by Tim Black
Mr. Greene smiled. “I totally agree with you. My niece and I will pray for the Lord’s deliverance as well.”
The waitress smiled. “That’s good,” she said and walked away still talking. “But I sure wish he takes a day off from the Holy Land and pays us a visit.”
Minerva and Mr. Greene walked out onto the Diamond. Confederate soldiers were all about the town square, and Minerva could see the barricade on Baltimore Street that the waitress mentioned. The barrier was manned by Confederate soldiers who were exchanging rifle fire with Yankees atop Cemetery Hill. Minerva turned her head and saw a steady flow of Confederate infantry marching into Gettysburg from Chambersburg Street.
“I think we can make our way safely to the Fahnestock Store and watch the events from the rooftop observatory,” Mr. Greene commented.
“I’m not so sure it is safe, Mr. Greene,” Minerva advised. “I don’t see any other civilians in the street right now. Everyone seems to be in their houses.”
“Probably down in their cellars, Minerva,” Greene said. “Let’s stay close to the buildings just to be on the safe side.”
Minerva heard the thud of a minie ball hitting a wall of a building on Baltimore Street. Then another. The firing emanated from Cemetery Hill to the south of town. Minerva realized that the Yankees were firing down from the heights directly into the town. She could see Confederate soldiers huddled behind their barricades. Bullets seemed to be whizzing around Minerva. She felt her heart racing. But Mr. Greene was determined to make it to the Fahnestock Store. When he made it to the door of the store he said forlornly, “It’s closed.”
Sure enough, Minerva saw the CLOSED sign on the window.
“Now what, Mr. Greene?” she asked her teacher.
“I guess we will have to watch what we can from our hotel windows,” Greene said in a disappointed voice.
They turned around and were nearing the Diamond when Minerva heard a shot and saw her teacher crumble to the street in agony.
“I’m hit!” Greene shouted, grabbing his calf. “My leg!”
Minerva sprang into action. She ripped the bottom of Mr. Greene’s left pant leg. The bullet had entered his calf below the knee and she was thankful for that. She tore the piece of pants into a strip and then tied it around her teacher’s leg as a tourniquet. Then she helped Mr. Greene to his feet, put his arm around her and helped him hobble along with his one good leg. She looked around and saw a small pool of blood soaking into the soil of Baltimore Street.
“My antibiotics,” Greene said. “Minerva, they are in the dry sink in my room at the hotel. I am going to need them. If my wound gets infected the surgeons will amputate!”
“I’ll get them, Mr. Greene,” Minerva promised. “Everything will be alright, she said calmly, afraid that her teacher might go into shock.
Suddenly, a Confederate lieutenant appeared with two men beside him. The officer offered his assistance.
“Allow us to help you with your father, miss,” said the clean-shaven young lieutenant. Even considering the situation, Minerva saw that the officer was a stunningly handsome young man. In his uniform with his long blond hair and dreamy blue eyes, he could have graced the cover of a romance novel, she thought. “He’s my uncle, actually,” Minerva said, heart aflutter.
“I see. Well, we will carry your uncle to your courthouse where there is a hospital set up and I will see to it that our surgeons remove the bullet from his leg.”
“That is very kind of you, sir,” Minerva replied.
“General Lee has told us to treat civilians like we would treat our own people, miss. Unlike the Yankees who are not gentlemen,” the lieutenant added. “Unlike your soldiers we don’t shoot our own civilians.”
“I know nothing of that, sir, but I am thankful for your help,” Minerva said, her infatuation for the Confederate officer quickly waning. She didn’t blame the Union sniper, she blamed her teacher for walking in the street. But she was not about to chastise him aloud, just in her thoughts.
The lieutenant bowed graciously to Minerva and the two enlisted men carried Nathan Greene by his legs and his shoulders to the courthouse with Minerva beside them. Minerva saw the agony on her teacher’s face. Mr. Greene had often said that the large caliber bullets sometimes shattered an arm or a leg, and she hoped that wasn’t the case for her teacher.
