Brothers in Arms
Appomattox.
The name spread through the community of Green Lawn, Maine, like proverbial wildfire. When Rowena Cutler heard the news that Robert E. Lee had surrendered to Ulysses S. Grant, she could not contain her joy.
"My boys will be coming home!" she cried optimistically.
Four years earlier, in April 1861, President Abraham Lincoln asked for seventy-five thousand volunteers to serve, following the attack on Fort Sumter. All five of Rowena's sons—Thomas, Peter, Nathaniel, Elijah and Benjamin—answered that call. It was to be expected, after all. Noah Cutler, their great-great-grandfather fought in the French and Indian War one hundred years earlier. Their great-grandfather served in the Continental Army under George Washington, and their grandfather saw military service during the War of 1812. Finally, their father was in the Mexican-American War, fighting beside some of the men who were now officers in the Confederate Army.
"I reckon as long as these United States go off to war," Rowena said when her sons told her of their decision to enlist, "they'll be a Cutler risking his life for them. That is, if the family doesn't die out first."
On the day before the five brothers were to leave Green Lawn and report for duty, Thomas, the oldest, chopped and stacked firewood for his mother.
"That ought to last you until the spring," he surmised. "Hopefully, we'll be home before then."
"Promise me one thing, Tom," his mother implored.
"Anything, Ma."
"You being the eldest, I want you to look out for your younger brothers."
"They're not children anymore. Even little Benjamin is eighteen already."
"Promise me," Rowena persisted.
Thomas was of the opinion that in the heat of battle he would most likely be too occupied watching out for his own skin to babysit his brothers, but his mother's pleading eyes brought him close to tears.
"I'll try to keep an eye on them, Ma. But you've got nothing to worry about. We're Cutlers. The Indians, the French, the British and the Mexicans couldn't lick us. We're not about to be taken down by a bunch of dandified Southerners."
During the four long years of war that followed, however, there were few letters from her sons. She had no idea if they were alive or dead, but since she had not received any official word from the Army, Rowena held on to the hope that all five of them survived. As the days passed with no sign of her boys, she prayed and anxiously watched the dirt road that led to their farmhouse for any sign of a familiar figure.
* * *
It was Elijah, her fourth son, who returned home first. Rowena was in the yard feeding the chickens when she saw a young man in ill-fitting clothes approach the gate. Because of the weight loss and the pronounced limp with which he walked, she could not immediately identify him.
"Ma!" he called.
"Elijah!" she answered, recognizing the voice.
It was a tearful reunion, but the tears were those of joy. When the mother and son broke their embrace, Rowena ushered the returning warrior inside the house.
"You must be hungry," she said. "Let me fix you something to eat."
"I'm famished."
She did not immediately ask Elijah about his brothers, afraid the news would not be good.
Let me enjoy this moment, she thought, before I have to face any bad news.
After the young man ate his fill of his mother's cooking, the two of them retired to the parlor.
"My pants are too big on me now, Ma," Elijah announced. "But a few more of your home-cooked meals, and they'll fit just right again."
Rowena looked at her boy's face, noticed how four years of army life had prematurely aged it, and could stand the suspense no longer.
"And what about your brothers?" she blurted out anxiously. "Are they all right?"
He had yet to speak of the war, preferring to talk about more pleasant things, but he could not avoid the subject forever.
"I don't know what's become of them. I haven't seen any of them since Antietam."
"Antietam? That was when? Three or four years ago?"
"It was back in September 1862. I was shot during the battle. One lucky Reb got me right in the leg. The force sent me into Antietam Creek. I tried to get up, but I couldn't move. I thought I was gonna drown for sure. I was lying helpless on the creek bed, holding my breath, looking up at the sunlight through the water when I saw a face appear above me. I've never been a fanciful person, but with the face distorted by the water and the sunlight shining around the head, I thought it was an angel come to take me to heaven. Suddenly, a strong arm came down and pulled me from the water. I gulped in great breaths of air, and coughed up water. Once I was breathing normally, I got a good look at the man who saved my life. It was Thomas."
"I made him promise to look after you and your brothers," Rowena told him.
"That was the last I saw of any of them. While my leg was healing, I was unable to walk, so I was reassigned to an administrative position in Washington. I did such a good job, they kept me there for the rest of the war."
