The Face of Heaven (22 page)

Nathaniel’s mouth was a thin straight line as he examined the Rebel flags a hundred yards ahead. “It’s Stonewall.”

Balls zipped through the trees, clipping leaves and snapping branches. The 19th Indiana and 7th Wisconsin returned fire. Nicolson and Nathaniel barked out the loading sequence for the recruits in their platoon: “Half-cock your musket! Cartridge! Bite off the twisted end! Powder in the barrel! Round in the muzzle! Ramrod! Seat the round on the powder! Return ramrod! Percussion cap on the nipple! Musket to full cock! Aim low! Fire!” White and gray smoke billowed through the tree trunks.

Battery B raced up to the Miller farmyard and unlimbered its guns. As soldiers pulled the artillery horses back out of harm’s way the guns began to fire at the Rebel troops in the woods. Nathaniel couldn’t see the cannon but he could hear them and the rough brogue of Lieutenant James Stewart as he shouted out aiming instructions to his cannoneers.

“You hear Old Jock?” he asked Joshua and Levi who were loading and firing off his left shoulder. “Stonewall’s boys don’t have much of a chance against a force from Indiana and Wisconsin and Scotland.”

Bullets ricocheted off rocks and trees. Men in gray fell. Men in black hats fell. But it was Stonewall and the Rebel troops who gave way. Captain Langston hollered that there was a Dunker Church just ahead and he wanted it captured and held. The 19th Indiana and 7th Wisconsin pushed against the gray wall as they had pushed against it at South Mountain. And stone by stone the wall caved in.

A ball burned across the back of Nathaniel’s left hand, taking some skin with it and leaving a streak of blood, but he only noticed it when he was lifting his musket to fire. An image of Lyndel sprang into his head and he saw her washing the wound, bandaging it, and patting him on the cheek with a smile:
You’re fine, darling. Go ahead. Get back in the fight and finish this war as swiftly as you can.

“They’re running!” Ham shouted. “They’re running!”

The platoon paused to watch as Stonewall’s men broke from the woods and headed across the turnpike into a cornfield.

“There goes the crop,” lamented Nicolson.

The 2nd and 6th Wisconsin were charging through the field, taking on hundreds of Rebel soldiers, so that the corn fell in bushels as if scythed. Union cannons added to the shower of fire. Men were dropping everywhere as if they were the cornstalks themselves and had just been cut. Flashes of flame slit the banks of thick smoke. The two Wisconsin regiments pushed the Rebels toward the church, were shoved backward, then stormed forward once again and cracked the Rebel line. Men in gray and butternut tried to climb the fence that separated the cornfield from the road but were shot as they made the attempt. As more and more corn was sliced by gunfire, and the ground beneath the stalks exposed, more and more men could be seen strewn among the cobs and husks.

Just as it seemed the Wisconsin regiments had put an end to the Rebel resistance Nathaniel was startled to see waves of gray troops explode from the trees behind the white Dunker Church the 19th Indiana was advancing toward. The Rebels roared across the turnpike and crashed into the Wisconsin men, throwing them back through the battered cornfield and into David Miller’s barns and farm buildings behind it. The gray troops surged forward, screaming and shooting, knocking down everything in their path.

“They’re going to capture our cannon,” said Nip, looking at the artillery stationed at the farmyard behind them. “Old Jock’s guns. And use them on our Wisconsin men.”

Nathaniel heard officers crying out commands up and down the line. At once hundreds of men in black hats emerged from the trees and aimed their muskets at the gray wave engulfing the cornfield and farmyard and turnpike. Lieutenant Davidson ran up to the company, his face spattered with blood and beads of sweat, pulling his horse by the reins.

“Save our brave boys!” shouted Davidson. “Wheel to the left and fire into the Rebel flank!”

The 19th Indiana and 7th Wisconsin burst into a sheet of white
flame and smoke. The Rebels hadn’t counted on this and were caught by surprise as dozens of their men staggered and collapsed from the volley. It was followed by another rage of fire and another. Lieutenant Colonel Bachman made his way to the front of his Indiana regiment, slashing his sword through the morning air.