In the courthouse, Minerva was reunited with Julia Culp, who looked at Minerva with contempt. Minerva realized Julia was angry with her for leaving so abruptly the day before. She decided she would apologize to Julia after she saw that Mr. Greene received treatment. The enlisted men placed Mr. Greene in a makeshift bed, swishing a few flies away from the top sheet. Minerva checked the tourniquet: it was holding.
Julia Culp came over.
“I’m sorry about yesterday, Julia,” Minerva apologized. “This is my uncle. He saw me out in the alley and told me to go to my room at the hotel. He didn’t think it was ladylike to be administering to wounded boys,” Minerva prevaricated, making up a whopper. It was a good one she realized when…
Julia smiled. “I understand, Minerva. You weren’t the only girl dragged away yesterday. My father’s dead and my older brothers are fighting so no man was around to tell me what to do. I am sure glad of that…may I see your uncle’s wound?”
Minerva nodded.
“I’ve seen much worse, “Julia commented after a quick evaluation. “I’ll see if I can round up a Union surgeon. We have both Confederate and Union surgeons, as well as Rebel and Yankee wounded,” she said. “Everyone seems to be getting along, too. Funny how it took a war to achieve that,” she mused.
When Julia walked away, Mr. Greene grabbed Minerva’s arm. “My pills, remember my pills. If I get an infection they will cut off my leg, Minerva. You’ve seen how unsanitary the conditions are.”
Minerva returned to the hotel and went directly to the dry sink in Mr. Greene’s room. She pulled out a drawer and extracted the antibiotics that her teacher brought along for his abscessed tooth. When she returned to the courthouse hospital, which was little more than a triage center, Mr. Greene was already laid out on a table. Minerva watched in horror as a surgeon stuck one of his dirty fingers into her teacher’s leg in an attempt to locate the bullet. Next the surgeon used a metal bullet probe which was a long thin piece of metal with a porcelain head. Mr. Greene winced in pain before he thankfully passed out. Having discovered the bullet’s location, the surgeon quickly moved into the wound with an extractor—a long, bullet-grabbing forceps. Minerva knew from listening to her teacher and from reading up on Civil War medicine that the high velocity weapons and the large caliber bullets often shattered the bones, making amputation imperative due to fears of infection to tissue.
After a few moments, the surgeon withdrew the bullet from Mr. Greene’s leg. Pinched onto the end of the forceps, he expertly swung the bullet atop a small metal pan and released the projectile where it registered a slight ding as it hit the pan.
“Didn’t seem to hit any bone,” the surgeon said. He examined the bullet for pieces of cloth or pieces of tissue. “He’s a very lucky man. If gangrene doesn’t set in, he can keep his leg,” the surgeon pronounced and then moved off to attend to another wounded man. Another surgeon moved in and quickly sutured Mr. Greene’s wound. Then he, too, moved on to the next patient. Two orderlies carried Mr. Greene back to his awaiting bed where the teacher drifted off to sleep.
Minerva was relieved. It was bad enough that Mr. Greene got knocked out on their trip to Philadelphia, but losing a leg would have been a whole lot worse, Minerva thought. She had had to intervene in Philadelphia to prevent Dr. Rush from bleeding Mr. Greene, but she hoped she wouldn’t have to interfere with a Civil War surgeon.
“Do you want to stay with your uncle, Minerva?” Julia asked.
“Certainly, I do,” Minerva replied.
Julie nodded, walked off and then returned with a chair for Minerva to sit.
“Thank you, Julia,” Minerva said.
“D
on’t thank me. I would hope you would do the same if my brother Wesley was brought in. He’s here I think, in Gettysburg, and I pray nothing befalls him.”
“I will pray for Wesley as well,” Minerva promised, although she knew the fate of Julia’s beloved brother. By tomorrow at this time, Wesley Culp would lay dying on his Uncle Henry’s Hill, known forever since as Culp’s Hill. Unlike the profligate son in the Bible who was welcomed home by his father, prodigal son Wesley Culp of Gettysburg returned home to a bullet, not a banquet. There was just no way that Minerva could tell Julia Culp what was in store for her brother Wesley. If Julia had that knowledge, history might be changed, and they certainly didn’t need another Peggy Shippen, either.
About an hour later, Mr. Greene awoke. Minerva offered him water and an antibiotic pill.
“How bad is it?” he asked Minerva.
