The Other Side of Life

by Andy Kutler

  Kelsey pulled his Colt and cried out. “E Troop, follow me!”

  Without hesitation, the men brandished their pistols and followed Kelsey as he charged forward. Kelsey whipped his horse up the hill, but then he heard shouting from behind and watched as Rhodes spurred his own horse past him, training his saber up the hill.

  “Come on men! For the glory of the Union!” Rhodes shouted over his shoulder. The lieutenant slapped the reins on his mount, cresting the hill and then dropping out of sight.

  Where the hell did that come from?

  Kelsey’s small force soon arrived at the crest. He slowed his horse as he surveyed the bedlam before him. The orchard was filled with men in blue and gray firing their pistols at close range and slashing at one another with their blades on a field now stained with blood. He saw Royston directing his defense with Kirch just behind him, trumpeting the notes to recall the horse holders. Royston had clearly figured out they could not hold much longer.

  Kelsey turned to Grady and shouted, “He’s ordering a retreat. We’ve got to cover them and give them a chance to get out of here.” Grady nodded his understanding, and he and Kelsey led their men gamely into the thick of the fight.

  Kelsey spotted Rhodes, who had dropped his saber and was now firing his revolver wildly, unable to control his mount. His body spasmed as he was shot in the throat and again clean through his cheek. He fell hard from his horse.

  The lieutenant was curled on the ground, his hands trying to stop the blood that was pouring from his neck and face. Kelsey thought about trying to reach him but turned to see a mass of Confederate cavalry charging their position. There must have been sixty or so Confederate horsemen, the shrill Rebel yell blasting from each man’s lungs. Without thinking, Kelsey kicked his horse and rode directly toward the enemy soldiers, thumbing the hammer back on his Colt. His men followed.

  The open ground between the two sides closed quickly. Kelsey leveled his pistol and aimed at the lead Rebel. He fired twice, missing, but his third shot hit the man square in the chest, knocking him to the ground. He tried to get another shot off, but they were close now, and he had to duck as a saber sliced through the air above his head. Kelsey turned to aim at the enemy officer but felt a hand grab his arm and pull him off his horse. He fell to the ground, landing on his shoulder with a grunt. The man punched Kelsey in the jaw, but his angle was poor and there was little power behind it. Kelsey pulled a six-inch hunting blade from his boot and as the man’s eyes widened in terror, Kelsey buried the knife deep in his stomach and twisted. The wounded man cried out and fell back, clutching his open belly. Kelsey withdrew the knife and then plunged it into the man’s heart, silencing his screams forever.

  Kelsey turned and saw a gray-clad sergeant viciously clubbing Grady with the butt of his rifle. Kelsey pulled his knife from the dead soldier, ran up behind the sergeant and thrust the knife into the man’s back. It lodged itself between his ribs and the man howled in pain. His arms flailed wildly as he desperately attempted to reach behind and pull loose the knife. Kelsey picked up the sergeant’s rifle and smashed his face with the stock. He could hear cartilage breaking as blood gushed from the man’s nose and mouth. As the sergeant fell to his knees, he tried to free his sidearm from his holster.

  It was then Kelsey noticed Terrell, behind the wounded Confederate, lying on the ground with a large stain of blood around his hip. The Frenchman winked at Kelsey, managing to raise himself on one leg and stagger to the big sergeant. He pulled the knife from the man’s back and used it to slash his windpipe from behind. There was a gurgling sound as blood spurted from the wound and the sergeant pitched forward, dead before he hit the ground.

  Terrell had just begun to smile back when a shot rang out, and the Frenchman’s head snapped back as a bullet tore away the top of his skull. Henri Luc Terrell seemed to suspend himself in midair for the briefest of seconds, before his knees buckled and he collapsed to the ground.

  His eyes burning with fury and despair, Kelsey turned and saw a nearby Confederate cavalryman holding a revolver in his hands. He had turned away after shooting Terrell and now aimed at one of the younger Federal troopers down on the ground. It was a fiddle player named McBride, hugging his knees and sobbing to himself.