Elijah saw the emotional turmoil in his mother's eyes and took her hand in his.
"When was the last time you heard from them?" he asked.
"Like you, your brothers were not much for letter writing."
"I'm sorry, Ma. I should have written you."
"I got a few brief letters, one or two paragraphs mostly, from Nathaniel and Peter. But the last was in '63. As for Benjamin, I haven't heard from him since '62. The only time I heard from Thomas was when he stopped in New York on his way south. He had his photograph taken at Mathew Brady's Studio and sent it to me."
"You mustn't give up hope, Ma. I'm sure my brothers are on their way back to Green Lawn even as we speak. After all, Thomas promised he would look after us. He saved me, didn't he?"
Rowena nodded her head, wiped the tears from her eyes and tried to smile. God had seen fit to send one of her boys back home to her. Whatever the future held in store, she must remember to be grateful for that.
* * *
Although not the most regular churchgoer in Green Lawn, Rowena Cutler went to services that Sunday. She went not just to give thanks for the safe return of Elijah, but also to pray for the safety or for the eternal souls of her remaining four sons. There were other members of the congregation—mothers, fathers, wives and sweethearts—who were there for the same purpose. Others, dressed in mourning clothes, came to church to seek solace from their grief. Rowena, unwilling to give up hope, refused to wear black.
After the pastor's benediction, the parishioners shuffled out of the church. Rowena did not tarry to speak with anyone, as was her custom. That day, she had to hurry home to cook Sunday dinner for her son. As she approached the wooden gate to the family's property, she heard voices coming from inside the house. One belonged to Elijah. The other one she had not heard in four years.
Elated, Rowena quickened her pace, ran up the steps and burst through front door.
"Nathaniel!" the petite mother cried, embracing her tall and lanky middle son.
Just as Elijah had come home with a pronounced limp due to a leg wound, Nathaniel bore a large scar on his left temple.
"What happened to you?" his mother asked.
"He'll tell you about it later," Elijah said, knowing from personal experience that his older brother was not ready to talk about his combat experiences yet. "First, let's celebrate the return of the prodigal son."
As she had planned, Rowena prepared a quasi-Thanksgiving feast but for three instead of two. While the meat was roasting, she baked a chocolate cake—Nathaniel's favorite. As she frosted it, she recalled that it would be Thomas's birthday in two days.
What a birthday celebration it would be if he came home now! she thought, longing to see her eldest son walk across the threshold.
But no one appeared at the door, neither Thomas nor his missing younger brothers. Still, Rowena was grateful for two sons' homecoming.
After finishing Sunday dinner, Elijah pushed back from the table and placed his hands on his stomach.
"I've been home less than a week and already I'm putting on weight."
"You look like you could use a little fattening up, too," Rowena told Nathaniel. "Didn't they feed you boys in the Army?"
"If you can call what they gave us food," Elijah answered.
There was a lull in the conversation, and Rowena felt a mounting tension in the room. Rather than ask the question that was foremost on her mind, she expressed her concerns in the form of a statement.
"I wonder if your brothers are sitting down somewhere to a meal."
"I don't know," Nathaniel responded, feeling enough at ease to discuss the unpleasant events of the war. "I haven't seen them since Fredericksburg."
"Is that where you were wounded?" his brother asked.
"Yeah. I took a bullet to the head. Turns out, it only grazed me, but there was a lot of blood. When Burnside withdrew his troops and led them back over the Rappahannock, I was left for dead. I eventually came to on Marye's Heights. It was nighttime, and everything around me was black. I tried to get to my feet, but my injury caused my head to spin. Then the movement caused the wound on my temple to open up and bleed again. I don't know how long I stayed there, but it seemed like hours. Not only was I in pain, but I was hungry and thirsty, too. Honest to God, I thought I was gonna die there on Virginia soil."
"What happened then?" Elijah asked. "Did the Confederates find you?"
"No. It was one of ours. At first I didn't recognize him in the dark." A smile spread across Nathaniel's face, and he added, "Then the clouds shifted and I saw his face in the moonlight. It was Thomas. How he found me lying there among so many dead bodies, I'll never know."
"It was Ma's doing," his brother told him. "She made him promise to look after us."