“Follow me, boys!” he yelled and charged across the turnpike into the cornfield.

“Fix bayonets, Indiana!” hollered Sergeant Hanson. “Forward! Double quick! That’s John Bell Hood’s Texas Brigade and Evander Law’s Alabama boys. Let’s give them the old Hoosier hurrah and end the war by lunch!”

The Indiana men poured across the turnpike after Bachman, shooting and yelling and climbing the fence into the corn patch, pursuing the Rebel troops that were fleeing back the way they had come. Nathaniel saw that Levi and Joshua were still on his left, their faces blue and black with powder, and Nip on his right, skin streaked gray in a mix of powder and sweat. As they trampled the cornstalks still standing he caught glimpses of Campbell and McKeever and Plesko and Groom. McKeever was without his black hat, had blood on his neck, and was caught up in the momentum of the charge as the men tore through the corn and into an open field.

The white church was there, just on the other side of the road, and Nathaniel couldn’t help but think, for an instant, of open Bibles, men and women praying and singing hymns, and little children waiting for a story about Jesus. Then he was reloading, firing, and running, reloading, firing, and running as the platoon roared with the rest of the regiment after the Rebel troops. But as he lifted his musket in the middle of the furor he saw a bullet strike Bachman and spin him around and then a second bullet rip through his back. The lieutenant colonel fell.

Now the Texans and Alabamans stopped running. They turned and gathered their numbers and gave a shout as loud as cannon fire. And then attacked the leaderless regiment. Firing and reloading as quickly as they could, the Indiana men were forced back into the cornfield among the bodies of the wounded and dead who lay in mounds of gray and
blue. The two armies blazed at each other at point-blank range, cornstalks and husks and caps sailing up and spinning through the sky.

“Hold them! Hold them!” Davidson was practically screaming. Then Nathaniel saw him drop like a stone. A wounded horse squealed and plunged through the corn, its reins trailing on the ground. The saddle was peppered with bullet holes. He recognized it as Captain Langston’s mount.

The 19th yielded ground angrily, firing at each step they took back, but for many their muskets were fouled and unshootable, while for others all they had left were a final half-dozen cartridges. Pinned to the fence between the cornfield and the road they made their stand, defying men Hanson called some of the best in Lee’s army.

“Stand like iron!” Hanson thundered. “You looked Stonewall’s Virginians square in the eye this morning! Now stare down Hood’s Texans!”

The Indianans stood and fought alongside the 7th Wisconsin and 26th New York, Battery B blasting over their heads into the Southern men and the corn. Balls and lead shot whirred through the air. Great heaps of white, black, and gray smoke blinded Nathaniel, who often could only fire at the gun flashes of the Texas and Alabama muskets, never seeing the human faces behind them. The stink of sulfur stung his nose and the taste of it made his tongue burn. Nip fired from one knee, Levi and Joshua stood. Their faces were so black it looked as if they’d been smeared with tar and soot.

Then a shout went up from behind the 19th Indiana. Rebel troops charged from the woods across the road where the 19th had fought Stonewall’s forces earlier in the morning. Bullets raked the ranks of the Indiana, Wisconsin, and New York men. With more and more of their friends falling into the stubble they turned to face the new threat from the road, returning fire with the rounds they had left or could scoop from the packs and cartridge boxes of dead and wounded soldiers. Pulling back over the road in front of their enemy they made a new stand at the barn of David Miller. It was the exact spot where they had begun their attack into the woods at the break of day and routed Stonewall’s men.

“Steady! Steady!” bellowed Hanson. “Fire rocks and stones if you have to! We’re not going any farther back, boys! I’m tired of walkin’, I tell ye!”

