Here I am surveying the view from Little Round Top, scene of a spectacular countercharge by Union troops at Gettysburg. (Photo by Becky Giles)
By Kevin S. Giles
Gather ye rosebuds while ye may
Old time is still a flying
And this same flower that smiles today
Tomorrow will be dying.
When visiting the battlefields at Gettysburg (and there are many), I looked across those hallowed grounds at the faces no longer there, trying to picture them as sons and brothers, more than armies.
Two of my great grandfathers fought with the Union at Gettysburg. Abner Skinner belonged to a Wisconsin infantry unit. William Boyle, who immigrated from Belfast, Ireland, fought with the US Volunteers from New York. I come from an old family on my mother’s side, stretched over decades as marriages and kids came late, which is why both great grandfathers died long before I was born.
I had hoped to hear them, and picture them, on those battlefields. The enormity of Gettysburg discourages specific investigations into history. Men clashed in such overwhelming numbers, in so many frenzied charges and retreats, that volume prevails. Even so, the National Park Service Museum includes several life stories of individual soldiers, some of whom survived Gettysburg and many who didn’t.
The armies hurled against each other for three days. Battles covered 6,000 acres surrounding the orderly Pennsylvania village. It was a gentle place, once unknowing of violence, but roads that extended from the village like spokes on a wheel funneled the Army of Northern Virginia (Confederate) and the Army of the Potomac (Union) into a fateful collision that left 50,000 casualties and laid waste to woods and fields.
In the end, on July 4, 1863, the Union declared victory, halting the bold Confederate advance into the North and preventing the United States from splintering into separate nations. By military measurements, the Gettysburg battle was pretty much a draw. Near-equal numbers of men were killed, wounded and missing. Had Confederate General Robert E. Lee heeded advice of his subordinates and skirted the right flank of Union defenses rather than charging head-on, he might have won. Gettysburg is as much a lesson in strategic mistakes by both sides as in the fragility of life and death.
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I went there, finally. The Gettysburg battlefields draw thousands of visitors each day. People gawk from tour buses, or hire private guides, or drive the 24-mile route to see for themselves. We did the latter, taking extra time to read interpretive displays and gaze over the fields where those men charged and perished.
Hundreds of monuments to both sides recall the desperate fighting at Gettysburg. (Photo by Becky Giles)
The most-visited scene at Gettysburg is Cemetery Ridge, the scene of the infamous Pickett’s Charge. Lee chose to attack the Union defenses in the middle, sending waves of Virginia, Alabama and North Carolina men (many barefoot) across an open field into a torrent of Union cannon and musket fire. Lee later took blame for the slaughter. He explained afterward that, after having won four consecutive Confederate victories, he thought his “invincible” men would overwhelm Union defenses.
When both armies withdrew from Gettysburg, residents were left to cope with thousands of rotting dead soldiers and horses. Amputated limbs lay in heaps. Canteens, haversacks, muskets, uniforms and other implements of war littered the landscape.
In the museum, I found a mural of hundreds of soldier faces from both armies. I was reminded of a scene in the movie “Dead Poets Society” where teacher John Keating (Robin Williams) takes his poetry class to look at photographs of young men long passed. (The verse at the beginning of this story, from Robert Herrick’s “To the Virgins, to Make Much of Time,” was quoted in that scene.)
Keating’s dialogue goes like this:
“They’re not that different from you, are they? … Invincible, just like you feel … they believe they are destined for great things, just like many of you. Their eyes are full of hope, just like you. … Did they wait until it was too late to make from their lives even one iota of what they were capable? … Because, you see gentlemen, these boys are now fertilizing daffodils. But if you listen real close, you can hear them whispering their legacy to you. Go on, lean in. Listen. Do you hear it? Carpe Diem. Seize the day, boys. Make your lives extraordinary.”
And now I try to picture those armies colliding at Gettysburg.
Down the Pennsylvania roads and lanes they came, pouring forth into the meadows surrounding Gettysburg, dusty columns of marching soldiers, regimental flags bobbing and fluttering, officers riding horseback beside them, miles of cannons and supply wagons
President Abraham Lincoln, in 272 words and 10 sentences, spoke what’s considered the most concise speech in American history.
and livestock trailing. Lee came with 70,000 troops. Union General Robert Meade brought 91,000. Somewhere in that stream of humanity were my great grandfathers, young men who would survive Gettysburg and other Civil War battles to become farmers in Minnesota. Some of the combatants were as old as 80, some as young as 12. Most of them were teenagers and young men.
The seeming invincibility of young men is a common but frayed reminder of the cost of war. Stephen Crane explored that theme in his Civil War novel, “The Red Badge of Courage.” The British “Charge of the Light Brigade” against Russian artillery in 1854 led to Lord Alfred Tennyson’s famous poem that said in part:
Cannon to right of them,
Cannon to left of them,
Cannon in front of them
Volleyed and thundered;
Stormed at with shot and shell,
Boldly they rode and well,
Into the jaws of Death,
Into the mouth of hell
Rode the six hundred.
At Gallipoli in World War I, thousands of spirited young Australian soldiers were mowed down when commanders ordered them into uphill suicide charges against Turkish machine gunners. In the Normandy invasion of World War II, a group of friends and neighbors from Bedford, Virginia, hit the beach. Nineteen of those 35 men, from Company A, died that first day. We know the story of Iwo Jima, which produced the largest-ever death toll of US Marines in a single battle before they conquered the Japanese.
President Lincoln, delivering his Gettysburg address not far from where the carnage took place at Cemetery Ridge, said in part: “The brave men, living and dead, who struggled here, have consecrated it, far above our poor power to add or detract.”
That, to me, is the tragic legacy of Gettysburg. What happened there over three days in 1863 saved a united nation but only because one army of Americans prevailed over the other army of Americans. Letters from the time confirm that many of those young soldiers had but vague notions of why they fought. The museum at Gettysburg tells of commanders trying to calm their jittery soldiers before sending them into withering fire. Dead men were found with letters from home in their pockets. Sometimes, they clutched family pictures in curled, blood-stained fingers. Death came instantly for many, but for others, painfully slow.
Is death in war the defining moment for young men? Is it their extraordinary defining moment, their carpe diem? Are they destined to fertilize daffodils? If you walk the battlefields of Gettysburg, listen closely. You might hear those young men whispering to you, and you’ll wonder if they’re revealing their hopes and dreams.
At Gettysburg, war showed no favors for young men.
A statue behind Confederate lines shows General James Longstreet, chief subordinate to Robert E. Lee. (Photo by Kevin S. Giles)
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Western Montana native Kevin S. Giles wrote the popular prison nonfiction work Jerry’s Riot, the coming-of-age novel Summer of the Black Chevy, and a biography of Montana congresswoman Jeannette Rankin, One Woman Against War, which is an expanded version of his earlier work, “Flight of the Dove.” His new novel, Headline: FIRE! is the third in the Red Maguire series. Masks, Mayhem and Murder is the second. The first is “Mystery of the Purple Roses.” More information is available at https://kevinsgiles.com.