The Face of Heaven

by Murray Pura

  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. Willi
ams 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.”

  “Just lie back—”

  “No, sir. Each of us has a role to play. All the boys know that if they get past us and the rest of the brigade there’s nothing back there to stop them. So we’re wasting time. Roll me over. Put my musket in my hands, it’s ready to go.”

  Nathaniel did what he asked and Groom fired the round in his Springfield and slowly and painfully began to reload. After his second shot he fumbled for cartridges in an empty cartridge box. Finally he dug one from his coat pocket but was too weak to tear open the paper with his teeth. Nathaniel took the cartridge and loaded the musket for him, then put it back in his hands.

  “Thank you,” whispered Groom. “I still got a few shots in me.”

  “Blaze away. I’ll get your gun ready for you. It’s better than standing around shouting and waving a sword.”

  Groom aimed and squeezed the trigger. The recoil made his whole body jerk. Nathaniel reloaded and Groom aimed and fired. This time he couldn’t lift the musket up so Nathaniel took it from his hands, reloaded it, and gave it back. Groom fired and fell forward on the musket after the recoil had slammed into his shoulder. Nathaniel could hardly work the Springfield free of the young man’s grasp. He saw that Groom was gone.

  “God bless you,” he said while guns thundered around him and balls threw up dirt and grass. “I’ll keep your musket going until the sun sets or I’m stove in.”

  Nathaniel emptied Groom’s pockets of cartridges and stuffed them into his own. Then he reloaded and aimed at a Rebel sergeant trying to creep into the run. There was a roar that was lost in the greater roar and the sergeant fell face first into the creek. Nathaniel reloaded and aimed again.

  “It’s the 26th North Carolina in front of us!” Hanson was yelling, riding back and forth along the line. “I just got a good look at their flag! Keep pouring it into them! Don’t give them a chance to catch their wind and try a charge! And keep an eye on that unit with them! The 11th North Carolina! They’re shifting over to our left flank!”

  “Biddle’s there!” shouted Nicolson. He no sooner said this than his horse was hit by three or four shots from the left. His mount collapsed on top of him and he was pinned underneath.

  “Biddle ain’t there!” yelled Jones. “There’s no one on our left flank but hundreds of screaming Rebels and they’re firing right into our backs!”

  Nathaniel ran to the exposed flank. He hit Levi and Joshua on their shoulders as he went past at a crouch through the thick haze of gun smoke. “You boys come with me! We’ll do what we can to keep the 11th’s heads down!”

  The three men fell on their stomachs and began firing back at the gray soldiers who were coming up toward the run from the side. Others from the company were sent over by Hanson to help them. The group was able to stem the tide for a while but many of the Carolina troops were shooting over them at the exposed regiment. Men were getting hit by bullets from the front and the back and the side.

  “The grass is thick with our dead and wounded,” grunted Levi as he aimed and fired. “This isn’t working. The regiment needs to get into a new position before there’s none of us left.”

  “Keep shooting and drop back, Indiana!” hollered Colonel Williams suddenly. “Long Sol has set up a second line a hundred yards back up the slope here toward McPherson’s Ridge! See him on his horse? Go there! Fire, reload, and drop back!”

  The 19th kept up a hot fire at the 26th and 11th North Carolina regiments and slowly edged their way to the new line of defense. Reaching it, men crouched behind trees and poured shot into the Confederate ranks. The creek bank and brush were smothered in scores of gray bodies. The 24th Michigan curled around on its left to present a hundred guns or more to the attack on the flank. Dark smoke obscured the trees and the soldiers and the creek.

  Long Sol’s horse went down and crushed the general beneath it. He was pulled clear but was badly hurt. The 151st Pennsylvania moved into the gap between Biddle’s regiments and the Iron Brigade and fought to control the gray surge but the Carolina troops kept coming. A soldier ran past with the 19th’s Stars and Stripes and Nathaniel saw that it was torn apart with bullet holes and its staff shattered. A shot thudded into the tree he was kneeling behind with Nip and a splinter of bark cut open his jaw. Libby, tethered behind them, reared and kicked out with her front legs.

  “There’s too many of them!” cried Ham. “They’re a cloud of locusts! They’re going to swarm over us like a biblical plague!”

  Hanson pointed with his sword. “Get to the top! Get to the crest of McPherson’s Ridge! Do ye see that rail fence to the right of the 7th Wisconsin? Rally there! Go now!”

