CHAPTER SEVEN
Attack
General Lee, unaware he is being so closely watched by General Meade, continues down the line of Southern soldiers until he reaches General Longstreet.
Luke, who is following the General, hears every word spoken.
“Sir,” General Lee says returning the salute of General Longstreet. The Commander of the Army of Northern Virginia, without waiting, issues his order, “Attack General, attack!”
General Longstreet still does not believe an attack on the center of the firmly entrenched Union Army can be successful. Reluctantly, without speaking, salutes, turns his horse and slowly rides away from General Lee.
Luke turns quickly and begins running through the line of rebel soldiers, “We’re attacking! We’re attacking!” he yells as he runs. The announcement comes as no surprise; most of the men simply take another chew of tobacco or fire up their pipes and await the inevitable. General Longstreet, as do his men, know attacking the Union defenses across that near mile of open space is going to be hopeless. The veterans have enough battle experience to have come to this conclusion also. They are not blind, but they will attack – they will follow orders, they know no other way to fight.
As he continues to run from one Confederate Company to another, Luke keeps inquiring about his father and brother Matthew. No one has seen either of them since the battle of yesterday.
“Luke! Luke!” A voice rings out from the rear of B Company. Luke turns to the sound. Peering through the throng of soldiers, he spies an old friend from back home, Private Carl Saint. Carl, Robert, Luke, and Matthew, all enlisted at the same time in 1862. Once they arrived in Nashville, Robert and Luke remained with E Company of the 48th Alabama; however, Carl went to B Company. At this time, Matthew was pulled from the Infantry and assigned to the staff of General “Stonewall’ Jackson.
Carl is trying his hardest to get Luke to hear him. At the edge of the woods, Napoleon cannons are being unlimbered and on the move. The men are all talking at once, horses whinnying, and officers bellowing orders. Over all this noise, Luke hears enough to begin pushing his way through the group of soldiers toward Carl; finally, they reach each other.
“Carl! Carl! It is good to see you after yesterday’s battle. I am so glad you survived.” Before giving Carl time to answer Luke continues, “Have you seen anything of my father? I left him badly injured yesterday, but I have no news of him. I left brother Matthew with Father also, do you have any information about him?”
“A bit of news, Luke – yer brother Matt he be doin’ fine – I seed him a little while ago, back yonder in yer E Company area.”
“That’s great news, Carl; I have not been back to my Company yet. I have been going up and down the line seeking word on Father and Matthew. What news of Father, Carl?”
“I seed him being bared away from the field on a blanket by two orderlies. I don’t know where they took him tho’.”
“Tell me Carl! Tell me I beg you, was he alive?”
“Luke, I can’t say yea or nay. I was only close enough to catch a glimpse of his face, and I’m sorry, but I couldn’t tell ye if he be livin’ or not. All I knows is his eyes wuz shut.”
Returning to his Company’s assembly area, Luke searches for Matthew. His Company of two hundred and thirty men has been decimated by the previous day’s fight, finding his brother Matt is not difficult, only about half of his Company remains.
“Matthew!” Grabbing his brother by his shoulder – Matt turns.
“Luke, I thought you were surely dead, thank God you are alive.”
They continue to hug each other tightly. “I am so happy to see you Matt, tell me about Father, what happened to him? Is he alive?”
“I’m sorry Luke; I could not stay and find out. As I hid behind a boulder, the command was given for the Company to fall back and regroup for another assault on the Yanks. I could not remain any longer I had to follow my Captain’s order; however, just before I was leaving a Union hospital orderly arrived and began abating the flow of blood from Father’s wounds. I asked him his name; I will never forget it if I live to be a hundred, this Yankee boy’s name was Charles Babb. If and I mean IF, Father survived he saved his life. This Babb feller told me he would get some stretcher bearing to come get Father. After the battle, our Company force-marched from the area of Devil’s Den to this place we now occupy. I’m truly sorry Luke; I let you and Father down! I didn’t get a chance to look for him again.”
