The Crossing
With the
crossing of the Tennessee River planned for August 9, Pershing spent August 7
and 8 bombarding Confederate positions across the river. Again he wanted a far
longer bombardment but a month of hard fighting greater reduced his stockpile
of munitions. The battle became the greatest consumer of American munitions in
July 1914, and spent shells and bullets faster than factories could produce
them. Pershing attempted to divert rounds from other fronts. His attempts were thwarted
by the War Department, which would not ‘rob Peter to pay Paul’.
Pershing
brought forward two more divisions of the First Army to Camden; the 9th
Infantry and 55th Iowa Guard. The 9th spent much of July
in reserve, recuperating losses sustained on the front for the previous three
months. The 55th Iowa was recently called up to service. It was the
rookie division, with half of its soldiers untested in combat. The rest were
survivors of the 37th Iowa, a National Guard Division torn to pieces
on the York Peninsula. Its members had mixed reactions from shifting from
Canadian winters to Southern summers.
At dawn on
August 9, five divisions went over the top and across the river. The crossing
of the Tennessee proved far more hazardous than a regular dash through no-man’s
land. Samson took the lull in activity from August 1 and August 6 to move
artillery pieces into place and fortify them against anticipated bombardment.
Civilians in the region were also evacuated, including the entire population of
Stuart. Stuart sat on the banks of the Tennessee directly between Camden and
the Waverly-Buffalo line. The town was virtually wiped off the map and provided
excellent cover for Union soldiers coming ashore.
The prospect of
platoons crowding on barges and battalions funneling on to pontoon bridges
brought great anxiety to the soldiers. In no-man’s land, there was at least a
chance to find cover. On a barge there was none. Should a shell come down on
the barge it could wipe out an entire platoon, which happened on a number of occasions
on August 9. The pontoon bridges were favorite targets of surviving Confederate
machine gun nests, which homed in and fired on a steady stream of advancing
soldiers.
Artillery units
did their best to sever all of the bridges, work that took a mere five minutes.
At 0813, Confederate artillery let up, bringing a much needed reprieve to
advancing Union soldiers. The reason of the pause was twofold; 1) Samson wished
to conserve his ammunition and 2) The CSS Memphis
made its appearance at the crossing. The Confederate river monitor was a near
copy of its Union counterpart. Two twin turrets of eight inch guns fired for
great effect into masses of Union barges.
Pershing
expected the Confederate Navy to play its part and fought with the US Navy
Department for a fleet of monitors. Instead, he was sent the USS Decatur and USS Evansville. The two Union monitors spent the morning firing on
Confederate fortifications and artillery nests. Both ships turned their turrets
on the Memphis once sighted. At 0820,
the two Union ships began firing upon the Memphis.
At a range of two miles, many of the rounds did indeed hit, unfortunately not
at what gunners where aiming.
A number of
Union barges fell victim to short rounds, blown apart by their navy. The Navy
cursed the soldiers for being in their way as they tried to navigate through
the swarm of barges at speeds topping one knot. The Memphis took advantage of the large, slow targets, turning its
attention away from soft targets to those two that were genuine threats. At
0823, shells from the Memphis blew
open the forward turret of Decatur,
knocking the ship out of the fight. Decatur’s
captain ordered the ship to turn hard astern, his goal to beach on the west
bank of the river before sinking.
The duel
between the Evansville and Memphis caught the headlines in
newspapers across the country, crowding out articles speaking of thousands of
Union casualties crossing the Tennessee. The duel was a short affair, for once
free of the Union barges, Evansville
was free to maneuver. The duel ended by 0830, with the Memphis sunk and Evansville
too heavily damaged to aid in the crossing. Unlike the Decatur, which could still bring one turret into play, Evansville suffered damage to both of
its turrets. As soon as the Memphis
rolled over, Confederate guns opened up on Evansville,
damaging the ship further. At 0833, one Confederate round breached the damaged
turret and aft magazine, sending the Union monitor to join its Confederate
victim.
