The Face of Heaven

by Murray Pura

  “The brigade is falling back to Seminary Ridge!” Hanson shouted. “D’ye hear me? We’re all pulling back to the Lutheran Seminary—you can see the top of it, can’t ye? Make for that now! Keep firing at those gray devils and make your way off this ridge and onto the other! Hurry!” A ball struck him in the chest and he dropped.

  Nathaniel quickly knelt by him. “How bad is it?” He saw the gaping wound. “I’ll carry you.”

  “And get yourself shot or captured?” growled Hanson. “The boys need an officer to lead them. Long Sol’s down. Williams is wounded. Nicolson’s dead, God bless ’im. This isn’t the end of it, Lieutenant. You’ll make a stand at Seminary Ridge. You have to. The First and Eleventh Corps are starting to fill the high ground but they’re nowhere near enough. You’ve got to blunt the Confederate advance.”

  “Sir, there are only a few hundred of us left—”

  Hanson heaved himself to his elbow. “Don’t argue with me. We scooped up a couple of prisoners in the last half hour. From the 26th. They came against us with over eight hundred troops—the size of two of our regiments! And they’re down to less than two-fifty, they reckon. They’ve been shot to ribbons. They’ll not pursue you. Neither will the 11th North Carolina.”

  “The Rebs are sure to send somebody else.”

  “That’s right. But they’ll send them after you. They’ll send them after Indiana and Michigan and Wisconsin. Not after the units of First Corps and Eleventh Corps that will dig in on Cemetery Ridge and Cemetery Hill. You’ll buy the Army of the Potomac the night. Riders have been sent all over northern Maryland—The enemy is at Gettysburg. Get there fast. Those heights will be filled with tens of thousands of Union troops by dawn. They’ll be spoiling for a fight. Lee won’t break that line. I swear he won’t break that line. After all, he couldn’t break us, could he?” Hanson grasped the front of Nathaniel’s coat. “Now go and lead. Make a stand. If the regiment has to die let them die with the fire in their eyes.” He had trouble catching his breath and sank back. “The blood’s coming out of me like Indiana’s Big Blue River. Even your pretty wife couldn’t fix me up now. Say a quick prayer in German and get over to the other ridge.”

  “Captain—”

  “You’re captain now. You have men to lead. Pray the prayer and go.”

  Musket fire was still crackling as the 24th Michigan marched past. Nathaniel took off his tall black hat and prayed in German for about a minute. He gripped Hanson’s hand after he was done.

  “Thank you, sir. For everything.”

  “It has been a grand ride, hasn’t it? My best to the boys. Tell ’em I’m proud of ’em. No finer company. No finer platoon.”

  Nathaniel came to attention and saluted. “Go with God.”

  “I hope to. I may be a rough-and-ready type but I love him, I truly do.”

  Nathaniel picked up Groom’s musket and began to run across the grass and through the trees to where he had tied Libby. He spotted the 19th regiment’s standard and the Stars and Stripes of his own company in the marching columns between the ridges and could see his men were already close to the seminary. He leaped into the saddle and started down the slope as quickly as he could. Amid the yells and gunfire he heard Hanson calling after him a final time.

  “By the by, it was the gunpowder. Raw gunpowder gave my coffee its bite.”

  27

  Lyndel stood on the front porch of the seminary with a hand resting on one of the pillars and watched what was left of the Iron Brigade stream into a huge barricade of fence rails near the building. She knew she would eventually spot her husband and in time she did, as he rode his black mare down from McPherson’s Ridge, crossed the valley, and came up the slope of Seminary Ridge in the midst of marching men in tall dark hats. He would see to his boys first, be sure his platoon and company were all right, talk with the other officers. Then he would come looking for her, hoping she would be there tending to the wounded.

  She kept looking, watching, praying until she heard her name.

  “Lyndel!”

