July 3rd, 1863, Gettysburg, Pennsylvania
I'm young. No girlfriend but a worried mother at home. I'm a Virginian.
I'm hunkered down at the edge of the tree line. A deep forest is behind me. An open field, in front of me. Beside me are some friends, mostly strangers, all Virginians.
The cannon volleys have begun. I hear ours. I feel theirs. Our sergeant's bringing up more troops. It's getting crowded under the trees. I'm up front, where I want to be. I'm not scared.
After a long time, the cannons finally stop and we all stand, not saying anything. We've been told that a mile away the Yankees have the high ground. I don't care. We've taken the high ground before. We'll take it today.
I adjust my knapsack. Check my powder, my lead. Got plenty, but probably won't need it today.
Mostly use the bayonet anyways. I place my bayonet tight on my rifle barrel. I look across the grassy field. Hard to see the other side through the cannon smoke, but I know where to go. Straight that way.
Bugle call. Call to form ranks. Getting close. Some officers join our sergeant and some other officers are out front. That looks like General Armistead up there. Well, I'll be god damned. The General going to lead us. He is saying something. I can't hear him. He's raising his saber. Looks like he wants us to follow. Don't have to ask me twice.
We start to march. We get to a bit of a rise in the hills. I look down the line. Sweet Jesus, there's a lot of us. Look at that. Focus now. I turn toward the Yankees, marching with my rifle resting on my shoulder. We're all marching.
We march and march some more. Cannon smoke from the Yanks. Shots fly over my head. Then cannon fire hits the line to my right and a bloody hole forms. I'm not afraid. I feel my blood rising. We begin to march faster. More cannon.
"March the double quick" I hear someone say. I begin to trot. Everyone does. I pull down my rifle and hold it in both hands. My blood's boiling now. Another cannon ball hits our line, and I'm sprayed with blood and bone. I don't care. I continue to run. All of us running, running forward.
I see the General put his hat on his sword and raise it above his head.
He yells something. I can't hear him but I know what he wants. I keep running. My blood is up, up, up. Someone yells. Then another, then another. Then I scream like I've done before. But today, today, I scream loud. Loud.
I yell and yell and run as fast as I can. Another cannon blast to my right. More blood on me. I don't care.
Then I can see them, and I see a stonewall. There. There. Get to the wall. That's all I want to do is get to that wall. I yell. I run. I'm getting closer. I see the Yanks. I yell. I run. I'm close. I'm close. I lower my rifle and point my bayonet forward.
Then I'm hit.
I feel a bullet tear through my right shoulder and push me back. I stop, gain my balance and take another step forward. Then another bullet hits my skull and blows the top half of my head clean off. I fall backwards and land on the ground.
And then I have the oddest feeling, like I'm flying. And I look down and I see myself on the ground. I look dead. I am dead. Damn. I really wanted to make it to that wall. Damn. Then I feel myself rising up above the battle, first a few feet now, then maybe twenty. I see my friends fighting, fighting and dying. I'm not sad or happy, just looking. More cannon fire. More smoke. I don't care about the wall anymore but I'm real interested in what's going on below me.
Then I turn toward the sky and see a cloud and the color blue and the bright yellow round Sun. Then suddenly I feel like I've been shot from a slingshot into the sky. To the Sun, past the Sun, into darkness, into light. And then I smile for the first time in months.
July 3rd, 2005, Dragoon Springs, Dragoon Mountains, Arizona
The Civil War, in what is now Arizona, didn't amount to much. There were some Confederate Texas volunteers based out of Tucson for a while, and there was the 'Battle' of Picacho Peak, north of Tucson. Wasn't really a battle. Just an accidental engagement. Union troops from California ran into Confederate troops from Texas on the road near a tall volcanic peak 50 miles north of Tucson. Took a couple of shots at each other. No one was killed. A couple of wounded. No big deal. They actually do a little reenactment of the Battle in the springtime, which is a bit comical to a Virginian like myself.
