Families, and rumored plans of battle from the commanders. As the men and I marched down the dusty trail, the commander stopped us to let us know we were going to the small town of Gettysburg in Pennsylvania to intercept the confederate army. My heavy woolens and the sixty pounds of equipment made my body feel tired. This summer was especially hot. I noticed several soldiers around me were marching barefoot. There had been news from my father that literally thousands of men fell out of line and got lost while marching already.
After several hours of walking, we stopped along the dirt road to get some sleep. I lied down with the thousands of other men like me. The only good part about sleeping outside on the earth was the fact that the clear sky showed the stars above that looked like night lights. When I peeked my head up from the wet, dewy grass, all I could see were the trees and the sleeping bodies of a thousand men. I looked over at a man next to me, a new soldier. I could hear him quietly crying. He was young, about my age. All of the new soldiers around me weren't sleeping. The hard, cold ground was completely different from my bed at home. I wondered how Samuel was doing.
Several hours later, it was morning. I got up from the cold, hard ground in which nobody had slept. We were only about two hours away from Gettysburg, according to the same men I was listening to earlier. We began marching as soon as we woke up, leaving without having any food or water. I was starving and thirsty. I began to count the number of times I picked up my feet to march to pass the time, and I counted over a million by the time we got to Gettysburg. As we kept marching along, all of a sudden I saw men in gray uniforms, the uniforms of confederate men. We had finally reached the confederate army. They stood in rows. They were a big group of fighting men, probably well trained, unlike me. The only training I had was when I asked a soldier last night to teach me how to use a gun.
Commander Meade rode his horse over to the famous General Robert E. Lee, the general my dad always told me about. I watched commander Meade discuss with the confederate army. Meade thought it was a perfect place to battle with the large rebel army standing right in front of us. Meade walked back to his fellow commanders. That was when, all of the Potomac army soldiers around me turned their muskets towards the confederate army, as if planned. I started to panic, not knowing what to do. I had absolutely no training. The soldier next to me that had helped me learn how to use a gun earlier began to frantically set the gun against my shoulder, so it would be ready for me to shoot. Commander Meade yelled for us to charge, and the first shot of gunfire went off from him. I started running towards the rebel army. As my army and my competitor charged toward each other, I could see blows of smoke rising from guns into the air.
For the first time, I shot my gun at a confederate soldier. I missed the first time, and mid-run I shot a second time. He fell to the brown earth, knees first. I had never even been fight with a man back home. I kept running. I hit my rifle across any confederate soldier that got in my way. Instead of running towards confederate soldiers to fight, I was running across the field to escape. Many other new recruits were running towards the woods. They were being shot by soldiers from their own army, as they were labeled as deserters.
As I ran across the field, I felt a pain at my leg. I fell to the ground, holding it. As the battlefield around me went dark, I saw a familiar union soldier pick me up. "You're really brave to run into the battlefield with that much courage and strength for a recruit, but try to be smarter about it next time."
After that, I must've blacked out. That's how I also must have ended up in the medical tent with an injured leg. The bullet was out of my wounded leg, but I was still hurt. I still wasn't sure who helped me off of the battlefield. They saved my life. Jacob looked at me, as if he expected a more heroic story out of me. There really wasn't. As cowardly as it sounds, at least I thought I wasn't dead. I looked at the ceiling of the hospital tent, and wondered to myself if Samuel was still alive and well. All of a sudden, I watched a man that looked like him walk into the hospital tent. Samuel picked me up and walked me out of the medical tent, as I laid in his arms. Never again could I run away from fear.