Victor Davis Hanson has a great Lew Wallace story in his “Ripples of Battle” book.
Wallace was in charge of the Union rear guard at Shiloh and was ordered to march around in circles on the first day.
The next day he fought bravely and effectively.
Afterwards the newspapers and politicians needed a scapegoat for the Shiloh slaughter and blamed Wallace.
His promising military career was destroyed.
His orders weren’t confusing, he chose poorly as to implementing.
He was down river from the battle. near Crump’s Landing. He was ordered down a road that would have him approach the battle down the Purdy Rd, but, the Rebs had already passed it and the bridge over Owl Creek was blocked. He was ordered to come in by way of the Savannah Rd, but, instead of just telling everyone to spin around and march back the other way, he had his lead unit (now at the end of the column) march through the other troops. This took a lot of time that could have been used to have the tail end of his column appearing on the battlefield hours earlier.
He did perform well afterwards, and at the Battle of Monocacy Junction in 1864, but, his reputation as a soldier was too tarnished at this point to recover.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lew_Wallace
I recommend the chapter on Shiloh in Shelby Foote’s book. Great overview of the whole situation without too much detail.
If you are a wargamer, I recommend “Bloody April”, if you can find it. Regimental coverage of the battle. You can have Wallace ignore the countermarch and try to bust through the Owl Creek Bridge.