The Lost Army

by Thomas Wallace Knox

“The next morning the general sent me to Elkhorn with a message to one of the surgeons. Outside of the building was a row of corpses of officers and men mingled indiscriminately, most of them having died during the night from the effect of their wounds or after amputation of limbs. Several legs and arms that had been cut off were lying on the ground, some of the legs having the stocking and perhaps a portion of the pantaloons still in place.

“The attendants were busy removing the corpses and carrying them to a place of burial. Each was covered with a blanket, and officers and men were moving among them, raising the blanket coverings one after the other, in order to find some missing individual. 'That's Captain ———,' said one of the officers, as he turned down a blanket and revealed a face and the double-barred shoulder-straps which indicated the rank of the wearer. 'That's private ————, of Co. B,' or 'that's Sergeant———, of-regiment,' were the remarks of the attendants as they went steadily on with their work. Here sat a soldier who was crying bitterly, as he had just discovered the body of his brother among the dead. The surgeons and their aids gave him no attention; in fact, they were quite regardless of anything except the wounded whom they were trying to save.

“Details were sent out to look carefully over the ground where the battle was fought, in order to bring in the wounded and bury the dead. The work of humanity was rapidly performed, and before night all the dead had been laid to their rest, and all the wounded, except a few who were not discovered until afterwards, were relieved as far as possible. The dead, where they lay thickly, were buried in trenches containing ten and in some cases twelve or fifteen corpses, but in most cases they were buried singly or by two's and three's. Most of those who fell at Pea Ridge found their graves where they lay, and there they will sleep undisturbed through all the rest of this war that is convulsing the country and threatening the existence of a nation which was founded as the home of universal liberty.

“From the hospital I carried a message to Colonel Bussey, of the Third Iowa Cavalry, who had returned from pursuing the rebels as far as Bentonville, and was just then in that part of the field where his regiment made a charge upon the combined white and Indian troops of General Pike, and was repulsed with the loss of several men. It afterward, as I have said elsewhere, rallied and defeated the rebels, recapturing three guns of a battery which had been temporarily lost.

“The rebels may deny as much as they please that the Indians scalped their fallen foes, but here was the evidence that they did it. Eight men of Colonel Bussey's cavalry were killed in the charge, and the Indians occupied the ground immediately and took off the scalps of those eight men and otherwise mutilated their bodies. Some of the bodies indicated that the men were only wounded and not dead when the Indians came into possession of them by the repulse of the cavalry, but the scoundrels quickly dispatched them with the tomahawk. Marks of the tomahawk, or some weapon like it, were plainly visible on several bodies, and the surgeons who examined the gunshot wounds on some of the bodies declared that they were not sufficient to cause death.

“Colonel Bussey and several of his officers and men have made oath to the evidences of the use of the tomahawk and scalping-knife by the Indian allies of the rebels, and the documents will be placed on record. It is probable that more than this number were scalped, as several bodies were buried before an investigation was thought of, but about these eight there can be no mistake. We hope the rebels are proud of these murderous savages, who may yet turn upon them in their frenzy when least expected to do so. A few of the Indians were captured, and if our men had not been restrained by their officers they would have hanged or shot the rascals. General Curtis has allowed all the rebel surgeons to come and go freely under parole, with the exception of the surgeon of an Indian regiment; him the general is keeping a close prisoner, and will send under guard to St. Louis.”

The rebels disappeared so suddenly from the battlefield that the union commanders could not make out where they had gone. General Sigel went after them in one direction and Colonel Bussey in another, but could not overtake them, and the pursuit was soon given up. It seems they turned off through several hollows and ravines, taking obscure roads, and finally reuniting in the neighborhood of Bentonville, where they camped for the night. A good many of them continued along the road without halting, determined to get a safe distance between themselves and the terrible Yankees. Previous to the battle the officers had spread the most startling stories about northern atrocities to prisoners, with the object of nerving the men up to a high pitch of courage.

On this subject let us listen to Jack, whom we left in the hands of the enemy, and who was carried away by them in their retreat.

“The night after they captured the colonel, and took me along with him,” said Jack, “we had a hard old time of it. We had very little to eat, and nothing but our clothes to sleep in. We were no worse off than the officers and men around us, as there were a good many of them that had n't any blankets, and nearly all were ragged and fearfully out at the elbows. Each man had for his rations a piece of corn-bread as dry as a stone and nearly as hard, and some of them had nothing more than an ear or two of corn, that they chewed on as though they were horses. One of the doctors dressed Colonel Herron's wounded leg. He could n't stand on it, and when he wanted to move around I helped him on one side and one of the hospital attendants on the other. They put him in an ambulance along with one of their own wounded officers and started us off on the road to Bentonville, and there we stayed through the night. Probably they would have sent us further if they'd known how the next day's battle was coming out.

“They were going to send me off with the soldiers, but Colonel Herron asked to be permitted to keep me as a personal attendant. He offered to give his parole and become responsible that I would not escape, the same as he had done when we were first captured, and this they accepted after a little palaver. At one time I thought they wouldn't do it, and began to think I'd have to trudge along the road with the soldiers. And I think I owe my good fortune to an old friend; at least I 'll call him so, as he acted like a friend, though he had no reason to remember me kindly.