The Restless Dead of Gettysburg

 Hello, everyone! It's almost Halloween, my favorite holiday, so here is an appropriate tale for 'round the campfire. Actually, it's my contribution to the Gettysburg Writers Brigade annual anthology project for charity. The book will feature a number of our authors including some of our stars with multiple titles to their names besides Jim R. The book, to be called 'For the Love of Gettysburg' will also feature works by artists from last year, Jim R and I included. There will also be a handful of others to go along with new voices and some first-time short story writers. I do hope you can find it on amazon after our launch, we can't set up a pre-order but I'll let everyone know when it's available by updating this post with a link. For now, enjoy my contribution (one of two submissions), 'The Restless Dead of Gettysburg'! 

  The Restless Dead of Gettysburg 

Another Gettysburg battle reunion. I’ve lost count of how many, but I’ve been to most of them. Gettysburg isn’t far from my home in Baltimore. I try to appear at as many of these reunions as I can, to be certain—to make sure—my work has not been undone. The crowds grow each year. I guess the word gets out, more forgive as time heals. That as much as anything encourages me to return again and again. 

I fought here, though I wasn’t infantry or cavalry or artillery. I didn’t serve in the signal corps, nor was I a spy. I was an embalming surgeon. And I was not alone. I had a dozen orderlies and assistants, but none of them have ever returned to this hallowed ground. There was one more, a woman. I look for her in the crowds, hoping against hope to see her again. I ask after her, hoping someone would know her and remember her. No one ever remembered Clover. 

She may have been a woman of ill repute, though she claimed to be an honest woman. She saved my life and turned the tide. I helped her, but it was her victory. She won this battle. She may have saved the whole of the Army of the Potomac. 

I rest in the Cashtown Inn for a night, a rougher crowd than the gentlefolk at the Blackhorse Tavern. Some nights I join an encampment, pitch a tent with some of the other veterans who are enjoying the favorable weather. I can’t help but overhear men arguing the endless ‘what ifs’ and the stories of heroism that grow larger year after year. I’ve never tried to correct the lies with the truths I know. Until today. Today I noticed some of my earliest works are failing, and I want to show the world a truth they ignore or forgot. 

One of these obnoxious storytellers has added to his inventory of charms inebriation. He spews hyperbole and spittle with wide-flung arms and wild gesticulations. He takes a bow and stumbles into me; I sweep his feet from beneath him with my cane. I put the butt of it to his nose. 

“Good sir, before I leave this world, let me set you straight on the point of debate that has so animated you.” 

I plant my cane into the worn wood plank floor and help him to his feet. I pat his back and offer him the seat beside me. I turn to the room as I search the eyes in the public house. 

All eyes are upon me. I bend down to retrieve my satchel from the floor and set it upon the table beside me. Inside is a sample of some of my earliest work, from that night in Gettysburg, that was coming undone. I pull the shriveled severed arm from the worn leather bag. I hold it high so all can see it and I hold it still so there is no mistake. I am not moving it, I am not shaking it or making its rotten claws and leathery sinews bend and reach. 

The hand is still very well preserved by my chemical treatments. Its movements are only slight, halting and slow as if struggling with arthritis or thawed by the sun’s first kiss after a long winter covered in frost. Men stare slack jawed in disbelief. I take a lap around the room, offering the desiccated limb to anyone who be brave enough to take it. To my surprise, one man takes it, if only to examine it a moment before dropping it in response to a more aggressive twitch. The hand turns the limb over on the floor, and I pluck it up, placing it back into my kit bag, still bearing the embossed letters U and S. Silence grows as men await the story, my truth of the Battle of Gettysburg. 

 **

I’d never seen such horror as in that bloody field. My mind races trying to comprehend what my eyes struggled to convey to it. My hands shake as I sit at my surgeon’s desk. I try to distract my racing mind, first with brandy, then with my journal. I write the date, 2 July 1863, and note it is frightfully warm even at this late hour. The wails of the dying had faded, yet the pitiful sounds of men weeping for the loss of a comrade or a limb taken by the surgeon could still reach me. 

