On Hell's Hallowed Ground

8/7/2019 On Hell's Hallowed Ground

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On Hell's Hallowed Ground

By

Derek Rush

They will come together again under higher bidding,and will know their place and name.

This army will live, and live on,

so long as soul shall answer soul...

Major General Joshua Chamberlain

There are few examples which render a more precise vision of hell on earth than during some ofthe savage fighting experienced throughout the American Civil War, where waves of infantry marched

across shell-swept fields, shoulder to shoulder in rank through drifting clouds of smoke and debris,headlong with their tattered colors into the withering blaze of musketry. More Americans died during

these four years of bitter conflict than in both World Wars and Vietnam combined. Advancements intechnology, including the repeating rifle, introduced a divided nation to untold carnage in its rawest

form.

The battle of Chickamauga was among the most bloody. It was in the late summer of 1863 thatfierce fighting broke out in the fields and woods surrounding a small creek in northwest Georgia.

Because of the rolling wooded ground over which much of the struggle was waged, linear battle

formations proved arduous to maintain; with visibility limited to 150 feet in places, neither army knewthe exact position of the other, and with lines extending nearly six miles at the start of action, the

situation became highly confused for commanding officers and soldiers alike. Fighting, at times, was

hand to hand. It was utter and complete madness. There were reports of small brush fires erupting fromthe spark of muskets and cannons, and those wounded unable to escape were consumed by the flames.One soldiers description claimed the scene to be a struggling, reeling, inextricable mass of

confusion.

All told, after two days of battle so intense it scarred the earth for more than twenty years, some34,000 men were either killed, wounded, or missing. Many of the soldiers that drew their last,

agonizing breath there were buried where they fell.

Much of what I learned of the battle was passed on to me by my father; a man as versed inscholarly fact as he was skilled in a way with words. Having grown up not more than a few hours drive

from the battlefield, the two of us had made the trip a number of times over the years. Hed cover the

battle in great detail as we drove slowly along the winding roads of the park, becoming quite involved

in the movement of troops and cavalry, the deployment of artillery. As he did, I imagined the smoke ofbattle still hanging heavily amongst the trees, listening with an ear to the wind for the cries of wounded,

the distant crackle of gunfire locals still claim to hear from time to time.

I often wondered what it must have been like for the soldiers that had fought and died there, menwho sacrificed their lives for a few more feet of ground, a rock fence, or a copse of trees somewhere

across an expansive field. It was all part of the experience.

I hadnt been back to the battlefield in the better part of a decadenot since dad had passed away.And it would have been many more had a unique business opportunity in Atlanta not presented itself.

Within a week I had most of my affairs in order and all my worldly possessions stowed in the back


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of the Tacoma. Although my old college roommate was not expecting me until sometime Monday

afternoon, I was eager to get settled into my new life, and therefore left a few days earlier than I had

planned.

My route out of southern Tennessee took me down I 75, and within a stones toss of the park. Itwas late Saturday afternoon. My thoughts were adrift. I was certainly not intending to stray from the

interstate as I did, but by the time I recognized what I had done I was nearly upon the park, being

drawn further on by the same familiar sights which commanded my rapt attention nine years earlier.Approaching from the present-day town of Boynton the road dips, crosses the river, then rises.

Almost immediately the signs of war are upon you. Cannons, markers, and memorials appear in

increasing numbers as you move east to west down the country road. The Ecno Lodge my father and Ifrequented was just up the road a ways. It would be a good place kick back after a quick drive down

memory lane. What's the rush? I figured.

It was nearing the end of another beautiful autumn day. I had just turned onto one of the more

secluded back roads leading into the park, when a rather acrid, foul-smelling odor like rotten eggs camewafting in through my open window. The odor, very much like burnt black powder, provoked only a

minor curiosity at the time, for I was far more perplexed by how little traffic there was upon entering

the confines of the park itself; being a weekend, and a rather pleasant afternoon, I was figuring there tobe more tourists out and about, soaking up the atmosphere of the place, studying the monuments,

reading the plaques, paying homage to those who fought and died upon these hallowed grounds. Yet the

farther I drove the more convinced I became that I was indeed the only person around for miles.The woods crowded me on either side. I can not easily explain the sense of unease which began to

settle over me at this point, nor the distinct heaviness about the air that made it difficult for me to

breath I felt as though I was in some strange way surrounded, or trapped, and I kept turning in myseat to search for the cause of what a sneaking suspicion warned to be more than an overactive

imagination.