“Seems you were fortunate. The bullet missed the bone. If you don’t get an infection you will keep your leg,” she said. Minerva wanted to chide him for his boyish impetuousness to see the battle which caused his injury, but she held her tongue, just like her mother often did when Minerva’s father did something asinine, which she mused, was fairly often. It was a defect in men, she concluded. A defect that Victor certainly had.
“The pills should prevent that,” Mr. Greene said.
“I hope so.”
“I’m sorry, Minerva.”
“For what, Mr. Greene?”
“My impetuousness. We should have gone to a cellar instead of the Fahnestock Building,” he said.
“You are the one who was injured, Mr. Greene,” Minerva said.
Greene smiled. “I tempted the gods, I guess, and Zeus sent me a message. Stay out of the streets. I wonder how Victor and Bette are getting along?”
“I don’t know,” Minerva said coldly, envisioning her erstwhile best friend in the arms of her former boyfriend. She shook the image from her mind. I’m a jealous scold, she reproached herself.
“I’m glad I gave them some pills as well in case something happens to one of them. This is a great deal more dangerous than I thought,” Mr. Greene admitted. “It is certainly more hazardous than Philadelphia in 1776, except when you girls had to rescue the Anderson twins at Fort Mifflin. That was really something.”
Minerva smiled wistfully. “Yes, it was,” she agreed with a reflective grin. It was the best day of her life. “I am glad that the soldiers only had inaccurate muskets when they fired at us. I’m not certain everything would have gone as well had the soldiers then had these Civil War rifles.”
“Yes,” Greene agreed. “These weapons are much more accurate, and as a consequence much more deadly. The bullet is bigger and the muzzle velocity is so much faster.”
“Uh huh…should I leave the pills with you, Mr. Greene?”
“No, Minerva, check my bandage and see if it is wrapped properly, and then play scavenger and see if you can find crutches for me. The surgeons are going to need this bed. And, frankly, I will recuperate more quickly in my hotel room. It will certainly be more sanitary. If I can make it to my room.”
“I’ll see to it, Mr. Greene.”
Chapter 8
Musketry and cannon fire provided a martial symphony of sounds all throughout the morning of July 2nd on the battlefield at Gettysburg. In a fiery and deadly confrontation, the Confederates drove the Union army from Devil’s Den and bodies began to accumulate in the Valley of Death.
On Big Round Top, a transfixed Victor Bridges and a horrified Bette Kromer watched the carnage progress in Devil’s Den and on Little Round Top, while still keeping an eye out for Confederate skirmishers on Big Round Top, as they had seen some Rebels a few hundred feet below the summit, walking through the woods to get into position for the afternoon assault on Little Round Top. From their vantage point, the soldiers appeared tiny, but as Bette looked through the telescope she could see the agony etched on the faces of the fallen. The frozen blank stares from young, dead men who only a moment before had been living and breathing human beings. Some, Bette noticed, were wounded, but no man dared rescue a colleague from the deadly crossfire in the Valley of Death.
“Bette, do you see that man on Little Round Top, the man holding the binoculars and pacing back and forth as if in a frenzy?”
Bette swiveled the telescope to Little Round Top. “Yes, who is he?”
“That has to be Brigadier General Gouverneur Warren, a civil engineer. He has just surveyed the area and realizes the importance of Sugar Loaf Hill.”
“Sugar Loaf Hill?”
“That’s what the locals nicknamed Little Round Top. Let me have the telescope a minute. Yes, that’s Warren alright. Today, his statue stands atop Little Round Top, facing the field of battle. Anyway, Warren has just figured out that the Union better get some men to reinforce the hill. He just grabbed an aide by the collar and his face is turning red. He is giving the aide orders. The Union troops will be here within a few minutes. If Warren hadn’t come along, the Rebels would have merely climbed the hill, and the rest, as they say, would be history. Lord knows what would have happened to the United States of America.”
“Really, Victor. You aren’t being melodramatic now are you?” Bette asked.
“Look, Kromer, if the South had won the Civil War there would be two nations, not one. Simple as that. Had the Confederates won the Battle of Gettysburg they could have marched on Washington and ended the whole thing.”
“Wow!” Bette said. “That’s pretty big.”
