From the moment Johnston reached his field he began to quarrel with his generals and complain to the Government at Richmond. He made no serious effort to unite his forces for the defense of Vicksburg and continuously wrote and telegraphed to the War Department that his authority was inadequate to really command so extended a territory. He made no effort to throw the twenty-four thousand men he commanded into a juncture with Pemberton who was struggling valiantly against Grant's fifty thousand closing in on the doomed city. On May eighteenth, Johnston sent a courier to Pemberton and advised him to evacuate Vicksburg without a fight! Pemberton held a council of war and refused to give up the Mississippi River without a struggle. Johnston sat down in his tent and left him to his fate. Grant closed in on Vicksburg and the struggle began. Pemberton could not believe that Johnston would not march to his relief. Women and children stood by their homes amid the roar of guns and the bursting of shells. Caves were dug in the hills and they took refuge under the ground. A shell burst before a group of children hurrying from their homes to the hills. The dirt thrown up from the explosion knocked three little fellows down, but luckily no bones were broken. They jumped up, brushed their clothes, wiped the dirt from their eyes, and hurried on without a whimper. When the dark days of starvation came, the women nursed the sick and wounded, lived on mule and horse meat and parched corn. Johnston continued to send telegrams to the War Department saying he needed more troops and didn't know where to get them. Yet he was in absolute command of all the troops in his department and could order them to march at a moment's notice in any direction he wished. He hesitated and continued to send telegrams and write letters for more explicit instructions. He got them finally in a direct peremptory order from the War Department. On June fifteenth, he telegraphed his Government: "I consider saving Vicksburg hopeless." Davis ordered his Secretary of War to reply immediately in unmistakable language: "Your telegram grieves and alarms us, Vicksburg must not be lost without a struggle. The interest and honor of the Confederacy forbid it. I rely on you to avert this loss. If better resource does not offer you must hazard attack. It may be made in concert with the garrison, if practicable, but otherwise without. By day or night as you think best." The Secretary of War, brooding in anxiety over the possibility of Johnston's timidity in the crisis, again telegraphed him six days later: