Lest We Forget

The National Memorial Service, now in its twentieth year, was dedicated to the memory of all the nation's fallen warriors on the evening of the twenty-fourth on the Mall in Washington, D.C. Particular remembrance was remarked during this 200th anniversary of Lincoln's birth to the fallen warriors of the Civil War, the terrible conflagration that took 620,000 lives, or 425 per day over the four years 1861-65, but preserved the Union. Perhaps the turning point in that war was consummated in July of 1863 during three days of fierce fighting at Gettysburg, Pennsylvania. Nearly 7,900 died in the battle, and there were more than 50,000 casualties altogether. Lincoln's most famous address, containing only about 278 words, was made in honor of the dead in November 1863. These words are a further remembrance:

GETTYSBURG

The pain, like nothing he had known
Since lacerating foot on stone …
Yes, worse than tissue ripped to bone
When just a boy, one day alone;
Once more alone, with searing pain
- From head to toe a pain-link chain -
His first awareness in the rain
As consciousness he fought to gain.
His mind, befogged, began to clear,
No musketry he now could hear,
No longer … now … that rebel cheer,
Which once was music to his ear.
Flat on his back, he closed his eyes
Against the rain from graying skies
And flinched at hearing anguished cries
Of comrades facing pain, demise.

On yesterday the fight was waged,
As back and forth the lines had raged;
A sniper's bullet rightly gauged
Had felled him in this crevice, caged.
He opened wide his cracked, parched lips,
To slake the thirst of countless trips
Through hostile fields ... some canteen sips,
And chewed-up weeds, tobacco strips.
Now fighting just to stay aware,
He turned his head only to stare
At blood that oozed through matting hair
And dripped on rock … quite tombstone bare.

To turn his head was all that he
Could bear, since pain incessantly
Made movement an atrocity
More feared now than the enemy.
Still gone were sounds of musketry
As twilight settled eerily,
No pounding hooves of cavalry …
The only sound … cried-misery.

He thought of Alabama corn
Just breaking ground that April morn
When tears were shed and love was sworn
And he to shot and powder born,
And then the days of victory
And seeming death-immunity …
All now recalled despairingly,
While facing his mortality.
In haze, he pondered "civil war -
Uncivil war, this blood and gore,
Was it for this, or was there more
That made men kill their brothers for?"

As darkness crept across the slain
And earth was marked by bloody stain,
Red rivulets, formed with the rain,
Made ghastly the pock-marked terrain.
His feeble cries on deaf ears fell,
Or ears of those who shared his hell
And, thus, with him could only dwell,
But not his wretchedness repel.
The thoughts of cotton fields in bloom,
A teenage boy, a small schoolroom,
Danced in and out amid the gloom
With thoughts of an impending doom.

As night wore on, the groans grew less
Throughout the mud of helplessness -
In sound and number less and less,
As comrades entered hopelessness.
Sometimes a scream, sometimes a prayer
Would split the heavy, midnight air …
The screams and prayers of stark despair,
No loved ones … there … to know or care.
He fought to keep his consciousness
And thwart his awful pains' duress
To make it till the dawn’s brightness,
When rescue would be his redress.
Toward daylight, thoughts consumed his mind
Of her for whom he so repined,
And parents to his will resigned,
And their entreaties he declined.

~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~

Then, slipping from his stubborn will,
No longer feeling rainy chill -
"Our Father" wafted toward the hill -
Then morning came...and all was...still.

And so it goes.

Jim Clark