by Larry Hunt
CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO
Colonel Adams
Robert seems to withdraw from reality after the death of his friend Ben. For months on end, he lies in his bunk, eating very little, talking even less. However, the winter is passing, and spring is not far behind – one can smell it in the air. The freshening breeze off Chesapeake Bay is beginning to feel a bit warmer and blows the stench of the prison away on some days, giving the prisoners a brief respite, if only for a little while.
Robert gave his small shop on Pennsylvania Avenue to one of his friends who gives him an occasional dollar or two. This small sum is enough to barely keep Robert alive.
His memory had entirely returned months earlier. The only indication of the bullet wound to his head is a bad scar on his forehead close to the hairline. The bayonet wound to his chest left only a jagged scar in front and a smaller one on his back.
Lying on his bed staring at the top of his tent, he thinks of his farm in Alabama, especially his wife Malinda and his children. Also, he cannot help but remember Luke and Matthew. The last he saw of them was at Gettysburg. He wonders if they live or are they buried along with thousands of others in unmarked graves somewhere over the vastness of that gruesome battlefield.
The entrance to his tent by a Union sergeant breaks his reverie. The sergeant walks up to Robert’s bed and asks, “You be Sergeant Robert Scarburg?”
Startled, Robert turns to face his questioner, it has been a long time since anyone has addressed him by his military rank and full name, “Yes, I am Sergeant Robert Scarburg.”
“The Commandant of Lookout Point is of the understanding that you can read and write a fair hand. Is he correct in his assumption?”
“Well, yes of course I can read and write. Why would he ask?”
“The Colonel’s orderly, a Sergeant Owens come down with a sudden sickness and died. The Army won’t send the Commandant a replacement. The Colonel needs someone to send and receive his correspondence and answer same if necessary, and he needs someone now! He figures that someone to be you. Now git yerself up and follow me to see the Man.”
Walking into the building the Commandant uses as his office; Robert waits in an outer room until the Union guard opens the door, motioning to Robert, “The Colonel will see you now.”
Robert removes his forage cap, which is now but a few rags held together by just enough hope and a promise that keeps it from totally falling off his head, and walks into the Colonel’s office.
Sitting at a large oak desk is a stoutly built man wearing a Union officer’s double-breasted, blue jacket with two double rows of gold buttons. On his shoulders are shoulder boards displaying an eagle signifying the rank of full colonel, a ‘bird colonel’ as the enlisted men refer to the rank of such officers. The shoulder insignias are trimmed in blue. A couple of strange thoughts come to Robert as he salutes the Colonel. The jacket, the Colonel wears, is a U.S. Army general’s coat. The shoulder boards trimmed in blue signify an infantry officer. An infantry general, now a prisoner-of-war commandant Colonel, albeit a bird colonel, that doesn’t seem right. Something isn’t adding up.
Holding his salute he addresses the Colonel, “Sergeant Robert Scarburg, reporting to the Commandant, as ordered Sir!”
The Colonel appeared busy signing some papers and did not look up. Gesturing a half-hearted salute he orders Robert to “Stand at ease.”
The sad shape Robert is in, health-wise, whether at ‘attention’ or ‘at ease’ the Colonel would not have been able to tell the difference. The sentry stands at the door at attention. The Colonel places the pen in the inkwell, motions to the sentry, “Wait outside,” and then turns his attention to Robert. “I understand you have had some formal education and can read and write, am I correct?”
“Yes sir, that is correct,” Robert responds.
Getting up from his desk he walks around and sits on its corner, “And, I understand you surrendered at Gettysburg?”
“Yes sir, I mean, you Yanks did capture me all right, but only after I was wounded, I did not voluntarily surrender, Sir.”
“Yes, yes, I understand, very commendable, I was at Gettysburg too. I commanded a Division of the XI Corps north of town on the first day; General Jubal Early’s Division of the South’s II Corps overran us. I could have succeeded in my advance if General Howard had re-enforced my Division,” Robert could see in his eyes the Colonel was re-living every moment of that first day at Gettysburg. “You in Early’s division?”
“No, Sir, we briefly got into the fight that first day but didn’t get into the hard fightin’ until the 2nd day. I was in Longstreet’s 1st Corp, under General Hood, the 48th Alabama. We did our fighting at Little Round Top and Devil’s Den, a little ways south of town at the far left of your line of battle on Cemetery Ridge. That’s where I was wounded and captured.”
“Well, I did the best I could with the quantity of men I had. They blamed the defeat north of town on me and reduced me from a Brigadier General to this lowly colonel’s rank. You know,” the Colonel said speaking as though he were talking to one of his officer peers, “they don’t seem to realize once General Early forced the Union Army to retreat below town to Cemetery Ridge, we gained the whole advantage of the battle. We held the high ground!”
Robert had heard reports of the Battle of Gettysburg many times by various participants there with him in prison and the Colonel was correct, General Meade’s defense of Cemetery Ridge won the battle for the North. The position made a formidable defense against Pickett’s fatal charge on the 3rd day of battle.
“Oh, I can still hear General Meade reading those orders:
‘For dereliction of duty by advancing his Division to an indefensible position which was overrun by General Jubal Early’s Corps resulting in the capture, wounding or death of his entire Division. Brigadier General Francis C. Adams is hereby reduced from the rank of Brigadier General to the rank of Colonel and is hereby re-assigned...’
