Gallant Boys of Gettysburg (7 page)

She reached over and touched one tiny, perfectly formed ear and murmured, “He’s a fine boy, Abigail.”

T
he first day of battle was victorious for the Confederates. They had driven the Federals back into Gettysburg. But it was an expensive victory. Many of their number lay dead, and many more were wounded.

A small fire flickered in the darkness, and there Tom Majors sat listening as Sgt. Henry Mapes went over the list of losses in their company.

Mapes’s voice was steady but sad as he named them off. “Jenkins, Conway, Lowrey, and his brother Dale—they got killed early in the fight.” Then he began tolling the list of wounded, and the crackling of the fire punctuated his words.

Tom listened, but his mind was only half on what he was hearing. These had been his comrades—young men that he had been through many battles with. And as Mapes called each name, it seemed a sharp knife penetrated his heart.

Finally the sergeant ended the list and rose, saying, “I’m going to see about Henry Staples. He took a bad wound to the side, but I hope he’ll be OK.”

When Mapes disappeared into the darkness, Tom looked over to where Jeff was sitting, silently poking a stick into the fire and watching the sparks
rise. “We took some pretty good losses, Jeff,” Tom muttered. “Good boys—every one of them.”

He knew Jeff had lost good friends that day. He had helped to bury two of them, Todd Mayfield and Shorty Wagner. Both were very young, not over eighteen.

Jeff poked the fire again, stirred it, watched the red sparks swirl upward. Finally he looked across the fire at Tom. “Now none of these fellows will have any life. They should have gotten married and had children—and then had grandchildren.” He added quietly, “Todd’s folks—this’ll about kill ’em! He was their only son, and they’re getting on in years. Now they’ll never have any more of their name in this world.” He threw the stick out into the darkness and said angrily, “It’s not right, Tom, just not right!”

“It’s war.” Tom shrugged.

Suddenly, out of the dark the tall form of their father emerged. He squatted down, saying, “I’m glad you two are all right. We took some pretty bad losses.”

After they had talked for a while, Tom cleared his throat. “Something I’ve got to tell you.” There was an odd note in his voice. “When I went into Gettysburg today something happened.” He paused, then said, “I thought stuff like this happened only in novels. It was one of the strangest things I ever heard of.”

“Well, what was it, Tom?” Jeff probed. “What’d you see?”

“I was headed down one of the streets, and cannon was beginning to knock the town apart,” Tom answered slowly. “I saw this woman come out of a doorway. She started down the street, and a shell
exploded not too far from her. Well, I went to get her off the street, and when I got up to her and she turned around—I saw it was Sarah.”

“Sarah
Carter?”
his father demanded.

“Yes. Why, you could have knocked me over with a feather!” Tom confessed. “There the shells were falling all around us. I knew we had to get out of there.”

“What in the world was
Sarah
doing in Gettysburg?” Jeff asked.

“You remember Abigail Smith that married the Munson fellow? Well, they moved to Gettysburg. The fellow she married is gone with Grant and the Union Army, and she’s having her first baby. She wrote and asked Sarah to come and be with her, and Sarah did.”

“I can’t believe it!” Jeff said in amazement. “Out of all the people in this town you run into Sarah!”

“Is she all right?” their father asked quickly.

“She was when I left her. She was on her way to get the doctor, and I went with her to be sure she got there all right. We got the doctor back to the house where Abigail was, and I had to leave to go on with the attack.”

Nelson Majors was watching his son’s face. “I guess it was quite a shock finding her right in the middle of a battle. I wish she weren’t here. This whole town could become a battleground.”

“I felt the same way, but she is, and she won’t leave Abigail. I know that.”

“What else did she say, Tom?” Jeff asked eagerly. “She say anything about Leah?”

“No, we didn’t have time to talk much. I had to get on my way. After the battle’s over I’m going to try to get back to her though. She said …”

“What was it she said, Tom?” his father prompted. He kept his eyes fixed on his son’s countenance and then smiled. “Something personal, I guess?”

“Yes, it was, Pa—I mean, Major,” Tom stammered. “Well—” he shrugged his shoulders “—she said she cared for me and someday she’d marry me.”

“Well, she’s never gone that far before. That’s good news.” Their father rose to his feet and looked toward the east, where the Union troops lay. “It’s gonna be a bad day tomorrow. I’ve got the feeling that General Lee’s gonna want to attack at once. Right now, from all the figures, we’ve got the Yankees outnumbered—for once.”

