The Face of Heaven (18 page)

“Harder than your apple.” Hanson gnawed on it unhappily. “If I had the energy to get up a fire in this drizzle I’d fry it in gun grease. I
tell you, I miss that young Corinth some. We’d probably be dining on beefsteak and gravy with buttermilk biscuits if the good Lord had left him with us.”

Nicolson nodded as he finished one apple and picked up another. “There’d be a fire, that’s for sure. Whole platoon’d be a lot drier and warmer.”

“Not much of a platoon these days,” Ham spoke up, wrapping his blanket around him.

“The captain said there’d be recruits before the next fight,” the sergeant told him.

“We got them at Upton’s Hill. And lost a slew more at South Mountain.”

“Sergeant!”

Sergeant Hanson rose to his feet. It was Lieutenant Davidson. He saluted. “Sir.”

Davidson looked down at him from his mount. “There are wagons just catching up to us with recruits. A number have been assigned to your platoon.”

“Thank you, sir.”

“Some of them specifically requested to be assigned to this regiment, this company, and this platoon.”

Hanson lifted his thick eyebrows. “That surprises me, Lieutenant.”

“It surprises me too, Sergeant. I hope you can see them safely through this battle.”

“I’ll do my best, sir. The rest is up to God.”

“So it is.” Davidson wheeled his horse. “Long Sol is in no shape to command the 19th tomorrow. Can’t lick his injuries from Brawner’s Farm. Lieutenant Colonel Bachman is taking his place. You can pass that along.”

“I will, sir. Bachman is a good man.”

“He is a good man. Goodnight, Sergeant. Catch up on your sleep. The drumroll comes early.”

“I will, sir. Thank you, sir.”

Hanson sat back down, running his fingers over his large mustache
and glancing at Ham. “There you are, Private. An answer to your prayers.”

Ham snorted. “What? The recruits? By tomorrow night we’ll be asking him for another dozen.”

Nip came out of the blackness, his blanket draped over his shoulders. “Does anyone want a fire?”

The men looked at his thin body and sunken cheeks in the wet dark.

“Don’t trouble yourself, lad,” said Hanson. “We’re about to turn in.”

“How about some mutton or beefsteak?”

“Ah, no. We’ve just dined on soldier’s food. You can do us up proper tomorrow night after the fight.”

Nip stared at the sergeant. “Is there going to be another fight?”

“There is.”

“With who?”

“General Lee.”

“What about Stonewall?”

“He’ll be there.”

“Will we lick him?”

Hanson nodded. “We will. I promise you we will.” He patted the damp grass. “Why don’t you lie down now and get some rest?”

“Hanson. First Sergeant Hanson. 19th regiment. The Indiana regiment. Sergeant Robbie Hanson.”

A covered wagon lit by a lantern was creaking along the turnpike and a man was calling from the driver’s seat. Nathaniel had already pulled his blanket up to his neck and lain down with his head on his pack. He was staring at the wall of the barn and, as his eyes continued to grow accustomed to the night, watching small drops of water gather enough weight to roll down the slats of wood. He heard Private Jones call that the sergeant was just at hand and listened as the wagon rattled to a stop.

“Sergeant Hanson?”

“Aye.”

“Indiana regiment?”

“You’ve found us.”

“I have recruits for your platoon here.”

“That’s good news.”

“Private Levi Keim. Private Joshua Yoder. From Elkhart County.”

Nathaniel sat up. Unable to see the recruit’s faces clearly he got to his feet and stumbled toward the turnpike, where Hanson and Jones stood talking with them and the wagon driver. As he emerged from the darkness he saw that it really was Levi Keim when the young man turned his face toward him.

“Nathaniel!”

They embraced, Nathaniel feeling the stiffness of the new uniform under his hands, a uniform beaded with drops of water.

“You were driving ambulance,” Nathaniel said, trying to take in the sight of Levi in a Hardee hat, frock coat, and knapsack. “What happened?”

But Levi did not answer him at first. Instead he extended his hand to Joshua Yoder. “Look who I have brought with me.”

Nathaniel and Joshua shook hands.

“Brother Nathaniel,” Joshua greeted him.

“I am frankly astonished.” Nathaniel looked back and forth from Levi to Joshua. “How is it you both enlisted with an Indiana regiment?”

“Why, we made plans to meet up with each other in Washington,” explained Joshua, tall and straight in his Hardee hat with the gold bugle symbol for infantry on its front. “We have been writing for months. Even sending telegrams now and then.”

“So you told the recruiters you were from Elkhart County?” asked Nathaniel.

Joshua smiled. “Didn’t you? And I have more cause—that really is my family with the Amish community there. I told no lies.”

“Nor did I.” Levi was smiling. “I simply said I had close relations in Indiana and that was good enough. Just like you did, Brother King.”

“But what kind of training have you had?” demanded Nathaniel.

Levi shrugged. “A few days of marching and bayonet practice. I can load and shoot.” He winked. “Shoot straight.” He unslung his musket and placed the stock firmly on the ground. “I suppose they needed
any warm body they could find after Manassas Junction and South Mountain. The fact I’d been with the ambulance service made a difference too.”

“But what will the church say about this?” Nathaniel was still trying to grasp what they had done by joining the army. “What have you told your mothers? What have you told your fathers—one is a pastor and the other is a bishop?”

The smiling stopped.

