysburg, but where Pickett failed, Johnson succeeded.

 

Three Days in Hell, action-packed from start to finish, is the story of Confederate General Bushrod Johnson's Chickamauga as told through the eyes and words of one of his staff officers, Major Chester Rigby. The author takes you onto the battlefield as no one has done before. He plunges you right into the center of the action, which doesn't let up until the very end. It's a story of heroism, desperate deeds, and death and destruction on a scale the likes of which had never been seen before.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Blair Howard
• Release date: Jul 17, 2015
• ISBN: 9798215830710

Blair Howard

Blair C. Howard is a Royal Air Force veteran, a retired journalist, and the best-selling author of more than 50 novels and 23 travel books. Blair lives in East Tennessee with his wife Jo, and Jack Russell Terrier, Sally.

Book preview

1

I received the news just this morning. My old friend, Bushrod Johnson, has passed away. Soon they’ll all be gone, the commanders. Robert E. Lee and our old nemesis George Thomas both died ten years ago, Forrest three years ago. They’re dropping like flies.

It’s hard to believe that frail old man, General Johnson, did so much, survived those four terrible years. I was there with him, and I often wonder how I got through it. But I stuck close to him, and I reckon that got me through it all. We walked the floors of hell, him and me.

He wasn’t an old man, just a month shy of his sixty-third birthday. His health had been failing for awhile, but I think he probably died of a broken heart. He never did get over his wife’s death. I’ve been thinking a lot about him just lately, about the times we spent together. He was my commanding officer for most of that mess some now call the War Between the States. I say he was my friend, but perhaps that’s a little presumptuous of me. I was his Aide-de-Camp—where he went, I went—but I’d like to think that he regarded me as his friend. My name, by the way, is Chester Rigby, Lieutenant Colonel C.S.A., retired. Retired? I suppose you could say that.

I have many fond and terrible memories of those days, and even though it ended only fifteen years ago, it all seems to be of another lifetime. I have nightmares about it, still, even today. I live it over and over again, my mind a turmoil of times, places, people, skirmishes, and battles. Oh the battles, so many of them. How did we survive? I watched the Old Man defy the odds so many times, put himself in places no man should ever be, but never more so than he did at Chickamauga.

I was back there again last night, back at Chickamauga, among the blood and the guts on the slopes of Horseshoe Ridge. Now that was a battle if ever the was one, and the Old Man was out there in front, as he always was, all three days and never a scratch on either of us. We survived that one. So many others didn’t: Generals Preston Smith, Jim Deshler, and Ben Helm, to name just three. They died there, but there were more, many more. Young men, healthy one minute, stone dead the next. And maybe they were the lucky ones. I saw Major Joe Watkins get his arm torn off by a cannon ball, solid shot. It hit him in his left forearm and tore it away at the elbow, spinning him around, blood spraying out of the stump in every direction and at anyone close to him, me included. I was just three feet away from him. He survived, Joe did, but he was never the same. Something like that changes a man. So much blood....

I wonder if, during those last few days before he died, the Old Man thought of all the men who died alongside of him. Thousands of them, good men, who followed us through hell. I know I do. I can’t forget them. I can’t forget Bushrod Johnson either. We did great things together, risked so much, left sweat, blood, joy, and sorrow on those bloody grounds. But we came through it when so many others didn’t. It’s what old men do, isn’t it? We remember.

Night after night, day after day, there’s never a moment when I don’t remember, or dream, and almost always... it’s about Chickamauga. More than 18,000 casualties we suffered during those three days, and our foes suffered almost as many. Can you imagine that? Can you imagine the slaughter? The blood? Can you imagine stumbling knee deep through mud, made not from water, but from blood? Can you imagine falling on your face into a man’s guts, torn from his insides by a bucket full of canister? I did that. I did that....

Oh yes, Chickamauga was three days in hell. Three days of slaughter.

Officially it was classed as only two days, but they weren’t there that Friday morning, September 18th. A skirmish, they called it, that first day, a goddamn skirmish. Hah! Ask anyone who was there and they’ll tell you what it really was. Skirmish.... And none knew it better than the Old Man and Nathan Bedford Forrest. Side by side those two stood and.... Now there was a man for you: Mr. Forrest. He was....

...Oh, forgive me; I dozed off just then. I seem to do that a lot lately. Boredom is a terrible thing....

-----

I remember it as if it were yesterday. General Bragg had, the night before, ordered General Johnson, with General Forrest in close support, to cross the Chickamauga at Reed’s Bridge no later than seven o’clock that Friday morning. Once across the bridge, we were to wheel to the left, march south, and meet with General Walker’s Reserve Corps. They were supposed to cross the Chickamauga at Alexander’s Bridge at the same time.

