The Face of Heaven (43 page)

“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.

“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

L
yndel 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.