My mind wrestles with it all, seeking some rationale, but only finds this from Proverbs: “Commit your work to the Lord, and your plans will be established.” I grab my kit and a hooded lantern. I motion for a pair of orderlies to join me. They wordlessly bring a cart and follow me back to the Bloody Wheatfield for another . . . load. 

We sought the dead; the railroads won’t transport these poor souls home unless they are embalmed first. I could have waited for the battle to end. But the buzzards above and hogs loosed from their pens by cannonade might ruin these poor men and make the difficult task of identification impossible. So, I led my men in amongst the dead and the dying while we might still lend some aid or comfort. The light is fading, but we make good use of it to keep valuables with the fallen and to find our way. 

We have to abandon the wagon beside what the map calls Plum Creek. Today it earned a new moniker, Bloody Run. The dead lay thickly, a macabre carpet of lost dreams. They are two or three thick in places; you can’t easily find the ground with your foot. We’re looking for officers while there is enough light to read their insignia. We can charge $80 for one of them and only $30 for the rest. We load the cart, return to our tents, and make the trip again and again. I relieve my orderlies and bring a fresh pair of men on my final trip of the night. I momentarily lose sight of my comrades and perhaps owing to fatigue, discover I am lost. 

I fumble with my lantern, somehow afraid, but hoping that more light will help me. I drop it into the gore at my feet. When I retrieve it, blood on the lens casts a hellish red glow. I wipe it away in a flash of fresh panic. I look up to survey my surroundings and see her. She’s panting, running, trying to warn me. 

“Run!” she howls. 

She crashes into me and tries to turn me around to push me on. I stammer in protest, feigning indignation with her familiarity. She pushes past me taking my hand and pulls me along, I see my men ahead and I call to them. 

She hushes me and I protest again, but only for a moment. There is something so visceral about her mindless panic that it infects my own blood, making me take flight behind her. My men take hold of her and offer more light beside the overflowing cart. They ask me what’s happened, then there is a low moan that falters to a hiss. We turn our lights toward the sound no living soul could ever have heard before. There, not four paces behind me, three dead grey-coats lumber toward us. 

I say dead. Though they walked, they could not be living men. They were missing so much flesh! Some of their limbs were broken, they were all pocked with holes you could see through, and one had an eye hanging loosely from its socket. No living man could endure such a mauling. One of my men bolts, knocking me backward, and the other orderly stands paralyzed in fear as a dead rebel takes a bite out of his throat. 

The lady takes a broken rifle from the cart of dead men and their belongings, turns, and cleaves the attacking horror’s skull in twain with one desperate swing. She grunts and recovers her balance, swinging again, smashing another skull. Both of the dead she struck fall limply to the ground, apparently now properly dead. 

I regain my feet in time to fend off the assault of the third. He has no lower jaw, and though he tries, he can’t bite me. I push him down to the ground and study him a moment. I look for the orderly that fled. I call out for him. The young lady tries to steady and help the bitten orderly. He’s fallen to his knees clutching his throat. 

“He’ll live!” she shouts. 

All my years of medical school, those days training on cadavers, flash to the front of my memory. One strange thought dominates as I stare into the jawless wretches dead eyes: I have to preserve this specimen. 

 I roll him over and bring his hands together. I bind him with my gun belt and load him into the wagon. 

“Help me with the cart,” I plead. 

 She nods and offers her name, “Clover.” 

“I’m Bichler, Seth Bichler.” 

“What are you doing out here with the dead?” 

 “I’m an embalmer, we’re collecting the men before the crows and pigs get to them. What are you doing out here all alone?” 

“My husband was captured today; my son was killed. I was hoping to find my way to your lines, to be reunited with my husband.” 

