The Face of Heaven (42 page)
Read The Face of Heaven Online
Authors: Murray Pura
Tags: #Amish & Mennonite, #Christian, #Historical, #Fiction
“How is it?” he asked.
“Worse than getting kicked by a mule. Coulter, Memphis.”
“King, Elizabethtown, not so many miles east of here. Can you walk?”
“If I had a crutch.”
“There’s an Enfield lying here.”
“That’ll do.”
Nathaniel helped him up and put the stock of the Confederate musket under his arm. The officer limped forward, stopped and leaned on the gun, panting. Nathaniel glanced past him. All along Willoughby Run soldiers from Alabama and Tennessee were surrendering by the hundreds. The run was littered with muskets the Southerners had dropped. He saw a Rebel general being led away and heard a captain from another Indiana company say it was General James Archer
himself. Soon his Amish platoon was back with several dozen more prisoners.
“You and you!” Hanson pointed to Ham and Joshua. “Take those Confederates back behind McPherson’s Ridge and turn them over to the 9th New York Cavalry. The officer with the Enfield crutch—I need you to go with them and get some medical attention.” He noticed Levi. “Have an argument with Tennessee, Sergeant?”
“It may have been Alabama, sir.”
“Pick up a musket and give King and Yoder a hand. While you’re at it drop in on the Lutheran Theological Seminary.”
“Do you think I need a sermon, Captain?”
“No doubt you do. There’s sin in us all. I was thinking of your body, though, and not your soul. The surgeons are set up there, I’ve been told. Get your head looked into. I’ll need you back here for the next round.”
“What next round?”
Hanson took off his hat and wiped his forehead with his sleeve. “We took the first. Our Southern cousins will come at us again to try to take the second. Go. They’ll not give us all day before they launch another assault.”
Nip brought a rag dipped in creek water and gave it to Levi to wipe the left side of his face. When he was done Levi got slowly to his feet and almost pitched forward into the stream. Nip looked up at Hanson who nodded. He joined Joshua as they escorted the platoon’s prisoners and the officer named Coulter with his musket crutch. Nip stayed close to Levi’s side.
“Levi,” Nathaniel said as they left. “If Lyndy happens to be at the Seminary—”
“I know,” replied Levi as he trudged unsteadily up the ridge. “You’re madly in love with her.”
“That’s a mild way of putting it, Sergeant.”
Levi glanced back and managed a smile. “I’ll try to think of something stronger, Lieutenant.”
July 1, 1863
Lutheran Theological Seminary
2:00 p.m.
Nathaniel:
I believe the two armies tripped over one another. Nevertheless this is how Providence has arranged matters. From what I can see from the Seminary cupola the Confederates are not withdrawing from Gettysburg. Indeed they are adding to their numbers by the hour. I estimate they have 15,000 in the field at the present time. Your strength at Willoughby Run and Edward McPherson’s Ridge does not exceed 2000. Of course other elements of the First Corps are on the field as well as the Eleventh Corps but the Rebels are adding to their force and the Union is not. Before long
they shall outnumber you far more than they do now. Moreover the Confederates appear to be aligning their regiments so as to advance the bulk of them against your position. You may be the Iron Brigade but I do not see how it is possible for you to do anything but break and run in the face of the onslaught the Rebels are preparing for you.
Yet here is the rub: If you break and run pellmell for the rear, the battle is lost. Meade has not arrived. The Army of the Potomac is not yet in Gettysburg but by the trickle. From conversations with the townspeople I calculate Buford and his cavalry held on for about five hours until the 2nd Wisconsin and the rest of the Iron Brigade came to the rescue. You would need to hold Lee’s forces at bay for longer than that in order for the main army to even begin to arrive and take control of the high ground behind us that commands this area—Cemetery Ridge, Cemetery Hill, Culp’s Hill, Round Top, and Little Round Top. If the Army of Northern Virginia overwhelms you and gains that high ground instead of us it will be another Fredericksburg. Yet, in all honesty, I do not foresee any other outcome but another Rebel victory. If that is the case I believe the peace movement in Washington will hold sway and Lincoln will be forced to negotiate a peace
treaty with the Confederate States of America on Confederate terms.
General Doubleday has replaced the fallen Reynolds. No doubt he and Howard of the Eleventh Corps have surmised all I have related to you and will tell you to make a stand despite the odds against you. I suppose that is the soldier’s lot. I have no doubt in my mind but that you and your regiment and the entire brigade will fight bravely and distinguish yourselves. Your enemy already holds you in the highest regard. Perhaps God has a miracle waiting in the wings. I do not know but that your brigade and the scattered units of the First and Eleventh Corps may be that miracle. Regardless of the outcome I pray you may come through this ordeal alive, my friend
.
Hiram
Nathaniel handed the letter back to Levi. “Get it to Hanson. He can show it to Williams and Long Sol Meredith.”
“I’m sure they are well aware of the pickle we’re in.”
“Give it to Hanson anyway.”
“All right.”
Nathaniel watched him walk away. A white bandage was a tight strip around his head. The sun vanished in a cloud and he saw the men of his company in shadows. Rain fell for a few minutes. The cloud moved on and the sun returned more fiercely than before. Plesko and Groom and Jones were laughing about something and clinking their tin cups together. They each drank as quickly as they could, eyes on one another, burst out laughing again, and sprayed Hanson’s coffee over
their uniforms and the grass. Nathaniel smiled and opened the second note Levi had brought back from the seminary.
