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Patrick Nolan didn’t think of himself as a coward. But when a Union musket ball bit into the tree next to his head sending little pieces of wood into his ear and scalp, Patrick lost all thought of anything except one: get away!

His rifle fell from nerveless fingers his eyes locked on the looming, angry, ugly faces of the Union soldiers scrambling towards him. Loosing all sense of reality and thought except one, he darted down the back slope of the forested ridge. Bullets and musket balls whipped through the trees sounding like angry bees, each one spurring Patrick to even more frantic efforts to get away. The screams of men locked in battle followed him relentlessly as he plunged downwards, seeking safety.

Tree branches pulled at his clothes, snagging and resisting his efforts to flee. He tripped on a root and went sprawling, his shoulder slamming hard into the base of an oak tree sending waves of pain down his spine. The bullets began to fall closer, zipping and snapping through the underbrush, punching small holes in leaves and sending wooden shrapnel flying through the air every time one hit a tree.

Patrick lay paralyzed. He couldn’t think. He didn’t know how to get away. Confederate soldiers rushed past him, struggling uphill towards the crest of the ridge where the Yanks now poured over, whooping, screaming, and shouting profanities at their Rebel brothers.

One thin boy, his first stubble of a beard just appearing on his pale face, pitched over and fell not a foot from where Patrick lay, a bloody hole where his eye should have been. It was too much for Patrick. In his wildest dreams, he never envisioned battle to be like this. His fear paralyzing him beyond the ability to move, his mind found the only available escape–he fainted.

Patrick had no idea how long he lay there under the oak tree unconscious, but when his eyes finally fluttered open, the sun had slipped down behind the ridge shading everything in deep shadows. He heard nothing. Even the birds had forsaken this part of the forest as if the battle waged here had laid a curse of death on it and life would be an unwelcomed intrusion.

His heart pounding, he raised his head and peered around. Nothing. Not a sign of life. Slowly, he rose to his feet, ignoring his throbbing shoulder, and took a deep breath trying to figure out what to do.

From what he could see, it looked as if the Union soldiers had overrun the Confederate position here. Bodies of both armies lay sprawled in grotesque positions. Abandoned equipment littered the ridge, but, strangely, the horse trail that ran parallel along the bottom of the ravine seemed free of the carnage. But the battle had moved elsewhere. He was alone.

Patrick abruptly decided on what he needed to do. If he was now behind enemy lines, being caught in a Confederate uniform would spell his death for sure. These Yanks under General Grant took no quarter, he had heard. He hurried over to the first Union solider he could find and began to strip the man of his uniform.

“Surin you won’t be needing it, anyhow,” he muttered as he worked. He would have to get back to Georgia somehow. Yes sir, Patrick Nolan didn’t belong in any war, nohow! What did Jefferson Davis ever do for me, anyway? he thought bitterly.

Patrick had no idea what regiment the Union Solider had been part of. His own commander, A. P. Hill, had dragged the Third Corps to this wilderness to blunt General Grant’s advance into Virginia. Patrick bitterly regretted not deserting earlier. Not that he believed himself to be a coward. He just didn’t belong in this stupid war. “I am not a coward!” he growled to himself, yanking the corpse’s trousers off.

He had just finished pulling on the Yank’s trousers when the muffled sound of a body of horses rushing along the trail nearby froze him in his effort to undo the dead Yank’s jacket. He bit down on his lip hard enough to draw blood, and prayed to God that the cavalry unit was in too much of a rush to notice him sitting on the side of the ridge. He didn’t really care which side they were on. He only wanted to get away, back to Georgia where he belonged.

He had no such luck.

“Lieutenant!” the lead rider yelled, pulling his horse to a sliding halt and pointing directly at Patrick. “Look there!”

The lieutenant, a tall gangly man, with a thick beard that looked much too large for such a skinny face peered at Patrick. Only then did Patrick notice the blue uniforms. He bolted.

“He’s runnin’!” someone yelled. “Get em!” A bullet zipped by Patrick’s head and splattered against a trunk a few yards ahead. All thought fled from Nolan’s mind. He ran blindly, not even realizing that he fled to the easiest path for the Union horses to take—the trail at the bottom of the ravine.

