The Final Day (After, #3)(93)
Near Warren’s iconic statue, the gaudy and imposing two-story-high mini-castle dedicated as a monument to a New York regiment towered above them, which John suggested they not climb up. He noticed that Bob was following along.
Bob’s features were drawn, pale in spite of the icy blasts of wind whipping about the hilltop. What is he contemplating next? John wondered.
“Wish we had time to really visit this place,” Bob said. “Maybe when better times come again, we will do so.”
In the silence of a winter morning, the landscape clad in snow, visibility at times dropping as another squall came in like powder smoke obscuring this field of action, John felt a strong profound connection with this land and its history. With all that had happened, would history eventually forget this place, its location returning to primordial forest such as what greeted the first settlers a hundred years before the battle? It was a sobering thought that a day might come when their descendants a score, maybe even a hundred generations hence might walk this ground, look at the broken fragments of long-gone monuments, and ask, “What happened here?”
Already, the first signs of neglect were showing. The once heavily trodden pathways were beginning to be reclaimed by the forest. Looters and vandals had already defaced many of the monuments, stealing the bronze plaques emblazoned with the names of the gallant for their metal. Even a couple of the artillery barrels had been stolen from their cast-iron gun carriages.
The path led down the slope to a simple granite monument tucked into the southwest slope of the hill. John, with his friend Bob by his side, approached it reverently. It was the monument for the Twentieth Maine, which had held the extreme left flank of the Union army on that grim, terrible day against odds as high as six to one. Even Lee Robinson, whose ancestors had assaulted this hill, stood in reverent silence as John spoke a few words about what this place meant to him, how the commander of that regiment, Joshua Lawrence Chamberlain, when returning years later to this now-quiet glen declared that where great deeds are accomplished, greatness lingers and that this was indeed the vision place of souls.
All stood silent, Bob then offering that they pray together for the repose of the souls of all who fell here, both North and South, which they did, Lee openly in tears.
As the group turned to start back up the slope, General Scales interrupted their departure.
“It might be legend, it might be true,” he began, struggling to keep control over his voice. “Some claim that when the few hundred men of Maine who were sent to hold this position started to dig in, piling up rocks to form a low wall to huddle against and hearing a tidal wave of thousands screaming the rebel yell heading their way, Colonel Chamberlain stepped forward to address his men. Back then, officers actually did that kind of thing.
“Legend is that he cried out, ‘Men of Maine,’ and then went on to proclaim that perhaps only once in a century were so few men gifted to hold such responsibility, that whether their Republic lived or died now rested in their hands and their hands alone and let each man embrace that duty, if need be with his life.
“Maybe that is us this day,” Bob said. “The Republic might rest in our hands before this day is out.”
With that, he turned and started back up to the crest, shoulders braced back, walking with a purposeful stride. John followed in his wake, sensing that his friend had reached a profound decision.
As they reached the crest of the hill, Sergeant Major Bentley, who had stayed behind, came racing down to meet the group.
“My God, General, you got to see this!”
Bob moved ahead swiftly, and this time Bentley did not hesitate to put his arm around his respected commander and help him up the slope.
John fell in behind them as they reached the crest. The two snipers were hunkered down behind the boulders, and the antenna arrays had been covered with gauzy white camouflage netting, one of the snipers forcefully suggesting that the rest of the group stay low.
“We monitored a Black Hawk taking off from there not ten minutes ago,” Bentley announced. “It was a tense moment, feared it might be coming over this way to check us out. But it turned southeast, and from the chatter we picked up, it was bound for Bluemont.”
“Okay, and…?” Bob asked.
“My God, sir, that place is bursting with chatter, uplinking to a sat, take a look!”
Bob went over to where his two surveillance people were hunched over their laptops, capturing data. One of the surveillance team looked up at Bob, but he wasn’t grinning, and there was a chilling, icy look of rage in his eyes and clarity in his tone of voice.
“Sir, those bastards—” He paused for a moment. “Those people over there, the flow is near constant. The stuff going up, not much and highly encrypted, but we can break some of it down. It is the other traffic, though. Personal notes to people back at Bluemont. Personal! One of them complaining that they’re sick of the frigging rations!”
The young man looked down at the ground and slammed his fist next to the laptop he was monitoring. “They’re complaining about the food they’re stuffing themselves with while I found out my father was killed trying to protect our family dog from being taken for food, and my mother was…” His voice trailed off into tears of rage.
Bob squatted down by his side, rubbing the back of the young man’s neck, but as he did so he looked at the data scrolling down on the screen, eavesdropping on transmissions from Site R but six miles away. He remained thus for long minutes, at one point picking up the laptop and asking the other technician how to freeze the screen so he could reread something. As he did, his features reddened, and he put the laptop down and stood up.