Gettysburg

By Badger

Author's Note: You cannot go to Gettysburg without being touched by it, by knowing what happened there and contemplating it; by learning of the courage and the sacrifice and the terrible toll. Posted as we prepare to mark the 150th anniversary of this immense and tragic battle.

Thanks to Hired Hand for her always excellent beta.

(Warning: there may be troubling images here for the faint of heart)

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"In great deeds something abides. On great fields something stays. Forms change and pass; bodies disappear, but spirits linger, to consecrate ground for the vision-place of souls. And reverent men and women from afar, and generations that know us not and that we know not of, heart-drawn to see where and by whom great things were suffered and done for them, shall come to this deathless field to ponder and dream; And lo! the shadow of a mighty presence shall wrap them in its bosom, and the power of the vision pass into their souls."

-Joshua Lawrence Chamberlain (who earned the Medal of Honor as Colonel of the 20th Maine, fighting at Gettysburg's Little Round Top) speaking at the dedication of the Monument to the 20th Maine; October 3, 1889, Gettysburg, PA

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It amazed him how quiet so many thousands of men could be. After hours spent listening to the thundering roar of hundreds of cannon, the ensuing silence was a weight unto itself.

And at long last the delay was finally over.

With the stillness now echoing in their ears, the men climbed to their feet, gathered their things, and moved into position. Few words were said; few were needed. They knew what awaited them and what they had to do; they were veterans and had been in battles, large and small, before.

He was just one of those thousands of men, unremarkable in appearance, standing just under six feet tall, compact of build, with unruly dark hair and deep blue eyes. The July sun beat down on him, the heat oppressive. Sweat ran down his face and trickled down his back, dampened his hair and soaked through his threadbare shirt. He wiped his face and wished desperately for another drink of water, but his canteen was already half empty and the day's work not yet begun. Best save it, he reckoned.

He'd never been so far north in his whole life, and had never imagined that Pennsylvania could be as hot as Dixie.

He checked that his cartridge box was secure and within easy reach, then straightened the blanket tied around his shoulders as his company commander called the men together. They had been waiting in a farm field just below the ridge crest and behind the trees that formed a narrow patch of woods. Moving forward into the cool shade of the forest was a welcome relief, but the men didn't get to stay there long. Instead they were ordered through the trees and out of the woods, marching back into the open where the searing mid-afternoon sun was hot as an oven.

More waiting then, which the man had learned these past months was what being in the army was mostly about: marching somewhere in a big hurry and then standing around and waiting, marching some more and waiting some more.

Men spoke in hushed whispers, if they spoke at all. The dark haired man reckoned their throats were as dry as his own, and not just because of the heat.

Far across the rolling farm fields, near three-quarters of a mile away he judged, the blue smudge of the enemy stood arrayed along another ridgeline. They were waiting, too.

He looked to his right and, jaded as he was, what he beheld was a grand and glorious sight, the likes of which none of those gathered had ever seen before, even those like him who'd already fought many a battle. Thousands of men stood in a long and ragged line, reaching as far as the eye could see to the south, sunlight glinting off the muskets resting on their shoulders, barrels pointing up toward the sky. Clad in threadbare butternut and grey, some without shoes, and yet, every one of the men was filled with pride and heart and the will to fight.

Flags waved brightly in the breeze and officers rode back and forth in front of the ranks.

Someone should'a been there to paint a picture of this, he thought.

A commotion started far off along the line. He squinted and in the distance, he spotted General Lee riding among the men. It was easy to follow the general's progress; everywhere he went the soldiers broke ranks and gathered around him, waving their hats and wanting to get close to him. He'd seen Lee up close yesterday, riding his grey horse along the edge of the camp, his face all stern and solemn and determined. He didn't know what it was about the general, but he knew, every one of the men in that army would follow Lee to hell and back, if that's what he ordered. The general had led them to victory after victory, and the sight of him now reminded the man that no damn Yankees could defeat this army, not with the old man leading. The South might be outnumbered and outgunned by the bluebellies, but these men had been that before, and won.

And, he believed, they would win again.

Bugles blew, drumbeats rolled, and he saw General Pickett waving his sword. He thought he heard Pickett shout something, but the general was too far away for him to understand the words. The line surged forward then, marching steadily out into the open while the drummers set the cadence. The land stretched away in front of him; with his comrades he crossed a field thick with golden wheat, knee high and heavy with grain, before the ground dropped away into a shallow dip. That fold of land would hide them from the enemy guns for the first few hundred yards, before the land slowly rose again to the next ridge, exposing them to enemy fire. Farther out, a line of split rail fence ran across their path and he heard someone say that it marked the Emmittsburg Road.

He didn't know where Emmittsburg was, and he didn't rightly care.

What mattered was that out there, beyond that road, waited the enemy.

He marched forward into air so still it was like the very earth held its breath in expectation.

Farther down along the line, he could see an officer walking in front of his men across the field, General Armistead he heard someone say, his hat perched on the end of his sword held high in the air like a banner for his men. But there was no more time to watch; the dark-haired man's unit regrouped in a sheltering fold of land, then stepped out into the open, ordered doublequick now, and like the others around him the Rebel yell erupted from his throat as he charged.