I was born in Richmond, Virginia, the Capital of the Confederacy. When I was a child, I would look at the statue of Stonewall Jackson out of the car window on my way to church on Sundays. Ringing Richmond are many battle sites from The Civil War. (When I was young, it wasn't The Civil War. It was The War Between The States.) When I visited my folk over the past few years, when my Dad was sick with cancer, I would stop by Cold Harbor on the way to their house in the Northern Neck of Virginia. A short cut to my folks' place drove past Cold Harbor, and it became a tradition to spend my first few moments back in the South at that battlefield. Wasn't much to look at really. Just a mile long loop road through a forest. But you could see the long trench lines and earthen works of the Confederates and some of the Union lines. Some pine trees have grown up, but a good portion of the open field when Grant charged is still there. A very peaceful place now, just a few miles from Richmond International Airport. Wasn't so peaceful in June of 1864.
Lee was in retreat. He'd been in a slow retreat since his devastating loss at Gettysburg almost a year prior. Mile after mile, Lee and his forces were heading south toward home, toward Richmond. Grant was in pursuit with a larger force. Lee got to Cold Harbor (named for a small hotel that served only cold meals), found good ground, ordered his troops to dig in, and waited for Grant to find him. The earthen works were dug high and strong. Grant, in a couple of days, found the Virginians and order a frontal assault the next day, making the same mistake that Lee made at Gettysburg. He attacked an enemy that had the better ground and that was well dug in and fortified. The night before the battle, many Union soldiers pinned small pieces of paper with their names written on them, to their uniforms, so their dead bodies could be identified the next day.
On the morning of June 3rd, 1864, Grant sent 31,000 men across that open field against the entrenched Rebels. The Confederates slaughtered them. There was no cover at all for the Union troops. One Confederate soldier later described it as 'simply murder'. The Union troops never even came close to the Rebel lines.
In 90 minutes, 7,000 Union soldiers were lost. 7,000 men in less than two hours. Four times the number that have died in the current three year War in Iraq. In 90 minutes. A Union soldier's diary was found the next day on the field of battle. It read "June 3rd, 1864, Cold Harbor, I was killed."
In the entire Civil War, only four soldiers were killed in what would become the state of Arizona and their graves are just up ahead, about a mile up this old stage road. The Butterfield Mail Stage ran through here. Used to be a spring that had water, year round, back in the day. In recent years, a small earthquake stopped the spring from running. Now just the ruins of the old stone stage house remain and the four graves of Confederate Dead.
Was just out here a few weeks ago, taking Brownies of the graves, the dry spring bed, the Junipers on the hill. The negatives were not that special. The flags over the graves looked awkward, the Juniper shots were uninteresting. I wasn't going to come out and reshoot for a while, but today is the 142nd Anniversary of the Third day at Gettysburg and it just seems appropriate to visit Confederate Dead on this day.
In not too long, I reach the graves and the old stage house. Four graves not dug in the ground but made of piling large stones on their bodies. Each mound is a good three feet high. Plastic flowers in cheap glass vases grace the top of each grave. Three flags per grave blow in the hot July wind. Three small decorative flags. One flag is the modern United States flag, and then there are two Confederate flags on each pile of stone, one the standard Stars and Bars and the other, the square Confederate Battle Flag. Nearby is a plaque that tells what happened here and at least part of the truth:
Here's my take of what happened:
A small Confederate troop out of Tucson was traveling in this area. It seems they were looking for stray cattle to take them back to Tucson. My guess is that they knew of Dragoon Springs and they needed water and came here to top up. Chiricahua Apaches also knew of Dragoon Springs. Actually, they had camped around these springs for hundreds of years in this area in the northern Dragoons. I bet they saw the Confederates coming for hours if not days to Dragoon Springs from atop any of the nearby hills. They saw horses. They saw mules. They saw cattle. They also saw men in uniform. Whether those uniforms were blue or gray, the Chiricahuas made no distinction. They had been at war with the U.S. Army since The Bascom Affair two years before (see "All Because of a Spring" above by Stu Jenks.) They thought they were winning the war for most of the U.S. Army had left (not knowing that they had just being reassigned eastward to fight in The Civil War.) But today, they see more white men in uniforms coming to their drinking hole. I sure they didn't even think twice.
