BLOOD AND BLUE RIBBONS: Chp. 18

A STORY OF THE BATTLE OF GETTYSBURG

Blood and Blue Ribbons

My Memories Of Events From The Great Battle Of Gettysburg, Pennsylvania

June 30^th – July 3^rd, 1863

Abigail Daniels, Summer, 1865

A Novel

Copyright by Elyse Cregar

Thursday, July 2nd, 1863

Late Afternoon

Kit

“Mary Ellen!” I cried as I ran, breathless, into my friend’s arms. Only one day apart and I had never missed her as much as I had in these last moments of running through the woods to her home.

Old Solomon mustered a smile at our reunion. He climbed the steps of the farmhouse and shook his head at Mary Ellen’s mother as she stood at the door, her hands full of bloody rags.

“Your grandfather is terribly worried about Willie,” I offered needlessly.

“I know. He has been gone since before dawn. It is good if he hasn’t found Willie in the fields, isn’t it?” Mary Ellen asked. “That means Willie wasn’t wounded or killed yesterday?”

“I pray not.” My emotional response was limited by my exhaustion, my relief at being away from the scenes of horror I had been an intimate part of hours earlier.

“Where is Betsy?” Mary Ellen looked down the farm lane. “You didn’t walk, did you?”

“We certainly did walk. And run. The Confederates stole Betsy and the wagon.”

“Betsy! Not my mare!” Tears fell instantly on Mary Ellen’s smudged cheeks.

I took my friend’s hands and squeezed them.

“Perhaps she will return to the farm. She may even slip out of her harness and kick those awful men. You know horses will always come back to the barn for their oats.”

I mustered a smile while my own heart welled with sorrow over this new loss my friend felt.

“Oh, Mary Ellen! I have so much to tell you!” I cried, impatient to relate my news and to hear of the events at the farm.

“And I have so much to tell you as well!” Mary Ellen said as she wiped her eyes. She turned toward the west and held her ears. “But who can hear anything with this commotion?”

Mary Ellen pointed to the remnants of a parade of soldiers on the Baltimore Pike.

“Did you ever see so many men in one place? I have been handing out water to them all afternoon. They are the Union Sixth Corps. Fifteen thousand men have been running through the night for thirty-six miles to get here from Manchester, Maryland. I even got to meet General John Sedgwick, himself. He is wonderful, so proud and noble. His men call him ‘Uncle John’.”

“Yes,” I nodded eagerly. “We saw them, too. Your grandfather and I had to keep to the side of the road to get here. The supply wagons that followed all those troops must have been miles long and some got stuck in the mud. It took us all afternoon to get here, but at least we felt safe with all those blue coats around us!”

“Safe, huh!” Mary Ellen snorted. “I don’t think any of us is safe anymore!”

“My ears hurt,” I complained. “The cannons and gunfire from south of town have grown worse since we left Gettysburg. Oh, I am so thirsty! I can’t say another word without a drink of water.”

“Our well and spring are still working, but, goodness, we have used a great deal of water. Our barn is overflowing with wounded, and the house as well. There are army nurses helping in the barn. Look!”

She turned me toward the white stone barn built into a hill a hundred yards behind the house. Screams drifted through the narrow windows in the granite wall. Flashes of light lit up the sky behind the barn. My eyes widened. Like a scene from the Inferno, arms and legs were piling up in the shade of the barn. Even as I watched, more limbs were trundled out in a wheelbarrow and dumped on the pile as it grew toward the second level of the great stone building.

“Come inside the house.” Mary Ellen took my hand. “It only gets worse. We must get to work. Ma’s been helping the nurses most of the afternoon.”

The familiar sights of the Miller vegetable patch and barnyard were nearly gone. Instead, much of the lane had been trampled by the wheels of ambulance wagons. Some were parked by the barn. One was turning around after discharging its load of wounded, no doubt returning to the battlefield. Piles of hay stacks looked like they had been thrown from the upper floor of the barn, scattered helter-skelter.