  Nathaniel broke into a run as soon as he saw her at the front door of the tall brick building with its white windows and white cupola. She started to rush down the steps but he bounded up the stairs before she was halfway, his hat falling from his head, kissing her, holding her. He brought with him the smell of battle, of sulfur and fire and blood, but she didn’t care. He was alive. She took his kisses and responded with her own. The wounded lying on the grass about the seminary watched and a few had the strength to smile.

  “I love you.” He brought her head into his chest.

  “And I love you, Nathaniel—I prayed for you, I thank God he has spared you.” Her tears came freely. “Hiram says your men have done more than anyone could have dreamed to slow the Rebel advance. He expects you to move into the high ground behind the Seminary now.”

  “The Confederate troops would just follow us there and storm the heights. They’d take them too—we don’t have enough men to hold them.”

  Lyndel ran both her hands over his powder-dark face, a face nicked and cut and stained by blood. “You can’t mean to stay in that flimsy barricade. I thought it was simply a place for the brigade to regroup.”

  “It’s our last line of defense. We can’t let them get to Cemetery Ridge, Lyndy. We have to wind down the clock here.”

  “Meade and the army will come.”

  “Not soon enough. We have to take as many hours of daylight from the Rebels as we can. Hit them so hard here that even if they overrun the brigade they won’t be in the mood to try to take the heights.” He smoothed back the loose strands of her hair with his palm. “We have to, my beauty. It comes down to this hour. We’re going to need your prayers a while longer.”

  They both heard the drumming in the distance. It was coming from the west, where the sun was slowly dropping behind McPherson’s Ridge. As they looked, the red and blue of the Confederate battle flag and its Southern Cross emerged over the crest from McPherson’s Woods. Lines of soldiers in gray and butternut followed the flags over the top of the ridge and marched down the slope and into the valley behind them.

  Lyndel’s fingers went to her lips. “There are thousands and thousands. You are so few—so few, Nathaniel.”

  “We’re not going to surrender America, Lyndel.” He kissed her on the lips. “I must go.”

  He was running back to the barricade, where men were taking up their positions and aiming their long-barreled muskets. She quickly made a decision and went back inside. Hundreds of Union and Confederate wounded lay in the hallways and classrooms and offices. She stepped between them, longing to stop and continue helping them, but realizing she had to do something else first. She found one of the brigade doctors at the end of the main hall.

  “I’m going up to the cupola for a few minutes,” she told him. “I will be back shortly.”

  He stared at her. “Mrs. King, we need you here.”

  “I know that. I’m needed elsewhere as well. I won’t be twenty minutes.”

  Suddenly the walls shook as Union cannon began to fire.

  “What’s going on?” demanded the doctor as Lyndel ran for the staircase.

  “The Confederate army is attacking our ridge.”

  “Get back here, Mrs. King. A stray shot could easily find its way up there.”

  But she was gone up the staircase. When she opened the door to the cupola the advancing Rebel forces were spread out like an oil painting over acres of green grass, moving through golden shafts of sunlight toward them. Hiram was leaning out with his brass telescope and watching them come. She put her hand on his shoulder and he lifted his head.

  “Lyndel! What are you doing up here? It’s far too dangerous.”

  “You’re here, Hiram.”

  “An occupational hazard. You must get back down.”

  “A stray shell could find me there just as easily.”

  “Really, I must insist—”

  “Hiram.” Her eyes became what Nathaniel called her
gunmetal blue. “My husband is in that barricade. My brother is in that barricade. I’m a regimental nurse and my regiment is in that barricade. Right here is where I need to be.”

  The cannon roared again and smoke began to drift through the cupola. Hiram gave up the argument and returned to his telescope. “Just what do you hope to accomplish from up here? Have you turned into a sniper?”

  “I’m going to pray.”

  He grunted.

  “Do you think praying is a waste of time, Hiram?”

  “On the contrary. Where the bloodiness of the war has turned some into unbelievers I find the miracles and mysteries of this conflict have worked upon me just the opposite effect. Your husband’s brigade being a case in point. They cannot win yet they keep on winning.”