  Kelsey screamed as he charged the man, surprising him as he started to swing his pistol around. But the man was a second too slow as Kelsey lowered his shoulder and drove it into the man’s stomach. They both rolled to the ground. The Confederate was stronger than Kelsey and climbed on top of him, wrapping both of his hands around Kelsey’s throat, squeezing hard. Kelsey gasped for breath and struggled to break free, but the man’s grip was like iron.

  Despite the full beard and grime covering the face of his foe, Kelsey could see he was a young man, built like a tank. The Rebel leaned in closer, hoping for more leverage, and Kelsey could feel the man’s warm breath on his face. A fatal mistake, and Kelsey knew he had his only opportunity to survive this. He reached up and used his thumb to gouge the man’s eye. As he pushed in, his adversary howled, blood trickling out of the socket. His grip on Kelsey’s throat loosened, allowing Kelsey needed air, and he was able to throw the man off of him. The Rebel fell on his side, one hand over his eye while the other reached for the pistol sticking out from his belt.

  Even in agony, the Southerner managed to raise the gun and use his remaining eye to aim it at Kelsey. Kelsey spotted his own Colt lying in the grass just a few feet away. He dove for the weapon just as the man fired. Kelsey heard the hiss of the bullet as it passed his ear. He wrapped his hand around the handle of his Colt as the Confederate pulled his trigger again, both men firing simultaneously. Kelsey’s shot was hurried, but he hit the Rebel in the knee just as he felt a punch in his left shoulder. The Rebel screamed in pain and fell to the ground, clutching his leg as blood spilled from both his shattered knee and gouged eye. Kelsey aimed again and pulled the trigger.

  Click.

  The chamber was empty.

  The wounded Confederate’s survival instincts took hold and he began crawling to the pistol he had dropped. Kelsey grabbed a baseball-sized rock lying nearby and dove on the man’s back. Even as a bolt of pain shot through his bloodied shoulder, he brought the rock down on the top of the man’s head. The Rebel grunted, continuing to reach for his weapon as Kelsey swung the rock down again, this time with all of his remaining strength. The young man went limp, his head stove in.

  Royston rode up, a smoking pistol in his hand. Kirch was behind him, and the two men looked down at Terrell’s corpse. Royston’s jaw fell, his face twisted in angst, but there was no time for grieving. What was left of the Union line was collapsing. Royston finally turned to Kelsey, who was clutching his shoulder.

  “You okay? Can you ride? We have to get out of here now.”

  Kirch quickly dismounted, and with surprising strength helped Kelsey onto the back of his horse. Kirch then climbed into his own saddle. “Hang on to me, Sergeant!” Kelsey did, wrapping his good arm around Kirch’s waist as he clenched his eyes in pain.

  The men galloped down the hill, back toward Fairfield, the surviving remnants of the 6th Cavalry already ahead of them, and the Confederate taunts echoing from behind. After they had come so far, it was another humiliating defeat, and the loss of their friend was too much. The three men tried to force their emotions aside as they fled south into the Pennsylvania countryside.

  “Liberté,” Kelsey bitterly thought to himself.

  CHAPTER 20

  Kelsey sat on the oak floor with his back against a wall. A blood-soaked bandage was wrapped around his shoulder, the pain subsiding enough that he was no longer grinding his teeth. Orderlies had stopped by from time to time, checking the dressing while offering assurances a surgeon would be along soon enough. But wounded men continued to trickle into the schoolhouse, now converted to a field hospital, pushing Kelsey further back in line.

  Three hours had passed since Royston and Kirch had left him here. The sparsely-populated village just southe
ast of Gettysburg was a collection of homes and shops aptly named Littlestown. They were bringing masses of wounded here, including Confederates, most to eventually be loaded on to rail cars and transported to Washington for further care. The small schoolhouse, Kelsey had been told, was just one of dozens of area structures commandeered by the overwhelmed Federal medical corps to treat the thousands of injured men that continued to stream in from the battlefields a short distance away.

  Though Kelsey knew the lead ball in his shoulder had to come out, his stomach turned when he thought about what sort of anesthetics or surgical techniques the doctor would use on him. He had seen the work of their own regimental surgeon too often.

  What was left of the 6th U.S. Cavalry was encamped near Emmitsburg where they had rejoined the rest of their brigade. He heard that the regiment had less than 120 men fit for duty. Miraculously, only a small number had actually been killed at Fairfield. Their losses were heaviest among the captured, as entire troops had been overrun by the onslaught of Confederates cavalry that swept across those fields in one final, unrestrained push.

