Last Ghost at Gettysburg (7 page)

“Yes,” said T.J. uncertainly.

“Well, look out that way toward Seminary
Ridge, where we started out from. Picture thousands of Confederate
soldiers, wave after wave, crossing that open space, marching
toward this wall, where the Union guys just waited and waited till
they got within range and then BLAMMO! They opened up with rifles
and cannons and whatnot and just blew them all over the place, but
the Southern guys kept coming. Sorry, but I don’t think I could
show that kind of heroism. Could you?”

T.J. tried to imagine the fear he’d
experience marching those farmers’ fields, bullets whizzing by his
head with screaming, wounded comrades crumpling all around him.
“No, I don’t think so,” he admitted.

“Yeah, well, that about ended the battle on
Day Three, and it was also the beginning of the end for the South.
Okay, let’s cut diagonally through the cemetery, and we should be
at the Center in ten minutes.”

They crossed through the now-vacant parking
lot to the old Center, entered the main gate of the National
Cemetery and kept on the diagonal until they reached the huge new
Visitor Center and Museum, which sat on a knoll above terraced lots
for cars, tour busses and RVs.

They entered through the park rangers’
entrance into the blessed air conditioning and found Mike Darcy
pouring over his day’s itinerary while sipping a cup of coffee. He
seemed surprised to see them. As if anticipating his question,
LouAnne said, “T.J has to get used to the course. We figured we’d
cut it off here for the first day.”

“I’m okay,” said T.J., though he was
obviously quite the opposite.

Mike looked at his watch. “Come on, I have
just enough time to drop you home and get back here for my first
tour. You guys must be dying for some breakfast.”

“Great, Dad.” As they hopped into Mike’s red
Dodge Durango he asked his daughter what she’d be up to that day.
“Well, I’m babysitting at Mrs. Spath’s at ten. I don’t know what
T.J.’s got in mind.” They both looked at him.

“Um,” said T.J., who might’ve been perfectly
happy depositing his aching body in bed for a few hours, “I think
I’d like to come back down to the Visitor Center like LouAnne said
and check out the place, get a better feel for the area and the
story of the battle.”

“Super idea,” said Mike. “If you want, you
can tag along on my noon cemetery tour. And if you’re really
adventurous, my friend Arlene is giving a small group of visiting
college professors a minibus tour of the entire battlefield at one.
This’ll give you a good overview. If anything, it’ll help you lay
out some alternate workout routes so you won’t get bored when you
run. There are many miles of paved roads that wind their way
through the battlefield.”

“Sounds good,” said T.J., who was just happy
to be off his feet for a little while.

Once home, T.J. and LouAnne quickly showered,
arriving at the breakfast nook table within seconds of each other.
He ravenously attacked Terri’s bacon and eggs, while his cousin
settled for a bowl of Total with sliced strawberries from the
garden. Then she was off to babysit while T.J., using his aunt’s
in-town trolley card, rode over to the Visitor Center again.

“Why don’t you poke around here for a while,”
said Mike, who was manning the information desk, “and meet me back
here around 11:45 so we can ride over to the cemetery.”

At last, on his own, T.J. had a chance to
wander about the immense facility which had been completely
redesigned and rebuilt a few years back. It was, he decided, one of
the best museums he’d ever visited, with some twelve galleries
loaded with artifacts, interactive exhibits and hands-on displays.
He was especially taken with the variety of uniforms of the
soldiers from both sides, though he felt the Confederate cavalrymen
got carried away at times with the gold braid.

And then there was the firearms display,
entire glass-encased walls of rifles, pistols, and other munitions,
many of them recovered from the battlefield in the months and years
that followed.

Perhaps the most touching were the personal
effects retrieved from the field and the corpses: Bibles, playing
cards, love letters to and from those left behind, the slips of
paper some soldiers pinned to their tunics before the battle
listing their name and home address so that their dead bodies could
be shipped home correctly.

But it wasn’t until he viewed the cyclorama,
a massive 360 degree painting depicting the battle in its entirety,
with a lifelike diorama included, that he had a true sense of the
magnitude of Gettysburg. In fact, it almost made him cry, and he
didn’t cry easily. The contrast between these graphic images and
the peaceful fields he’d jogged through this morning was both
stark and disturbing.