  “I would scarcely call the way they have been shot down today winning.”

  “Every minute they successfully resist a superior force they have won a battle.” He handed her the telescope. “But I will be my usual realistic self and tell you they cannot possibly stand against the forces arrayed against them now.”

  Lyndel put the scope to her eye and the gray troops immediately jumped into focus. She saw faces and beards clearly and could see lips moving as men spoke to one another. She could count the stars on the battle flags and read the numbers on the regimental standards.

  “How beautiful they look and how terrible,” she said.

  An explosion she couldn’t hear suddenly appeared in the lens. Ten or twelve men she had been viewing vanished. She yanked the telescope away.

  “How I hate war!”

  Hiram took the telescope back. “And yet, at the present time, there seems to be no other means at hand to preserve the Republic, politics having been exhausted in 1860.”

  Lyndel clenched her fists. “There is the praying.”

  “Yes. Prayer and gunpowder.”

  Lyndel closed her eyes and prayed silently in German. As she prayed she could hear a single cannon booming in one ear and Hiram talking in the other.

  “Now, do you see we have Rebels from Harry Heth’s division and from the divisions of William Dorsey Pender and Robert Rodes converging on us? Alfred Scales’s brigade of North Carolina regiments is advancing—North Carolina again!—there are the standards for Colonel Abner Perrin’s four regiments from South Carolina—and yet more North Carolina regiments under General James Lane—I make out the 7th, 18th, the 37th, 28th and 33rd. The Army of Northern Virginia means to conclude business with the Iron Brigade this afternoon.”

  Eyes still closed, Lyndel spoke up. “What about Nathaniel?”

  “Ah—your husband has with him the survivors of all the regiments save the 6th Wisconsin—they are outside the barricade and guarding six Napoleon cannon from Battery B—Old Jock, you know, James Stewart, he commands that battery—there are other guns—the Fifth Maine Battery—they are guarded by what’s left of Biddle’s brigade, who were on the 19th’s left at Willoughby Run—there is artillery from the 1st Pennsylvania and from our fallen General Reynolds’s New York batteries—I see troops from Colonel Stone’s Pennsylvanians, the Bucktail Brigade—I hear they fought to the bone at the west end of McPherson’s Ridge—those that are left are with Battery B—and aiming their muskets—here it comes—”

  A shattering roar of muskets and cannon made the cupola shake and almost deafened Lyndel. She couldn’t stop from opening her eyes. “What is it, Hiram?”

  “The Rebel lines have reached a fence approximately two hundred yards from us. The Iron Brigade and its comrades in arms just loosed their first volley and all the cannon from all the batteries fired at the same time. The Confederates are falling like rain. It’s as if a giant is gouging out the earth and tearing up life with great terrible fingers.”

  She closed her eyes and resumed praying as the explosion of thousands of muskets went on and on. Her words were words for the preservation of the nation and an end to slavery but they were also words for the sparing of husbands and fathers and sons and brothers, North and South… Americans, Lord God, Americans. She ached for the new battle to be quick and the South to be thrown back, though she knew there would be much more fighting to come, whatever transpired at the seminary gates.

  “We have stopped their advance,” said Hiram.

  “Oh, Gott sei Dank.”

  “But they are reforming, closing in the huge gaps in their lines. They are coming. They are coming again.”

  “God help us,” Lyndel whispered. “Please help us.”

  Cannons roared, muskets barked, the Rebels yelled, and the Union troops and cannoneers yelled back. She could hear men shrieking, “Come on, Johnny, come on, Johnny!” and musket fire splitting the air in two. She could even make out officers screaming commands above the thunder of artillery and the crack of Enfields and Springfields. Then she imagined she heard Nathaniel’s voice as clearly as if he were standing across from her in the cupola… “Though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil: for thou art with me.”