He ran, and a few more shots buzzed angrily by him. He could feel the ground shaking as the horses pounded after him. “A spy!” someone yelled. Patrick pushed on even faster, until a slug caught him in the leg. Pain launched him into a flailing roll over the narrow trail.

He groaned in pain, clutching at his leg and rolling from side to side in a vain effort to control the agony. The Union cavalry rode up and surrounded him. Patrick closed his eyes and began to tremble violently, expecting a bullet to end his life at any moment.

“Surin a spy, Lieutenant. Look at them trousers.”

“He took it off of one of ours,” someone else concurred. “I seen him. What you think? He a spy?”

A chorus of laughing agreements followed. “Get a rope,” Patrick heard to his horror.

Patrick’s eyes snapped open in panic. Forgetting the pain, he tried to scramble up the slope of the ridge, confused as to why his leg would not obey him. “Not a spy!” he yelled. “Not a spy!”

“Shut yer blabberin’” one yelled, dismounting. He grabbed Patrick by his injured leg and jerked him back down onto the trail. Pain kept him from trying to crawl away again. “Where you from?” his tormentor demanded.

“F—f—from? I—I’m…”

“He’s a spy,” the lieutenant interrupted confidently. “Get the rope.”

“No!” Panic took over again, but Patrick had nowhere to go. The men laughed and kicked him, while another took down a rope and cast about for a stout limb to toss it over.

That’s when the Confederate cavalry swept in, whooping, and hollering the famous Rebel yell. The first volley cut three of the Union boys right out of their saddles.

“Rebels!” shouted the union lieutenant. Those were his last words as a passing scar-faced Confederate chopped at him with a saber.

Patrick closed his eyes in terror once more. He wished he could run, but the noise of the battle froze him in place. It soon stopped however, and Patrick slowly came to realize a different group of men had surrounded him. He opened his eyes to see gray uniformed men peering down at him.

“Who’re you?” demanded a blurry man wearing a Confederate captain’s insignia. The man’s viciously scared face held no sympathy.

“Nolan,” Patrick managed to squeak out.

“He’s wearin’ a Confederate coat,” a red faced man pointed out. “And Yank trousers.”

“A spy?” scar-faced asked, rubbing his chin.

Patrick wanted to protest, to deny it, to explain what had happened, but a deserter was hung as quickly as a spy these days. Another of the soldiers interrupted. “Cap! Looky here at these papers!”

The other solider had been rummaging through the saddle bags of the milling Union horses and had discovered some interesting dispatches in the lieutenant’s bags. The Captain grabbed the papers and flipped through them, scowling the entire time. Finally he looked up and settled a glare on Patrick. “They were protecting you, weren’t they?” He waved the papers at Nolan. “These are drawings of our lines! You brought them! You’re a spy!”

“No!” Patrick managed to yell.

“Get a rope!”

Patrick couldn’t protest. He couldn’t even resist. Fear so consumed him that he didn’t even struggle as they hung him. Nolan’s last thought was: I’m not a coward! I’m not!

The deed done, the Confederates stared at the swinging body until the legs stopped kicking. The captain then snorted in disgust and pulled out a knife. “Get that coat off him. No sense despoiling it any more than it is. I got a message to send them Yanks.”

Sometime later, a strong Union patrol led by Colonel Miles rode up the abandoned trail and discovered a body hanging from a high tree branch. Miles eyed the body in speculation. The man wore Union trousers, no coat or shirt, and had the words ‘Yankee spy’ carved into his chest. A wad of papers had been jammed into the dead man’s open mouth, and his eyes bugled from a malnourished face.

“What do you make of it?” his aide asked, not really liking the too common sight of a hung man.

“Looks like one of ours tried to make it back to us and his luck ran out. God have mercy on him.” Miles sighed deeply. “Cut him down. Try to find a name if you can—though I doubt you will. We’ll bury in a proper Union uniform with a medal pinned to his chest.”

“A medal, sir?”

“Yes. He died a hero. We’ll give him a hero’s burial.”

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