Finally, he visited the theater and viewed a
film about the Gettysburg Address narrated by the actor Morgan
Freeman, whom he remembered had a major role in the Civil War movie
Glory
that Mr. O’Neill had shown at school.

There was so much to process that T.J
realized further visits would be necessary. It was clear to him
that even if he’d aced O’Neill’s Civil War unit he would be
woefully uneducated on the subject. You had to
be
here, to
see the actual uniforms, equipment, firearms and artillery, the
photos of the devastation wreaked upon the area. You had to walk
the fields and get a sense of the magnitude of the battle where
eight-thousand lives were lost, all of them American.

“Yo, T.J.!” shouted Uncle Mike from across a
crowded hallway. “Glad I found you! I’m meeting a group over at the
cemetery. You coming?”

“Sure.”

They took a golf cart for the ten minute ride
over to the cemetery’s main entrance, where T.J. fell in behind a
bunch of senior citizens from Montana whose tour bus was parked
across the street in a lot which had served the former Visitor
Center. Thankfully, the military section of the cemetery was just a
short walk from the entrance, but just passing through the high,
wrought iron entrance gate was like entering another dimension for
the seniors. Their lighthearted, excited air quickly turned somber
as they entered the graveyard. Many of the men were obviously
veterans; some seemed to go as far back as World War II.

Mike Darcy’s many years as a teacher had
prepared him well for his current job, and he took it seriously,
shepherding his charges across the street and through the entrance,
keeping them together as he would a bunch of school kids. And,
although his obvious enthusiasm for his work shone through, he,
too, switched from his usual garrulous persona to a more subdued,
pedantic tone to explain the surroundings.

“Shortly after the Battle of Gettysburg, with
the support of Pennsylvania Governor Andrew Curtin, this site was
purchased and Union dead were moved from the shallow and inadequate
burial sites on the battlefield to the cemetery. The landscape
architect William Saunders, founder of the National Grange,
designed the cemetery. It was originally called Soldiers’ National
Cemetery at Gettysburg.” He turned on his heel and they followed to
an area of small headstones, set in semicircular rows.

“As you may know, thousands of men died on
the fields of Gettysburg, many in horrible fashion. At the end of
the third day there began a torrential rain as Lee’s forces
retreated back to the South. Thousands of men who could not be
transported, both Union and Confederate, remained in makeshift
hospitals, churches and private dwellings. The townspeople, whose
dead livestock lay decomposing in the fields, opened their doors
and their hearts and tried to help however they could.

“The task of cleaning the battlefield was
monumental. Dead horses and cows were heaped into piles and burned,
leaving a stench over the town that lasted into the fall. The
removal of Confederate dead from the burial plots was not
undertaken until seven years after the battle. From 1870 to 1873,
some 3,320 bodies were exhumed and sent to cities such as Raleigh,
Savannah, Richmond and Charleston for reburial. Richmond, the
capital of the Confederacy, took the most. Only a few were
returned to private cemeteries.”

As they moved to another area T.J. could see,
beyond a chest high wrought iron fence, the civilian part of the
burial ground, Evergreen Cemetery, which had witnessed the battle
and where Gettysburg’s citizens were still being buried. When the
group stopped again, well within the military section, T.J. noticed
a short stone that simply said “Unknown. 411 Bodies.” As if that
weren’t chilling enough, it seemed to have been recently cleaned of
a material that left a brownish purple residue. He looked up to see
Mike eyeing him before he cleared his throat and resumed his
monologue.

“William Saunders’s design had two parts.
First, the Soldiers National Monument was placed at the center,
promoting the Union victory and the bravery of the fallen
soldiers; second, you will notice that the graves are arranged in a
series of semicircles around the monument, emphasizing the
fundamental nature of American society, with all graves considered
equal. The stones are grouped by state with two sections for
unknowns and one for the regular army. In later years, the dead
from the Spanish American War and World War I were added outside
the original configuration. Which brings us to the centerpiece of
the military cemetery.”

T.J., along with the rest of the group,
shielded his eyes from the blazing sun and looked skyward at the
marble structure that towered above the graveyard.

