Free Battle of Lookout Mountain by Gilbert L. Morris Page B

run!”
    Drake whispered, “All right, all right. I’m coming.” Gripping his weapon, he stumbled ahead.
    Royal moved away, encouraging other members of the squad. The Confederates were falling back,and there was a wild cry of victory from Company A as they charged.
    And then, unexpectedly, there was a surprise attack from the right side. Some Confederates had apparently hidden in a grove of trees, and now they stormed out, tearing through the Blues with a terrible barrage.
    Drake stared at the falling men. He heard the Confederates screaming, and the bores of their muskets seemed as large as the mouths of cannons. Something touched his side. He looked down to see that a bullet had neatly slit his uniform.
    Suddenly Drake knew that there was no hope. Bullets were ripping the air beside him; it would be suicide to stay. Without thought, he dropped his musket, whirled, and began to run. His one desire was to get away from that terrible fire before he, too, was killed.
    He heard a voice crying, “Drake! Drake, don’t run!” He ignored it, however, and ran even faster.
    Other men were approaching in thin ranks— their support troops. They asked, “What is it? What’s going on?” but Drake did not answer. Blind fear took hold of him, and he ran and ran and ran.

9
A Defeated Army
    N o one ever knew the exact roll call of heroes at the Battle of Chickamauga. It was a fierce battle with great courage shown by both Confederate and Union soldiers. The dead and wounded lay across the fields, and both sides suffered dreadfully.
    One man became famous as a result of this battle. Before he was ten years old, Johnny Clem had run away from his home in Ohio to be a drummer boy. But at Chickamauga, he armed himself with a sawed-off musket and shot and wounded a Confederate officer.
    After the war he was appointed a second lieutenant. When he retired at the age of sixty-five, he was a major general. Johnny Clem was the last man active in the armed forces who had actually fought in the Civil War.
    When the battle was over, the Union army began its retreat back toward Chattanooga.
    The Southern general, Bragg, spoke with a Confederate soldier who had been captured and then escaped. The soldier, who had seen the Federals for himself, said to the general, “They’re retreatin’, General.”
    But Bragg would not accept the man’s story. “Do you know what a retreat looks like?” he asked.
    The soldier stared back at him and replied, “I ought to, General—I been with you during the whole campaign!”
    Bragg decided not to continue the fight. His army was completely worn down. When the count was in, it would reveal that Confederate casualties had been greater than those suffered by the North. The Confederates lost 18,000 men—killed or wounded or captured—while the Federals lost approximately 16,000.
    General Bragg had also lost a third of his artillery forces. When someone pressed him to pursue the fleeing Union troops, he protested that he couldn’t because his wagon trains did not have sufficient horses and his artillery was almost completely bereft of the animals that pulled them.
    By September 22, the entire Federal army was safely inside its Chattanooga defenses, and General Rosecrans put his men to shoring up the fortifications.
    General Bragg moved the Southern troops up to the outskirts of Chattanooga and decided to starve Rosecrans into submission.
    “We’ve got him where we want him!” he said confidently. “His destruction is only a matter of time.”
    “Hey, Professor, did you hear about Drake?”
    Royal dropped his shovelful of dirt and looked up at Rosie, who had appeared at the top of the ditch. Royal’s hands were blistered, and he laid the shovel down and flexed them, grunting with pain. “No, what about him?”
    Rosie had somehow managed to avoid most of the work of building defenses. He turned up, of course, at sick call every day. But now, as he stood looking down at the ditchdiggers, he seemed in