But I learned better in about the first five minutes of the battle of Shiloh

SWMODave

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'Last Days of the Confederacy' from Volume 50 Cosmopolitan
by W Herbert Dunton
Our principal source of revenue whereby we got money to buy ammunition was hazel-nuts, which we would gather, shuck, and sell at five cents a quart. And the work incident to the gathering and shucking of a quart of hazel nuts was a decidedly tedious job. But it made us economical in the use of our ordnance stores, so we would never throw away a shot carelessly or unnecessarily. And it was a standing rule never to shoot a squirrel anywhere except in the head, save as a last resort, when circumstances compelled one to fire at some other part of the body of the little animal.

And so I thought, at the beginning of my military career, that I should use the same care and circumspection in firing an old musket when on the line of battle that I had exercised in hunting squirrels. But I learned better in about the first five minutes of the battle of Shiloh. However, in every action I was in, when the opportunity was afforded, I took careful and deliberate aim, but many a time the surroundings were such that the only thing to do was to hold low, and fire through the smoke in the direction of the enemy.

I will say here that the extent of wild shooting done in battle, especially by raw troops, is astonishing, and rather hard to understand. When we fell back to our second line at Shiloh, I heard an incessant humming sound away up above our heads, like the flight of a swarm of bees. In my ignorance, I at first hardly knew what that meant, but it presently dawned on me that the noise was caused by bullets singing through the air from twenty to a hundred feet over our heads. And after the battle I noticed that the big trees in our camp, just in the rear of our second line, were thickly pock-marked by musket balls at a distance of fully a hundred feet from the ground. And yet we were separated from the Confederates only by a little, narrow field, and the intervening ground was perfectly level. But the fact is, those boys were fully as green as we were, and doubt less as much excited. The Confederate army at Shiloh was composed of soldiers the great majority of whom went under fire there for the first time, and I reckon they were as nervous and badly scared as we were. ….

We had not gone far before I saw something which hardly had an inspiring effect. We were marching along an old, grass-grown country road, with a rail fence on the right which enclosed a sort of woods pasture, and with a dense forest on our left, when I saw a soldier on our left, slowly making his way to the rear. He had been struck a sort of glancing shot on the left side of his face, and the skin and flesh of his cheek were hanging in shreds. His face and neck were covered with blood and he was a frightful sight. Yet he seemed to be perfectly cool and composed and wasn't "taking on" a bit. As he came Opposite my company, he looked up at us and said, "Give 'em hell, boys! They've spoiled my beauty." It was manifest that he was not exaggerating. …….

It was impossible to tell if any of my shots took effect, but after the battle I went to the spot and looked over the ground. The Confederate dead lay there thick, and I wondered, as I looked at them, if I had killed any of those poor fellows. Of course I didn't know, and am glad now that I didn't. And I will say here that I do not now have any conclusive knowledge that during my entire term of service I ever killed, or even wounded, a single man. It is more than probable that some of my shots were fatal, but don't know it, and am thankful for the ignorance. You see, after all, the common soldiers of the Confederate Armies were American boys, just like us, and conscientiously believed that they were right. Had they been soldiers of a foreign nation,—Spaniards, for instance,—I might feel differently.

As Lord Byron, somewhere in "Don Juan," truly says:
"Mortality! Thou hast thy monthly bills,
Thy plagues, thy famines, thy physicians, yet tick,
Like the death-watch, within our ears the ills
Past, present, and to come; but all may yield
To the true portrait of one battlefield."

from The Story of a Common Soldier
 
Intresting post which reminds me of a book that I read sometime ago called ‘on killing’ the book written by Lt. Col Grossman explored the reasons behind the strange phenomenon known as high firing. Grossman argued that there are four psychological behaviours that soldiers will experience during battle, ‘flight, fight, posture and submit’. High firing as described in the account at Shiloh is apparently not that uncommon and is a part of the ‘posture’ response.

I’m not sure how accurate Grossman’s research was but he argued that during the CW, many soldiers would opt to become loaders for those willing to fire, some of those firing would deliberately aim over the heads of their enemy, some would wander off into the smoke and confusion and it wasn’t that unusual for some men to drop as if they had been hit.
There’s also evidence that nearly 90% of weapons found on CW battlefields we’re loaded, of the twenty-four thousand that were found to be loaded, twelve thousand had been loaded more than once. Six thousand of the twelve thousand loaded weapons had between three to ten rounds loaded in the barrel, one weapon had been loaded twenty three times.
The question is why did at least 12 thousand soldiers misload their weapons, if soldiers were really intent on killing, many of those recovered weapons should have been empty.

I think that’s why the author of ‘last days of the confederacy’ found the wild shooting of raw troops astonishing, us humans just don’t like killing each other.
 
Intresting post which reminds me of a book that I read sometime ago called ‘on killing’ the book written by Lt. Col Grossman explored the reasons behind the strange phenomenon known as high firing. Grossman argued that there are four psychological behaviours that soldiers will experience during battle, ‘flight, fight, posture and submit’. High firing as described in the account at Shiloh is apparently not that uncommon and is a part of the ‘posture’ response.