“The cemetery was dedicated on November 19,
1863. Of course, it was here that President Abraham Lincoln
delivered his famous Gettysburg Address, which is noted for its
brief yet powerful message. The cemetery was completed in March of
1864 with the last of 3,512 Union dead being reburied. In 1872
control of the grounds was transferred to the War Department and it
is currently administered by the National Park Service as part of
Gettysburg National Military Park. It contains today the remains
of over six thousand bodies from numerous American wars.

“This monument before you was the first of
any type to be placed at Gettysburg. The cornerstone was laid on
July 4, 1865, and the full monument was dedicated on July 1, 1869.
The white, westerly granite pedestal supports a shaft and marble
statue entitled
Genius of Liberty
. Four buttresses on the
pedestal support allegorical statues of War, History, Plenty, and
Peace.

“I hope you have enjoyed our tour, and I will
stay behind for a few minutes for anyone who had further questions.
Please observe the cemetery protocol of silence and respect as you
walk about the grounds. Thank you for your patience on this hot
day, and enjoy your visit to Gettysburg.”

A few stragglers stayed behind to ask
questions but most moved off to wander about before heading back to
their tour bus. Some of the older men had a distant look in their
eyes, perhaps remembering their own battlefield experiences in
more modern conflicts.

“So, how was it, big guy? Did I bore you?”
asked Mike, putting an arm around his nephew’s shoulders.

“Not at all,” said T.J. “Actually, I’m
starting to get into it.”

“Super. You gonna do the bus tour I
mentioned?”

“Not today. That might be overdoing it.”

“You’re right, no need to rush all this. If I
were you I’d take a stroll around downtown, grab a bite to eat.
There’s all kinds of fast food places and a couple ice cream shops
just a block away. A cold vanilla shake would go down nice right
about now. Today I don’t knock off till five, but you can hop the
trolley when you’ve had enough and it’ll drop you fairly near
Seminary Ridge.”

“Sounds great, Uncle Mike.”

“You still worn out from this morning?”

“Well, I’ve kinda gotten my second wind.
Still, it’ll feel good to go home later and put my feet up.”

“Listen,” said his uncle, “don’t let LouAnne
steamroll you. She can be a handful when she gets going. If you
think she’s being too bossy or a know-it-all or whatever, give it
right back. She respects that.”

“Will do. See you later.” And with that, T.J.
ambled off to see where the day would take him while his uncle
downed a bottle of water and steered the golf cart back toward the
Visitor Center.

T.J. wandered along Steinwehr Street, the
most commercial avenue, ducking in and out of the many shops that
filled the gaps between eateries and motels. In some ways they were
all the same. There would be a front counter that sold “authentic”
Civil War bullets and artillery shells and fragments, right next to
the refrigerator magnets and key chains, followed by racks of
kiddie plastic guns and swords, much more realistic, and expensive,
replica pistols and rifles for adults, hats, flags, tee shirts,
blankets, toy soldiers and cannons, belt buckles, glassware,
collector spoons and thimbles, CD’s, DVD’s and books, a surprising
percentage of which that dealt with ghosts and hauntings in the
area.

Especially strange to T.J. were the
Southern-oriented tee shirts with likenesses of Robert E. Lee and
other Rebel commanders with inscriptions like “The South Shall Rise
Again” and “Hell, No, I Won’t Ever Forget!”

There was also a brisk business in Civil War
art (a couple galleries on the street were even devoted to it) with
various vignettes or leaders from key battles being portrayed.
Some of it was quite good, while some was downright amateurish and
horrible. But no matter the quality, T.J. marveled that
anyone
would frame this stuff and hang it on the walls of
his living room. He’d heard that some enthusiasts, especially
reenactors, could be Civil War maniacs, but always considered them
an exaggerated fringe element. Viewing all of the memorabilia,
trinkets and art throughout his Historic Downtown exploration, he
wasn’t so sure now. This town was “making a mint” as his dad would
say. He thought to himself, as he sucked on a truly satisfying
vanilla shake, that an 1860s soldier would take a look around at
all this crass commercialism and say, “So
this
is what I
died for?”