Despite my concerns, I continue on.

That decision would ultimately prove to be the greatest mistake of my life.I had just rounded a bend in the narrow road, and came suddenly upon a smoky haze which

obscured much of the area ahead of me. For a moment I could not see the edge of my hood much less

where I was going. As a result, I had all but crawled to a stop.Seger was on the radio, singing Roll Me Away. But his husky tone had gone to static. Instead of

fumbling for another station, I simply reached down and turned the radio off. I needed the quiet to

concentrate.The rotten egg odor only grew in intensity, stinging my nostrils, watering eyes. I remember making

a face and bowing my head briefly, pinching my eyes in an attempt to clear my suddenly blurred vision.

There was a momentary feeling of static electricity in the air, raising the hair on my arms, tingling

my scalp. When I looked back up, jolted to attention by the sudden rough condition of the roadway(had I driven off one side or the other?), I was utterly awestruck to discover the scene before me had

inexplicably changed.

The smoke had cleared enough to reveal some macabre version of reality in which my view of theoutside world seemed cast through windows tinted a muddy shade of red. The paved road I was on was

now a narrow dirt lane as far as I could tell through the haze. And I was hearing the sporadic crackle of

distant gunfire, the thunder of hooves and the whinnying of horses, along with the crack of leatherrigging.

There was the roar of what sounded like cheering men in the distance. But I was primarily trying to

focus on the indistinct shades darting about in the smoke around me.My first thought was that I had inadvertently strayed into the middle of a battle reenactment. I've

been to quite a few over the years with dad. With thousands of reenactors coming together each year to

participate in the living history events, things can get rather intense. And loud. Seeing, however, as


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these things often occur on or around the actual dates, it would have otherwise made perfect sense to

me had the anniversary for the battle not been nearly a month ago.

And added to which, it was not commonplace for the National Park Service to allow such staged

events, which usually involved hundreds of enthusiastic onlookers, within the boundaries of the parkitself. While living history exhibits may feature drills and other demonstrations as forms of

entertainment, actual recreations of the fighting has always been forbidden, and held elsewhere.

Perhaps this year things were different.Leaning forward to look at the sky, I saw dark billowy clouds through the leaves and smoke,

roiling frantically among one another in heated dispute, and knew at once that something extraordinary

was occurring. Something clearly beyond my scope of reason to understand.I felt suddenly tight and sick inside. There was a chill at the nape of my neck, and the hair on my

arms continued to stand on end. I used my hand to rub my arm as I looked around.

My concern had morphed into a tight ball of fear that burned in my gut.

For crissakes, Aaron, just turn around! Don't be your usual stupid self. Get the hell away from thisplace while you still can, while there is still time.

A reasonable enough argument posed by that judicial little voice inside my head.

Words of wisdom some may even say.If not possessed of a strange and unnatural urge to keep going, I just might have listened.

Why the hell didn't I listen?

Ahead of me, now, I could see figures darting back and forth through the drifting smoke. To oneside men were gathered on horseback shouting orders, emphasizing their commands with eager

gestures. Things seemed chaotic. A booming report startled the animals, startled me. It was promptly

followed by a second. Then a third.Cannons firing?

Somewhere to my right.

What in God's name was going on?

Almost simultaneously with another deafening blast, something struck the side of my truck withenough force to shake me in my seat.

I winced, thinking in a frantic way that a stray cannonball had found its mark. But there was no

explosion. I had not been blown to bits. I was alive and well. And this was, after all, just someunscheduled event I had gotten in the way of. Surely these boys were pissed with me getting in the way

and all.

I spun in my seat half expecting to find a few ornery characters, armed with rocks and wieldingmuskets and vicious insults, but instead was greeted by a mounted soldier who fixed me with his

furious gaze.

I had just about gone to roll down my window as he maneuvered his large animal around the back

of my truck and up along the diver's side, ready to offer him my sincere apology for being where Iclearly did not belong.

Abruptly, I lost my ability to speak.

