A storm amid the hills........

Just a few weeks ago, I stood at the sliding glass door in my dining room and gazed out into the gloom of evening as incredibly bright bursts of color exploded above the tree tops and brought brief, intense illumination to the landscape as far as the eye could see. It was the closing night of the Smithsburg carnival, and, as is the yearly tradition, a quite impressive fireworks display was heralding the end of the week-long festivities. I looked out over the housetops below the hill where my street meanders and found my gaze repeatedly falling on the view immediately opposite. There was nothing all that spectacular about the scene itself, just a dense treeline along a winding road that leads from the edge of town down into the entrance to my development. But, as I had done on other occasions, I determinedly shifted my gaze back to those trees, caught with surprise as each pyrotechnic burst cast a momentary flash of near-daylight over that distant slope. Each percussive slam of the exploding shells rattled the glass in my kitchen window and echoed in a slow-dying slapback from one ridge to the next, rolling like an almost infinite thunder between the towering hills which surround our tiny western Maryland town. Some distant dog, terrified by the cacophony, barked a frantic, forlorn chorus of agitated yelps that somehow merged in a melancholy tapestry with the thunderous claps and short-lived blossoms of intense light. As the finale unfolded ten minutes later, the last booms rebounded through the farmland and the closing burst of light lit the smokey shrouds which drifted lazily on the warm night air. Then it was over, and the nearby dog gradually regained his composure, and Alison and I turned the lights back on, snapped suddenly into the commonplace sight of the living room as it always looked, and the same old town beyond the same old neighborhood out the same old window.....

None of this would be all that incredible in most towns in America, just an age-old expression of festivity in the incredible realm of a summer night, some noise and smoke and fun, and nothing deeper or more profound than a replay of a tradition we occasionally slip on like an old shoe, comfortable and familiar. But my town, like so many of the others tucked away amid the hills of Washington County, Maryland, holds the special distinction of being the site of a Civil War battle, certainly not on the scale of what unfolded just a few miles down the road in Sharpsburg, but, to those who fought here and to those who stood by and watched in a horror of fascination as it unfolded around them, every bit as terrifyingly real and agonizingly unforgettable. Much of the Civil War history of Washington County is entangled in the complex series of events which occurred in the aftermath of the conflict at Gettysburg, as the Army of Northern Virginia made its desperate retreat to the Potomac, fragmenting so as to not move as a single target for the Union Army, a 17-mile long wagon train of the wounded and dying in tow, and with the logistical nightmare of transferring a gigantic military machine back to the safety of Virginia. For both sides, it was cavalry units which played a huge role in the maneuvers of early July, 1863, as the pursuer and the pursued sojourned across the mountains from Pennsylvania back into Maryland. And so it was on a rainy Sunday, July 5th that none other than Brigadier General George A. Custer led his brigade of Michigan cavalry regiments down Water Street and into the midst of a celebratory throng which gratefully poured into the streets to welcome the Union troopers. The townspeople set up tables and served the horse soldiers a stunning array of food and drink, while a cluster of young people sang Yankee Doodle and Hail, Columbia. A family living on South Main Street invited Custer to join them in their home for Sunday dinner, and the general aura throughout the town was one of jubilation.

