Last Ghost at Gettysburg

by Paul Ferrante

  “Ready to rock?” asked LouAnne after she’d poked her head inside T.J.’s guestroom door. “It’s gonna be a hot one so we’ve gotta motor.”

  “Just give me a minute. I’ll meet you downstairs,” mumbled T.J. as he shook the cobwebs from his sleepy head.

  “You won’t just roll over and go back to sleep?”

  “Don’t worry.”

  “Okay, see you in a few.” She bounded down the hallway and descended the staircase. T.J. marveled at her energy this early in the morning. Groggily, he visited the bathroom and then pulled on his track shorts, Bridgefield Middle School tee shirt, socks and New Balance 1220s. As he made his way down to the kitchen he could smell coffee brewing, which made his stomach growl. LouAnne was reading the morning paper, her long blonde hair pulled back in a ponytail. She was outfitted much as he, in a baggy tee with spandex tights underneath her track shorts.

  “Anything interesting?” he asked.

  “Maybe, but I can’t see a thing,” she laughed. “Without my contacts I’m blind as far as reading, but it’s better than those goggles I used to wear. Remember?”

  “Yeah, kinda.”

  “Dad had an early meeting this morning so he’s out of here, but Mom should have some suitable eats waiting for us when we’re done. So, Cuz, what’s the plan? You have a workout that you like to do?”

  T.J. hadn’t even read Coach Autieri’s printout yet. “I, uh—”

  “Wanna do my workout with me? It may not be as tough as yours, but at least you’ll get a feel for the roads around here.”

  “Yeah, sure,” said T.J., hoping he’d be able to keep up with her. There wasn’t one ounce of fat on his cousin’s shapely legs, and he hadn’t run in a couple weeks.

  The two of them went out into the front yard and thoroughly stretched in the shade. Even at this early hour the humidity was starting to descend on Central Pennsylvania. “Okay, Cuz, my cross country workout calls for five miles, more or less. So what we’ll do is follow Seminary Avenue to Confederate Avenue, which will wind through the battlefield, past where the old Visitor Center was, and down to the new one near the rear entrance of the cemetery. Basically, we’re going to be doing one quarter of the total battlefield area. Sound good?”

  “Sure,” he said, inwardly panicking.

  “Then let’s get after it!” She sprang from her hurdler’s stretch and sprinted off down Seminary Avenue, T.J. keeping pace. Eventually they settled into a more comfortable gait as parts of the battlefield drifted by.

  “Lots of monuments,” T.J. panted at length.

  “Oh, yeah. They’re everywhere. Mostly Union, although we’ll be passing the North Carolina and Virginia Memorials. I mean, it’s understandable that there would be more Federal monuments, since the battle was a Union victory fought in the North.”

  “It looks so...placid. Just rolling farmland, with some woods here and there.”

  “Yeah, that’s what the locals thought in 1863. They figured there was no way the war would ever touch their lives. Wrong!”

  By the time they’d gone a mile, just passing Pitzer’s Woods, T.J. felt the beginning of a stitch in his side. He loathed the idea of asking his cousin to slow down and fought to stabilize his breathing pattern. But LouAnne was on to him.

  “You okay?” she said, looking sideways.

  “Yeah, sure, but could we take it down a notch?”

  “No problem.” They slowed their pace, and soon the stitch worked itself out. “We’re now on Confederate Avenue, and we’ll be making our way towards Little Round Top. See, there were two major hills on the battlefield that were good vantage points for artillery and whatnot. The smaller one, Little Round Top, was actually the better one. Some of the heaviest fighting came when both sides were trying to take it.”

  “What’s ‘Devil’s Den’?” asked T.J., reading a marker alongside the road.

  “This big clump of prehistoric rocks that sharpshooters were occupying during the battle. There’s a little creek we’ll pass nearby called Plum Run. They say that during the battle it ran red with blood from all the guys getting shot up.”

  “Wonderful.”

  “Yeah, it’s pretty grim. Hey, y’know what you should do to get a better idea of the whole thing, stop by the Visitor Center. It was just rebuilt a couple years ago and it’s a real improvement on the old one. They have maps, displays, tons of museum cases. You might even run into my dad if he’s between tours. I’d come with you, but I babysit this little girl down the street from mid-morning to 4:00 P.M. most weekdays. One of my many jobs.”