It all began in the early hours, close to four o’clock that morning. We were at the railway station some seven miles east of Reed’s Bridge. The first of General Longstreet’s divisions, more than 4,000 officers and men, were arriving by train from Virginia. General John Bell Hood had not yet arrived, and General James Longstreet was not expected until midday on Saturday at the earliest. General Johnson, along with his own division, assumed temporary command of Hood’s division of three brigades: General John Benning’s, General Evander Law’s (commanded by Colonel Sheffield), and General Jerome Robertson’s.

Ringgold Railroad Station was not equipped to handle the influx of more than 15,000 men, plus artillery, horses, and equipment, so you might well imagine how chaotic it was that morning: almost total darkness, except for a few flickering oil lamps and the light of a quarter moon that was moving rapidly toward the western horizon. Thousands of men and horses milled around in the darkness. And as if that were not enough, it hadn’t rained for more than three weeks, and the heavy traffic kicked up swirling clouds of thick clay dust.

Men everywhere were building fires, trying to throw some light on the madness. Hundreds of officers and NCOs were shouting orders that no one could hear over the din. Whew....

General Robertson’s brigade was the first to disembark and join with us for the march to Reed’s Bridge. General Benning was ordered to Catoosa and, once there, to guard General Bragg’s supply depot. Colonel Sheffield was still debarking from the trains and had to feed his men before he could move out, so he stayed behind with orders to catch up with us as soon as he could.

It was a little after four thirty in the morning when the head of our column moved out from Ringgold. The night sky was clear, and there was just enough moonlight for us to see the road ahead. The bright ribbon of hard-packed clay, bordered by thick forest, stretched away into the darkness as far as I could see.

Generals Bushrod Johnson, John Gregg, Jerome Robertson, and Nathan Bedford Forrest, along with Colonels John Fulton, who was commanding General Johnson’s own brigade, and George Dibrell, who was commanding Forrest’s cavalry brigade, were at the head of the column. I was also in that leading group—I was a major then—along with a dozen other staff officers, including another ADC, Captain William Blakemore, and a half-dozen dispatch riders. Forrest’s cavalry escort and some 300 of his troopers were right behind us. They were followed by Lieutenant Everett’s 9th Georgia Artillery Battalion—four twelve-pounder Napoleons—and a little later we were joined by Major Robertson’s artillery battalion, two batteries of four guns each. The rest of the division, with Colonel Fulton’s brigade leading, and two regiments of Forrest’s cavalry brigade marching in column of fours, were stretched back toward Ringgold for more than three miles. We were more than 4,500 strong that day.

Up front, where we were, the road ahead was clear. A nice, easy ride. For the infantry, it was a nightmare. I remember looking back along the column and shuddering when I saw the swirling clouds of thick, choking dust over the ranks; the farther back, the thicker the dust. For the first hundred yards there wasn’t much dust. Beyond that, the lead regiment, the 17th Tennessee, had disappeared in the thick haze. How those marching soldiers must have suffered.

Around 6:45 in the morning we arrived on the banks of Pea Vine Creek, a little more than a mile and a half east of Reed’s Bridge, and they spotted us. There must have been at least a thousand of them, Federal infantry, cavalry, we couldn’t tell.

They were well hidden under cover of a line of trees, on the far side of an open field some 500 to 600 yards across—the road we were on ran right through the center of it.

We were taken completely by surprise. The first we knew of them was when we were met by a firestorm of Minié balls. Fortunately, the range was extreme. Only two men were hit—both junior lieutenants—and several horses, including mine, although the wound was a minor one. Still, it turned my usually docile beast into a wild thing that did its best to fling me out of the saddle.

For several minutes there was utter chaos at the head of the column, as the horses of the more than eighty officers and men reared, wheeled, and bucked. Two of Forrest’s escort went down, along with several more horses, screaming and kicking. The horses made much easier targets for the sharpshooters at extreme range. Fortunately, however, most of the incoming fire went over our heads, probably due to the enemy overcompensating for the distance.

The head of the column split into two, wheeled left and right, and then galloped back along the road until we were clear, out of sight of the enemy. The storm of Minié balls, however, continued unabated. I stuck fast to General Johnson. Forrest stayed with him, too. Colonel Fulton, without waiting for orders, took it upon himself to deploy his brigade and was shouting orders at one of his regimental commanders, namely Colonel Floyd of the 17th Tennessee and one of their captains. Fulton’s horse was having a fit, rearing, hooves flailing, spinning on its hind legs. Fulton hung on for dear life, but never lost control. His orders were precise and quickly carried out.

The road behind us was jammed with thousands of men. Those closest to us, and therefore under fire, were a seething mob. Hundreds of men trying desperately to stay on their feet, to stay upright, under the crush of the surging mass.

And then, slowly, the officers regained control. As the turmoil became less chaotic, the 17th moved forward, followed by the 23rd, 25th, and 44th Tennessee regiments. More than 1,500 men, their weapons cocked and at the ready, surged forward under the tree cover on either side of the road and began to return fire.