Custer's divisional commanding officer, General Judson Kilpatrick, arrived with the other brigades, and defensive positions were established with artillery deployments guarding the mountain passes near Raven Rock, immediately opposite the town. As the afternoon wore on, the festival atmosphere gradually evaporated as a threat began to emerge on the mountain -- the Confederate cavalry units of Major General J.E.B. Stuart. Stuart had incurred the disfavor of Robert E. Lee by initiating a largely fruitless ride around the Union army which had caused his absence as the battle of Gettysburg unfolded, depriving Lee of badly-needed intelligence gathering and a shielding device for the infantry against the reconnaissance of the Union troops. Determined to clear the way for the retreating Army of Northern Virginia and resolute in his efforts to restore the confidence of his commanding officer, Stuart moved down from Raven Rock toward Smithsburg. When it became obvious that there was a large Union presence in the town, his artillery unlimbered and began to shell the distant houses. What traces of the party-like atmosphere of the morning remained were completely decimated as the shells began to rain down on streets. A shot dropped into the pottery of Joseph Kimler on Water Street, and another struck the end wall of Leonard Vogel's house across the street. The Confederate cavalry dismounted and engaged the Union troops at the base of the mountain in a short, hot firefight as artillery on both sides pounded away in the late afternoon hours. As Stuart shifted his troops down from the mountain, Kilpatrick became convinced that his position was untenable, and he hastily ordered a complete withdrawal from the town, with his units retreating to Boonsboro. By early evening, Stuart's forces moved directly into the town, and Smithsburg earned the distinction of being occupied by the forces of two different armies in the same day. By 9:00 that evening, Stuart led his men down the Smithsburg-Leitersburg road, and the citizens of Smithsburg caught one last glimpse of the gray invaders moving over the rolling hills, with wreckage in their wake, and a turbulent vision that would forever remain in the collective memory of the small town I call home.....

Sometimes on Sunday mornings, when I'm walking from my car to my church at the corner of Water Street and Main Street, I picture them all there, Custer and Stuart and Kilpatrick, and the hundreds of troopers and horses that rolled up and down the hills and the muddy streets. I try to imagine the unbridled panic that must have swept through the sleepy farm village on that long-vanished Sunday, when explosions rocked the buildings and lead tore through the hot air. Some of the buildings are virtually unchanged since that short battle, old weathered brick and gray stone foundations, with only the occasional power line or satellite dish here or there to destroy the image of what Custer might have looked up and saw. In Veteran's Park, at the base of the hill where the town library sits, a historical marker describes the action and the principal players in that bloody dance one ancient July. But it's the small details that I find the most affecting. The cannonball that struck the Vogel house is still there, embedded in the brick and mortared over by Leonard Vogel 146 years ago. Just down the street is the Bell House, which served as a field hospital, and it's strange to picture men lying in the small bedrooms, suffering and distraught, hundreds of miles from their own homes. The house Custer dined in is still there, just a few doors down from the railroad tracks, nondescript and practically hidden in the long string of others which sit anonymously along the hilly street. It's easy to picture the young boy general, all of 23 years old, basking in the adoration of the young ladies and the grateful old men, and tiny children caught up in the splendor of something they were too many years away from even being able to comprehend. I think of Custer, extravagant and brimming with confidence, absolutely convinced that he would be an endlessly victorious commander, completely unaware that thirteen years later, as the United States celebrated its centennial, he would recklessly lead his men into a deathtrap called the Little Bighorn, and fall at the hands of the Lakota under Crazy Horse and Sitting Bull, facing an enemy he completely underestimated, he and his men vanquished in a Montana battlefield far removed from the little town of Smithsburg. In a glass display case in his basement, my brother has a small leather pouch that was reclaimed from the Little Bighorn battlefield, the possession of some now nameless Sioux warrior, a strange modern-day connection for me, knowing that it came from the field where Custer died, the same man who once jubilantly paraded down the street I drive on every day.

But there are two reminders I find most poignant, made somehow more so by their odd juxtaposing against the commonplace banalities of everyday life. One is something I see each time I take the recycling to the big dumpster behind the fire hall on North Main street. As I turn back the small alley to where the bin is located, I catch a glimpse of the tiny corner of the graveyard behind the Lutheran church. There, almost against the fence, is a small, slate-gray tombstone, rubbed smooth by a century and a half of western Maryland winters, and I sometimes see a small Confederate flag stuck in the ground beside it. There most likely was never a name on the stone, but I find it heartbreaking to think that it denotes the final resting place of some forgotten horse soldier, from either Virginia or North Carolina, based on the states of origin of the troops who fought here. A few feet away lies another stone, equally small and unadorned, which has been identified as the marker of a Union fatality, and there is something painful and awe-inspiring in the realization that these two forgotten veterans once looked out across the smoke-shrouded hills and saw each other's battle lines, and now they lie in the quiet corner of a churchyard together, far beneath the green grass, just a few feet from where laughing children climb unaware on playground equipment in the Maryland summer sun. I sometimes look at the little stones and wonder if each of the men who lie beneath them had a wife and children somewhere, maybe back in some little town not that unlike Smithsburg. I wonder what the men looked like, and what they did for a living....I wonder what dreams each shared with his wife as he held her in their distant home, and I sometimes ask myself whether or not either wife ever really knew what happened to her beloved, or where he was laid to rest.