The battle was
half-over for soldiers once they reached dry ground, where they could again
spread out and seek shelter. By sunset, most of the 9th and 14th
managed to cross and gain a toe hold on the east bank and fought through the
night to keep their holdings. It took until August 12, before the entire force
stood on the east bank. Samson sent out company-sized raids against the
assembling Union lines with the expressed goal of keeping them disorganized. The
nightly raids kept Union soldiers awake and daily artillery bombardment denying
them afternoon naps.
By August 15,
the seventy thousand Union soldiers trapped on a five mile deep and ten mile
long front suffered greatly from fatigue. A push on August 16 met with more
casualties than gains and a push the following day failed as miserably.
Pershing needed to gain ground, otherwise he would be forced to ferry his men
back across the river, with likely the same casualty rates as crossing it cost.
August 21, saw
five days of fighting come to an unsatisfactory conclusion when the surviving
sixty-five thousand soldiers of the Union crossing slammed into a prepared
trench network between the towns of Waverly and Buffalo. The first line of
trenches they captured through sheer willpower.
Two attempts to breach the second line of trenches failed, costing the
lives of three thousand Union and two thousand Confederate soldiers. On August
22, Pershing called a halt to the advance.
The supply
situation remained critical as Confederate guns took every opportunity to fire
upon the pontoon bridges. A number of trucks carrying ammunition exploded after
encountering a Confederate three inch shell, taking a second of the bridge with
them. After each explosion, engineers raced to replace the destroyed section of
bridge, reopening supply lines as quickly as humanly possible. Despite their
efforts, supplies ran dry. On the morning of August 22, supplies were critical
for the 61st Ohio. In some cases, companies were down to their last
clip of ammunition and out of grenades.
In the month of
August, the United States Army advanced no further than ten to twelve miles
east of the Tennessee River at the cost of nearly thirty thousand casualties, a
third of them fatal. The media and members of Congress began to clamor for
Pershing’s replacement, ignoring the advance he gained in the month of July.
Similar calls for replacement rang through the Confederate States, with the
governor of Tennessee complaining loudest of Sylvester’s ‘indecision’.
Recent advances
in Europe offered Pershing a solution. The Germany Army fired a number of
rounds into British lines containing tear gas. It was a non-lethal chemical
weapon and allowed the Germans a minor advance along the Western Front when
British soldiers panicked. Since it was non-lethal, it also proved easy to
counter. Chemists in industrial heartland of the United States offered the War
Department a weapon far more devastating than mere irritants.
New Weapons
By September 1,
the Union’s position on the east bank proved far more tenable. The toe hold was
no longer in danger of collapsing before Confederate counter-attacks. In
addition to replacements for the maimed units, Pershing moved the 124th
New Hampshire Guard across the river to bolster the line and prepare for a new
push. The advance was delayed not by the movement of men or artillery, but by
the deployment of a new weapon and the cooperation of the weather.
Instead of the
shells he hoped for, Pershing receiving thousands of canisters of chlorine gas.
He could not simply bombard the enemy. Instead, the First Army was forced to
rely upon the wind carrying the gas across the no-man’s land. A favorable wind
blew across the front in the early morning hours on September 3. The flow of
greenish clouds across no-man’s land and the sudden choking death of hundreds
of soldiers sparked panic in the Confederate trenches. The psychological impact
of an unbeatable foe was far more damaging than the actual deaths.
An hour after
the cloud rolled into the Confederate lines, Union soldiers climbed out of
their trenches and charged. Upon entering contaminated Confederate trenches,
several hundred Union soldiers succumbed to the gas attack. Early gas masks
were very primitive by modern standards and the unknowns of large-scale
chemical warfare would plague all sides in the war throughout 1914 and into
1915. What awaited the Union soldiers was chaos. Some Confederate soldiers fled
the gas while others were quick to surrender. The soldiers of the Tennessee
divisions stood their ground and fought before being forced to retreat in the
face of a better organized foe.