“Do not worry Matt, you did all that was possible. You certainly have nothing for which to be ashamed.”
Matthew tells Luke today’s rumor is the Rebels are to attack the Union forces occupying the far hill toward the west.
Luke confirmed the rumor of an impending attack, telling Matthew he heard it personally from General Lee. He told Matthew about the encounter with Bobby Lee and how he was so close he had overheard the conversation between General Lee and General Longstreet.
Unable to finish, orders were being given: “Fall In! Line of Battle, Fall In,” yelled Company E’s commanding officer Captain Leake. The Captain draws his sword from its scabbard; swings it wildly over his head as his flag bearer falls in line beside him. The Confederate soldier, hardly past his sixteenth birthday, tightly grips his tattered Stars and Bars - a torn and dirty flag bearing the scars of dozens of previous battles. Names of these battles ‘Pittsburg Landing,’ ‘2nd Manassas’, ‘Fredericksburg’, and ‘Sharpsburg’ have been sewed on the red and blue standard; although, ragged and shredded these names of dreadful places of Southern glory are still readable. Grabbing their muskets, the soldiers hurry into a line of battle preparing for the attack, an attack that will add the name ‘Gettysburg’ to their proud banners.
Luke stands beside Matthew. Matthew withdraws a black ostrich plume. “Mama said this black feather belonged to Pappy Scarburg. He wore it at the Battle of Scarburg Mill and gave it to grandfather Thomas. I wear this in their honor,” he said sticking the feather into his cap.
He turns and looks to his left – as far as he can see are four lines of proud Southern soldiers with another four immediately behind them. Dozens upon dozens of Stars and Bars flutter in the breeze, turning to his right the same scene is repeated. Standing at the edge of the trees, he sees Traveller and his stately rider General Robert E. Lee. Lee is sitting his saddle as though watching a parade, his gray, bearded face emotionless. His eyes, once bright and alert are now dull and lifeless as they stare out on the field of the imminent battle. His eyes seemingly sense the death and destruction that is about to happen.
Luke, for the first time, turns his attention from his side of the field of battle to the enemy on the far side. He can see the Stars and Stripes flapping all along the Union line. He can also see the Union soldiers behind a low rock wall. It is the December ’62, Battle of Fredericksburg all over again – except this time the South will be the force attacking an embedded enemy.
At Fredericksburg, the Confederate forces occupied the high ground behind a short stonewall. The Union attackers, under the command of General Ambrose Burnside, mounted a futile frontal assault on these entrenched, seasoned, veterans of General Stonewall Jackson. The Yankees were cut to shreds, suffering thirteen thousand three hundred casualties. Luke realizes the shoe is on the other foot now. The battle of Fredericksburg was like lambs being led to slaughter. Now Luke and thousands of his fellow Southerners are to be the lambs.
His eyes return to the red, white and blue colors of the Stars and Stripes waving on the far hillside. They are as tattered and war-worn as the Stars and Bars on his side. Glancing from left to right along the Union line, the multitude of American flags seems innumerable. For a brief second, his allegiance to the Confederacy is forgotten. He thinks of the dozens of times he has heard the tale of his long ago ancestor Jacob Ingram fighting the British Redcoats and how he had received a wound in his leg at the Battle of Scarburg Mill. He remembered how the British colonel had hanged Pappy Scarburg, during the Re
volutionary War for simply being a humanitarian. And his great-grandfather Charles, who also fought on the American side, but was never heard from again. He thought of his grandfather Thomas, fighting with the Americans in the War of 1812. He remembered his own father Robert Steven enlisting in the United States Army with the twelfth president of the United States Zachary Taylor to fight the Seminole Indians. In fact, his family’s move to Alabama was due, in part to his father, a veteran of the Seminole Indian War, being awarded bounty land by an Act of the Congress of the United States. His whole family, for generations, had defended those same Stars and Stripes sacrificing everything, home, life and limb. Now he is being ordered to attack and defeat the very symbol his forefather’s fought and died so hard to defend — the American flag!