Love,
I stand in the Seminary cupola when there is a pause in the surgery and I look where Hiram points and I use his brass spotting scope. But I can’t see the field of gray uniforms he insists is there. I see you. I am certain of it. Who else has so glossy a black? Who else sits so erect in the saddle? Who else still has an intact ostrich feather in his hat? I love you, my dear Nathaniel. Come what may you can rely on that and on the love and power of God. My prayers for you and your men are unceasing. Psalm 91:15.
With all my heart,
Your Lyndel
Nathaniel brought his Bible out of a pocket, turned easily to Psalm 91, which he had read so many times, and found the verse.
He shall call upon me, and I will answer him: I will be with him in trouble; I will deliver him, and honour him.
He was reading it a second time when Colonel Williams rode down to Willoughby Run where the 19th was positioned. Several of the company captains and lieutenants were with him, including Hanson and Nicolson.
“Men!” Williams stood up in his stirrups. “Men of Indiana! General Doubleday has expressed his expectation to Long Sol that the Iron Brigade will hold the woods at all hazards! You see the force the Rebels are massing against you minute by minute! The 24th Michigan is arrayed on your right and will face the same fury from the enemy as you! Long
Sol and I and the 24th’s commander, Colonel Henry Morrow, have requested repeatedly that our regiments be permitted to leave this slope and Willoughby Run and move back onto the top of McPherson’s Ridge! There we would build a fortified position that would require the enemy to make an uphill assault in the face of almost a thousand muskets! But General Doubleday considers the woods below the crest of McPherson’s Ridge the critical point in his line! There are no more appeals to be made! The army is counting on us! The nation is counting on us! This is the hardest fight you have ever been asked to make for our state and for our Republic!” The color guard was standing beside him. He reached down and seized the American flag. “Boys! We must hold our colors on this line or lie here under them!”
He galloped away. Nathaniel looked out across Willoughby Run from the slope that rose from the shallow creek. The Rebel formations Hiram could see much more clearly were continuing to form and extended far past the 19th’s left flank. They even extended past the flanks of the three regiments from Colonel Biddle’s brigade that had been sent to strengthen the left wing of the Army of the Potomac. Thousands upon thousands of men were being mustered against them on the farm fields below. It was as if the Rebels knew the time was ripe to take not only the McPherson high ground by storm but all the rest of the Gettysburg high ground beyond it.
Nathaniel began to walk up and down his company’s line holding Libby’s reins. Was anyone hungry? Were their canteens full? Did they have plenty of cartridges handy? Plesko? Conkle? Sala? Nip? Everything all right?
Nip was lying on his back looking at clouds. “My uniform is bulging with cartridges. It was hard running through crops and slipping over rail fences with a hundred pounds of lead in each pocket. But now I guess I’m ready for the whole Rebel army.”
“There’s four of them for every one of us it seems like,” said Joshua. “You think you have enough for all that?”
“Enough and to spare for a deer hunt.”
“Deer hunt!” Hanson came by on his horse. “I expect all the deer left for Indiana hours ago, Private.”
“There may still be a few brave ones, sir.”
“Here they come!” Williams hollered. “Fall in!”
Nathaniel saw two lines heading toward them and upward of two thousand troops converging on their left flank. All the Rebels were moving fast. He took out his pocket watch. It was three o’clock. The thought passed through his mind that he had not even been awake twelve hours, yet everything about his world had changed drastically.
“Aim low.” It was Nicolson. He had dismounted. “Hit them hard. Don’t waste ammo, we don’t have any to spare. If your gun fouls, use a tree trunk or a rock to slam your ramrod home. Or pick up another musket. You know what to do.”
Clouds gathered again and a shadow ran over the approaching Confederates like the palm of a hand. The sun returned in a rush. Nathaniel held a pistol in one hand and his sword in the other along with Libby’s reins and felt annoyed. Why weren’t officers issued muskets? What good was a revolver or a sword when the enemy was a hundred yards away?
“Easy, boys, easy.” It was Williams. “Remember the stories they told you when you were ten about the Revolution and Bunker Hill. Don’t fire until you see the whites of their eyes. Let them get right up to us, right up to the run. Then cut loose. On my command.”
The first Rebel line came charging up to the creek bed. Williams gave a shout and hundreds of Springfields blazed yellow fire and white smoke. The Rebel line collapsed as if knocked down by a huge fist. The Indiana men kept up their fire and every Rebel officer or soldier who tried to make it across the creek was shot down. The Rebels pulled back and settled into a killing fight with the Union troops.
A shower came and went and the hot musket barrels on both sides of the run evaporated the raindrops instantly with a hiss. All the men in Nathaniel’s Amish platoon were firing as fast as they could tear open cartridges and shove the bullets home. A ball clipped Nathaniel’s ear and he could feel the warm blood trickle under the collar of his uniform. Groom was hit and knocked on his back, got up and was hit
again, returned to a kneeling position and was slammed onto his back a third time. Nathaniel ran to him. Groom’s whole chest was blood.
“Didn’t have enough coffee.” Groom smiled, blood on his lips. “Shouldn’t have spilled any.”
“We’ll get you to the surgery at the Seminary.”
“Lieutenant. I have no intention of leaving the best friends I’ve ever had right when they need me the most. Grooms don’t lose a fight—remember I told you that when I was a recruit at Antietam? Help me get on my belly. I guess I can reload my musket and get a few more shots away.”
