The Dying Place
By: Ron Warren June 23, 2017
Murfreesboro Tennessee - December 31, 1862 --
An artillery shell exploded and the concussion threw the young man violently into a tree. One second he had been a tall, strong, slim man, full of fight –the next he was bucking around like a horse -indifferent to the musketry and canon shot. He was carried from the field of the Cowan farm that night and taken on a wagon from Murfreesboro back to a field hospital in Lincoln County, Tennessee. The young soldier's Regimental Commander, Lieutenant Colonel Anderson knew how to fight and he knew how to take care of his people. This boy was going home.
His father goes to the field hospital set up just outside of Mulberry. He doesn’t know if he will place his son, Samuel, on the back of the wagon alive or dead. The surgeons advise the father to wait until morning to take him home as they can care for him better than the man’s family. The father goes back home. Every time a spoke’s tip of the wagon wheel touched the ground a tear fell from his eyes. Count that by four.
The father walks through the front door of their house and is met by his daughter who looks into his eyes. Seeing his face she falls to her knees wailing. Mary loves her older brother more than anything. His young son, GW, tries to keep his emotions under control. The father upon seeing this son in the shadows, grabs him, gasping like he was kicked in the stomach, he knew the army would try and come for him next. The mother runs down the steps and gathers the pile of her family under her arms. She would have to mop up the tears later.
The father knew what to expect. He had known Cheatham in Mexico at Moilno Del Rey and Camargo. His son was fighting under, “Old Frank,” just yesterday. The father busies himself by making a dying place for his son. He had done the same thing for his own older brother back in Mexico twenty some years ago. As he looks at his family, their healthy unbroken bodies look so pure, almost unusual after seeing his eldest son’s bruises and cuts –those lifeless eyes. Lord, help him!
The father cleared out furniture so he could make a palette close the fire place. He put down quilts that had seen births and deaths many times over. The father wouldn’t be taken again by a youngster’s hopes like back when he was a soldier tending to his brother. He went into his barn and started measuring and cutting wood for the casket. They would need it someday, possibly within the next week.
The father got up early the next morning for the long ride to Mulberry. He insisted he go alone. After the sun rose there were still clouds of darkness inside the father’s heart, lightning piercing the fabric of his soul. The rooster would never again crow for the morning’s sun in his heart –his pain!
The father walked right up to where his son had been the previous night. A soldier aggressively asked him why he was there. The father cursed the man heartedly and went to his son’s side. The father was a little tight by the time he got there and didn’t want to hear it. They called it, “wildcat whiskey,” in Lincoln County.
Mary had hidden in the back of the wagon under blankets. She had stolen her way through the guards unnoticed. She appeared at her brother’s side like a whiff of smoke, shocking the father. As she cried over her bother, he lifted his face and looked into her eyes and smiled.
There were a few local boys there who helped carry the son to the wagon. They laid him down and covered him with the quilt and blankets the father had brought with him. His army issued blanket would have to stay. The father understood. It had been that way in Mexico too.
The daughter was lying next to her brother to keep him warm in the back of the wagon. His left arm was mangled from when he struck the tree. His broken jaw made him look differently but she could still tell it was him. It was his eyes. She would know him no matter what he had looked like. That was how close their bond.
A few miles down the road the brother forced his way up off the bed of the wagon and with his sister’s help climbed into the front. His jaw rested on his father’s right chest, his father’s right arm around him. His arm hung limp on the father’s right side.
With clear eyes, he looked into his father’s eyes, smiling with that pitiful broken jaw. The daughter covered him in a thick quilt and a blanket and got up close to him. She knew he couldn’t look at her because of his injuries. His neck wouldn’t turn that way now. The young man was going home -for good or ill he would be with his family. His eyes looked so lovingly at his father. The spokes of the wheels talked sadly to the father the whole way home.
The family chewed food for the young soldier and did everything they could think of to keep him alive. His smiles were just as sweet as always. With his broken and bruised ribs he wasn’t able to cough. His lungs filled with fluid and he passed away five days later. The calico cat sits behind the family visibly shaken. She would bite at people who got near. She loved the older brother too. As he passed away she was licking the young man’s hair, grooming him as he gently held the tip of her tail. She was never the same after that.
For every shovel full of dirt the father took out of the ground a piece of his heart just as big came out with it. His youngest son was helping. His light blonde hair and light blue eyes seemed to turn gray with his sadness.
When they came for the youngest son the father had a trick. Two horse soldiers had come across the old stone bridge in Fayetteville headed for Chattanooga. They had gotten trapped in an empty springhouse for a week and half. The father had collected their Spencers, 34 tubes of seven shots each and an additional cask of bullets from their horses. The Confederates seemed to respect this man for his loss and his knowing Old Frank in Mexico. That Spencer across his lap did not hurt.
By that time the youngest son had known the hills and creeks of this hollow for fourteen years. He had good vision. The conscript gang were lucky. From behind the rock outcroppings on the hills this kid could have killed them all with his the seven shooting rifle.
After what this young man had seen of his brother dying he knew a piss-poor cause when he saw it. He didn’t go away with the union troops that passed through and the bushwhackers are buried inside the cave that only he, his father and brother knew. The sister, in later life, remembered the cave from when her older brother had taken her there as a child.
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On a gently sloping hill in Bugger Holler, in the same cemetery the young soldier and his family are buried in, sits a man with his back leaning against a tree. The man looks at the young veteran’s grave. He reads the date of death from 1863 and turns his head to his son’s grave. His boy was a Marine just like he had been back at Yudam-ni.
His boy was severely wounded in Hue. The Marines of his squad put him in a poncho and carried him south to the river for extraction. The new kid took the Springfield rifle with scope and honored his son by using that rifle to effect –just as his boy had done. His son died on the dustoff. The letter came from Phu Bai, Vietnam, Republic of... Date of death, February 18th, 1968.
-- In a letter to North Vietnam -- “Father, I am writing to you from inside the Imperial City. Of our fifteen men, seven were killed today by long range rifle fire. We got the Marine sniper with a rocket but another was there the next night. There seems to be no end to it. Our Tung was killed by one of these men. Tell mother Tung has had a proper burial. I hope to be home soon. Light incense for Tung. He was a good Communist.”