Probably the little lasting memory of the battle that touches me the most is one I rub elbows with when I drive home at night after a quick trip to the grocery store, and find myself moving down that twisting road along the ridge directly opposite my house, the one I watched lit by fireworks. My window glass had rattled and the dog had barked, and the booms had echoed forever off the ancient hills, and I couldn't help but think that those brief moments had been the slightest taste of what Smithsburg must have sounded like on the old, almost forgotten day of battle. But my fascination still lies with that little ridge, not for anything incredibly significant, but due to the fact that a company of Union soldiers had been assigned to that particular piece of ground. And, driving down that ridge, I almost always find myself thinking about them. They were in one of Custer's units, Michigan Wolverines, men who had drawn the duty primarily because they were outfitted with repeating rifles. The logic was that their armament gave them a tremendous advantage in guarding a critical road out of the town, and they were deployed to secret themselves in the tree line along the ridge, not in the combat, but standing on the side, vigilant, ready, watchful as the drama unfolded. What these men learned with horror was that, as the battle fizzled out and Kilpatrick made a mad dash to Boonsboro --to, in his own mind, save his command--they were left behind. This special detachment with their special rifles, completely overlooked in the evacuation, suddenly confronted with the reality that all of their comrades were gone from the field, and the only troop movement on the streets of the town was by ragged men in gray and butternut.

When they finally realized what had happened, they were able to safely withdraw, but I think sometimes of how awful it must have been to be left on that hill. Most of them were probably just kids, 18 or 19 in many cases. Child soldiers in a brigade with a 23-year-old commanding general, in a sad, tragic war that stubbornly refused to end, abandoned on a tree-lined country road winding out of a small farm town surrounded by towering hills. Today, no discernable trace remains of the Michigan boys who ensconced themselves in their lonely vantage point, save for the fact that the tightly-clustered unit of townhouses at the base of the hill sits on a cul-de-sac with the bittersweet cognomen of Sentry Ridge.

I always find it humbling to think about, the sacrifice of young men who desperately fought each other in a town where some families had members on each side of the war, where loyalties and allegiances were complicated and sometimes painfully blurred. I grew up in this county which has the ghoulish distinction of being the site of the bloodiest day in American history, September 17th, 1862, the Battle of Antietam, but even I never knew about the battle of Smithsburg until I was 41 years old. Most of the people who live here, especially the younger ones, are equally oblivious.....they see the Food Lion and the convenience stores, the bank and the churches and the old brick houses, but they remain unaware of those few brief hours when something desperate and awful unfolded in these common, unremarkable streets that crisscross what we call daily life.....

I guess that's where the story ends.......nothing profound, no great pronouncement of anything. I just like to think about what happened here, because it bears repeating, not because it was so vast in scope, but because it was a human experience, a dreadful one our modern lives are far removed from. But it did happen, and it was one small component in the complicated path that lead us to America, 2009. It may not carry enough merit to be discussed at length, or even to hold the attention of the casual observer for more than a few seconds, but I choose to honor the memory of those boys from so long ago, not with anything grandiose or elaborate, but with a simple and humble acknowledgement. It's not my goal to analyze, to judge, or even to understand.......just to try always, at least in some simple way, to remember........