  A few minutes later they came to an area designated “The Wheatfield.” Monuments and markers were everywhere. “Some of the heaviest fighting went on here,” LouAnne said. Then she added, “Various people have actually claimed to see ghost soldiers marching through this field.”

  “You believe in that stuff?” huffed T.J.

  “To be honest, I don’t know. See, if you buy into that paranormal stuff, you’ll believe that in places where people’s lives were ended violently and prematurely, restless spirits would remain. Well, this is a primo location for that. There’s been documentaries about it on TV, and there’s three different outfits in town that do ghost tours. You saw some of the groups last night when we were walking home, remember?”

  “Yeah.”

  “There’s another inn on the same block as mine that actually has a ‘mourning theater’ in the basement where this husband and wife team in undertaker’s outfits give presentations about all the haunted parts of town. The room’s made up to look like an 1800s funeral parlor. Mucho creepy.”

  “Wow,” T.J. replied with a wince, his side-stitch recurring.

  “Even my place of employment is said to be haunted. I think a Rebel sharpshooter was picked off up in the garret where I do my talks. Some scientific research team did a black-light analysis of this big old spot on the floorboards and said it was human blood that had soaked in and then dried out.”

  “And you’re not scared up there?”

  “Of what? It’s not like some ghost is gonna grab me or something, Cuz.” She smiled and readjusted her ponytail scrunchie without missing a step.

  “LouAnne?”

  “Yeah?”

  “Can we dial it down a bit?”

  “Sure thing.”

  They slowed to a brisk walk. “Put your hands behinds your head and take deep breaths,” she advised. “It’ll open up your airway.”

  “Don’t know what’s wrong with me,” said T.J. awkwardly.

  “No big deal. The humidity’s a killer. Plus, the terrain here slopes up and down so gradually that it deceives you.” She smiled, trying to ease his embarrassment.

  “One thing I’ve noticed,” he said, breathing more evenly now. “The monuments are all so different. Some are just etched blocks of granite, some have a plaque attached, some are bronze statues of soldiers or cavalry guys on horses, some are big Greek and Roman-looking things. How come?”

  “Depends. See, they commemorate different regiments, states, or even generals, some of whom got killed here. In the end, each particular monument’s as big as the state who built it could afford. Most went up in the late 1800s, I think.”

  “It seems like they’re everywhere.”

  “They are, just like all the cannons that were placed wherever there were artillery units. There’s a cannon or two on my block, if you noticed. I’ll tell you, though...at night, when the sun’s going down, the bronze soldiers seem almost lifelike. It’s spooky.”

  “But you’re not supposed to be in the Battlefield Park after dark, right?”

  “Technically, yeah,” she said with a wink. “But that doesn’t mean I’ve never gone for an evening jog. It helps if your dad’s a ranger. You feeling any better?”

  “I think so.”

  “Okay. We’ve just passed the Peach Orchard. Tell you what. There’s a little over a mile from here to the Visitor Center. Let’s make that our goal, and hopefully Dad’ll be around to give us
a lift home when he has a break. I think he’s on cemetery duty today.”

  “Cemetery duty?”

  “The National Military Cemetery, silly. You know... Abe Lincoln? Gettysburg Address? Four score and seven years ago? It’s a fairly short walk from the center, though the rangers get to use a golf cart to go back and forth. You up for that?”

  T.J. couldn’t say no. “Sure, let’s do it.”

  They took off again, T.J. determined to keep pace with his obviously athletically superior cousin. Woods and fields alternated until they reached Cemetery Ridge, following the Union line of defense. They pounded up the blacktop lane, passing dozens of statues, monuments and cannons laid out in a row, facing back towards Seminary Ridge.

  “Stop here,” said LouAnne suddenly. T.J. thankfully slowed to a walk again. “See this little angle in the line? Where those couple of trees are? That’s the point in the Union line where the Confederates almost broke through. You’ve heard of Pickett’s Charge?”

  “Yes,” said T.J. uncertainly.