By god, he was a horrible mess. He smelled of rot and appeared as bad; a ghastly bearded figuremere feet away, whose long, stringy hair fell over a disheveled Confederate uniform. It was caked with

blackened gore and beyond repair.

Others were behind him. I noticed them near the road's edge and in the dusky woods, perched highon filthy, snorting steeds. One drew an eager bead on me with a short carbine, while another cast him a

glace as if to say: Dont let this one git away, now, ya hear?!

But it was the rugged bastard staring down at me I was most concerned with. His intent, with theflash of a pistol as his horse reared, spread across his twisted continence in the form of a wicked grin.

His gravely laugh seemed to echo like the booming rumble of thunder at the start of a mean storm.

Those eyes, however, green and aglow, will haunt me for the rest of my days.


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Stunned by what I was seeing though hardly rooted in place, I stomped down on the gas.

My throaty V6 roared as I fled their fire. Slumped to one side in my seat so as to lessen the chance

of being hit, I could hear the report of their carbines and the successive bang of each round that tore

into the body of my truck. My rear window exploded inward. Tiny shards of glass fell over me, downthe back of my shirt. I lost my drivers side mirror in a half-hearted attempt to ram one of the riders that

got too close. They were screaming, hooting and howling, and no doubt insane.

Up ahead of me, cannons lined one side of the road, placed there by the park service decades agoto mark the spot of one battery or another at the time of the battle. I was horrified to find these guns

now manned by teams of haggard, filthy figures in uniforms made black and shredded by countless

years of waging some endless war. Soaked in sweat and sopped with blood from wounds not severeenough to be taken out of action, these men were evidently of no relation to the reenactors of which I

was familiar, as I had first assumed. With the memory of Old Green Eyes still so fresh in my mind, and

the brief sight of his riled troop gaining ground fast in my rear-view as I chanced a peek, I wasnt so

sure they were even the visage of man. More like ghastly demons in the failing guise of mortal flesh.Few stopped in their frantic duty to regard my strange horseless conveyance as I sped by them with

wide, uncertain eyes, though those that did fixed me with besetting gazes, as if I were a petty intrusion

upon the ground for which they bravely contested. As with those of the riders in pursuit, I swear theireyes glowed of green fire.

My mind was whirring away but not in an orderly fashion. It was nearly impossible to concentrate

under the pressure. I had no idea was to do next; I fled in a blur of panic on through the smoky brume,unsure of where to go other than down the sunken dirt road I came in on, praying all the while it would

lead me, somehow, back out this bizarre aberration.

Or at the very least away from the most agitated of my pursuers.My foot was to the floor. I couldn't press down on the gas any harder if God himself was

demanding it of me. The engine roared a high, straining note, and I recall thinking wildly how fucking

aggravating it was that I wasn't able to outrun a group of men on horseback. The truck wasn't that old;

recently tuned and well maintained, I could cruise at 75 on the highway without a care in the world.Why then, all of a sudden, can't I pick up any speed?

Then it hit me: You're only in second gear, jackass!

Shift the damn truck!The big guns were booming all around me. The concussion waves came like slaps of wind that

rocked my truck, the overpressure inside the cab popping my ears. I could feel each terrible roar in my

chest.No longer could I rationalize what was happening to me. Reality was in hiding. It had all become

so very dreamlike.

These were not reenactors, and I was clearly in a place I've never been before. I had crossed some

line, slipped into another place, and feared for my life, feared I might never find my way out.That feeling of being trapped had fast become suffocating.

I was fully involved now. The crash of rifles, hissing bullets, screeching shells, thundering

explosions near and far, bugles, cheers, shouts of anger, maniacal peels of laughter, and the long,agonizing moans of the wounded all contributed to the frenzied cacophony of death not even my

gunning engine could drown out to any great effect.

In my panic-stricken haste to escape the riders on horseback as much as this strange hell intowhich I unwittingly drove, I happened to glance off into a broad smoldering field on my left were the

batterys fire was being directed. There I saw the long densely stacked ranks of advancing troops.

Dressed in blue, they marched unflinching forward with their long, bayonet-tipped rifles braced againsttheir shoulders, steadily, with neat precision though the licking flames and haze of battle, the drifting

smoke, and the dim, dusky crimson light that infused the very air. The exploding shells were blowing

them to bits. And still they continued on.