  Kelsey stared ahead, glassy-eyed. He tried to ignore the suffering around him, but the anguished cries and pleas for relief—even death—were too close to escape.

  Every one of his senses was exposed to the horrors of this place. There was the stench of medicinals mixed with human blood and waste. There was the growing pile of amputated limbs, stacked like cord wood near the surgeon’s table and drawing every fly in Pennsylvania. Occasionally, an orderly would toss the limbs into a large crate, to be moved outside, hopefully buried somewhere far away. But within a few hours and a thousand stomach-churning screams for mercy later, the pile had rematerialized.

  The heat in the tent was unbearable. Kelsey fought drowsiness by swatting the flies that hovered near his open wound. Day turned to night, and at some point his eyelids slowly closed as he succumbed to a deep slumber.

  When he came to, sunlight was peeking through the shutters and he felt several rough hands lifting him onto a table. A surge of panic swept through him as he glimpsed a tray holding an array of bloodied surgical instruments, suddenly remembering how they practiced medicine here. A pair of tired eyes, framed by white bushy eyebrows and matching beard, were examining him. They belonged to a local civilian doctor who had been pressed into service. The man pushed up his eye glasses and reached for a long instrument with a crooked end.

  “Son, I have no more chloroform for you, not even ether.” Even his voice was tired and drained of any emotion. Two orderlies pinned Kelsey’s arms and legs to the table. He squeezed his eyes closed, feeling the anxiety course through his body. He turned away, clenching his teeth as the long probe entered the wound.

  He saw a young woman standing to the side, watching the surgeon work. Her face showed a mix of fatigue and pity, and like the doctor, appeared as if she had been working through the night. A local girl, he presumed, perhaps twenty years old or so. Her long dark hair was pulled back in a bun but several loose strands dipped in front of her eyes. Her face was round and her nose pointed, but she had a pleasant look about her. Somehow, her femininity brought him a moment of comfort.

  The young woman stared in fascination as the surgeon continued to probe the wound, Kelsey’s pained expression and uncontrolled gasps revealing the toll the procedure was taking.

  Kelsey was bathed in perspiration but his eyes were fixed on her. She pulled a cloth from her apron and approached the table, gently mopping his forehead.

  “Thank you,” he whispered, his voice trembling as the orderlies grasped him more firmly.

  “You’re welcome,” she said with the faintest of smiles.

  He swallowed hard. “Wh—wh—what is your name?”

  “Lillian,” she said softly. “My friends call me Lilly.”

  He tried to focus on her, his only solace here. He finally released a long breath as the probe was withdrawn. The surgeon picked up another instrument and gave Kelsey an almost apologetic glance.

  “Hold on, son,” he murmured, as Kelsey felt the hands pressing him even harder to the table.

  As the surgeon dug into his flesh, Kelsey could no longer restrain himself. He cried out as someone roughly pressed a leather strap into his mouth. He chomped down on it, following the scores of other men who had chewed on that leather these last many hours. Lillian quickly knelt down. She placed her hand on his cheek, their faces inches apart, eyes locked on one another.

  The surgeon pushed the instrument deeper into the wound, working to free the coarse metal object lodged somewhere between muscle and bone. Kelsey gripped the edges of the table, sweat pouring from his temples and chin. He saw the glint of metal on her finger. He spit the strap out of his mouth.

  “Tell me about him,” he said, through gritted teeth.

  “Who?”

  “Your husband.”

  She looked down at the thin gold ring on her finger. “Danny? He’s not my husband, just my beau right now. This was his grandmother’s. We’ve known each other our whole lives. He used to pull my pigtails when we were children.”

  She paused as Kelsey gasped audibly.

  “Keep going,” he pleaded, desperation in his voice.

  “He asked me to marry him after he enlisted. He’s in the Twenty-fourth Pennsylvania Volunteers. They’re with General Grant in Tennessee, if you can believe that. I don’t understand the Army—shouldn’t he be here? Shouldn’t the Pennsylvania men be in Pennsylvania?”

  “Army. S-s-ome things…never change.”

