Sent Into Hell

Part 2

After days of believing that nothing could get worse, it suddenly did. “Grab the tent!” Morgan yelled. The maniacal wind, whipped his words across the bull-pen but it mattered not, his men were already securing the campaign-worn canvas. They stuffed their few possessions into the knapsack, and hunched over, backs to the storm.

Clouds darkened the day and released a torrent of rain, saved since Noah’s day, to wash over them. The normally sluggish stream swelled into a roiling river of sand, vermin and excrement. Part of the compound wall was undercut. Eighteen-foot long walls, suddenly free, swept away exposing the outside world to the prisoners. Confederate guards, carrying rifles fitted with bayonets, plugged the breach. Cannoneers, stationed at the corners of the prison, positioned their weapons to fire down on the thirty thousand defenseless prisoners. Periodic lightning flashes illuminated the fearful dangers poised to prevent escape. Massed cannon fire would quickly solve the problem of over-crowding.

Lightning and thunder imitated cannon fire. Fearful Yankee prisoners of war loosed a chorus of pleas: “Don’t shoot! For Christ’s sake, don’t shoot.”