The Apaches attacked the Confederates, killing four of them and drove them away from Dragoon Springs. The Chiricahuas also obtained a good number of mules, horses and cattle in the attack. The Confederates fled but came back a few days later, seeking revenge and their horses. They attacked the Apaches, killed five of them and got their livestock back. No Confederate casualties this time. The Rebels also took time to bury their dead from the initial ambush. Sgt. Sam Ford of the Captain Hunter's Company of Arizona Rangers was among the dead, along with two unknowns and a muleskinner by the name of Ricardo.
A pro-Confederate website on Arizona's role in The Civil War speculates that Ricardo was caught up in a "rush of patriotism" when the Texas Confederates comes to Tucson and occupied it for a time. I have a different theory. Ricardo probably didn't fall in love with the idea of State Rights and Slavery. He simply needed a job. He was the hired help, to manage the horses and the mules on the Company's patrol to forage for cows.
And as I stand here on this day in July, I feel no sadness for the dead Confederates. In years past when I first visited here, I felt like they were distant brothers. I know better now. They were coming into a land that the Chiricahuas had lived on for hundreds of years. The Confederate Army's view of Western Indians was even worse than the U.S. Army's policy. The United States' plan at the time on how to solve 'The Indian Problem' was to convince/manipulate/force/coerce the Native People to go and live on reservations. If they didn't go, they'd kill 'em then, but they'd give them the option to go. The Confederate States of America's position on Western Native Americans was simple: Exterminate them, every last man, woman and child.
(Eastern tribal relations with the Confederacy were a bit different. Many Creeks and Cherokees at the time, were as divided about the Civil War as were Whites. Red Brother against Red Brother. There was actually a Cherokee Confederate General by the name of Stand Waite. He came from a wealthy slave-owning Indian family, a family that, believe it or not, assisted President Andrew Jackson in the forced relocation of fellow Cherokees from Georgia to present day Oklahoma, during the Trail of Tears. Brigadier General Stand Waite fought and commanded many Confederate troops during all of the Civil War, attacking and killing Union soldiers, both Indians and non-Indians alike. Long story. Someone else to tell really. Modern term for a Cherokee like Stand Waite is an Uncle Tomahawk.)
My guess is the 100 Apaches that attacked Hunter's Company on May 5th, 1862 knew nothing of the Confederate Army's intention to kill every Western Indians they could but I'm bet they or their relatives had has some run-ins with the newly arrived Confederates and they probably didn't like them very much. Plus they hated whites in uniforms anyways and on top of that, I'm sure they thought they could use the horses and cows.
I stand here now looking at these graves. I feel smug. I nod. I drink some water. I prepare to take a couple reshoots with my Brownie.
I say to the wind, "I'm on the Apaches' side now. I'm glad they killed you sons of bitches. Served you fucking right."
July 5th, 2005, Dragoon Springs, Dragoon Mountains, Arizona (Two days later)
I'm back to right a wrong. My wrong. A little wrong.
When I was here last, the U.S. flags on the graves of the Confederates pissed me off. So I took them off, leaving the Confederate flags only. My rationalization at the time was that I was angry at the political correctness of it all. I can hear the membership of the Arizona Division of the Sons of Confederate Veterans, who maintain these graves, now.
"We can't just have the Stars and Bars on the graves. We have to put Old Glory there too, just so folks don't think we are radical modern-day states-righters or something. We are good Americans, you know, even though we do love our dead Confederate brethren."