“We’ll whip ’em this time, Pa,” Jeff said, forgetting to call his father by his military title. “See if we don’t.”

“We’d better.” Nelson Majors nodded grimly. “We’re a long way from home, and if they ever get their full strength up and get us flanked, it’d be bad. You boys watch out for yourselves.” He strolled off into the night.

It was perhaps thirty minutes later that Pete Simmons came out of the darkness and sat down beside Tom. He said nothing, which was unusual, for usually he was very talkative.

“It was pretty rough today, wasn’t it, Pete?” Tom remarked.

Pete did not answer for a moment. Then he cleared his throat and said, “Something happened to me today.”

Tom stared at him. “What was it?” he asked curiously. He knew that Pete had been in some of the heaviest fighting and that at one point had been
in front of the whole Confederate force charging ahead.

“While the battle was on,” Pete said slowly, his brow wrinkled and an odd look on his face, “I didn’t think about anything. Seems like a fellow kinda loses his mind. Shells are going off, and men are dropping, and all you can do is run and shoot as fast as you can. Well, as long as that was going on, I didn’t have no trouble. But afterwards—”

Tom waited for him to continue, then asked gently, “What happened, Pete? You didn’t get hit, did you?”

“No, I didn’t get hit by no bullet—but after all the fighting was over, just about an hour ago, something come to me—just come into my mind. Never had anything like that happen before.”

Jeff and Tom exchanged glances, and Jeff asked, “Well, what was it, Pete?”

Pete Simmons bowed his head so that his eyes were hidden. His throat constricted as he swallowed, and finally the tall, lanky young man raised his head and said haltingly, “I got the idea that I’m gonna be killed in this here battle.”

“Why, lots of us feel like that, Pete. It can happen to anybody,” Tom protested.

“No, it’s not like that. I’ve always known I
could
be killed. But this time it was almost like a voice spoke—inside me, sort of.”

“What did the voice say?” Tom asked.

“Well, it was just like something said, ‘You’ll be dead and in a grave before this battle is over.’ ” Pete swallowed hard again and ran his fingers through his reddish hair. “I—I ain’t never been scared of nothing. Always figured I could take care of myself—but somehow this is different.” He looked out
almost fearfully into the darkness. “I don’t know what’s gonna happen tomorrow—but that keeps going through my head over and over again. ‘You’re gonna be dead before this battle is over.’ I—I don’t mind tellin’ you it’s got me shook up some.”

Tom had been irritated with Pete Simmons and his blustering ways many times, but now all that left him. He had been in many battles and had seen many men show fear. He had even seen a man fight bravely in one battle, then turn tail and run in the next one, which was actually no worse. There was no explaining the way men would behave under fire.

He knew Pete Simmons to be a young man full of raw courage, for he had seen him demonstrate it all day long. Now, however, he saw that Pete’s hands were trembling and that something dreadful was happening inside. Seriously he said, “Well, Pete, I hope that your feeling is wrong.”

“I hope so too, but I don’t mind tellin’ you, I’m downright scared.”

Jeff spoke up then. “I’m scared too, and I’m not even in the regular army. But it can happen to any of us, Pete. Even drummer boys get killed.”

“Reckon that’s so—but it never bothered me before.”

Tom said cautiously, “I know you don’t like to hear anything about your soul, Pete, or about God, but it might be well if we talked of it a little bit.” He waited for Simmons to grow angry as he always did and refuse.

Instead the young soldier ducked his head and grew still. He said nothing, and Tom took that as permission to go ahead.

“The Bible says, ‘It is appointed unto man once to die but after this the judgment.’ All of us know that, I guess.” Tom went on softly. “We know we’re going to die, anyway. It’s just a matter of time and place and circumstances, and if you were home, Pete, you might fall off a horse and die. That’s always been part of your life, like it is of mine and Jeff’s here.”

“I never thought about it,” Pete mumbled. “Never been to a funeral. Didn’t want to think about it.”

“None of us like thinking about death, but ‘a wise man looketh well to his going.’ The Bible says that too. If you were going to go on a long journey over the ocean, you’d make some preparation. You’d get some money, get some baggage, say your good-byes. You’d do all kinds of things.”

“I guess that’s right.”

