Hill’s Rebels dug into that sunken road, and they used that concealed position to blast off murderous volleys, burning through the advancing troops like a lighted match on dust-dry brush. In that first volley, a musket shell had torn away half of George’s face, and laid low the good Lord knew how many more.

Artillery thundered, shook the ground.

It seemed like hours he lay there, staring through the smoke to the blue of the sky, listening to screams, moans, shouts, and the endless, incessant, world-filling clatter of gun and cannon.

Minutes only in reality. Only minutes to breathe, to understand his friend was dead and himself alive by inches.

His hand trembled as he reached inside his uniform, carefully took out the photograph. Eliza. Lizzy. His Lizzy with hair like sunlight and a smile that opened his heart. She loved him, despite all. She waited for him, and when this hell was over, they’d marry. He’d build her a house—not so very far from where he lay now. But the house would live with love and joy, with the laughter of their children.

When this hell was over, he’d go back for her. He’d had one letter, and only one. Smuggled out of her house, to his mother, and passed on to him. He’d read her despair at being locked in on the night they’d planned to elope, and her unwavering faith that they would find each other again.

He’d written her only the night before, carefully forming the words while restless in camp. He’d find a way to get the letter to her. No man could live through hell and not believe in heaven.

He’d have his with Eliza. They’d have forever.

He heard the shouted orders to regroup, to advance again on that damned sunken road. He closed his eyes, pressed his lips to the image of Eliza, then slipped her carefully away again. Safe, he promised himself. Safe against his heart.

He got to his feet. Breathed, breathed. He would do his duty to his country, trust in God, and find his way back to Lizzy.

He charged again, the murderous hail of bullets flying from both sides.

He lived again as bodies, torn and rent, littered the once quiet farmland. Hours passed like years—and somehow like minutes. Morning into afternoon. He knew by the sun he’d lived another morning. He never wavered in duty, shouldered beside others who’d vowed to serve.

He moved forward, climbing fences, through an apple orchard where windfalls scattered over the ground and bees half-drunk buzzed over them. And on the rise looked down at the men in that old road. Finally the high ground served, and they ripped through a gap. He stood near the bend of the road, looked down into horror.