Victor shook his head. “You think?”
“Don’t be sarcastic, Victor,” Bette chided.
“I’m sorry, Bette. From what I learned by reading and rereading Killer Angels, the three mistakes the Confederates made at Gettysburg were one, failing to take Little Round Top, and two, Pickett’s Charge. And three, ignoring Longstreet’s advice to move the Confederate army south of Gettysburg. From our vantage point atop Big Round Top, I can see the wisdom of James Longstreet’s advice to Robert E. Lee: Move the Confederate army south of Gettysburg and force General Meade to fight on offense, not defense. There was no one better at fighting in a defensive position than Robert E. Lee and the Army of Northern Virginia. I think Longstreet was right. If Lee had moved the Army of the Potomac between Gettysburg and Washington, he would have forced Meade to attack him.”
“What’s the difference?”
“It takes fewer men to defend a position than are required to take a position. Usually the attacking force should have a three to two advantage. In this case, Lee’s army was actually smaller than Meade’s, so he should have been on the defense. But Lee’s blood was up.”
“What does that mean, ‘his blood was up’?” Bette asked.
“It meant that he was determined to try to end the war here, at Gettysburg. He thought he saw the opportunity and he took it. Remember hubris, Kromer?”
“The Greek word for excessive pride?”
“Yup…well hubris had its day, actually three days, at Gettysburg. The thought was that Robert E. Lee was the greatest general since Napoleon, well Napoleon had his Waterloo and…”
“Lee had his Gettysburg?” Bette said, finishing Victor’s thought.
“You got it, Kromer.”
A minie ball nicked a boulder about ten feet from where the two were huddled.
“Whoa!” Victor said. “Someone is shooting at us. We’d better change our location. Let’s go over there, behind the two boulders. That will shield us better from Devil’s Den.”
Actually, they could still see Devil’s Den from a small opening between the two boulders and they watched as the Confederates finished dislodging the Yankees from the odd rock formation. Victor took the telescope in hand and scanned Little Round Top. The Union troops were arriving and taking up positions. He focused on an officer with a full, large, but droopy mustache. “Chamberlain!” he whispered.
“What?” Bette asked in a soft voice.
“Chamberlain, Kromer. Joshua Lawrence Chamberlain, the commander of the fabl
ed 20th Maine. Wow, as I live and breathe.”
“Indeed, Chamberlain is here at last!” a male voice said.
“Mr. Catton?” Bette said as the ghost floated in place.
“At your service,” the dead historian smiled. “I hope you are enjoying the show,” he said. “Isn’t it wonderful being here?” he asked, rhetorically.
“Yes,” the teens said in unison, and began to laugh.
“I think it best that you two members of the quick do not venture forth to join the dead. I compliment you on your choice of vantage point. I see you have a regulation Signal Corps telescope as well. Very well done, Victor. Now, I must leave you. Unlike you, I can float over to Little Round Top and watch the action a little more closely without fear. It is one of the advantages of being an apparition. Talk with you later, perhaps tonight back at the Weikerts’…” Catton added, and floated across the indentation that separated the two Round Tops.
The Confederate assault on Little Round Top began. On the lower slope of Big Round Top, a brigade of Alabama soldiers were affixing bayonets to their rifles.
Victor pointed for Bette. “Those Alabama boys are about to charge Little Round Top,” Victor said. “Don’t stand up at any time. You might attract another bullet,” he cautioned.
“Why, there’s Mr. Foote,” Bette said, pointing toward the ghost.
“He’s with the Alabama boys!” Victor said. But his eyes swerved to the summit of Little Round Top and he concentrated on a lieutenant colonel.
Chamberlain was amazing, Victor thought, hero worshipping. A professor of languages at Bowdoin College in Maine, Chamberlain had led his men in the futile Union charge at Fredericksburg in his first combat of the war, but it was a smallpox outbreak within his regiment that caused him to miss the Battle of Chancellorsville where he was, ironically, promoted to regimental commander. Victor knew that Chamberlain’s chief aide was his brother Thomas Chamberlain. Victor remembered one of Chamberlain’s quotes: “War makes bad men worse and good men better.” The professor was the embodiment of his own axiom.