  She flew to the cupola rail. Cannons blazed white fire, dirty smoke covered the ridge like a fog, gray men marched up and up the slope and fell and died and other gray men marched up the slope in their place, muskets were like long black spears, flags collapsed, bayonets became bright-hot needles in the July sunlight.

  “I can see Nathaniel.”

  Lyndel snatched the scope from Hiram’s hands and pointed it at the barricade. After a moment she found her husband, standing while others knelt or crouched, shouting and clapping men on the back, once even standing on the rails and waving with his arm toward a line of charging, hollering Rebels.

  Oh, Nathaniel, come down from that fence!

  “Mrs. King! Mr. Wright!”

  A doctor stood in the cupola in clothing that was red to his neck.

  “We are sending three wagons of medical supplies to Cemetery Ridge as well as any of the wounded who can walk. The barricade will be overwhelmed in a matter of minutes. We desperately need you two and Miss David to drive the supplies.”

  “The barricade will not be overrun in minutes, doctor,” Lyndel protested.

  “Minutes, half an hour, it doesn’t matter, we need those supplies at Cemetery Ridge for a field hospital. A doctor is going with you. Any wounded who remain here will become prisoners of war. A number have already headed out across the fields. Try the Chambersburg Pike if it is still open. Go through town and get on the Taneytown Road. It runs behind Cemetery Ridge.”

  “Doctor—”

  “Mrs. King!” The doctor’s words became a plea. “Help us!”

  Hiram’s wagon rattled away from the seminary first, leaving from the back of the building. Morganne followed him and Lyndel was last. Several officers’ mounts were tied at the rear of the seminary to keep them out of harm’s way. Lyndel noticed Libby standing patiently and nuzzling another horse.

  They went along wagon ruts in the high grass before getting on the road and heading into Gettysburg. Smoke boiled down the ridge after them and the shriek of the fighting seemed worse to her from this short distance than it had when she was right on top of it. She thought of Nathaniel and her brother and prayed for them and their men. She prayed for all of the men.

  Nathaniel was grateful for the extra few minutes they were granted every time they knocked the Rebel lines off balance and forced them to regroup. The barricade flashed like forked lightning and rolls of smoke massed like thunderheads. Men dropped all around him, and he could see them dropping in the lines attacking their position. Despite the fever that came with the fighting, Nathaniel was staggered at the sight of the casualties. He hoped and prayed the Confederates would withdraw and the day would end. But the Army of Northern Virginia had no intention of drawing back from Seminary Ridge.

  Levi seemed to be in a black uniform from neck to waist. He shot and reloaded and shot and reloaded as if he were a piece of farm equipment pulled by horses. Plesko wasn’t quite as fast but was just as determined to stave off the Confederate for
ces, tearing his cartridges open, ramming the loads home, his eyes glittering in the strange colors created by the tumbling of sunlight, gun smoke, and muzzle fire. Nathaniel wasn’t there when a Rebel bullet found him but once he discovered the young man’s body, grief pierced his chest and he remembered what Plesko had told him before the attack—When the war is finally won I, like Lincoln, will thank God for the chance to live in a world that is governed by the better angels of our nature. I know it must sound strange but one of the reasons I am fighting is so we can have that kind of country one day.

  Men in yellow and brown surged against the barricade and were hit with vicious volley fire. Those that made it to the rails were shot at five or ten paces by musket or pistol or clubbed down by gunstocks. Rebel charges were smashed by hundreds of balls, the strikes sounding to Levi like hail smacking the side of a barn, but a new charge always followed within moments. Union and Rebel standards were ripped by bursting shells or punctured by bullets. Color bearers were killed within seconds of lifting up the Southern Cross or the Stars and Stripes. Officers were blasted from their saddles or crushed beneath dying horses. Thick powder smoke blotted out faces and uniforms and the bodies strewn over miles of dandelions and grass and wildflowers. No matter how many times the Confederate army came shrieking at them, the Iron Brigade and their allies and artillery hurled them back with their own howls and screams.