The Mostly True Adventures of Homer P. Figg (21 page)

“Men of the Twentieth, look to me! See that small hill?” He points with his sword. “We must hold that with our lives! It guards the left of the Union Army and cannot be allowed to fall into rebel hands! Every man! Every man on the double! Run for the hill and take position! Follow the flag! Quickly now!”

He makes to wheel away and then thinks better of it. Instead he sidles up to the prisoners and shows them the flat of his sword, tapping it against his boot. “Gentlemen! Those willing to fight will get a good word from me. Obey your orders and I’ll do my best to get the charges dropped.”

To my dismay, the prisoners stand as one, including my brother, Harold Figg, begging to be allowed to fight.

The guards release them, and they dust away the
M
so cruelly chalked upon their uniforms. The prisoners and guards grab rifles and cartridge boxes and run for the hill, following the flag of the
20
th Maine.

All is confusion, but I manage to get to Harold just as he picks up a rifle.

“Now’s our chance!” I say. “There’s no one to stop us! We can run for it! We’ll be miles away before they notice!”

Harold looks at me like I got two heads. “I gave my word,” he says.

“Words won’t stop the bullets!” I say as he wrenches himself loose from my grasp. “Words won’t keep the shells from exploding! Words won’t stop you getting killed and leaving me alone in this world!”

He shoves me to the ground.

“Stay there!” he orders me. “Crawl under the wagon and keep yourself safe. I will see you after the battle, Homer, after the fight is done.”

Then he’s running up the hill, a rifle in one hand and a cartridge pouch in the other.

“Harold, stop!”

He won’t stop. He keeps on going, running toward the sound of gunfire.

What choice do I have? I haven’t come all this way for nothing. So I follow my brother up the hill, into the fight, into the Battle of Gettysburg.

T
HE TOP OF THE LITTLE HILL
is strewn with rocks and boulders and a few spindly trees. The men from the
20
th Maine spread out along the ridge, quickly finding shelter among the rocks. From here they may fire down upon the enemy and still be afforded some small protection.

They don’t have long to wait. Ten minutes after occupying the hill a full regiment of Alabama men attack from below, waving their regimental flag.

Suddenly gray uniforms swarm among the rocks and into the open, surging upward with that terrible cry that is called a rebel yell. The
ki-yi yip-yip
of the rebel yell being partways an owl-like screech and partways a high-pitched yelp that makes your skin crawl if you happen to be on the receiving end.

The bullets start flying before I can locate Harold or find a place to hide. Bullets spitting off rocks and scudding up the dirt and making little smacking noises as they hit skinny trees that are too small to hide behind.

Everywhere I turn there are more bullets striking all around, like hornets swarming,
snick-snick-snick
.

Finally Harold scoots out from behind his rock and drags me to safety. “What are you doing, you little fool? Do you want to be killed, is that it?” he asks, panting.

“I want to go home.”

Harold grunts, then takes aim between the rocks and fires his Springfield rifle. His leather cartridge pouch lies open at his side and he swings the rifle around, tears the paper cartridge in his teeth, rams it down the muzzle, swings the rifle back around, inserts the primer cap, and cocks the hammer — all as quick as you can count.

Then he takes careful aim and fires and does it all over again.

There are forty cartridges in his leather pouch, which means when he fires thirty-seven more times he’ll be out of ammunition. Figure twenty minutes or less, if he keeps up to speed.

“Where are you going?” he cries.

“To get more ammunition!”

And that’s what I do, scampering down the back slope of the hill, out of the line of fire. I follow the others and locate the powder wagons, hoisting a wooden ammunition box that looks like a little casket and dragging it up to where Harold is still loading and firing his rifle, steady as a clock, a bullet fired every count of twenty.

After seeing that Harold is well supplied, I make myself useful hauling ammunition to some of the others, who are strung out all the way to the southern end of the little hill, and under vicious fire from the troops below.

Time and again the Alabama men scream out their wild rebel yell and swarm up the hill, only to be turned back at the last moment, punished by the men of the 20th Maine, who hold their ground, hunkered down among the rocks like smoking barnacles, refusing to let go.

For an hour or more the bullets fly. Men are wounded, men scream, men die, but still the bullets fly.

Colonel Chamberlain is everywhere. He strides along the ridge, in direct line of the rebel sharpshooters firing from below, ordering where his men should be placed and how they might best repel the next desperate charge of the troops from Alabama.

Bullets crease the air around him, close enough to part his hair, but he never flinches from his purpose.

Later I heard he was a college professor who knew nothing of war excepting what he’d read in books, but that fateful day upon the little hill he seems to be Napoleon himself, never in doubt as to what must happen next. He orders where the men should move, when the line should be extended, and when the wounded should be dragged back to safety and carried by stretcher away from the withering fire.

The bodies of the fallen have to be left where they fall, to be retrieved when the battle concludes, if ever it does.

Even when they’re dead, bullets make them flinch.

Seeing me scurrying along with a load of ammunition, Colonel Chamberlain pauses in his purposeful stride and says, “You there, boy! Do you know the risk you take?”

“Yes, sir!”

“Very good! Carry on!” he commands. “And keep your head down!”

