"So he'll dig in along Westminster?'' Meade asked.
The tone caught Henry off guard. He was not used to Meade asking for advice, for support He was obviously rattled, ready to drop with exhaustion, suddenly frightened by the prospect of all that was unfolding. It frightened Henry. That kind of mood is contagious. It starts with the commander, and then spreads like a plague down the line. It was like that at Chancellorsville and at Second Manassas, the last hours when Pope fell into a panic.
"It's a tough position," Henry offered. "There're two things to hope for though."
"And that is?"
"Get there fast sir. They most likely will attack Westminster by dawn."
Meade lowered his head.
"Herman Haupt is in command down there," Warren offered. "He's got somewhere around ten thousand men. He might very well put up a hell of a fight If he does and the lead column pushes hard enough, it can still be retrieved."
"Put Hancock in the lead," Henry offered. "His troops are almost astride the Baltimore Road. Get them moving now."
"That will leave the center open," Meade replied.
"It's no longer the center," Warren responded forcefully. "Put Hancock on the road now, then Sickles as planned, followed by Twelfth Corps; Sixth in reserve ready to move either toward Westminster or Taneytown. The Fifth hits Taneytown, perhaps severing their line of advance."
"And if Haupt can't hold Westminster?''
"The second hope," Henry interjected, "is that if they have taken Westminster, it will most likely only be a division at most. They'll be exhausted, troops strung out from Emmitsburg to Westminster, with die head at Westminster. They might not have time to survey the ground up around Pipe Creek. Hancock forces the creek and deploys. We cut off their head at Westminster. We'll then be astride our base of supplies, with Lee strung out We then start pushing west, rolling him up, and meeting the Fifth Corps in Taneytown."
"You think we can do that?"
Meade was indeed exhausted, Henry realized. No sleep. for two days, suddenly overwhelmed by the full realization that Lee had again done the unexpected. He needed sleep.
I do too, Henry thought I can barely stand.
Worn down and demoralized, Meade could only nod.
"Fine then. All right send someone up to Hancock. It's almost midnight now. Tell him I want his corps to quietly pack it up, to start moving at two in the morning. Tell Howard to then detach a brigade, push them down to fill in along Hancock's line."
Warren and Hunt looked at each other. They'd won their point
"Get some sleep, sir," Warren offered.
There was no need to give the advice though. Meade's head was resting on the table. He was out
The two stepped out onto the porch and spotted a young orderly sitting on the steps. It was Meade's son, new to the staff.
"Your father," Henry said softly, "get him into bed and make sure he gets at least four hours' rest"
The boy, who had been dozing, came awake, nodded, and went inside.
Henry pulled out his watch. By the light of the moon, he could read it… midnight
"I'll take the orders up to Hancock," Warren offered. "Get some sleep, Henry. Tomorrow's going to be a tough day."
Henry didn't need to be told. He stepped off the porch. His orderly had unsaddled Henry's horse and spread out a blanket the saddle as a pillow.
Henry nodded his thanks and collapsed on the ground.
The last minutes of July 2,1863, ticked down for Henry; and in a few minutes he was fast asleep, falling into an exhausted, dreamless sleep.
11:50 PM, JULY 2,1863 NEAR TANEYTOWN
John Williamson sat down on the cool, damp ground with a stifled groan, leaning back against the trunk of an ancient oak. The campfires around
him were beginning to flicker down. The men had been given a few hours to cook a hurried dinner, a short rest, and then orders to be ready to march long before dawn.
Hazner was by his side, curled up on the bare ground, a tattered quilt his blanket, haversack a pillow. He was snoring away contentedly, and John envied him his oblivion.
The march had been grueling, John and Hazner assigned to the rear of the regimental column to prod the men along, and when necessary to sign off permission for men too exhausted, or sick, to fall out of the line of march. Between yesterday's battle and the stragglers, the regiment was down to less than half of what it had been only three days ago.
He tried to close his eyes, to sleep as Hazner did, but couldn't Finally he reached into his haversack and pulled out a small leather-bound volume. Elizabeth had given it to him on the day he left for the war, and the mere touch of it made him smile, remembering how she had kissed the book before handing it to him, asking him to write often, that it would be the way in which they could still touch each other. She had fancied him to be a writer, and the thought of it made him smile. She who loved Scott Hugo, and Dickens fancied that perhaps he would become such as well.
He opened the volume up and skimmed through it The first months of his journal were filled with pages of neatly written notes, vignettes when the world still seemed so young and innocent… a snowfall in camp and how the boys from the hot bottomlands of Carolina had frolicked… the first shock of battle before Richmond… the strange night after Fredericksburg when the Northern Lights appeared*-a sign of the Norse gods gathering in the souls of the slain- and then long weeks of nothing, just blank pages.
He fumbled for a pencil in his haversack and rested the volume in his lap, looking off across the fields, the shadows of men covering the ground, the warm, pleasant smell of wood smoke and coffee, so reminiscent of a world of long ago.
"My dearest Elizabeth," he wrote, hesitated, then scratched me line out No, this is just for myself..
"I am in Maryland tonight" he began again, now writing for himself. "At least I think that is where we are. It gets confusing at times with all the marching. A long one today, twenty miles or more. Tomorrow there will be another fight; if not tomorrow, then the day after.
"Why I am here I can no longer say with any certainty. There was a time, long ago, when I believed, but in what I can no longer say. All I long for is for this to end, to go home, and to somehow leave behind all that I have seen, to forget all that I have felt I feel a shadow walking beside me, filling my nights with coldness. If I live, perhaps there will be a day when we will speak of these times with pride, but will I be there? And if not what will be then said of me? What will you say, Elizabeth, if I do not return? Will you remember me? Will you wait for me across the long years of your life, or will memory fade and one day you will seek warmth, seek love with another?"
He stopped for a moment pencil raised, ready to scratch out the last line. What if I die, and she reads that?
No, let her. Fine for others to hide their fears with noble sentiments, but this is my life, the only one I shall ever have. There is no romance in this agony, and those who speak of glory rarely have seen the truth of it
He looked back down at the page.
"I wish I could fool myself into believing that what I do matters," he wrote. "But does it? Why did this war have to come into my life? Why now? Elizabeth, I would trade, in ah instant, all of this for just a day, a night as it once was, as it should have been for us. I care not for what others speak of, of all the things we now say caused this war. I just long to go home… but I cannot… and I fear I never will.
"I just want to live. If I should survive this, all I ask is for you to stay by my side, for us to grow old together in peace."