by Larry Hunt
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
Hark the Herald Angels Sing
Christmas 1863 is just a few days away. It has been almost four months since Robert and Ben have been imprisoned at Point Lookout. After their lucky meeting with Private Luther Street that first morning at breakfast they have had a number of good things happen. If the word ‘good’ can be connected to anything in Point Lookout.’
Their immediate need back then was a place to bed down. Another night sleeping on the wet ground with no blanket was going to be like the night before – miserable. It is early winter, and the winds blowing directly off the Chesapeake Bay, from the north, brought dampness, producing a bone-chilling, wretched night.
Robert had mentioned their situation to Luther with the chance he might know where they might spend the night. Luther answers, “Alabam’ you be in luck! Two of my tent mates were taken to the hospital this morning – I don’t believe theys will be coming back.” Winking, he said, “You get my drift?”
Robert, although sorry for the two men’s misfortune, wasn’t sorry enough to turn down the offer of their bunks in Luther’s tent. Anyplace dry and out of the biting wind was fine with them.
The next morning, before sunup, both Robert and Ben found themselves in a mass of emaciated, humanity waiting and hoping to hear their names called for the morning work detail. They will learn nothing in this hellhole of a prison is free. Unknown to Robert and Ben their benefactor Luther had traded hardtack and tobacco to the duty assignment Sergeant ensuring they would be picked for the morning’s detail. Robert and Ben had thought the prisoners were a pack of uncaring, self-centered, friendless individuals. They were wrong Luther had proved he was a true friend.
Death was a common sight, anywhere from ten to fifteen prisoners die each day. Most are buried in the common graveyard located just a few hundred yards north of the hospital. Most mornings, the daily assignment is to bury the dead. At first Robert would utter a silent prayer for the body he is throwing dirt over; however, it becomes so routine, he would throw the body into its grave, and taking shovel in hand he throws the dirt in without even thinking about the task at hand. Occasionally, sitting on his bunk, he would think how this War has so de-humanized men, especially him. Each man has only one thing in common – survival, personal survival at any cost. He was ashamed, he must change, he cannot exist like this.
Over the past months, thievery has increased considerably. The low-lifes will slip among the tents late at night, slit a hole and steal whatever they can easily reach. Using a couple of the wooden cracker boxes, Robert constructs a sort of cabinet where he and Ben store what little ‘valuables’ they possess. He secures the cabinet door with a length of tent twine with one end tied to his foot. If someone tries to pull on the door, he will feel the tug on his leg and pounce on the intruder. Fortunately, no one ever cut into his tent. In Robert’s starved, haggard condition, no doubt he would have killed the thief without a second’s thought. Or, perhaps been killed himself.
A few months after their arrival Robert and Ben have saved up enough money to open up their own little ‘business’ along Pennsylvania Avenue. They would buy molasses from the Sutler, boil it down, roll it in to small lengths and sell them as molasses taffy at a half-dime per roll. Their store counter is merely a couple of cracker boxes stacked one on the other, but they did a brisk business. Robert and Ben trade turns – one day Robert will work the store and Ben would go out on a work detail, the next day they would reverse jobs.
One day Robert is whitewashing the fence around the hospital when he sees one of the hospital orderlies dumping the used coffee grounds from the hospital’s coffee pots in the trash pile.
Back in his tent he explains to Ben what he has witnessed at the hospital fence. Together they devise a plan to get under the fence, get the used coffee grounds, and hopefully escape back to their tents with their prize.
Next morning, Robert whitewashes for a few minutes, when the guards are not looking he begins working on a hole under the fence. This endeavor consumes most of the day. About an hour or so before quitting time he catches the two guards smoking their pipes and talking to each other. Unnoticed, he slips under the fence, hurries to the garbage pile and scoops up as much coffee grounds as he can get in a gunny sack before the guards can see him. His covert operation works, he was not seen.
The next day both work their store. Standing in front of their hardtack boxes they announce, “Get your taffy here! Hot coffee just a half-dime. Hot coffee, real coffee!” They do a brisk business. There is no telling how many time those same coffee grounds gets boiled; regardless, Robert and Ben collect a tidy sum of spending money each time a weaker and weaker batch of coffee is brewed.
