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they were “rough and ragged men with no vestige of a uniform.” During the night, while Neve lay shivering on the ground listening to every rustle and snap, Thompson rolled bandages for the Sisters of Mercy. He had not expected so much noise or, perhaps, so much blood. “This is war with a vengeance,” he wrote.27 The men had seemed universally brave and determined. Robert Neve could have enlightened him that nothing was ever uniform in battle: “I noticed in this fight that several officers and men got sheltered behind the trees, and kept waving their hats and cheering men up to a great degree, not even caring about firing a shot at the enemy.”28

After breakfast on November 24, Thompson returned to Fort Wood to watch the second day of the Battle of Chattanooga. Bragg had managed to recall one of the two divisions sent to Knoxville—General Patrick Cleburne’s—and had placed it at the far end of Missionary Ridge to shore up his right. Grant’s overall plan for the day was simple: to capture the extreme ends of Bragg’s position and then take the middle. “Fighting Joe” Hooker’s day had come.

I began to think nothing was doing [wrote Thompson] when at about midday, when I was dividing my lunch with one of the gunners on the fort, heavy reports of cannon and musketry from Lookout Valley made all of us hurry to that side of Fort Wood. I joined two officers looking through telescopes towards Lookout Mountain and we soon saw Hooker attacking, his men plainly visible to us sweeping round the steep face of Lookout.

Close by me was General Grant in a black surtout with black braid on and quite loose, black trousers and a black wideawake hat and thin Wellington boots. He looked clean and gentlemanly but not military having a Stoop and a full reddish beard, the moustache much lighter than the ends which were trained to a peak.

We saw Hooker’s men fall back once—then they advanced again. After some little suspense we saw the Rebels run round the face of Lookout near the top and Hooker’s line advance after them, rifles popping all along the face of the mountain and guns shelling the retreating Rebels from Moccasin Point and Fort Negley. An officer beside me with a telescope cried out: “There they are and the Rebels are running.” His glass was pointed to the steep face of Lookout more than half way up—and there sure enough, just three miles from us along the sparsely wooded face of the mountain, we saw a running fight with the Rebels retreating before Hooker’s men.

When Hooker’s men planted that large U.S. flag near the top of the mountain, the whole of the troops, and the people in and around Chattanooga, who must number some 60,000 at least, seemed to hurrah together.

The only man who seemed unmoved was General Grant himself, the prime author of all this hurly burly. There he stood in his plain citizen’s clothes looking through his double field-glasses apparently totally unmoved. I stood within a few feet of him and I could hardly believe that here was this famous commander, the model, as it seemed to me, of a modest and homely but efficient Yankee general. I stood next to General Grant for quite some time. If the battle had been a pageant got up for my benefit I could not have had it better.29

Map.18 Chattanooga, November 24–25, 1863

Click here to view a larger image.

Thompson had witnessed the “Battle Above the Clouds,” so called because a light fog had formed on parts of the mountain during the fight, obscuring the valley below. Hooker’s victory had been achieved with surprisingly little cost; his casualties, including those missing and captured, were fewer than two thousand. The following day, the twenty-fifth, was supposed to be Sherman’s turn for glory. Grant expected his man, who had served him so well at Vicksburg, to complete the rout and drive the Confederates off Missionary Ridge. But Sherman’s adversary was General Patrick Cleburne, a former corporal in the 41st (Welsh) Regiment of Foot, who was the best commander in the Army of Tennessee. Cleburne’s new British volunteer aide-de-camp, Captain Charles H. Byrne,