Free Boys of Wartime: Will at the Battle of Gettysburg by Laurie Calkhoven Page A

couldn’t listen anymore. I walked into the parlor and opened the front door to take a breath.
    The Rebs had built a barricade right in front of our house. They had stacked their guns and were cooking and relaxing. I couldn’t see the Union lines. Rebels stretched up Baltimore Street as far as I could see.
    Across the street, six-year-old Mary McLean leaned out a second-story window and sang at the top of her lungs. “Hang Jeff Davis on a sour apple tree!”
    Someone snatched her into the house and slammed the window closed.
    I held my breath and waited for the soldiers to fire on her house. Jefferson Davis was the President of the Confederate States. Rebels wouldn’t take kindly to songs about him being hanged. The soldiers under the window only laughed and launched into a loud round of “Dixie.”
    I scanned the street for Abel. If he was in town, I thought he would make his way to our house. But what could he do? I certainly couldn’t tell him about the soldier in the carriage house. About the important papers for General Meade. He was the enemy. His duty would be to turn the soldier in, and me for hiding him.
    I wished Father were here, or Jacob, or even Grace. I felt frozen despite the heat. Rebels were all around the house. That Union officer would be arrested or shot before he took a step. General Meade would never get his urgent communications.
    It would be dark soon. I finally had my chance to join the war. To do my part for the Union, and I was afraid. All I wanted to do was curl up in the cellar with that other soldier and hide.
    Some Rebels approached the house. One carried a man on his back. The other held his arm as if he was afraid it would fall off.
    â€œA doctor lives here?” they asked.
    â€œYes,” I said, “but he’s not here.”
    Mother came up behind me. “The Courthouse is being used as a hospital,” she said. “And the Presbyterian Church.”
    â€œThey’re both full up,” the soldier told her. “Every church, every building in town is full up with wounded.”
    Mother pulled me out of the doorway so that they could come in. “Bring them into the parlor,” she said.
    The man being carried moaned something awful when they laid him on the settee. His chest and belly were covered in blood. The other—the one with the wounded arm—dropped into a chair. He could barely sit upright.
    â€œWill, get me some more water,” Mother said. “We’re going to need it.”
    The other Rebels came out of the kitchen then, with their prisoners.
    â€œDo you have a red flag to hang from the house,” their leader asked.
    â€œRed flag?”
    â€œSo the sharpshooters will know this is a hospital,” he explained.
    â€œIf my house is to be a hospital, then perhaps you’ll leave those three gentlemen here,” Mother said, pointing to some of the Union men. “They’re wounded.”
    With that, our house became a hospital. Mother hung Grace’s red shawl from an upstairs window, and three of the Union prisoners got to stay with us instead of going to prison. I was sorry for the other two. Maybe the Rebs would parole them when the battle ended instead of marching them down south.
    â€œI’ll need lots of water,” Mother told me. “See if you can find me something to use for bandages.”
    I headed to the back of the house to get more water from the well. On my way through the kitchen, I shoved a piece of bread into my pocket for the soldier in the carriage house. I would have to tell him there was nothing I could do. There were too many Rebs around. If his papers made the difference between victory and defeat, I guess the defeat would rest on my shoulders.
    I was filling the bucket when an idea started to form in the back of my mind. I thought of all the times Father had set out in the dark to help someone who had taken sick. It seemed like he was always going off in the