What prevented
Pershing from full exploiting the crumbling line east of the Tennessee was a
continuing supply problem. Pushing the Confederates out of artillery range of
the river allowed for more pontoon bridges to appear and railroad bridges to be
rebuilt in late 1914, improvements that did little for Pershing on September 3.
Against disorganized and trapped units, bayonets worked superbly. Against
entrenched and determined foes, it worked not so well.
By September 5,
he decided the forward elements of the First Army were sufficiently supplied
and ordered a second gas attack take place. As with the first, the nature of
the weapons remained dependent upon the weather, which proved to be the
Confederate’s ally for the better part of a week. The time spent waiting for
the right wind was no time wasted. Soldiers spent their time fortifying
captured lines and extending the trenches, as well as addressing their own
supply issues.
A short window
of attack opened on September 14, when chlorine was released in the new
no-man’s land. The windows proved too short for a shift in wind blew some of
the poison gas back into Union lines. Much to Pershing’s growing frustration,
panic in the ranks of the 124th N.H. proved almost as devastating as
the panic occurring in the Confederate lines. With that division in disarray,
Pershing gave the order for the rest of the divisions to advance. The Confederate
lines were in disarray and again the 14th and 73rd Neb
broke through their forward defenses. Again the First Army failed to bust
through and charge towards Nashville.
Pershing’s
frustration grew over the course of September. The longer the much needed
breakthrough waited, the more time the Confederate Army could adapt to the
poison gas attacks. A third attack occurred on October 9, and resulted in a
minor breakthrough. The Confederate Army was forced from their trenches and driven
back nearly fifteen miles. Since the First Army crossed the Tennessee, Samson
prepared a series of defensive lines between the river and Nashville.
The Confederate
Army of Tennessee manned trenches spanning from Dixon to Centerville. The First
Army ran into a solid line of Confederate defenses, breaking their momentum for
good. Machine gun and artillery fire pinned the forward most elements of the
First Army, forcing them to dig in desperately. Within a week, the bulk of the
First Army sat a few hundred meters west of the Confederates, packed in shallow
trenches and vulnerable to mortar attacks. Their positions were tenuous, and
had Sylvester sufficient forces in place for Samson to attack then the
Confederate Army might have driven the Union back to the Tennessee River.
By October 20,
both sides in Tennessee were exhausted from months of near constant fighting.
Pershing wanted to launch one more push, but the weather refused to cooperate.
Rain began to bombard both sides of the war, turning trenches to mud and
rendering gas attacks useless. On October 21, he gave the order to Baker to
make himself comfortable. The Battle of the Tennessee River wound down back to
the sporadic artillery duels and trench raids that made up the fighting in the
first half of 1914. Even the artillery duels were few and far between. In his
attempt to flank Nashville, Pershing expended his stock and reserve of shells.
Results
The Battle of
the Tennessee River failed in its strategic goal. Nashville remained in
Confederate hands until well into 1915. For a gain of thirty miles southward in
the land between the rivers, Pershing spent nearly fifty thousand lives over
four months. To defend that same area, Sylvester sacrificed forty thousand
Confederate soldiers. With a soldier ration of nearly two-to-one, the United
States won the numbers gain in mid-1914.
In the summer
of 1915, Pershing and the First Army went on to capture Nashville but failed to
break the state in 1915. By the end of the war, the First Army was poised to
invade the Deep South. After the war, Pershing served as military governor in
the Deep South during reconstruction. There was some talk in the 1930s for
Pershing to run for office, but no political party wanted to place him on a
national ticket. Before the Great War, he was known as Black Jack Pershing.
After the Battle of the Tennessee River and its grueling body count, he was
dubbed Black Death Pershing by the press.
James Sylvester
III did not live to see the war or the consequences of his indecision in July
1914. He, along with several staff officers, were killed in Nashville during a
Union air raid. Bombers of the Great War were not the most accurate of weapons and
killed Sylvester only through dumb luck.
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