An Extremely Uncivil War

PROLOGUE – JOSH’S WAR

Be careful who you trust, as the devil was once an angel.

The splinters flew in every direction when a Confederate cannon ball pulverized the massive oak tree above the trench in which Joshua Quark was crouching. Initially he did not think that he had been injured, but then he noticed that blood was dripping from his cap onto the ground in front of him. Luckily Josh sustained only some minor cuts to his scalp, but that was scary enough. His throat constricted.

Was today going to be his last day on earth? There was a very good reason for Josh to ponder that question. Worrying would not help him at this particular moment in time. No one in combat could ever know what the next day, hour, minute or even second might bring. His mind raced back to the admonition from the Captain that his troops under his command had to be fearless warriors. That is more easily said than done.

Nothing foretold of the danger that was awaiting him that humid day. Of course, extreme stress is part of every soldier’s life when shells are flying. Josh had never known anything remotely like the constant, fear-driven existence that he presently was leading. Everyone has a breaking point, and he felt that he was coming close to his at that moment. Josh grinned inwardly as he remembered the comment from one of the lieutenants, who said “The first requirement for anyone to get to Heaven is to be dead.”

The thick cloud of cannon smoke made it almost as dark as night. The sun was nowhere to be seen. Josh had known better days. In fact just about every previous day in his life had been better. There was nothing civil about this civil war. He decided that the situation could not get any worse, then that is exactly what happened.

His always-cheerful friend, Sebastian Smith, was crouched a few feet to Josh’s left. Sebastian often joked that he would live to be a hundred since generation after generation in his family had been blessed with long life. Fate had a different agenda for him that day. As he rose to fire his rifle, he was struck in the forehead by a Rebel bullet. He died on his back facing up towards the branches that he would never see. Mercifully Sebastian’s death was instantaneous. Unless a shot is to the brain or the heart, a seriously wounded man would suffer for hours before the Angel of Death came to claim the soul of that unfortunate soldier.

Looking at the lifeless body of Sebastian lying next to him, Josh became queasy. He had seen a lot of men die during combat, but this time it was one of his closest friends who had died. Josh already knew that it was a bunch of crap when the officers had told the men at the training camp about dying with dignity. Is there anything on the other side of life? What is a soul? Does it disappear at the time of death?

Josh remembered from back home Preacher Douglas saying that the soul transcends the existence of the body. How could he know that to be a fact? He also said during one of his sermons, “You get closer to your moment of death every minute that you are alive. You begin to die the moment that you are born.” Considering the situation in which he presently found himself, those words were not encouraging to Josh.

A few minutes later another Confederate bullet hit its target. Don Gates was a blacksmith and was known by everyone back home as being the town brawler. The man had a volcanic temper. Gates ducked too slowly and got shot in the right shoulder. Josh ran to him and saw that while the wound was serious, it did not look life-threatening though it might cost him an arm. That Confederate bullet guaranteed that Gates would be discharged and sent home. Josh said to Gates that he should thank God that he was only winged. Having never been a religious man, Gates responded through clenched teeth in obvious pain, “This is the first time God ever did anything for me.” Gates had always been a real smartass.

Then Gates looked at the blood running down his arm and said, “The last time that I had this much fun was when I dropped an anvil on my foot.” He was strong and said that he could walk on his own without help, so he retreated behind the line of battle to look for a surgeon. Then what? Can a man with only one arm be a blacksmith?

While looking at Gates walk away, Josh rationalized that if he did not survive this damned war, at least he would not have to worry about the pains of old age, nor about having his children support him when he got so old that he could work. On the other hand, he preferred the idea of continuing to breathe for another few decades. There came to mind that old line that it is better to arrive late at the Pearly Gate than to get to Hell on time.

Far too many times Josh had heard the anguished screams of seriously wounded men lying in no-man’s land in the middle of a battlefield. It was impossible to tell whether it was a Union or a Confederate soldier who had been hit. Pain and suffering are universal. Josh pondered the question of when will this damned war end, or will it be a war without end?

There was no way that a year earlier Josh could not have pictured his life to be the way that it was now. Everyone knew that life can be unfair. Now he had come to the realization that death is equally arbitrary. He had a feeling of repulsion the first time he saw a bullet that he fired hit its targeted, a Confederate soldier, but now he had long since grown insensitive to inflicting injuries on another human being. He was not firing at a fellow American but rather it was a Rebel who represented a foreign nation that sought to retain the institution of slavery, a practice that Josh abhorred.

Granted, he had never met a black man prior to the war, but he knew what the slave practice entailed. Josh saw the Confederates as being an illegitimate rogue nation fighting for an immoral purpose. Josh was doing his patriotic duty to fight to reunite America as a slave-free nation.

Josh drew comfort knowing with total certainty that God was on the side of the Union. Upon further reflecting, he guessed that probably the Confederates thought the same thing. One area of commonality was that both sides believed that the other was the villain.

It is hard to lose a friend, but after having survived months of frequent combat, Josh did not have much emotional energy left to grieve for fallen comrades. In fact he thought back to his first week in uniform when one of the lieutenants told the new troops, “I know that none of you are tired of living, but some of you may very possibly perish in combat. That’s going to be rough on the rest of you, but you will need to hold off your grieving until this damned war is ended. Luckily, there’s no chance that this conflict will last more than a few months.”

He certainly had to eat those words. The people in both the North and the South were certain when the shooting commenced that the conflict would be short lived. That opinion was proven totally wrong at the battle of Bull Run at Manassas, Virginia. It was a wakeup call for both sides. For the first time it became clear that people had unrealistic expectations. The pageantry ended that day, and since then a great deal of blood had been soaked into the ground. The armies from both sides now limped towards whatever the future had in store for them.

Josh’s worst fear was that of a living Hell, which would be in the form of being maimed but surviving. It is better to get killed outright than to have your brain turned to mush and live for years thereafter as a vegetable. He would prefer death. Josh had heard of stories when for all practical purposes lives were lost. Men survived who were so badly injured ---- either physically or mentally ---- that both they and their families were shattered.

He wondered what was the likelihood that he would survive this war and return home in one piece. He had never expected much from life before enlisting, but now all he wanted was just to survive with his body and his mind intact.

As he looked around him, Josh let out a silent scream. The destruction of men and horses was beyond belief. He stumbled across the mangled, lifeless body of Eric Green, who formerly had been neighboring farmer, and Josh got nauseated and light headed. A few seconds later he stepped on someone’s detached leg. Josh fell to his knees and tried to rise, but his legs refused to cooperate, so in a trance-like condition he aimlessly crawled a few hundred feet.

Suddenly Josh experienced a strange feeling of total calm. He was at peace with himself. He was in no position to argue about his fate. Whatever was going to happen to him next was beyond his control. He had long ago tried to call in every last favor that he had with the Lord.

The day’s combat was a matter of happenstance. The weather hampered everything that both sides tried to do. The Union and the Confederate commanders had tried to deploy their forces as effectively as possible under the adverse circumstances to outmaneuver the other side. However, the variables caused by the heat, the murky weather and the torrential rain rendered neither side able to effectively communicate orders to the scattered infantry, the cavalry or the artillery units. Sometimes Josh felt that the generals did not have a real plan or knew what they were doing, but maybe it was just that they did not want the foot soldiers to know the scary stuff.

Neither side’s commanders had intended to initiate an attack that day at that place, since there was no high ground or strategic value to that flat piece of land. The...