I’m not sure how accurate Grossman’s research was but he argued that during the CW, many soldiers would opt to become loaders for those willing to fire, some of those firing would deliberately aim over the heads of their enemy, some would wander off into the smoke and confusion and it wasn’t that unusual for some men to drop as if they had been hit.
There’s also evidence that nearly 90% of weapons found on CW battlefields we’re loaded, of the twenty-four thousand that were found to be loaded, twelve thousand had been loaded more than once. Six thousand of the twelve thousand loaded weapons had between three to ten rounds loaded in the barrel, one weapon had been loaded twenty three times.
The question is why did at least 12 thousand soldiers misload their weapons, if soldiers were really intent on killing, many of those recovered weapons should have been empty.

I think that’s why the author of ‘last days of the confederacy’ found the wild shooting of raw troops astonishing, us humans just don’t like killing each other.
Dont trust it.
Modern research on soldiers in Afghanistan and Iraq show that most soldiers do as they are trained.
Had the soldiers been well trained with sufficient time doing live fire on a range, then this would not have happened to the same huge extent.
The issue was poorly trained soldiers that very rarely, if ever did any sort of live firing outside of combat.

And you cant use the numbers from Gettysburg as some evidence of resistance to killing.

If a soldier do his very best to hit the enemy and he can load in 20 seconds, then his weapons will only be empty in maybe 4-5 seconds... since that is the time it take from his last shot until he have a round in the barrel.
(and that is most likely what Laidley considered loaded when he wrote about it)

Then add the soldiers that are hit by artillery, when he is moving and any other situation where he is not actively firing back.

The result is that most dropped weapons would have had a bullet in the barrel... even if the soldiers all where well trained and did their best to kill the enemy.
 
Dont trust it.
Modern research on soldiers in Afghanistan and Iraq show that most soldiers do as they are trained.
Had the soldiers been well trained with sufficient time doing live fire on a range, then this would not have happened to the same huge extent.
The issue was poorly trained soldiers that very rarely, if ever did any sort of live firing outside of combat.

And you cant use the numbers from Gettysburg as some evidence of resistance to killing.

If a soldier do his very best to hit the enemy and he can load in 20 seconds, then his weapons will only be empty in maybe 4-5 seconds... since that is the time it take from his last shot until he have a round in the barrel.
(and that is most likely what Laidley considered loaded when he wrote about it)

Then add the soldiers that are hit by artillery, when he is moving and any other situation where he is not actively firing back.

The result is that most dropped weapons would have had a bullet in the barrel... even if the soldiers all where well trained and did their best to kill the enemy.
That is also covered in the book “On Killing.” To further add resulted enemy casualties increased when using human silhouettes down range vs circles or squares.
 
Dont trust it.
Modern research on soldiers in Afghanistan and Iraq show that most soldiers do as they are trained.
Had the soldiers been well trained with sufficient time doing live fire on a range, then this would not have happened to the same huge extent.
The issue was poorly trained soldiers that very rarely, if ever did any sort of live firing outside of combat.

And you cant use the numbers from Gettysburg as some evidence of resistance to killing.

If a soldier do his very best to hit the enemy and he can load in 20 seconds, then his weapons will only be empty in maybe 4-5 seconds... since that is the time it take from his last shot until he have a round in the barrel.
(and that is most likely what Laidley considered loaded when he wrote about it)

Then add the soldiers that are hit by artillery, when he is moving and any other situation where he is not actively firing back.

The result is that most dropped weapons would have had a bullet in the barrel... even if the soldiers all where well trained and did their best to kill the enemy.
Well, I did say that I wasn’t sure how accurate the research was. I think that it’s worth remembering that the psychology behind the training of modern troops is very different to anything civil war troops would have experienced.
 
Well, I did say that I wasn’t sure how accurate the research was. I think that it’s worth remembering that the psychology behind the training of modern troops is very different to anything civil war troops would have experienced.

I've been wondering about this combat mind-set for some time - very hard to quantify. Some people, like Forrest, seemed to completely change into an amazingly efficient killing machine. Even a big man who was well-trained might have trouble with a dozen men attacking him...but Forrest usually killed half of them! There were physical changes, too, that were observable. His mind was perfectly clear, reflexes accurate, strength double, vision and hearing way sharper than normal. I can't think of anybody else described this way in the whole CW.
 
Diane
Forrest was a natural soldier who knew war meant killing and was accepting of this principle. He did not kill for pleasure as some like "Bloody" Bill Anderson but was more akin to George Custer who also transformed in battle. Some men, in all nations, take to war as a natural reaction and become tremendous soldiers.
Regards
David
 
Diane
Forrest was a natural soldier who knew war meant killing and was accepting of this principle. He did not kill for pleasure as some like "Bloody" Bill Anderson but was more akin to George Custer who also transformed in battle. Some men, in all nations, take to war as a natural reaction and become tremendous soldiers.
Regards
David

Yes, Forrest did not go mad but he understood what war was. A lot of men seemed to begin the war with the niceties and courtesies of civilized society but Forrest never did. At Sacramento, his first serious engagement, the Union major saw the charge coming and turned, signalling he was challenging the rebel commander. Forrest simply lowered his saber and ran the major straight through and kept on going without a backward glance. He did not see a gentlemanly contest but an impediment that had to be removed. Didn't go out of his way to kill the major, but the major had put himself in the way. That's how most of the kills happened.
 
About what I knew about the war came from history classes at high school mixed in with history books now I've read numerous books (the actual or bits of them) including some related to the Civil War such books covering the 1849-1850 January-September pre-Compromise and Compromise of 1850 lime America's Great Debate, On the Brink of Civil War, and soon Prologue to Conflict: The Crisis and Compromise of 1850.
 
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