Then his attention is drawn elsewhere as one of his officers falls, wounded in the neck, and he must see to a replacement.

In the first few minutes of the assault the rebels almost gain the top of the hill, where they are met with pistol shot and sword. A few soldiers fight hand to hand, rolling among the rocks, each one desperate to kill the other man, but most of the casualties are inflicted at a distance of thirty yards or so. An Alabama man will emerge from cover, firing as he tries to gain a few yards, and a Maine man will stand up, exposed to the withering hail of bullets, and take aim at the Alabama man, and most times one or the other will fall wounded or dead.

Sometimes both.

All to gain advantage on a rocky little spur of a hill that happens to stand at the far end of the line, where the Confederates hope to sweep around and crush the Union Army from both sides. A small hill shrouded in gray gun smoke and running with the blood of the wounded and the dead.

The steady hail of lead chops little bits out of the trees, like they are being attacked by small, invisible axes.

I keep down, like Harold and the colonel suggested, and find myself a good boulder to hide behind.

All the ammunition has been taken from the wagons and distributed. It can’t last forever, the way the men are using it up, each taking two or three shots a minute, but for now the gunfire spits and pops like a full load of popcorn in a hot pan of grease.

There comes a lull when only a few guns are popping off and I hear Harold call out for more ammunition.

“All gone!” an officer shouts back. “Find cartridges where you can!”

Already they are borrowing cartridge cases from the many who have fallen. The dead men don’t object.

In my hiding place, curled up small, I’m praying the cartridges will run out soon, so we can fall back.

It comes to this: I care not if the rebels take the hill. There are a million hills in Pennsylvania, let them have this one if they want it so bad!

A little distance away, half obscured by the clouds of gun smoke, the colonel confers with his officers. From what I can see of their faces the news must be very grim indeed.

Good, I’m thinking, sound your retreat! An army can’t fight without bullets, can it? We are outnumbered, outgunned, and outfought. The only sensible thing to do is run for it.

Then, clear as a bell that tolls through the fog, comes his order.

“Fix bayonets!” he roars.

All down the line soldiers eagerly slip bayonets onto the muzzles of their empty rifles and ready themselves for what happens next.

Ahead of me, crouching behind his rock, my brother, Harold, shakes his head at me.

“Homer, get back!” he shouts above the din. “Go home! Save yourself!”

Then Colonel Chamberlain’s voice booms out, louder than the crack of artillery.

“Charge!” he commands, lifting high his sword.

Harold leaps to his feet and follows him down the hill, into the guns of the enemy.

T
O THIS DAY
I
CANNOT SAY
what made me follow my brother down that hill. It was not ignorance, because I had seen what war does, and hated it. It was not courage, because fear of dying made me scream out loud.

All I know is, there I was, running after Harold and begging him to take shelter. And as I come over the top of the hill the air itself is hot enough to catch afire from the heat of flying lead.

To my shock, no more than fifty feet separates us from the enemy. Measured in blood it might as well be a hundred miles. All around me men are charging downhill, eyes wide in the madness of killing, teeth snapping like dogs at the scent of death.

Fast as I’m running over that rough ground, I can’t seem to catch up to Harold. Soldiers on either side of him fall like rag dolls but he keeps on going.

Just ahead of him is the burly sergeant with the regimental flag, the one who cussed Harold and said he was swamp trash. The sergeant stumbles, clutching at his stomach, and the flag starts to fall.

Without breaking stride Harold drops his empty rifle and seizes the flag from the wounded sergeant.

“Harold, no!”

Now all rebel eyes — and rebel guns — will be upon him. My brother holds up the flag as he advances, leaning into the lead-filled air as if he is leaning into warm summer rain.

“Harold, get down!” I scream. “Get down or be killed!”

Holes appear like stars in the billowing flag, but still he will not take shelter.

I search for a rock to throw at him, to bring him to his senses, but the first thing my groping hand encounters is the fallen sergeant who passed the flag to Harold. He lies on his side, grinning at his pain, hands clawing at his wounded stomach. I want to ask him why he blacked my brother’s eye, and if he’s sorry now, but it don’t seem right to ask while he’s busy dying.

Instead I lift the pistol from his holster and take aim, intending to fire at Harold’s feet to get his attention.

I pull the trigger.

The bullet strikes the ground. Harold falls.

At first I think he has finally been struck by rebel lead and then I see what has happened. My own shot has splintered away a chunk of rock that has stuck itself in his leg like a dart in a board.

As Harold falls he tries to keep the flag upright.

Without thinking I drop the sergeant’s pistol and somehow the flag ends up in my hands and my brother lying at my feet.

By rights I should toss aside the flag and drop to the ground and try to get under the flying lead, but something in me won’t let go. Now that the flag is in my hands it don’t seem right to let it fall on bloody ground.

A dumb idea. Dumb enough to get me killed, but there it is.

The strangest thing is happening. All around me, all down the hillside, rebel soldiers are throwing down their rifles and surrendering. Begging mercy from the crazy men with the bayonets, men mad enough to charge without a shot to fire, into the face of certain death. Men who will not give up. Men who would rather die than be defeated.

Beneath me Harold is groaning and trying to pry loose the sliver of stone imbedded in his leg. I am sorry he is hurt but glad that he is alive.