Bullets whizzed over his head, sounding like a million angry hornets.
“Sergeant! WHAT DO I DO NOW?!? SERGEANT?”
The sergeant, a burly man Irish man from northern Illinois, stared back at him blankly. The young drummer boy looked closer at his head. A bullet had hit him cleanly in the forehead, killing him instantly.
That’s how the day had gone so far. Badly.
The drummer boy’s belly pressed lower against the dirt. Bullets continued to whiz over his head and a cannonball took the head off a lieutenant who had foolishly just arrived on horseback. The horse fell victim soon afterward. One minute they had been eating breakfast peacefully, the next chaos had broken loose. If the boy lived to 100, he’d never forget the sound of the Rebel yell. Or the sound of the bullets.
War had seemed so fun just a week ago. Now this. And his drum was destroyed. If he saw General Sherman again, he knew what he’d tell him — “Sir, war is Hell.”
Four hours into battle had pushed them back toward the Tennessee River. What would become known as the Battle of Shiloh had started badly for the Union Army. And it would get worse before it got better.
The drummer boy was now alone in the ravine with his dead sergeant. The fighting had passed them by. The hornets had stopped buzzing above him. The screams of dying men and exploding shells had stopped. The boy was scared and tired. He closed his eyes wishing he was somewhere else. Fear, fatigue and dust choked him. The drummer boy succumbed to his need for sleep and nodded off.
He awoke to darkness. The sun had set and the fighting had ceased for the night. Even Hell took the night off. The boy slowly got off the warm earth and quietly padded back toward to where his camp had been. He got to the edge of the tents and noticed that they were picked-over — but abandoned. He slipped into one of the officer’s tents and noticed a pen and paper sitting on the small wooden desk. The boy sat down and began to write down what he had seen that day. One word after another. And another. Soon he had written a page. He found an empty liquor bottle and rolled the paper up and put it in it. The boy found a shovel and quietly slipped out of the tent and headed back to the ravine. There he buried his sergeant and placed the bottle on top of his body.
Today’s nightmare would go in the ground with his leader’s body. The drummer boy was determined to survive this battle. As far as he was concerned, the war was over.
But the war had different plans. He fought the next day, the next month and then the next year. He followed General Sherman to Jackson and then to Vicksburg. He had drummed in Chattanooga. He witnessed the slaughter at Kennesaw Mountain and helped burn Atlanta. He then marched to the Sea, tearing up railroads along the way. He’d forever remember the sweet sounds of the church bells when the war was over. The drummer boy, older and hardened, went home. But even his mother did not recognize him. The war had claimed another casualty — the bright-eyed boy had become a cynically dark soul.
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One hundred and fifty years later, a group of Boy Scouts marched along the lip of the ravine. “Nearby was the Hornet’s Nest and Bloody Pond,” the leader in knee socks told the boys. One Scout, a boy the same age as the drummer boy, fell behind. He had seen something shiny in the ditch and climbed carefully down the bank to see what it was. He looked closely for snakes — nothing — and then headed to what looked like the top of a bottle. The Scout pulled it out of the soil and noticed a scrap of fabric under it. And then a bone.
“SCOUTMASTER!”
The Park Ranger and the Scouts stood around the table at the station. The historian, in his rubber gloves and mask, carefully pulled the paper out and unrolled it. And on the yellowed paper, a 150-year-old secret was revealed.
Today was the worst fighting I’ve ever seen. One minute we were joking in camp, the next, we were overrun by Rebels. I saw many friends die today. But the moment that broke me was death of my Sergeant — my father — Thomas Patrick O’Reily. One minute he was telling me he would keep me safe. The next, he was dead with a gunshot wound to the forehead. I buried him here, where he fell. If this bottle is found, please give him a proper burial. Thomas Patrick O’Reily Jr.
The Scout who had found the bottle began to cry. The other scouts looked at him and started to laugh. But the scoutmaster raised a hand to silence them. “What’s the matter, Tommy.”
“My great great great Grandfather fought at Shiloh as a drummer boy. His father died here but they never found his body. My great great great Grandfather came back in at the turn of the century but never could find the ravine again. I think I may have just solved one of my family’s biggest mystery.”
The earth takes in her secrets and then reveals them when she wants.
In the Shiloh National Cemetery, a soldier was laid to rest next to a family mystery. And as a bugler played taps for his great great great great grandfather, a scout named Thomas Patrick O’Reily VII swore he saw the drummer boy banging his drum in time. But it was probably just smoke from the twenty-one gun salute.