"Well, he listened. He carried me to the nearest field hospital. I can't tell you how we got there 'cause I drifted in and out of consciousness. Once the doctor bandaged me up, I asked to see my brother. He told me the man who had brought me in left immediately after handing me over to the hospital staff. I assume he went back to duty, but I didn't hear from him again. After I recovered, I remained with the hospital since they were so short of staff. They needed men to help transport patients from the battlefield to the hospital, and since my enlistment was already up, I volunteered for the newly formed ambulance corps."
Again, Rowena's questions about the welfare of the rest of her family went unanswered. Still, she stubbornly refused to give up hope.
* * *
Another week passed, one in which Rowena Cutler had no word of her three missing boys. Meanwhile, her sons that had returned wasted no time trying to rebuild their lives. Nathaniel hoped to rekindle a romance with a girl he had been courting before he enlisted.
"I can't believe in four years she didn't get married," he told his mother when he learned Melinda Hazlitt was still single.
"And just who do you think she would marry?" Rowena laughed. "With all the able-bodied young men in the Army, there was no one in Green Lawn except old men and young boys. Besides, Melinda was always fond of you."
"Would you mind if I invited her to Sunday dinner?"
"Not at all! There's plenty of food."
Elijah's thoughts also turned to the fairer sex. In his case, he began keeping company with a young widow whose husband fell during the Wilderness Campaign.
"Since we have so much food," Elijah asked, "could you set another place for Louise?"
"Why, certainly! I declare, it will be nice having people sitting at the dining room table again. For four years, I sat there by myself."
That afternoon, while the two boys were repairing the axle on the farm's wagon, Rowena was in the kitchen baking buttermilk biscuits. She had just put the pan in the oven, when Nathaniel opened the back door and called to her.
"I think you'd better set another place at the table, Ma."
"My heavens! How many girls are you and your brother going to bring home?"
She turned around from the oven and saw Nathaniel grinning ear to ear. A moment later, a familiar face appeared over his right shoulder.
"Bless my soul! Another of my sons has come home!"
Still wearing his uniform, Peter strode across the kitchen and took his mother in his arms.
"Oh, Ma, I missed you so much!"
Rowena led her two sons to the living room where she got a good look at Peter.
"You don't appear to have been wounded."
"I was lucky," he replied, lying back in his father's old easy chair and putting his feet up on the matching hassock. "I made it through the war unscathed. Of course, there was a moment when I was sure I was about to die."
"When was that?" Nathaniel asked.
Unlike his two brothers, Peter was not reluctant to talk about the recent past.
"It was at Gettysburg. We took a position on Cemetery Ridge—how's that for an unlucky name?" he laughed. "On the early afternoon of July 3, Pickett's men came charging across the field toward us. Most of his men didn't make it, but a few did. I kept firing my rifle until I ran out of ammunition. One Confederate made it to the top of the ridge and was standing about five feet away from me. He raised his rifle and pointed it directly at me. I closed my eyes, expecting the worst, and then I heard a shot ring out. I'll be damned!—Sorry about the language, Ma. I realized a man behind me had fired his rifle and killed the Reb that had been fixin' to kill me. I turned around to thank him—and what do you know? It was Thomas! Hell!—Sorry again, Ma. I hadn't seen him since the first battle at Bull Run back in '61. And there he was!"
"What happened to him after that?" Rowena asked anxiously.
"I don't know. We were in the thick of a battle; we didn't have time to sit a spell and catch up. Once the Confederate army retreated, I tried to find Thomas, but I didn't have any luck. There were so many wounded and dead, it was impossible to find anyone."
"What about after the Army left Pennsylvania?"
"The war kept going, battle after battle, until Appomattox. Once Lee surrendered, I mustered out and headed home. I never ran into Thomas again. Has he written to you recently?"
"No," Rowena replied. "I only got a handful of letters from the lot of you."
Both Nathaniel and Peter hung their heads in shame.
"That's all right," their mother said. "The three of you are home now. That's all that matters. And I'm sure Benjamin and Thomas will show up soon enough."