I caught my breath as I entered the familiar home. Bodies covered nearly every square inch of the floorboards. On the wide dining room table, four soldiers moved their bloody limbs about like grotesque marionettes. I looked up as if to see the puppeteer dangling his strings from the chandelier. Two days earlier I had shared a sumptuous feast on this very table with the Millers. With Willie.

“Hello, Abigail,” Mrs. Miller said. “When you’ve rested you can help Mary Ellen and me. I’m afraid there will be no time for a social call.”

Sarah Miller’s capable hands were full of clean rolls of muslin bandages, her light blue dress was matted with blood. Her black hair hung loosely around her shoulders, the netting she always used dangled from the left side of her face.

Mary Ellen reached over and pulled the netting away. “Ma, sit down for a minute. Let me fix your hair.”

She gently pushed her mother into a chair.

“There’s water in the kitchen. Help yourself, Abigail,” Mrs. Miller said. “You might even find a bit of bread.”

I walked carefully among the bodies.

More men were in the kitchen; slightly wounded, they carried on quiet conversations about their experiences. I wanted to hear no more of war.

I felt the soldiers’ eyes follow my movements. I dipped a tin cup into the water bucket, and twice more, wondering if my thirst could ever be quenched.

“Miss, could you bring me a cup, please?” asked one soldier who cradled the elbow of his twisted arm. I handed him a tin of water while I surveyed the others. Before I knew it, an hour had passed in which I brought water to the men in the four large rooms of the first floor. I also hauled buckets in from the well and gathered bloody used rags, dumping them outside the house to be rinsed later.

The screams continued from the upper floor. In one bedroom, a Union doctor was sawing off legs and arms as quickly as the shattered men could be placed on a makeshift table. Sarah Miller and two army nurses helped with holding the men down on the rough boards during the cutting and the bandaging of the stumps. One of the men grabbed the limbs as they were severed and threw them out the window.

“Bring that water to the men in the other bedrooms, Abigail,” Mrs. Miller directed.

In a daze, I remembered the water sloshing in the bucket I held. I was almost immune to the hacking and sawing that had become a part of my day. Screams to my right, cannon to my left, smoke from the battle even then taking place beyond the Round Tops filling my eyes and throat, the sweat pouring off my body. Finishing my latest task, I left the house to find a bit of fresh air.

Mary Ellen offered me a weak smile as she brushed past me, her hands full of wet rags.

“Tonight. We will talk tonight,” she promised.

As I made my way to the backyard well, I surveyed the kitchen gardens Sarah Miller had always tended so carefully. The day’s activity in the farmyard had brought her beans, peas, beets and corn to the brink of destruction. Dust enshrouded some of the once cheerful flowers, the rest had been trampled into the dirt. Perhaps I was dreaming, a girl of sixteen asleep in a fairy tale, yet searching the darkening woods and thorny brambles along the split-rail farmyard fence. How would my wayward prince ever find me here? Stealing a moment away from my tasks I dropped the empty buckets, sat down, and leaned against the cold stone well.

A canvas covered Union ambulance wagon rumbled past the porch on its way to the massive granite barn; the setting sun cast the barn’s monstrous shadow before me. Exploding cannons and musket fire to the west shook the earth. Even the porch steps vibrated beneath my feet.

My thoughts were interrupted when a tall, hefty young soldier in a dusty blue uniform hobbled toward me and sat down on a nearby boulder. He placed his crutch to one side. His left foot was wrapped in rags.

“Hello, Miss. I see how hard you have been working. Permission is granted to sit and rest.”

I turned to see a boyish face with rosy cheeks, curly brown hair and pale blue eyes. The reality of his kind face was a shock from the terrible images I had just witnessed in my mind.

“Thank you. I needed some fresh air,” my voice hoarse with the effort of speaking.

“My name’s Kit. That’s short for Theodore. I hate the name Theodore. What’s your name?”

“Abigail,” I replied. “Abigail Daniels. When did you change your name?”

“Oh, about the same day I joined up. I thought I would like to be a whole new person in the army. New uniform. New musket. New me. Gives me an energy for fightin’ those bloody rebels.”

I nodded as if I understood but remained silent.

