Battlefields

“Lookit ‘em all die!” the boy behind me crowed as another man with a gun fell to the ground.

I had arrived at the top of the tall hill some minutes before, puffing from the climb. All across the hill’s front slope, people seated on blankets and in folding chairs shaded their eyes and watched as, below them, men in the blue-on-blue tones of the Union Army sweated in a line, waiting.

It was the first day of the annual Civil War Muster that overtakes Jackson, Michigan’s Cascades Park each August. Vendors in period costume hawked bonnets, toy muskets, and iron candlesticks while volunteers prepared for the evening’s military ball.

Here before me, though, the highlight of the day was ready to begin. After a pregnant pause ― in which the announcer shared trivia about General Lee’s pet chicken ― Confederate Army reenactors in gray and tan wool uniforms shuffled onto the battlefield. A cannon boom made the crowd jump, and the Battle of Tulifinny began.

The actual 1864 battle in South Carolina saw 900-some Confederate soldiers routing a Union Army 5,000 strong. The battle stretched over four December days, unlike the reenactment, which took all of about 30 minutes.

The reenactors seemed a ramshackle lot. They wriggled in their heavy uniforms with hats askew, knocking into each other as they concentrated hard on forming straight lines. Some of them looked too old to be soldiers. Or too young. Or too businessmanlike, or too farmerish. They didn’t look like soldiers at all. They looked like just a bunch of guys. 

The battle was fake, I knew. But these men were real.

Battles are real.

Gunshots rang out, and smoke obscured the armies, then dissipated. Soldiers fumbled with their muskets, concentrating intently as they poured in gunpowder and tamped down bullets before pointing, firing, and loading again.

The two armies moved closer together. One hundred yards apart ― fifty yards ― twenty. Close enough they could look each other in the eyes. They kept shooting.

And then they started falling. One by one, soldiers collapsed into the grass, bodies limp.

Medics trotted behind their army’s lines to collect the wounded. Still the soldiers stood in their lines, firing, loading, firing. Young men. Dads. Husbands. Guys who didn’t belong there with guns in their hands. They stayed and fired not out of hatred of the enemy, but because someone had told them to. They kept standing there, waiting to shoot, waiting to be shot.

Stop, I pleaded with them in my head. Stop shooting. Stop standing there. Put the guns down.

They didn’t stop. Instead, with a roar ― the “rebel yell,” the announcer said cheerfully ― the Confederate Army raised their weapons and charged the enemy. No more loading muskets. Now it was hand-to-hand combat. Bodies clashed. Fists flew. One bearded Confederate caught a Union soldier and landed a solid, if fake, blow to the stomach.

The crowd laughed.

And I cried.

“Lookit ‘em all die,” the boy behind me said as bodies piled up in a heap in the grassy field.

A cannon boomed. Riders on horseback whooped and fired guns. The armies ― what was left of them ― reassembled and shuffled to the sidelines. The dead and dying resurrected themselves, straightened their hats, and waved to the applauding audience.

The war wasn’t over, though.

It wasn’t over in 1864, and it isn’t over still.

In far away countries, men keep killing men, not because of hate but because someone told them to. Brothers. Fathers. Husbands.

In Los Angeles and Chicago and Detroit, guns point needlessly and young men crumple to the ground and mothers wail. Smaller city headlines crackle with news of the latest young woman struck down by gunfire. In small, safe towns, hands leave bruises in secret and close around throats and squeeze triggers.

Everywhere, cowards hide behind screens, firing bullets made of words and rushing in with clenched fists and a defiant yell, and the bodies pile high.

Lookit ‘em all die.

If only they could all stand up, brush themselves off, and take a bow. But our dead stay dead, and our grief is not make-believe.

I need to join this battle. Not as a soldier, nor even as a nurse tending the wounded. I need to stand as a purposeful person of peace, offering what I can to help keep people from reaching the battlefield in the first place.

I can’t afford to watch, sorrow-filled, from the sidelines and do nothing. The war of senseless violence is my war. It endangers my community, my kids. It hurts people who matter, to me and to their Maker. 

I can’t stand between armies, arms spread, pleading for a ceasefire. But I can love one hurting person with a little less talk and a lot more action. I can support policies and efforts proven to prevent gunfire, like trauma-informed social services, sensible gun laws, and community violence intervention programs. I can be deliberately kind, a safe place for those living in turmoil to find acceptance and peace.

***

On my way back down the hill, two girls in floral dresses and pigtails skipped past me. They giggled in the sunshine, and they were holding hands.

Hope. Innocence and hope. Hold tight to each other, girls. War is raging. But there’s still sunshine and giggles. Thank God for hope.