I immediately suspect she is an escaped slave, a grave robbing local, or a common ‘camp wife’ or a spy. I don’t care, I just need to get away from whatever just happened. I decide to test her later, but for now one question rises above the din in my mind. 

“What happened back there? What is . . .” 

Clover senses the question in my eyes. “Good sir, please let us make good our escape first. We are not yet out of danger.” 

I nod and we catch up to my other orderly. Together we push past the picket guards, gather my orderly, and push through our camp back to our tents. There we try to staunch the bleeding of my wounded man. He’s lucky I tell him; the wound is superficial. But there is something else too, something I don’t tell him. 

I look at Clover as she helps me. I get a good look at her. She’s dark, her dress is torn, bloodied, and her hair is a mess. She is young, half-starved, and sinewy. I see too in her eyes she knows the same thing I do, and more. This man is done for. His wound is oozing, bubbling, bleeding something like wet black ash and tar. The edges are spidering and his eyes are glassy. He’s panicked. I try to calm him with brandy, then stronger medicine. Thankfully, he falls into a fitful sleep. 

Clover coldly tells me, “Restrain him.” 

“Why? You know he’s not going to survive; he’s sleeping peacefully now.” “I’ve seen it before, the wounds, it’s how the curse spreads,” Clover said, holding back something. 

“Curse?” the other orderly inquires. He’s been watching the bound abomination that tried to bite me. It hasn’t stopped its desperate twitching, mindlessly seeking to attack without fatiguing. 

“Yes, a curse. The southern commander, Lee has gone mad. He’s desperate for this victory. He’s enraged with his generals, blaming them for this battle. For the losses. He has turned to his manbo. She has promised victory in return for something unspeakable.” 

“I thought we were losing; we control only one good road—” I stopped myself from saying more. She could still be a spy. “How do you know this?” 

“I’m Haitian too, I know his manbo. I watched her make her dark prayers, bargain with the devils. I watched the dead rise, and I watched it all go wrong.” 

The idea of what she was saying was too much. While hearing it had gone awry should have been comforting, it only brought more dread. 

 “What happened?” I wonder if the dead men would threaten us here on our ridge. 

“The dead men did not listen to Lee’s manbo. She told them to attack your lines, but they wandered, randomly, as if in a daze. Then some attacked our men. There was a desperate battle, men were attacked in their sleep, unarmed, and surprised. Some of the dead were trapped in a pen, in a muddy piece of low ground or a high-walled creek bed. Some of our soldiers broke and ran and hiding where they could. Others may still be fighting them, or they may have been overcome. I came this way, fleeing to this place to warn your commanders, to preserve my own husband.”

“We have to tell the Colonel, sir.”

I nod at my orderly. “Go get him, he needs to hear this.” 

 The man nods and dashes off. I turn back to Clover, “How many of these things did they make?” 

“Hundreds. Some are your dead. Some ours. Mostly from Georgia and Alabama. There is more you need to know. In those first skirmishes, I saw the men who were bitten by the creatures. Even if the wound were but slight, the bitten would quickly fall, tremble, then die only to rise again as one of these blasphemous fiends.”

“So, this could spread? It spreads by the bite?” Clover nods. “You’re Haitian you say?” She nods again. “Your husband, was a rebel?” 

“He’s a soldier. He and our son serve in a Georgia regiment.” 

“I didn’t know southerners could marry slaves.” 

 “I’m no slave, I’m a free woman.” 

Clover is defiant, proud. I don’t know what to believe. I turn back to the still determined attacker, the jawless and bound monster.

“How did they fight these things? What did you see work against them?” 

“I saw axes and bayonets, clubs, pikes, shovels, mattocks, and fire. They aren’t affected by the blows. Fire can consume them, but they don’t react to it; it doesn’t cause them to suffer as it does a living man. They don’t flee it as an animal would. Only a blow to the skull seems to return them to eternal rest.”

I consider this. Fire, axes . . . What about my own tools? 