  “Well, look out that way toward Seminary Ridge, where we started out from. Picture thousands of Confederate soldiers, wave after wave, crossing that open space, marching toward this wall, where the Union guys just waited and waited till they got within range and then BLAMMO! They opened up with rifles and cannons and whatnot and just blew them all over the place, but the Southern guys kept coming. Sorry, but I don’t think I could show that kind of heroism. Could you?”

  T.J. tried to imagine the fear he’d experience marching those farmers’ fields, bullets whizzing by his head with screaming, wounded comrades crumpling all around him. “No, I don’t think so,” he admitted.

  “Yeah, well, that about ended the battle on Day Three, and it was also the beginning of the end for the South. Okay, let’s cut diagonally through the cemetery, and we should be at the Center in ten minutes.”

  They crossed through the now-vacant parking lot to the old Center, entered the main gate of the National Cemetery and kept on the diagonal until they reached the huge new Visitor Center and Museum, which sat on a knoll above terraced lots for cars, tour busses and RVs.

  They entered through the park rangers’ entrance into the blessed air conditioning and found Mike Darcy pouring over his day’s itinerary while sipping a cup of coffee. He seemed surprised to see them. As if anticipating his question, LouAnne said, “T.J has to get used to the course. We figured we’d cut it off here for the first day.”

  “I’m okay,” said T.J., though he was obviously quite the opposite.

  Mike looked at his watch. “Come on, I have just enough time to drop you home and get back here for my first tour. You guys must be dying for some breakfast.”

  “Great, Dad.” As they hopped into Mike’s red Dodge Durango he asked his daughter what she’d be up to that day. “Well, I’m babysitting at Mrs. Spath’s at ten. I don’t know what T.J.’s got in mind.” They both looked at him.

  “Um,” said T.J., who might’ve been perfectly happy depositing his aching body in bed for a few hours, “I think I’d like to come back down to the Visitor Center like LouAnne said and check out the place, get a better feel for the area and the story of the battle.”

  “Super idea,” said Mike. “If you want, you can tag along on my noon cemetery tour. And if you’re really adventurous, my friend Arlene is giving a small group of visiting college professors a minibus tour of the entire battlefield at one. This’ll give you a good overview. If anything, it’ll help you lay out some alternate workout routes so you won’t get bored when you run. There are many miles of paved roads that wind their way through the battlefield.”

  “Sounds good,” said T.J., who was just happy to be off his feet for a little while.

  Once home, T.J. and LouAnne quickly showered, arriving at the breakfast nook table within seconds of each other. He ravenously attacked Terri’s bacon and eggs, while his cousin settled for a bowl of Total with sliced strawberries from the garden. Then she was off to babysit while T.J., using his aunt’s in-town trolley card, rode over to the Visitor Center again.

  “Why don’t you poke around here for a while,” said Mike, who was manning the information desk, “and meet me back here around 11:45 so we can ride over to the cemetery.”

  At last, on his own, T.J. had a chance to wander about the immense facility which had been completely redesigned and rebuilt a few years back. It was, he decided, one of the best museums he’d ever visited, with some twelve galleries loaded with artifacts, interactive exhibits and hands-on displays. He was especially taken with the variety of uniforms of the soldiers from both sides, though he felt the Confederate cavalrymen got carried away at times with the gold braid.

  And then there was the firearms display, entire glass-encased walls of rifles, pistols, and other munitions, many of them recovered from the battlefield in the months and years that followed.

  Perhaps the most touching were the personal effects retrieved from the field and the corpses: Bibles, playing cards, love letters to and from those left behind, the slips of paper some soldiers pinned to their tunics before the battle listing their name and home address so that their dead bodies could be shipped home correctly.

  But it wasn’t until he viewed the cyclorama, a massive 360 degree painting depicting the battle in its entirety, with a lifelike diorama included, that he had a true sense of the magnitude of Gettysburg. In fact, it almost made him cry, and he didn’t cry easily. The contrast between these graphic images and the peaceful fields he’d jogged through this morning was both stark and disturbing.

  Finally, he visited the theater and viewed a film about the Gettysburg Address narrated by the actor Morgan Freeman, whom he remembered had a major role in the Civil War movie Glory that Mr. O’Neill had shown at school.

