Free Under Siege! by Andrea Warren Page A

each in quick succession … Morning found us more dead than alive.”

    Fred (shown here fourth from left) was liked and accepted by his father’s officers. Grant (standing in the middle of the photo) is wearing a hat.

    G RANT TOOK TWO DAYS to rethink his strategy. In the meantime, he tightened the noose around Vicksburg: as of May 18 it was under siege. He also readied his men to try again. In spite of the pounding they had received, they had not lost their will to fight.
    As Grant visited various points along the Union line, Fred rode beside him. He no longer desired to be in combat and spent part of each day resting in the tent he shared with his father. One of his worst fears had come true, for the wound in his leg had become infected. He had been with the army long enough to know he might lose his leg. He tried not to think of this possibility. He wanted to be an officer when he grew up—a military leader like his father. How could he do that with only one leg?
    In spite of his own misery, he was still greatly interested in what was going on, and he listened while Grant and his officers laid out plans for their next assault on the Rebel fortifications. It would take place on May 22. All corps commanders would synchronize their timepieces and open fire in unison, at precisely ten o’clock in the morning.
    On the appointed day, Union soldiers were realistic about what was ahead and tried to make certain that loved ones would receive their valuables in the event they were killed. One soldier wrote, “The boys were … busy divesting themselves of watches, rings, pictures, and other keepsakes, which were being placed in the custody of the cooks, who were not expected to go into action. I never saw such a scene before, nor do I want to see it again.”
    When the cannon sounded the attack, the men in blue rushed forward. One Union soldier tried to add some humor to his grim report of the assault: “We fixed bayonets and charged point blank for the rebelworks at a double quick. Unfortunately for me I was in the front of the rank and compelled to maintain that position, and a glance at the forest of gleaming bayonets sweeping up from the rear, at a charge, made me realize that it only required a stumble of some lubber just behind me to launch his bayonet into the offside of my anatomy … This knowledge so stimulated me that I feared the front far less than the rear, and forged ahead like an antelope, easily changing my double quick to a quadruple gait … During that run and rush I had frequently to either step upon or jump over the bodies of our dead and wounded, which were scattered along our track.”
    Usually generals were positioned in safe places during battles, but in spite of the concern of his officers, Grant once again stayed with his men. Fred learned later that his father “had a narrow escape from a shell which was fired directly down a ravine which he had just entered. He was unhurt, but was covered with yellow dirt thrown up by the explosion.”
    Fred would never forget one particular incident. He was with his father and Sherman when a boy barely older than he “with blood streaming from a wound in his leg, came running up to where Father and Sherman stood, and reported that his regiment was out of ammunition. Sherman was directing some attention to be paid to his wound when the little fellow, finding himself fainting from loss of blood, gasped out, ‘caliber 54,’ as he was carried off to the rear. At this moment I observed that my father’s eyes were filled with tears.”
    The young soldier was Orion Howe, a fourteen-year-old drummer boy from Illinois. His regiment was running low on .54-caliber ammunition, and he had volunteered to go for more. Union soldiers saw him running through heavy fire, determined to complete his errand. Most drummer boys like Orion Howe were very brave. Though they were sometimes as young as nine or ten, they played a critical role in battle, for their drumbeats relayed