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What the fuck is happening?! I kept shouting over and over with a white-knuckled grip of the

wheel. Nothing looked familiar. This was not the Chickamauga I knew. The landscape itself seemed

different, scarred, blackened as if a violent blaze had rolled across the land. Trees were dead, singed,

skeletal hulks.Dead soldiers and horses in all stages of death littered the road and scorched, adjacent fields

like leaves and twigs after a violent storm. The recently fallen lay mingled with the bloated, rotting, and

often skeletal remains of those who must have taken their last breath days, weeks, or possibly evenmonths before. How many times has this field changed hands? Was there no burial detail for the dead?

A temporary reprieve from the fighting to tend to the fallen?

I had to swerve around a broken ammunition caisson, a smoking shell hole, then again to avoid thetwisted remains of more fallen combatants mangled by this wars grisly hand. The wreckage of battle

was beyond belief, strewn to and fro as far as the eye could see, like a weirdly shaped rendering of

hells own Apocalypse.

The smell, too, was awful. The pungent melding of burnt powder, charred wood and smolderinggrass, rotting flesh, and something similar to raw sewage triggered a wave of nausea I struggled to

quell. I had no longer had any windows to roll up in defense of the funk. They were all shattered, their

tiny shard all over my lap, the seat, the dashboard and the floor.The lines of battle closed ahead in the rapidly gathering darkness. The road, if I chose to follow,

would wind uphill through the middle of the two sides now well within range of small arms, and who

were dealing death with brutal efficiency around the burnt hulks of two large dwellings. Volleys ofwithering fire wrought havoc upon the opposing lines. Men (or some imitation of) fell in droves.

How could it get so dark so fast?

Where the hell was I that time moved in this manner?It was the least of my concerns.

More rounds peppered my tailgate, my sidesI was catching hell from every direction, not just

my pursuers but others were firing on me as wellpotshots and snipers. I saw one haggard soldier hurl

a black rock at me that bounced of my hood. Another took a whack at me with a large tree branch.I was encountering more casualties, now, as I drew nearer the fighting; scores of wounded lay

writhing in pain, nursing their wounds, or scurrying for cover. Some huddled in small groups in places

of shelter, craters, and sporadically the remnants of old stone foundations. Those that chose to walk orlimp or hobble back to their own lines did so with bewildered stares and fading fire in their eyes,

leaderless and broken. They were dying. Their wailing and pitiable moans sent shivers up my spine.

Many riderless horses roamed the fields and woods amidst the din of battle.As did strange dog-like creatures, most resembling hyenas, that fed on the dead and dying.

Thick gray smoke plumed and drifted from an overturned wagon that had caught fire beside the

road. From behind it a wounded drummer boy crawled, crossing the road and out of the path of my

speeding truck with nary a second to spare, dragging his broken instrument and severed arm behindhim. He was crying, frightened and alone. His face was horribly disfigured, charred, perhaps for having

been caught up under the wagon after it crashed. I wanted desperately to stop and help him, but instead

I turned my gaze away from his just in time to avoid a group of stragglers, or the retreating remnants ofa skirmish line who ambled out onto the road through a blown down section of fence.

Already driving uncontrollably, swerving, I cut to the right and crashed though a tall plank fence

and roared into a field of waist-high grass.In my rear view I could see one of the cavalry troopers draw another bead on me with his carbine

the instant he broke through the hole I had made. Five or six others quickly joined him, some firing

pistols.I stomped down on the accelerator to increase my lead but could not gain enough traction in the

soft earth to do so. My back end was fishtailing wildly about, tires spitting steady streams of dirt, and

within a moment the thundering of galloping hooves was nearly upon me. I could hear the snorting and


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been left upon the land, and in some very rare instances even infused itself into the atmosphere of a

place?

Perhaps, then, it is like a flimsy curtain that distorts or hinders our view, fluttering in the breeze of

eternity, and but for an instant parts to offer those sensitive few a brief interlude with another world,one in which the fighting rages on.

Or is it so simply that place called hell?

While the memories of the past may fade for the living, it pains me to imagine that they remain amost vivid and current event for the dead.

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On Hell's Hallowed Ground