“I did nothing behind my father’s back,” said Joshua. “Or my mother’s. After the losses at Mechanicsville and Malvern Hill I told my father I must enlist. I said I could not let the Union be defeated and allow a country conceived in liberty to be ruled by slaveholders. David and Jonathan fought for Israel, I told him. So I will fight for our New Israel, America.”

“Didn’t our ancestors come here in freedom?” asked Levi. “How can we stand by and pray and watch that freedom disappear without doing a thing?”

“Prayer is doing something,” Nathaniel responded.

“Yes,” replied Levi. “And it is prayer that brought me here.” He glanced back at the turnpike as if looking for someone. Then he fixed his gaze on Nathaniel and the sergeant while the men in the platoon listened. “What would you have done? Under a flag of truce I was retrieving wounded from Manassas and Chantilly and inside the Maryland border. I saw Rebel troops rounding up African families—men, women, children. Neighbors told me many of these people had never even lived in the South, had never been slaves, they were freemen.

“But it made no difference to Lee’s soldiers. They beat them and cursed them and chained them and sent them back to Virginia in wagons. One of the officers was the slave hunter who came to our home that night, Brother King. Yes, it was him, a major now in the Army of Northern Virginia. They called him Georgey Washington. Can you imagine that? So I remembered Charlie Preston and realized there would be many more Charlie Prestons unless we put an end to the Confederate States of America and became one country again. I cabled my father and mother:
I prayed, I searched the Scriptures, now I have
taken up arms and put on the uniform of a common soldier of the United States of America.
”

Hanson nodded and shook his hand. “The Hoosiers are proud to have you fight alongside them. Especially with solid stock from Elkhart County in your blood.” He turned to Joshua and shook his hand as well. “The same goes for you, Private Yoder. Have you two had anything to eat?”

“Hanson. First Sergeant Robbie Hanson. 19th Indiana regiment,” a voice called from the turnpike.

The wagon driver smiled. “Here’s your second set of recruits.” He called out as the wagon came alongside his, “What took you so long, Billy? Take the road into Virginia by mistake, did you?”

The other driver reined in his team. “No need scaring the recruits to death their first night in the field, so’s I took my time. Are you the platoon sergeant?” He was looking at Hanson.

“I am,” Hanson replied.

“I have here privates Plesko, Campbell, McKeever, and Groom in the wagon. All from Indiana.”

“Thank you. They’ll be welcome.”

It was Nip who spoke up and asked, “Are any of you good at foraging?”

11

L
yndel returned to Washington from Fairfax Station on Wednesday, the third of September, and went to her house to change clothing before reporting for duty at Armory Square.

To her dismay, she had fallen asleep and the host family had tucked her in. She slept, exhausted, for more than two days.

She awoke to frustration and anger at herself for having lost so much valuable time. Further, now that she had experienced Fairfax, closer to the front, she was no longer content to work in a Washington hospital. No, now she knew she had to get closer to the front and nurse soldiers within minutes or hours of their wounding.

Accordingly, she proceeded to knock on the doors of Indiana congressmen and senators and officials. For more than a week she persisted, but all to no avail. Brandishing letters from two Indiana captains she had cared for after Manassas brought praise from the Indiana statesmen, but no efforts to procure a pass through the lines so she could work with the ambulance service on the battlefield.

“I’m not asking to go everywhere and do everything,” she pleaded in office after office. “I just wish to assist the surgeons and ambulance men of the 19th Indiana. I want to keep Indiana boys alive. You mustn’t think of me as weak or a coward. I was at Fairfax when we fired the station and fled by rail from Rebel cavalry.”

The men all nodded and thanked her, but nothing was done. They pointed out that Clara Barton was already in the field, traveling by
wagon in the steps of McClellan’s army. They couldn’t ask the army to authorize a pass for yet another woman.

“Suppose something happened to you,” a congressman argued. “Think of the scandal. Think of the disgrace. Indiana sends a woman to war and then isn’t able to protect her from the enemy. Impossible. Your plan is well intentioned but far too risky for yourself, the state of Indiana, and this federal government to undertake. You’re greatly needed at the hospitals here. The wounded will reach you soon enough.”

Lyndel’s’ blue eyes had blazed white. “That’s the whole reason for my appeal to you, Congressman. They will
not
reach me soon enough! They will die on the way. What if it was your own son lying on the field without so much as a mouthful of water or a bandage or a word of hope?”

On Sunday the 14th there was another battle involving Nathaniel’s brigade—the 19th Indiana and the 2nd, 6th, and 7th Wisconsin. They fought so bravely the papers were calling his men the Iron Brigade—if Nathaniel was even alive! Now there was talk of an even greater fight looming like thunderclouds over Sharpsburg and Hagerstown in Maryland. How could she stay in Washington when the soldiers were going to be fighting and dying a hundred miles away? What if Nathaniel was still with his regiment and needed her? Clara Barton had already left with the Army of the Potomac weeks ago. How was it possible God had left her here in Washington when any of a dozen other young women could easily take her place?

Lord, can’t you do something? Why put this fire in my heart and then give it no place to burn? Can’t you move somebody’s soul to grant me passage to the battlefield? How can I help the wounded man on the road to Jericho if no one will even permit me to put a foot on the road to begin with?

Lyndel arrived late at Armory Square. The outside of the hospital was thick with carriages and soldiers and a crowd of civilians. An armed man blocked her way.

Still steaming from the disappointment of her last meeting, Lyndel was curt. “Excuse me, young man. I have to get to work.”