Hanson identified the new Rebel troops as Virginians from Jubal Early’s brigade and the artillery as that of Jeb Stuart, who had battled them at Lewinsville. Stuart used canister shot that spread hundreds of balls in vicious bursts through the Indiana columns. But the 19th Indiana and 7th Wisconsin of the Iron Brigade, along with the 26th New York, stood firm despite the fire being hurled at them. Across the turnpike the rest of the Iron Brigade, the 2nd and 6th Wisconsin, even though they had lost scores of their comrades in David Miller’s cornfield, stood by the cannons of Battery B and poured what bullets they had left into the Texans and Alabamans who were trying to overwhelm the Union position and capture the artillery. Old Jock used canister just as Jeb Stuart did, and he double-shotted them, so that Rebel dead fell before the Wisconsin men and the cannons by the score. When General Gibbon finally ordered a withdrawal to Joseph Poffenberger’s farm, where Wednesday, September 17th, had dawned for the Iron Brigade, what was left of the Confederate troops had no intention of following them.

Nathaniel’s platoon took up a defensive position on the east side of the road by the Poffenberger farm with the rest of the brigade. The artillery pointed its snouts menacingly toward Sharpsburg. But no one ever came after them. Men gulped from their canteens and listened to the terrific crash of muskets from across the fields and forests of the battlefield as the fight swept back and forth throughout the rest of the day.

Levi sat with his head in his hands under a tree and could scarcely speak. Joshua knelt on the grass and said he was looking for a ladybug he had brushed roughly off his uniform, thinking it was a wasp. Nicolson and Nathaniel counted heads as they passed out fresh cartridges. McKeever was gone. Campbell was gone. Nip was gone. Harter was gone.

“Did any of you see them go down?” Nathaniel asked his men. “Are they wounded? Are they dead?”

“Davidson’s dead,” someone said.

“Yes.” Nathaniel’s face was dark blue and looked like a death mask. “I saw that.”

“Bachman’s dead,” Ham spoke up. “And Harter took a shell right in the chest.”

“Captain Langston’s dead,” mumbled Joshua.

“What about Nip? McKeever? Campbell?” Nathaniel glanced around him at the weary faces. “Didn’t anyone see them?”

“I guess not,” muttered Nicolson.

“Saw Nip being loaded into an ambulance,” one of the men spoke up. “Don’t know what shape he was in.”

“Are you certain?” asked Nicolson.

“Yes, sir. It was him.”

“Thank God. Thank God. I pray he’s all right.” Nathaniel sank down on the grass. “You know, I can’t hear too well.”

“Neither can I,” admitted Nicolson.

“Where’s Hanson?”

“Meeting with Gibbon. He’s company commander now.”

“We didn’t keep the cornfield.”

“No,” admitted Nicolson. “But who would want it? The crop is ruined.”

“We have wounded lying there.”

“I know. But we can’t get them now. Not until there’s a flag of truce or the Rebels withdraw.”

Nathaniel stared at him. Nicolson’s skin was as dark as his. “Do you think they’ll withdraw?”

Nicolson shrugged. “Who can tell what’s going on? Listen to those volleys.” He paused a moment as the roar of muskets reached a crescendo hundreds of yards south and east of them. “If we took Stonewall and Hood out of the fight we did our part.”

“I still worry about the wounded. We could save them.”

“The Rebel surgeons will look after some of the boys. Though I expect they will see to their own first.”

“Their own! We are all Americans!” Nathaniel felt like screaming. “This is madness! Today’s slaughter is madness!”

“Easy, Corporal,” Nicolson said quietly. “The men need to see your strength now.”

Nathaniel nodded and looked out across the turnpike. “Yes, yes, you’re right.”

“If it’s any help I saw the ambulance corps pull some of the wounded out of the corn when the fighting was closer to the church. I think they managed to rescue a couple dozen before the battle came back into the cornfield again. I saw a woman working with the wounded.”

Nathaniel nodded. “Dark skirt and red bow at the throat? That is how the newspapers describe Clara Barton. A brave woman.”

Nicolson frowned a bit as he thought back to the moment and took a drink from his canteen. “No, nothing like that. This woman was wearing a blue dress with a black apron. And she had some kind of black cap on her head. I’ll never forget the hair. It was all pinned up but you could spot that woman from a mile away, I swear. Every strand on that pretty head was the color of fire.”