As they moved forward, so did we—Generals Johnson, Forrest, Gregg, myself, and two of Forrest’s staff officers—until we had a clear view of the enemy. The Federals were maybe 600 yards away to the west, under cover of dense forest on the far side of an open field. It took the 17th no more than five minutes to reach the edge of the field. Every yard of their advance was made under heavy fire.

Then one of their captains, Douglass, as I remember it, abandoned his horse and ran backward, his pistol and sword in hand, urging his men on. He wasn’t more than a couple of yards from me when he was hit in the back of the neck by a Minié ball. I saw it... I heard it... and it was sickening.

SMACK. The ball smashed through his vertebrae and on out through his throat in an explosion of blood, flesh, and bone. His head, almost severed, snapped backward under the impact, then forward again. His chin hit his chest, and he pitched forward onto his face. He was dead before he hit the ground.

And the fire from the opposite side of the field continued. If anything, it increased.

BAM. BAM. Twin clouds of blue white smoke gushed out from between the trees. The sound of the reports were distinctive and could only have come from Napoleon cannon. Seconds after the blasts, the two shells screamed low overhead and exploded in the air a hundred yards back along the road, showering the crowded infantrymen with razor-sharp shards of iron. The effect was devastating and, for as far as I could see through the smoke and the dust, thousands of men were running left and right from the road and into the trees.

At the head of the column, now close to the edge of the open field, the generals, still on horseback, had their glasses to their eyes, trying to assess what we were facing.

Ain’t a whole lot of ‘em, General, Forrest shouted. Cain’t be more than a couple o’ regiments, at most. Maybe 800, 900 of ‘em, judgin’ by how wide their field of fire is. He turned to his officers. Mr. Maltby. Mr. Savage. Go to General Davidson and have him organize two scouting parties and send ‘em to me. Let’s see if we can figure out what we’re up against.

General Gregg, Johnson shouted, as he wheeled his horse to face him. Advance the colors and deploy your brigade to the south on Colonel Fulton’s flank. Stay among the trees. General McNair, you deploy your brigade to the north, on Fulton’s right flank. General Robertson, you will withdraw your brigade east and stay out of sight, in reserve.

He paused, gazed through his glasses, and then turned in the saddle to face back down the road. Major Robertson, bring your guns into battery in the trees to the south, over there. Mr. Everett, deploy your battery there, just there. He pointed to a spot among the trees just to my right. Keep ‘em out of sight of the enemy until I give the word. Then you may fire at will.

Those Yankees were in for a shock. General Johnson had just ordered three of his batteries of artillery forward, eight twelve-pounder Napoleons and four three-inch Rodman rifles. I watched as they unlimbered the guns and then took the horses away to the rear. And all the time I was mindful, and fearful, of the lead flying all around us. I must admit, I did my best to stay out of the way of it. We, the three generals, four staff officers, and me, had edged our horses over to the right, to the north side of the road. We were now under tree cover, out of sight of the enemy, but not for long.

I say trees, but in reality it was dense forest, woodland, a wild, almost impenetrable tangle of scrub oak, pine trees, cedars, dogwood, honeysuckle, trumpet vine, poison oak, briar, and blackthorn that clung to and tore at the clothing. It was a struggle for a man just to put one foot in front of the other, let alone try to fight in it.

The two big guns in the Yankee positions across the field were now firing canister. Now, if you’ve never been under fire from canister, you can have no understanding of what true terror is. Canister? What’s that, you ask?

How can I explain it?

Have you ever hunted with a shotgun? If so, try to imagine a giant, single-barrel shotgun with a bore more than five inches in diameter. Now try to imagine the size of the shell that such a weapon might fire, but instead of bird or buckshot, imagine that this one is loaded with a cartridge containing some forty or so one-inch iron balls. Now imagine the gun double-loaded with two of those shells, one atop the other, and imagine the effect of those eighty-plus iron balls hurtling toward you at more than fourteen hundred feet per second. It’s what nightmares are made of. Such a load can tear gaps in the line of battle ten, fifteen, even twenty feet wide. At close range, such a load can tear a man apart, leaving nothing but flesh, blood, and bone scattered in every direction. I’ve seen men literally explode at such an impact.

Thank God they only had two of them. The incoming iron balls howled through the trees and undergrowth like a swarm of angry hornets, stripping away leaves, twigs, branches, and bark and tearing dagger-like shards of wood from the tree trunks that inflicted wounds the likes of which you cannot possibly imagine. And those balls that found a human target... they stripped away clothing, flesh, fingers, limbs; they turned faces into objects of utter horror, usually encountered only in nightmares. In an instant they could turn a man’s guts into a mush of tangled intestines, flesh, and bone. Yes, thank God they had only two Napoleons, and that their aim was less than perfect. We, however, had eight of them, and there were two more batteries to the rear should they be needed.