“Well, think of death as being kind of a journey. We all go on it someday. You might not go on yours for forty years—but like all the rest of us in this here army, you might go tomorrow. I think it’d be good if you made some preparation.”

Jeff sat across the fire listening as Tom talked gently on.

Tom loved the Bible and had memorized parts of it. Now Scripture after Scripture came from his lips. He dropped them casually, not hammering at Pete or threatening but explaining, as he went along, that everybody needs salvation.

“Jesus is the only way I know, Pete,” Tom said at last. “He died on the cross for one reason. Not for His sins—because He didn’t have any. He died for your sins. And mine. That day I called on Him, He forgave me every one of them. That’s what we call
being saved.” He hesitated, then said, “I’d like to see you saved, Pete. I always have, but you’d never listen.”

Jeff added a word. “It’s easy, Pete. All you have to do is tell God you’re sorry and you want to turn from what’s been wrong in your life—and then call on the Lord Jesus Christ. And that’s it.”

Pete Simmons looked up. His eyes were cloudy. He said, “That sounds too easy. I mean, there ain’t any preacher here. There ain’t no church to join. I couldn’t get baptized—”

“All those are things that can happen and ought to—but God knows your heart. He knows there’s no preacher here. And if you’re saved, you’ll join a church and be baptized when you get a chance. You’ll do all those things. But all that comes afterwards. First you have to get saved. Then you can go on and be the Christian that you ought to be.”

For a long time the talk went on around the campfire. Several times Jeff got up and replenished the dying blaze so that it flickered into life again.

After Pete had asked many questions, he looked up and said, “I’ve been pretty much of a rotter. Never told anybody, but I’ve done lots of bad things. You reckon the Lord would forgive me for all of them if I’d ask Him to?”

“He says He would. ‘Whosoever shall call upon the name of the Lord shall be saved,’ ” Tom said quickly. “That ‘whosoever’ means you, Pete.” He saw tears in Pete’s eyes. “I was saved about like this: Somebody was talking to me, asking me about my soul, and I felt bad about my sins. But then he told me I could call upon the Lord and be forgiven, and I did. Pete, the Lord forgave me when I did that. He’s been with me ever since. I think right now we
ought to do the same thing. Will you pray in your heart if I pray for you out loud?”

“Yes, I will.”

Tom began to pray, quietly and fervently, for Pete Simmons. When he looked up, he saw that Pete’s face was lined with tears. “Pete, did you ask the Lord Jesus into your heart?”

There was a moment’s silence, and Tom held his breath.

And then Pete said, “Yes! I done it! And He forgave me, ‘cause He said He would.” Then Pete’s face was filled with shock. “I don’t know how to explain it, but that fear, it’s all gone.”

For a long time the three sat and talked about being in God’s family. Then Pete said, “I don’t know what’s gonna happen tomorrow. I may die anyway, but I know it’s all right. I sure do thank you two fellers!” He got up then and walked away down the line.

Jeff said as soon as he was gone, “That’s great, isn’t it, Tom?”

“It sure is. I hope Pete doesn’t take a bullet tomorrow, but if he does, he knows the Lord.”

The next day the attack began again. Maj. Nelson Majors explained to his officers and sergeants what would happen. He drew a map on the ground, saying, “Look! Here’s what we’re facing.” Then he said, “See that long, low ridge over there?”

They looked to where he pointed with his stick, then down at the map.

“Over to the north are Cemetery Hill and Culp’s Hill. Way down on the other end—on the south—are
the Round Tops. If we can take either one of those, we’ll have the Yankees whipped.”

“Which one are we going for, sir?” one of his lieutenants asked.

“There’ll be three attacks. General Hood will attack at our far right, General McLaws to his left, and General Anderson to his left. We’ve got to break that line. General Ewell will attack the other side of the line at Cemetery Hill, but the main attack will be on our right. Right there at Little Round Top.”

The attack did not go well. To begin with, General Lee had expressed his intention to strike early in the morning. All of his forces were up and ready, but the Confederate attack did not begin until late in the afternoon.

The key to the entire Battle of Gettysburg may have been the small rise called Little Round Top. A Union general left it unprotected, and only at the last moment were reinforcements rushed to protect this extreme left flank of the Union Army. Again and again the Confederates attacked the position but were beaten back by the furious defense of the Union troops. All day long the attacks rolled. Cannon thundered as artillery pounded both Union and Confederate positions.