The Battle of Shiloh, when the Injured Soldiers Glowed

It is early 1862, and Ulysses S Grant has just won two major battles. Fighting tooth and nail in Tennessee as he forced his way south in an effort to splinter the Confederacy and cut off vital supply lines, the victories were the largest the Union had achieved at the time, and earned Grant a promotion to Major General.

But now, things are grim. Although the battles have forced the Confederate Army to abandon Kentucky, this has allowed them to consolidate their forces further to the south. The Union army, by contrast, is exhausted and still separated from reinforcements. The Confederate leaders knew they had to act decisively, and act they did.

Before Grant could join with his reinforcements and continue to push southwards, carving the Confederacy into two, the Confederate army launched a surprise attack on April 5. Their plan, to force Grant and his Union forces into the swamps at their back, and defeat the Union incursion.

This conflict became known as the Battle of Shiloh, named for the rough wooden church near the heart of the fighting. “Shiloh” is an odd name for a church, a Hebrew word meaning “place of peace” and hardly a fitting title for the hard fought victory the Union won here.

But this is not a story of the conflict. Instead, this battle is remarkable for another reason. As the dead and dying from both sides lay on the battlefield in the aftermath, something strange was seen, something which lacked any satisfactory explanation for almost 150 years.

The wounds of some of the soldiers were glowing.

Many Theories, Few Explanations  

Losses were heavy on both sides after the battle, and there were many injuries. Emanating from many of these grievous wounds was something never before seen: a glow which allowed the soldiers to be easily found in the dark, and which the amazed survivors termed the “Angels’ Glow”.

This was not some tall tale of history, this was a reality of the aftermath verified by everyone at the scene. And the strange glow was not the only thing that was unusual about the wounded of Shiloh. It was observed that those among the injured with glowing wounds were more likely to survive their injuries.

Battlefield surgeons and orderlies noted in the days following the battle that the injuries which glowed this eerie bluish green were less likely to become infected. It seemed that the glowing wounds healed faster and gave those soldiers a better chance at life.

Over the following 150 years no adequate explanation was offered as to the cause of the glow, or the reason for the protection offered by this strange phenomenon. Many Union soldiers attributed it to divine providence, seeing in the protection it offered them a hope for their cause: were the angels truly on their side.

For these glowing wounds certainly benefitted the Union casualties more than the Confederacy. The Union victory at the Battle of Shiloh was hard won indeed, and estimates put the Union wounded at some 8,000. Confederate casualties were similarly high, but the Confederate army was not nearly as overextended as Grant’s force.

It is possible the high number of wounded on both sides was a factor in the observation: with so many injured soldiers the glow around some of the wounds would have been more likely to attract attention. The glowing wounds may have been missed at a smaller or less destructive conflict, with fewer casualties.

The mystery of the glowing wounds would only be solved as late as 2001, and then only in theory. A high school student named Bill Martin, touring the battlefield, came across the strange story and decided to investigate further.

Bill enlisted the help of his mom, a microbiologist. For Bill, you seem had a theory. He thought the glow might have come from a very particular bacterium, known as Photorhabdus luminescens. 

This bacterium, as its name suggests, luminesces: it glows. It is also known to be found in nematodes, microscopic worms found in soil. The nematodes have a symbiotic relationship with the bacteria: the worm infects insects attracted by the light, and then introduces the bacteria into the blood of the insects: both bacterium and worm feast.

This would explain much. The glowing bacteria not only kill the host insect which the worm has infected, but all other competition, including other toxic bacteria. This would explain why the glowing wounds of the soldiers were more resistant to infection, as they were effectively being sterilized of other harmful bacteria.

Had the worms infested these wounds? Bill set to work to figure out if the soil present at the Battle of Shiloh could have contained such worms, and if the worms in turn could have introduced to the injuries of the soldiers as they lay dying on the battlefield.

Why then do all such wounds not glow? Several other factors must have come into play for this hypothesis to be true. For a start, nematode worms do not ordinarily infest human hosts, driven off in part by the higher temperatures of the human body.

The injured soldiers lying on the battlefield in the cold April night would have had a lower body temperature than healthy individuals, potentially allowing the worms to overcome this barrier. Similarly the soldiers’ own immune systems would have been hard pressed under such circumstances, failing to fight off the bacteria which passed from the soil into their bodies.

It is certainly a possibility, but it is sadly one impossible to prove. But it seems that this explanation is entirely plausible as the source of the Angels’ Glow. Not divine intervention after all, but a glowing bacteria and its host worm feeding on the wounded soldiers at the Battle of Shiloh.

Top Image: The wounds of many of the fallen soldiers were seen to be glowing after the battle, and those with glowing wounds seemed more likely to survive (Thure de Thulstrup / Public Domain)