  There was so much to process that T.J realized further visits would be necessary. It was clear to him that even if he’d aced O’Neill’s Civil War unit he would be woefully uneducated on the subject. You had to be here, to see the actual uniforms, equipment, firearms and artillery, the photos of the devastation wreaked upon the area. You had to walk the fields and get a sense of the magnitude of the battle where eight-thousand lives were lost, all of them American.

  “Yo, T.J.!” shouted Uncle Mike from across a crowded hallway. “Glad I found you! I’m meeting a group over at the cemetery. You coming?”

  “Sure.”

  They took a golf cart for the ten minute ride over to the cemetery’s main entrance, where T.J. fell in behind a bunch of senior citizens from Montana whose tour bus was parked across the street in a lot which had served the former Visitor Center. Thankfully, the military section of the cemetery was just a short walk from the entrance, but just passing through the high, wrought iron entrance gate was like entering another dimension for the seniors. Their lighthearted, excited air quickly turned somber as they entered the graveyard. Many of the men were obviously veterans; some seemed to go as far back as World War II.

  Mike Darcy’s many years as a teacher had prepared him well for his current job, and he took it seriously, shepherding his charges across the street and through the entrance, keeping them together as he would a bunch of school kids. And, although his obvious enthusiasm for his work shone through, he, too, switched from his usual garrulous persona to a more subdued, pedantic tone to explain the surroundings.

  “Shortly after the Battle of Gettysburg, with the support of Pennsylvania Governor Andrew Curtin, this site was purchased and Union dead were moved from the shallow and inadequate burial sites on the battlefield to the cemetery. The landscape architect William Saunders, founder of the National Grange, designed the cemetery. It was originally called Soldiers’ National Cemetery at Gettysburg.” He turned on his heel and they followed to an area of small headstones, set in semicircular rows.

  “As you may know, thousands of men died on the fields of Gettysburg, many in horrible fashion. At the end of the third day there began a torrential rain as Lee’s forces retreated back to the S
outh. Thousands of men who could not be transported, both Union and Confederate, remained in makeshift hospitals, churches and private dwellings. The townspeople, whose dead livestock lay decomposing in the fields, opened their doors and their hearts and tried to help however they could.

  “The task of cleaning the battlefield was monumental. Dead horses and cows were heaped into piles and burned, leaving a stench over the town that lasted into the fall. The removal of Confederate dead from the burial plots was not undertaken until seven years after the battle. From 1870 to 1873, some 3,320 bodies were exhumed and sent to cities such as Raleigh, Savannah, Richmond and Charleston for reburial. Richmond, the capital of the Confederacy, took the most. Only a few were returned to private cemeteries.”

  As they moved to another area T.J. could see, beyond a chest high wrought iron fence, the civilian part of the burial ground, Evergreen Cemetery, which had witnessed the battle and where Gettysburg’s citizens were still being buried. When the group stopped again, well within the military section, T.J. noticed a short stone that simply said “Unknown. 411 Bodies.” As if that weren’t chilling enough, it seemed to have been recently cleaned of a material that left a brownish purple residue. He looked up to see Mike eyeing him before he cleared his throat and resumed his monologue.

  “William Saunders’s design had two parts. First, the Soldiers National Monument was placed at the center, promoting the Union victory and the bravery of the fallen soldiers; second, you will notice that the graves are arranged in a series of semicircles around the monument, emphasizing the fundamental nature of American society, with all graves considered equal. The stones are grouped by state with two sections for unknowns and one for the regular army. In later years, the dead from the Spanish American War and World War I were added outside the original configuration. Which brings us to the centerpiece of the military cemetery.”

  T.J., along with the rest of the group, shielded his eyes from the blazing sun and looked skyward at the marble structure that towered above the graveyard.

  “The cemetery was dedicated on November 19, 1863. Of course, it was here that President Abraham Lincoln delivered his famous Gettysburg Address, which is noted for its brief yet powerful message. The cemetery was completed in March of 1864 with the last of 3,512 Union dead being reburied. In 1872 control of the grounds was transferred to the War Department and it is currently administered by the National Park Service as part of Gettysburg National Military Park. It contains today the remains of over six thousand bodies from numerous American wars.