  Nathaniel jumped up, fired, and began to grab men by their arms and propel them up the slope to the top. “The fence at the crest of McPherson’s Ridge! Rally on the left flank of the 7th Wisconsin!”

  Nicolson was limping up from Willoughby Run, turning every ten or twelve feet to fire with his Colt Navy at the North Carolina soldiers. He saw Jones in the grass with a leg wound and stooped to help him up. Together they made it to the fence where bullets were hitting and sending wood chips flying. Wave after wave of Rebels pursued the Indiana troops, and wave after wave fell apart before the fire of the 19th Indiana, the 7th Wisconsin, and the 24th Michigan. The fire of the 2nd Wisconsin was concentrated against Confederate forces on the right flank of McPherson’s Ridge. The 6th Wisconsin clashed with Rebel units on the far side of the Chambersburg Pike, a road that ran between the ridge and the farm fields to the west.

  The reek of sulfur, the din of thousands of muskets blasting away life, the rolling smoke, men falling like trees and tumbling down the slopes of the ridge like logs, the screams of horses, the heat that made hands sweat so much that ramrods could not be held and bullets could not be seated, the powder that burned the eyes and the nostrils and scorched the tongue from biting cartridges open—Nathaniel had experienced all this at Brawner’s Farm and South Mountain and Antietam Creek. But this time the odds were worse. His pocket watch had been smashed by a bullet at 3:27 p.m.—he had no idea how long ago 3:27 was or how much daylight remained. But the sun still seemed high to him and had no problem hurling its heat against combatants whose tongues were already swollen black from biting into the powder of their cartridges and whose mouths were parched and lips cracked and bleeding.

  From the mist of light and smoke a man appeared in a black swallowtail coat. Long and dark as a fence rail he carried a musket almost as tall as he was. He seemed like a spirit who had materialized out of the ground. Nathaniel watched him aim and fire and reload. He glanced Nathaniel’s way and spoke briefly.

  “I fought the British invaders at Lundy’s Lane in the War of 1812 when I was a young man like you. I have no intention of watching
you boys defend my town from these Rebels and not lift a finger to help. I go by the name John Burns.”

  “Lieutenant Nathaniel King, Elizabethtown.”

  “That so? Good to have another Pennsylvanian beside me.”

  The smoke of the battle rolled over the old man as he aimed his musket a second time and Nathaniel did not see him again.

  “There’s dead secesh all over McPherson’s Ridge and they still keep sending them up from those oat fields,” Ham rumbled. “I haven’t got bullets enough for them.”

  “Pick up cartridges from the dead and wounded,” said Levi.

  “I’ve tried that. There’s nothing left. Maybe I should start pitching these fence rails on top of them Tar Heels.”

  “They’re bound to run out of ammunition too, Corporal.”

  “Not soon enough for me. Plesko! You got any spare cartridges?”

  Plesko tossed Ham three. “That’s all. I need the other five rounds for myself.”

  “Didn’t you fill your pockets when we left our packs this morning?”

  “I did. But I’ve emptied them.”

  Hanson came up on foot, holding reins in his hand with no horse attached to them. “Ordnance wagons are rolling up behind us! They’re throwing boxes of cartridges onto the ground! See ’em? Break ’em open, get your share, use every pocket you’ve got and every cartridge pouch you can get your hands on!”

  The surviving troops from the four Iron Brigade regiments on the ridge crammed ammunition into their uniforms and returned to the fight. Muzzles continued to bark and flash. No sooner did a dozen North Carolina troops drop dead or wounded but another twelve took their place. Black Hats fell in the woods, on the open meadows between the clusters of trees, at the foot of the fence; they draped lifeless over the fence’s top rails. Nathaniel was talking to Nicolson one moment and the next heard a thump as if a fence rail had been thrown to the ground—a ball had punctured Nicolson’s heart and he lay dead on the ground. Ham was trying to work his musket with one arm broken. Levi had either opened his old head wound or taken a new one because his bandage was black with blood. Joshua had tied a tourniquet above his left knee and Plesko had wrapped a red handkerchief over a bleeding eye and another over a gash in his throat. Nathaniel counted heads and couldn’t find Jones, finally spotting him sprawled next to the shattered boards of the ammo boxes, bullet holes in his head and chest and legs, no light in his open eyes.