So I took off the American flags, rolled them up and place them in a niche in one of the old decaying walls of the station house. Then yesterday, I realized that it isn't because of the political correctness of the thing that pissed me off. It's what my government is doing right now that angers me: The stupid and unjust War in Iraq, the arrogant and ignorant President that leads us now, the seemingly universal cowardice on both sides of the aisles of Congress, the resistance to stand up for justice and peace and to do the right thing. I really love my country, but I hate my government right now. So I took down the flags. Fuck 'em.
Then I realized that without the U.S. flags on the graves, new visitors to the site would think that the Son of Confederate Veterans are whack jobs. Perhaps they are, but they should get that judgment on their own merits, not from my actions and resentments toward my government. So I'm now jogging up the old stage road. Ain't that far from Tucson, but after you get over the Interstate, you go on a bit of two lane blacktop, then a few miles of dirt road, and then a couple more miles of 4 x 4 jeep trail until you get to the site. Today, like any other day, I park my Pathfinder about a half mile in and hike the rest of the way. Unlike other days, I have no water, no hiking boots, no backpack. Just my running shoes with no socks, and my Brownie in my hand. I'm not going to be long.
I get the site pretty quick. I enter the ruins of the station house and right away, I find the nitch where the American flags are. I reach down, pull out the small bundle and immediately notice something. There are only 3 flags here. Where is the 4th flag? Did I forget to take one off a grave? I don't think so. I walk the few feet to the graves and study them. Nope. No U.S. flags anywhere. What in the hell? Where did it go?
Then I look down and notice some new footprints in the soft soil near one of the graves. Someone was out here yesterday. Could they have found the bundle and taken a flag? It was Independence Day yesterday. Doesn't see likely though.
I look again at the four graves and immediately I see the wisdom of those who decorate these graves. I missed it all along. There isn't one U.S. flag and one Confederate flag. There are two Confederate flags and one U.S. flag per grave. They are covering their bases and showing their pride in America but not to the expanse of their feeling for their dead ancestors. I see the elegance of the three flags setup now, for the very first time.
I bend over and wedge a U.S. flag back into its spot in the rocks of each grave. First the Sergeant.
"Sorry, Sarge." I say.
Then I put a flag into the grave of one of the unknowns.
I leave one grave without a flag, the grave that's the farthest away. Maybe folks will think it just blew away.
And lastly I put an American flag into the rocks of the grave of Ricardo, the muleskinner. I pause over his grave. I notice that someone has carved his name by hand into a flat rock, and below his name is carved a Spanish Cross.
"Sorry, Ricardo, that you got killed back then. You were just doing your job. May you rest in peace," I say.
I take out my Brownie and clip off a few shots in the late afternoon sun. No clouds today either. But it's July and the Monsoon rains will soon come, releasing the intoxicating smell of the Creosote bushes, making the washes run high and muddy, waking up the frogs that are hibernating underground, and washing away my footprints from around these graves.
And maybe the rains will wash away a sin or two as well.
[Addendum: The Gettysburg recollection at the beginning of this story was taken from memories of visions I had during Holotropic Breathwork sessions during the 1990's. In 1993, I took a tour of Civil War battlefields looking for the place I'd died. I went to Antietam, Fredericksburg, Cold Harbor, and other battlefields but no dice. They were very sad places but I felt no intuition that this was the place where I charged toward a stonewall and was shot dead. A small voice said 'Go to Gettysburg'. I had doubts but I went anyway. I cried most of the day there at Gettysburg. I was not alone. Many men and women I saw, standing in tall grass fields, quaking with tears. At a place known as The Angle, I felt an incredibly powerful feeling of Déjà vu. I saw the stonewall. I wondered. I walked a good hundred yards into a field west of the stonewall. I turned and looked toward the wall and saw it all. Everything. It was here. I walked toward the stonewall and suddenly felt the place where I had been shot. I felt the shots but they didn't hurt. After a minute, I continued toward the stonewall. I still wanted, needed to get to that wall. And 160 years later, my soul in a different body stepped up and over the stonewall at The Angle at Gettysburg.]
Copyright © 2005, Stu Jenks