Kit removed his canteen strap from his shoulder.

“You can fill your canteen at the well,” I said, pointing up to the oak bucket hanging from a rope.

“Thank you, Miss Abigail. I have been filling the canteens of my friends in the barn. There’s a heap of wounded inside. Legs, arms missing. Some layin’ dead already. I’ve been helping carry out the bodies, though it’s not easy with my crutch. See those boxes over there?”

I looked toward the barn.

“Those are coffins, Miss. We just got a whole new shipment. I hope there’s one left for me when the time comes,” he chuckled. “And I’ll need a big one, won’t I?”

I stared at the boy, amazed at his light-hearted nature.

“What happened to your foot?”

“Oh, this!” He tugged at the rag that wound around his foot and halfway up his shin. “A shell landed nearby as the rebs got closer. The shell exploded and shot some loose shrapnel into my leg and foot. My face got scratched up some.”

“Does your foot hurt now?”

“Well, the metal is still inside my leg. I can feel it cuttin’ on me when I walk.”

“Can’t a doctor here take the metal out?”

Kit reached over and put his hand on my shoulder; I welcomed the uninvited familiarity.

“Miss Abigail, I believe there are about two doctors and maybe a thousand wounded men on this farm. I do not think they will get to me for some time. Why, I was lucky to get this old foot bandaged up right away so’s I wouldn’t bleed to death.”

“I’m sorry. I didn’t know.” But my thoughts came back to the amputations taking place upstairs in the Miller house. “Maybe you are better off with the wraps,” I offered.

A long silence stretched between us.

“How do you, I mean, all of you men keep fighting? The amputations, the suffering.” There must be an answer to this agony, I thought.

Kit shrugged. “We must keep the Union in one piece, Miss Abigail. We cannot let Johnny tear the country into shreds.”

Kit again grew silent. He seemed to stare at the coffins for several moments.

“There is so much to fight for. It’s no wonder this war has been going on for two years. I’ve seen enslaved men and women for the first time in my life. Our troops have helped to free colored folks we found held within Confederate enclosures, many in chains.”

“Oh! Kit, my friends, the Freemans, were enslaved years ago.” My story tumbled out in spite of myself. “They had to leave Gettysburg in great haste yesterday so they would not be captured by the Confederates. Ma sent my little brother with them. We didn’t know what else to do to keep him safe. I worry about where he is being hidden, whether he is out of danger.” Fighting tears, I whispered, “Joe Pye is only two years old. He must be terrified!”

“Why, that’s strange, Miss Abigail.” Kit pushed himself to his feet with his crutch. He pointed to the east, across the Baltimore Pike.

“Yesterday afternoon I was up in the barn cupola observing the lay of the land. I saw a group of maybe twenty coloreds walkin’ real fast down that road. I remember thinkin’ the little children had trouble keepin’ up. Sometimes the grownups would pick up a child for a short time, then set him down again. They turned into the woods just yonder, up by where that creek crosses the road.”

“What about my brother?”

“Hmmm. A tall colored man carried two little boys. One boy, ah, seemed to me he was white with blond hair. I remember wonderin’ why them folks would be carryin’ a white boy.”

“How old? How old was the white boy?”

“Not quite old enough for soldiering, Miss Abigail. Though we do take ’em young.”

He chuckled again, until he saw the expression on my face. “I guess maybe he was a little shaver. I don’t know ages too well.”

A quiet sense of foreboding crept into my heart, placing a stone on my chest.

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Hal Jespersen volunteered his time and expertise in creating the accompanying map of Gettysburg. You may see more of Hal’s carefully drawn and extensive collection of maps at his website cwmaps.com

The FREE chapters to follow will post on my Substack Section: Blood and Blue Ribbons, generally on Saturdays and Wednesdays. This novel appears as a Section on my Substack site: MORE CATS, PLEASE!

Post for Saturday, May 10: Chapter 19

To read more about the Battle of Gettysburg, please visit my non-commercial website: Bloodandblueribbons.com . There you will find a brief history of the Maine 16th Volunteer Infantry Regiment at Gettysburg on The Stories tab.