I look at my kit, the stores of chemicals and medicines. I don’t know why, but I pick up my embalming needle and connect it to the twitching dead rebel via his carotid. I pump him full and don’t have long to wait. In a few moments, the potent mixtures paralyze and preserve the beast. I don’t dare remove his bindings, not yet. I have to know if this effect is only temporary. 

I pull my journal from my desk and begin to document these events, my experiments. I check the wounded orderly; he is still able to fog a mirror put to his nostrils, but he is cold. His wound’s spidering has spread to his chest and shoulders. The cursed infection crawls up his jawline. Then the Colonel arrives.

“Doctor Bichler, I apologize for the delay in responding. Pray tell, you can make sense of this man’s gibbering.” 

The Colonel is annoyed. I dismiss the orderly, telling him to get some rest. I recount everything I learned and show him the now frozen corpse that had tried to attack me. 

The colonel looks closely at the dying orderly. He is too tired after our forced march here and two days of fighting. He was wounded and lost use of his left arm this morning. He had been stunned in a fall from his horse trying to keep up with General Meade, dodging cannon shot and musketry all day. Now, after all of that, he is too fatigued to evince any reaction to it all. He turns to examine Clover briefly, then thumbs through my offered notes. 

The Colonel turns to one of his staff and orders Clover arrested as a spy. I protest meekly. 

“Keep him under guard. The doctor is confined to these quarters until further notice.” 

Then, a miracle of sorts. The dying orderly arises with a vengeful groan. His eyes are milky white orbs of hatred, his jaw agape. He reaches toward the Colonel and lunges. His men draw pistols and fire repeating carbines, but they fail to bring him down. The Colonel barely escapes the monsters grasp and his own men’s panic fire. 

“The skull!” I cry, but it is too late. The men break and run. Clover jostles free from her guards and tackles the fiend. I grab another embalming needle and get to work while the soldiers reload their arms or run looking for help. The Colonel watches me work, and I pray to Moses this would have the same effect as the last time. My late orderly ceased to move, frozen in a most hateful aspect. 

“Thank you, Miss Clover.”

“Missus Saint Claire, Doctor Bichler.” 

I smile. She binds the preserved man, unsure as I am of the permanency of my mixtures. I help the Colonel compose himself and gather his men. Our entire camp has mustered, it seems, and the Colonel apologizes for doubting me. He sends a Major and a pair of lieutenants to alert the corps commander. Food is brought, and my surviving orderlies are assembled. I repeat my tale to yet another of Meade’s officers. Eventually I am taken to the General himself. He listens intently but never says a word. The Colonel and other officers add their observations, validating my report. I am sent away for the council to confer. I notice then that I had been separated from Clover, and I feel alone like never before. 

A short time later a Brigadier I don’t know comes to greet me. He says I am to be evacuated to the capital to present my findings to Secretary Stanton. My men and equipment are being loaded up as we speak. I ask about Clover. The Brigadier doesn’t know anything about her but says he would find out. I beg him to see that she is reunited with her husband if he could be found in our stockade. I tell him that the fellow was a man from Georgia, name of St. Claire, and they had lost a child in the campaign. He swears he will see to it personally. 

In the weeks and months that followed, I rode to tell my tale to everyone I was asked to share it with. At one point, I was telling Mr. Lincoln himself. As always, I was one of the last in a parade of officers who had been shedding the light of their expertise on pieces of General Meade’s dispatches and reports. Not long after that, I was assigned to train other embalmers in Baltimore and assist in crafting a scheme of licensure for my trade. I quit the Army before the war had ended but remained in Baltimore through the present day. 

Through the years I thought of and inquired after Clover, or rather Mrs. St. Claire. I joined the reunions in Gettysburg offering my insights into the debate about why Meade didn’t pursue Lee as quickly as some may have liked. While I was not privy to the council that decided these things, I knew it was because we were just exhausted, disorganized, starving, and low on supplies. Perhaps Meade was a bit leery of the cursed dead infesting Lee’s position and the likelihood of these beasts being used to thwart our pursuit.