* * *
At the end of June, Nathaniel proposed to Melinda Hazlitt, and she accepted. Not to be outdone, Elijah asked Louise Howarth to marry him and also received an affirmative reply. Due to the shortage of men brought about by the war, Peter had his pick of young women to choose from. Unlike his two brothers, though, he was not eager to settle down just yet. Besides, once Nathaniel and Elijah got married, who would take care of their mother?
When Benjamin, Rowena's youngest boy, came home, it was not on a Sunday; and there was no large dinner to celebrate the occasion. Instead, he walked into the house in the middle of the night when everyone was asleep in bed. Peter, a light sleeper, heard his footsteps on the living room floor and grabbed his shotgun.
"Hold it right there!" he called, standing at the top of the stairs, poised to shoot the intruder.
"Don't tell me I managed for four years to avoid getting shot in the war only to get killed in my own home," Benjamin said.
Peter immediately lowered his shotgun. The brothers' voices woke the other members of the family. Clad in her nightgown, Rowena ran out of her bedroom to see what the commotion was all about.
"Benjamin! My baby! Oh, thank God you're alive!"
As his mother went downstairs to the kitchen to make a pot of coffee, Benjamin went up to his old bedroom to change into civilian clothes. When Rowena and the four boys gathered around the dining room table, drinking coffee and finishing off the last of the previous day's cornbread, the three older brothers filled the returning soldier in on life in postwar Green Lawn.
"So Melinda Hazlitt and Louise Howarth are going to be Cutlers? That's great news. Looks like I'll have to get myself a new suit to wear to your weddings."
This time it was Benjamin himself, not the worried mother, who brought up the subject of the oldest son.
"Have you heard anything from Thomas?"
"No. Peter was the last of you boys to see him," Rowena replied.
"When was that?"
"During the battle at Gettysburg," Peter answered. "But it was only for a few minutes. I searched for him once the fighting ended, but I couldn't find him."
"Back in July '63, then? I saw him after that," Benjamin announced.
Rowena's hopes skyrocketed. Thomas had survived Gettysburg!
"I was captured at Chancellorsville in May '63 and sent to Andersonville in Georgia. I thought war was unbearable, but I had no idea what hell was until I was thrown into that Confederate prison. It was crowded way beyond capacity, there was not enough food or water and the sanitary conditions were practically nonexistent. It was a struggle to survive each day. Many prisoners didn't make it; about a third of those sent there died of either starvation or diseases such as scurvy, diarrhea and dysentery."
"My poor boy!" Rowena cried, wiping the tears from her eyes.
"As bad as it was, I managed to survive for over a year. Then I took sick with a fever. Because I was so weak, other prisoners stole what little food and water rations I was given. It reached the point where I could barely move anymore. I could only lie on the ground waiting to die. Just when I was sure the end had come, I felt someone raise my head slightly and put a canteen of clean water to my lips. After I quenched my thirst, a piece of fresh bread was placed in my mouth. To me, that bread and water tasted like a Christmas feast!"
"It was Thomas, wasn't it?" Rowena asked intuitively. "He gave you his food and water."
"Yes, but how he managed to find clean water and fresh bread in that hell-hole is beyond me."
"Someone must have smuggled it into him," Elijah suggested. "One of the guards maybe."
"It's possible," Benjamin said. "But I never got the chance to ask him. Once I recovered my strength, I didn't see Thomas again. To help ease the severe overcrowding at Andersonville, the Confederacy transferred some of the prison population to Camp Lawton. I assumed Thomas remained behind in Andersonville after I was transferred."
"Were conditions at Camp Lawton any better?" Nathaniel asked.
"I didn't have much of an opportunity to form an opinion. We were there a little more than a month when Sherman's Army marched through Georgia. While we were being transferred again, I managed to escape and join up with them. In December we arrived in Savannah. From there, we went to the Carolinas. When we heard about Appomattox, we knew the end was near. Finally, Sherman met with General Johnston in North Carolina, and the war came to an end. I was anxious to get home, but we had to go to Washington first and participate in the Grand Review of the Armies. We didn't actually disband until May. Immediately afterward, I headed for Maine."
Bolstered by Benjamin's account of his meeting with Thomas in Andersonville, Rowena was more optimistic than ever that her oldest boy would come home to her. Not only was he last seen alive as late as 1864, but he also had a source of food and water—enough for him to share with his youngest brother.
