Days Without End

The company marches through Tennessee, seeing no Confederates. Their new colonel drinks heavily, making Thomas miss Major. They are led by a man named Major Wilson. FitzGerald, who isn’t an officer, offers support and encouragement to new recruits, one of whom reminds John of Watchorn. They come across Confederate troops and battle ensues, raging past nightfall. The Confederates have greater numbers and a stronger tactical position, and the Union company is forced to surrender. The Confederate troops mass murder the Black battalion despite their surrender. The remaining soldiers are forced to march to Andersonville with little food and no medical assistance. They are taken to a main prison camp, where they are assigned a tent that is made to hold 13 men, including two Black men. One of them, Bert Calhoun, has a severely injured hand. Thomas asks why he can’t see a surgeon, and a soldier named Private Kidd warns him about asking this question; the Confederates shoot anyone who shows sympathy for an injured Black man. Bert dies, along with many others. The prisoners are given little food or clothing and the winter is long and miserable. They hope to be exchanged for Confederate prisoners, but a Confederate soldier named Lieutenant Sprague taunts them that “Mr Lincoln says he don’t want no skeletons back” (150).