Robert has another idea for their store – flapjacks. He will purchase flour from the Sutler and make flapjacks and serve them with a bit of thinned sorghum molasses. However, to stretch his flour purchase Robert makes the flapjacks rather thin. So thin, in fact, one day a customer orders a couple, holds one up to the light and proclaims, “Darn, I believe I can read newsprint through these. I thought I had been hoodwinked by the best, but you fellows beat ’em all!” Needless to say, the flapjack business did not last too long. Robert was relieved the flapjack business failed – he had always considered himself to be an honest man and taking advantage of poor, destitute soldiers did not sit too well with him. He believed, surely he could do better.
In the first week of December ’63, Ben developed a slight cough. At first they just contributed it to the conditions under which they live, but it had progressively gotten worse. Ben reports for ‘Sick Call.’ He is carried to the hospital and examined by a Yankee doctor. The news is dreadful. He is diagnosed with Lung Fever, a disease officially called Pneumonia by the doctors, a disease that will progressively get worse, a disease with a bad prognosis - a fatal prognosis.
As December the 25th nears, they are to spend their first Christmas as prisoners of the Yankees. Ben is constantly coughing, wheezing and on some days cannot even get out of his bunk. He is a miserable wretch to see. Even though Robert buys extra rations, the sparse food isn’t wholesome enough for Ben; he is emaciated down to nothing but skin and bones. Everyone knows the worse, Ben has Lung Fever, and he is nearing death. A few days before Christmas as Robert tries to feed Ben a small bowl of potato skin broth Ben asks if Robert will do him a favor.
“Anything Ben, if it’s within my power, just name it.”
“Robert, I know I am dying and will never see home again. For one last time, I would like to have a Christmas tree. One like I used to have at home.”
“My friend, if it is at all possible a Christmas tree you will have.”
Twice a week work details were sent outside the walls to cut and gather firewood. It takes almost all the money he and Ben have saved from their various business enterprises to bribe the guard to allow him to go on the firewood detail. Outside in the pine woods Robert finds a small cedar tree about five feet tall. He cuts it along with the rest of the wood he gathers that day.
Back at their tent, Robert stands the little cedar tree upright, but he does not have anything to decorate its branches. He remembers at home Malinda strung popped popcorn kernels together on a long string and drooped it around the trees. He has not seen any popcorn in years, and surely there is none in this Hades’ abyss.
Word quickly spreads through the ‘pen’ of Ben’s Christmas tree. Without hesitation, men with no worldly goods begin to bring in ‘ornaments’ for the tree. One has a few scraps of red cloth another has cut a few pieces of tin from an old metal box – the man’s most prized possession. One old fellow hangs Confederate money he has rolled in to springy coils. Lids from cans, pieces of carved wood, one even donates a couple of candles. Pretty soon they have the makings of a ‘beautiful’ tree. Beauty has a different meaning to a scraggly, bone-thin, dirty group of men who are now the happiest they have been in years. One of them speaks to Ben, “Sorry old fellow,” he says grinning. “I don’t believe Santa is coming,
I hear the Yanks saw his gray beard and figured he was a Reb spy and shot him.” Ben managed a weak smile.
Glancing around the tent wet tears can be seen slowly flowing down dirty cheeks of the Sons of the Confederacy into scraggly beards that are long past the need of a good trimming. All gaze at the tree and remember Christmases of old. They can see their children in their mind’s eye sitting around their tree at home. The fire burning brightly in their fireplaces and all the rooms are cozy and warm. Later one old Reb confides to Robert he thought he could actually smell the turkey roasting in the kitchen. Someone puts a flame to the candles and from the back of the tent a voice begins to sing and they all join in:
“Hark
the herald angels sing,
Glory to the newborn King!
Peace on earth and mercy mild
God and sinners reconciled.
Joyful, all ye nations rise
Join the triumph of the skies
With the angelic host proclaim:
"Christ is born in Bethlehem."
Hark! The herald angels sing
"Glory to the newborn King!"