My boy looked after all four of his brothers; no doubt he can look out for himself, too, she thought, as she stared down at the photograph taken of Thomas at Mathew Brady's Studio and anticipated the moment when all six of the Cutlers would be seated at the farmhouse's oversized dining room table.
* * *
In April 1866, approximately one year after Appomattox, Benjamin became the third Cutler brother to marry. Nathaniel and Elijah preceded him by a matter of a few weeks. Peter was still single but had narrowed his choices of a wife down to two. His mother was confident that eventually he would make up his mind.
Since Rowena received no further word of Thomas in the past twelve months, she finally went into the closet and took out her black dress. Although she still harbored hope that her oldest boy would return to her, she wore the somber-colored garment in public in memory of her still-missing child.
"I wish I knew what happened to him, one way or the other," she lamented to Green Lawn's minister when she first appeared in church in her mourning garb. "If he's dead ...."
"You must have faith," the clergyman said, as he had advised hundreds of his flock during his career.
"Not knowing whether he's alive or not is torture. He could be in a hospital somewhere or a prison, unable to get home or to contact us. Miles away from home and all alone."
"He's not alone. The Lord is with him."
Never the most religious of Green Lawn's residents, Rowena did not find much comfort in the minister's words. Still, for another twelve months, she held on to the belief—however slim it was—that Thomas was still alive, that he had not died subsequent to his encounter with Benjamin in Andersonville Prison.
On April 9, 1867, two years to the day after Grant and Lee met in Wilmer McLean's parlor to agree to the surrender of the Army of Northern Virginia, Melinda Cutler gave birth to a healthy son, Rowena's first of what would eventually amount to more than a dozen grandchildren. Nathaniel and his wife named the baby Thomas, after his father's oldest brother.
As the happy grandmother beheld the infant, she recalled the birth of the baby's namesake and tears came to her eyes. In many ways, it seemed like only yesterday that she had held her firstborn in her arms. When she returned to her own house, she removed her black dress and put on a pastel blue one instead.
"Baby blue," she said, looking at her reflection in the mirror. "That's more appropriate for such a happy occasion."
Although she lived another forty years and died at the ripe old age of ninety-three, she never gave up hope that her missing son would someday show up at the family farmhouse in Maine. When she passed away peacefully in her sleep, her four surviving sons buried her in the Evergreen Cemetery beside their father. Inside the coffin, placed between her folded hands, was the well-worn Mathew Brady Studio photograph of Thomas Cutler.
In the decades that followed Rowena's passing, her four sons, their wives and descendents were interred nearby. As the family matriarch had once predicted, Cutlers went on to fight in the Spanish-American War, the two world wars, Korea, Vietnam, the Gulf War, Afghanistan and Iraq. Although warfare had changed drastically since Noah Cutler's day—from flintlocks and muskets to atomic bombs and drones—the family's love and loyalty to its homeland and to each other remained constant.
Finally, more than one hundred and fifty years after Abraham Lincoln's call to arms, archaeologists unearthed a "limb pit" on the grounds of the Manassas National Battlefield Park. The site contained two skeletons and the amputated limbs of eleven other individuals who were killed during the 1862 Second Battle of Bull Run. The National Park Service sent the bones to the Smithsonian Institution, and it was determined from items found with the remains that the two men were Union soldiers.
In 2018 their skeletal remains were laid to rest in Arlington National Cemetery; however, because no positive identification could be made, they were listed as unknowns. What the forensic scientists did not realize was that the skeleton at the very bottom of the pit dated back to the 1861 Battle of First Bull Run, fought on the same ground as the battle that occurred a year later.
The fact that he was to be buried not in Maine but in Virginia did not disturb the eternal slumber of Thomas Cutler, for once his four brothers safely returned to Green Lawn, his spirit was able to rest in peace, knowing he had kept his promise to his mother.
In 2014/5 a limb pit was unearthed on the grounds of the Manassas National Battlefield Park. The remains of two Union soldiers from the Second Battle of Bull Run were laid to rest at Arlington Cemetery in September 2018. For the purpose of my story, however, I wrote that one of the soldiers was actually killed during First Bull Run.
Salem had four brothers. When I adopted him, I considered taking all five kittens. Needless to say, I'm glad I didn't. I've got my hands full with the one.