“ Re-assigned hell, they might as well have cashiered me out of the Army as to send me here. I suppose they would have thrown me out had it not been that I am the grandson of President John Quincy Adams and the great–grandson of John Adams. Let me tell you Sergeant having famous relatives can be a blessing, but sometimes it is a curse. My assignment to this God forsaken place is one of those cursed times. I wish the Army would have just let me resign my commission.”
“I’m sorry sir, but I don’t have any famous relatives, oh, my great-great-grandpappy was hung by the British – does that count?”
The Colonel walks back around his desk, opens a drawer and takes out a half empty bottle of Old Crow, a Kentucky straight bourbon whiskey. “I guess if it is good enough for old General Grant,” holding the bottle up for Robert to see, “it’ll be good enough for you and me.”
He pulls out the cork with his teeth, spits it aside, finds two glasses, and pours his almost to the rim and about two fingers full in the other for Robert. Touching glasses, the Colonel says, “To the Union, may it long survive.” Turning his glass up he downs the contents before stopping, then turns to Robert, “Now get the hell out!”
Although the toast was to the survival of the Union Robert could not refrain, it was the first whiskey he had tasted in such a very long time. Upon downing his portion, it took his breath, and he thought his throat was surely on fire. He wanted to cough but resisted the temptation until he was out of the Colonel’s office.
Rubbing the remains of the alcohol from his mustache and beard Robert returns to the outer waiting room and addresses a Sergeant sitting at a small table, “Sir, what am I supposed to do?”
“Do? Do? Sit at that other table, and you do what I tell you to do? Get it Johnny Reb?”
“Yes Sergeant I get it, but the names ‘Robert’ not ‘Johnny’.”
Robert walks over to the bare table, pulls out the single chair and sits with his hands, fingers interlaced, on the table. The Sergeant turns toward Robert. Robert drops his hands down to his sides, ‘was I not supposed to to
uch the table,’ he thinks. “Robert huh? I don’t like Robert, yous is Bob, yeah that’s good, I’m gonna call you Bob... Bob run over to the mess house and tell Cookie that Sergeant Samuel O. Belue”, (he pronounces his name as ‘Blue’), “wants a slice of ham on some bread.”
Robert jumps up, “Yes sir Sergeant,” and hurries to the door.
“Oh, while you’re at it tell him to fix one fer yerself, ‘cause now you is my assistant. Drop by the Quartermaster’s place and tell him Blue said to fix you up with some better clothing. It just ain’t right to have a sorry soul as you work for me and the Commandant and look the way you do. Git a bath too, they got hot water out behind the officer’s laundry, jest tell ’em Blue sent you. When you git done go up to the postal office and git the Commandant’s mail, and be quick about it, yer hear?”
Before Blue could say another word Robert said, “And tell’em Blue send me for the mail. Right Sir?”
“Correct, and, by the way, don’t call me Sir, I work fer a livin’.”
It must be around midnight as Robert lay in his bunk thinking if the day had been real or was that bullet to the head causing him to imagine things. If it were real, he knew one thing – the name ‘Blue’ was like saying God had sent him, ‘cause it sure parted the seas and opened the doors around the prison.
He had run errands all afternoon for Blue and wrote a couple of letters for the Commandant, nothing important, one to Headquarters requesting a re-assignment for the Colonel and another to his wife. He wonders, who would want someone else writing to their wife. Odd, he thinks.
The flap of the tent flies up, and a soldier with a lantern enters, “Bob? Bob? Where the heck you at?” The soldier with the light asks.
“You looking for Robert Scarburg?”
“Yeah, it that you Bob? What the dickens are you doin’ back down here?”
“This is where I live, who’s asking?”
“It’s me Bob; Blue, git yer belongings yer supposed to live in that side room with me at the Commandant’s office.”
‘This can’t be,’ thought Robert, ‘this has got to be that bullet to my head.’
Next morning Blue asks, “Are you a religious man Bob?”
“Are you asking if I believe in God if so, the answer is yes, but do I sit and read my Bible daily, the answer is no. If you...”
“Enough Bob, enough! I don’t want to hear yer entire religion background I just wanted to know if you knew this Sunday was Easter. My father was a Presbyterian minister, and we celebrated Good Friday and Easter. Today is Good Friday; Easter will be the 27th of March.”
“Yes Blue, we did celebrate the Resurrection, but we did not use the name Easter, our family celebrated Resurrection Sunday. Why? I’m not quite sure, but it had to do something about my grandfather I think. But thanks, I knew Resurrection Sunday was sometime in March or April but I was not sure of its exact date. It’s going to be pretty early this year, huh Blue?”
“You know Easter travels around from Sunday to Sunday each year, reckon hows they know when to have it?”
“Well, Blue, Resurrection Sunday is always the first Sunday after the first full moon past the beginning of spring. Spring is around the 20th or 21st of March.”
“Well, do tell. Never noed that, but it’s right, yesterday there was a full moon.”
“That would have been the 24th, this is about as early as Resurrection Sunday can come.”
“Yeah, Sunday will be the 27th of March, 1864. This will be the fourth year I have spent Easter in this man’s Union Army, what about you Bob?”
“I joined in the spring of ’62, so I suppose this will be my third Resurrection Sunday in the Confederate army. I surely hope and pray I will not be in this place for a fourth, in 1865.