  “I worry about him every day. He can’t see out of his right eye, lost that one when he was a boy and had the fever. Tell me, how is he supposed to shoot a rifle with one eye? Such a sweet boy. His daddy is a hog farmer, and Danny wants to be one too. My birthday last winter, Danny got me a piglet. Named it Wendell.”

  She paused, but this time he didn’t say anything. She looked at him closely, seeing his eyes were closed now and his breathing had slowed. Even the man’s face was no longer taut as he had slipped into unconsciousness. At long last, the surgeon removed the forceps, its ugly teeth clenching a bloodied Minié ball. One of the orderlies quickly clamped a thick bandage over the wound.

  Another soldier approached the surgeon. “Doctor, three more ambulances have arrived.”

  The surgeon’s shoulders sagged.

  ***

  Ethan entered the schoolhouse, the stench nearly overpowering him. He steadied himself as his senses absorbed the gruesome scene in front of him. The desks had been moved to partition the room. Nurses and orderlies with bloodied aprons moved about briskly. In front of him, men laid on the floor, shoulder to shoulder. Some were unconscious; others were sobbing or moaning, unable to cope with their misery, begging the medical staff for relief. There would be none, as even Ethan knew that anesthetics were in short supply and reserved for the most critical cases.

  He stepped to his left where he saw a row of men on cots and litters. There were so many, nearly all shirtless and bloodied, yet one stood out. Ethan saw the crimson-soaked bandages, just above where the man’s knees used to be. The young officer’s face, once tanned and vibrant, was now ghost white. A dressing was also tied around his head, a patch of blood visible where it covered what was left of his ear. He was lathered in sweat and his bare chest rose and fell as he labored through deep breaths even as he slept.

  Ethan knelt down and touched the man’s shoulder softly. “TJ.”

  There was no response, and Ethan pressed harder. “TJ,” he repeated, louder, closer to his good ear.

  TJ’s eyes fluttered as he awoke. He turned his head slightly and offered a tenuous smile. “Ethan.” The smile faded as he remembered where he was, his face quickly filling with despondence.

  “My apologies for not standing.” His voice was hoarse and barely audible.

  Ethan could not speak. He took his brother’s hand and squeezed it. It was cold and damp, and there was no response.

  TJ licked his lips. “Water please,” he as
ked.

  Ethan stood and grabbed a canteen hanging from a nearby peg. He kneeled again and offered it to TJ, who took a long swallow, coughing up half of it. “This will be the third time I’ve pissed myself today,” he mumbled. But there was no anger, or even bitterness. Just despair. “Did we hold, Ethan?”

  Ethan felt grateful for the question despite the news he had to share.

  “No. They eventually threw an entire brigade at us. Didn’t take long for our line to break. They chased us all the way back to the Fairfield Gap. We held there. What’s left of the regiment is in Emmitsburg, about fifteen miles west of here. Civilians in Fairfield were able to transport some of the wounded out of Fairfield before the enemy overran the town. That’s how you got here.”

  “Nurses say the battle is over, Meade got the Rebs good in Gettysburg.”

  Ethan nodded. “Apparently Lee marched an entire division into an open field. Right into the center of our lines, against Hancock and his corps. It was a turkey shoot, they say.”

  “How’s my squadron?”

  “As bad off as the rest of the regiment. There’s plenty of wounded, a lot more missing. Most of your men avoided getting captured since they were mounted from the start.” Ethan paused. “Terrell is dead.”

  TJ turned his head. “Christ, no,” he said in disbelief.

  Ethan didn’t want to ask the question, but he knew he had to. “I want you to name your replacement. I figured Givens, but wasn’t sure what you thought of him.”

  “Givens is the right choice. Smart, good instincts. And he’ll have Kelsey with him.”

  “Not at the moment. Kelsey took a ball in the shoulder. He’ll be all right though.”

  TJ paused as he gathered his thoughts. “You know, Ethan, I always thought when it came, it would be a simple bullet to the heart. Fast and easy. I was okay with that. But there was nowhere to go, Ethan. That barrage…the shell exploded right under Ginger. She was blown to bits. I remember feeling it rip into her, and that was the last thing I remember. Until I woke up. Here. Like this.”