I heard from some soldiers who had seen evidence of this. Men who were sent in pursuit immediately on July 4th, through the torrential downpour, and reported on Lee’s progress west and south. I heard at one reunion that there was a particular wagon in Lee’s train that was lost on a ferry when it’s cables mysteriously parted. I heard that his manbo was on that ferry and that it was another slave that was to blame for cutting the ferry cables.

 ** 

Back in the public house, the room had taken on a reverent air. Men bowed their heads, I felt that it was time for me to strike for home. I retrieved my bag and looked back at the faces in the crowded room. They looked past me in astonishment. I was afraid of what might be behind me. I froze then felt a soft hand on my shoulder. 

 “Clover?” 

** 

 This story is my contribution to the myth and lore surrounding the aftermath of the battle, specifically to address the apocryphal statement that Meade failed to pursue Lee and destroy him when he had the chance (perhaps blaming Meade for the war dragging on far longer than needed). History proves this is not quite true. Meade made a decent attempt to follow, harass and even intercept. 

However, he had many obstacles, not the least of which was the condition of his army. He had won at Gettysburg, but it was costly and nearly as destructive to the Army of the Potomac as to the Army of Virginia. Meade’s forces were disorganized; many senior commanders were killed or wounded. They were out of food and low on ammunition. His mistreatment after the battle and marginalization were not deserved. Had he reported he was attacked by zombies, maybe his treatment could be deemed reasonable.

Meade was much criticized by his political enemies and rivals who were seeking to build, protect, or salvage their own reputations (Sickles, Pleasanton). The research has been done. The parts about Lee I ad lib, in part in push back against the deification he received by the lost cause movement. Lee made a serious error. While the zonbies of voodoo tradition might be a convenient excuse here, it’s no less fanciful than the lengths his apologists have stretched reason to protect him. I like my version though, because it’s simple: Lee had previously failed to invade the north, and he was desperate. He had said as much when asking authorization for the campaign. 

Once there, in a battle not of his choosing, his unclear orders, vacillation (or mental illness brought on by syphilis or microstroke), and distrust of his own men (lamenting he had no cavalry when there were two robust units available with commanders he didn’t trust) cost him the initiative and the battle. He did not see beyond the next move in his offensive planning, exposing a key weakness of his military mind. I’m no expert on Lee, but from what I’ve read and what I know of this battle, he was foolish in pressing the third day’s battle, even with the help of some zombies that may have ravaged the union lines on his behalf. 

I would encourage those interested to do their own research into this. But this story is more than my two cents. I wanted to shed a little light on the funerary practice of the time as well. Embalming was not in regular use in the United States before the Civil War. Yes, it’s an ancient practice, but it was out of favor until the railroads required it for transporting soldiers’ remains home. Embalmers were generally surgeons by training or other medical types, but not always. They were not always well liked, and there were some scandals within their ranks, not the least of which was price gouging. A licensure scheme was crafted in 1865, too late to have any real affect on the practice during the war. 

I conducted research on this topic at the Museum of Civil War Medicine in nearby Frederick, MD. I would encourage anyone interested in medicine of the time and how the Civil War helped usher in a new era of military medicine to check it out. There are some amazing exhibits that shatter commonly held misconceptions that I allude to in the story. For example: Civil war surgeons are often maligned as butchers, people who hacked off limbs at random, immediately and without bothering with anesthesia. This is simply not true. Even at Gettysburg when casualties were piling up at record pace, most surgical units had access to ether and brandy or other anesthetics. Limbs were most often removed due to the Minnie ball, which left bones and flesh so traumatized that serious infection was virtually assured and patients would be in mortal peril if not for the drastic measure. Waiting would multiply the danger.

But there are many more interesting things to learn at the museum on East Patrick Street near beautiful Carrol Creek Park. Go and enjoy it!

I want to send a special thank you to the museum staff and curators. My kids even enjoyed one of my research trips there with me.