Charged into the federal guns.

Charged into death.

Not that he wasn't afraid, because he was; it wouldn't be human not to know fear. What he did, he knew it made no sense at all, knew it was something no man should do, but something a man had to do, and he did, all of them did, and he couldn't explain why. It was like a fever, rising up and carrying him with it.

It was bedlam.

Cannons roared. Shells screamed overhead, whistling through the air like banshees, drowning out the men's shouts.

Shells and shot tore into the ranks, tore men apart. He saw them fall, heard some scream, some blown to pieces so quick they never uttered a sound, just one moment they were there and the next they were gone. But he kept moving forward, his blood pounding in his ears, everything happening in slow motion, each moment stretched out and distinct. He didn't think of the danger of what he did nor of the insanity of it; he thought of nothing but reaching and breaking through that blue line. He stepped over bodies without looking down at them; didn't look because he didn't want to see who it might be; didn't let himself think what was happening to the men around him because no man could watch his friends die and go on.

But he did.

He ran on.

The sounds of battle were so loud a man could hardly hear himself think. The deafening roar of cannon fire was followed by volley after volley of gunfire; it was like thunder rolling amid the shouting of officers. Over it all soared the keening of the Rebel battle cry, propelling him forward into the swirling smoke.

He was nearly to the split rail fence that marked the road; the enemy waited only yards away. He could see their faces now, the wildness in their eyes, and he knew that his own looked the same.

So close now, so close, they were going to make it, he thought for one glorious moment; they were going to cross the road and smash through that line and drive the bluebellies back. They'd win the day because they were Robert E. Lee's men, by god, and they wouldn't, couldn't fail him.

Scrambling over the fence, one minute he was striding forward and the next, he was suddenly down on the ground with no idea of how he'd gotten there, like he'd been knocked flat by an invisible fist. Even without looking, he knew what had happened; he could feel the warm blood flowing in a steady stream from beneath his shirt, like water running downhill. He reached under the grey cloth and when he pulled his hand out, it was covered with it, thick and warm and wet.

An odd, muffled quiet came over him then, as if the battle was suddenly far away, and all he could hear was the nearby sound of men moaning, some crying out for water, some crying out for help, and one man crying for his mother.

He was dying. He didn't know how he knew, but he did. Strangely, he realized it didn't bother him none, pondering it as he lay there. It didn't hurt, neither, not much anyway, just, it was hard to get enough air, like a heavy weight lay on his chest. Knowing his time was short, with fumbling fingers he reached into his pocket for the letter he kept there. He'd had J.D. Harknett write it for him; Harknett was in his unit and he'd been a schoolteacher before the war. He'd written lots of letters for lots of the boys.

He clutched the paper in his hand, holding on tight while his life drained away like water spilling slowly from a bucket. Maybe somebody would find his letter and send it on home to his folks. He hoped so, so that they would know what became of him and where his body lay. See, he'd joined up under a name that wasn't his own, knowing the law was after him, a Texas boy in a Tennessee unit with a name that was not his own. It was a sorry way to end his life, he thought; his Ma always feared he'd come to a bad end and he had proved her right in so many ways.

Idly, he wondered how the battle was going and who was winning but in an oddly detached sort of way, and his thoughts kept drifting like smoke across a battlefield, blown by the wind here and there, in circles and eddies that went nowhere until they slowly faded away.

After a while he started to feel cold, real cold like it was a raw day in the worst of winter, and weary in a way he never had before, and he knew the end was close. He stared up into the blue of the sky, and it was the prettiest, most perfect blue he'd ever seen. He thought of his home back in the panhandle country of Texas, the home and family he'd been so eager to get so far away from. It was so long since he'd seen them last, seven years it must be, no, eight it was; his Ma and his Pa and his sister Francie and his little brother Jess, Jess who would be a man-grown by now. He hoped the boy wasn't caught up in this war, too. And Johnny, just a little fellah in short pants when he'd left, he'd be near to growed by now, too.

He wished he'd gone back before the war, just once, to see them, and to tell them… and to tell them… to tell… to… tell… to….

The light faded, and then, suddenly, it flared up real bright like the glory of the first rays of the rising sun and he could see someone walking towards him. He squinted into the brightness, surprised. "Ma? Is that you? Ma? Aw, Ma…."

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The Confederate casualties from what would become known as Pickett's Charge littered the farm fields south of the small town of Gettysburg, Pennsylvania. There was no one to help the dying, much less bury the dead. Bodies lay in the sun, exposed to the summer heat and, a day later, to the rain.

It was four days before the farmer, overwhelmed by the devastation to his property, dragged the last of the bloated remains into a mass grave and unceremoniously shoveled dirt over them. He was far too weary of the horrid task to try to find out who they were, and why risk the accusation of robbing the dead by checking pockets? He couldn't miss, though, that this one clutched a letter in his hand, the writing smudged to illegibility by the blood and the rain that had soaked the paper. The exhausted farmer had no time and no energy to think of this thing he put into the ground as someone's husband or son or brother, only a body that needed to go into the earth.

Like so many others, no one, not even the remnants of his family, would ever know where Private James Harris, real name Joshua Harper, died and was laid to rest in the hallowed ground of Gettysburg.

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