The Vision Part Three

The next day early we awoke early amid gunshots and shouts coming from all around us. I couldn't imagine what was going on; I simply had no idea what might be happening. I only knew that it was something like I had never seen before--it had to be as many gunshots as I heard going off round and about us all. I got up to look out the motel window only to see that we were way out in the country. We were in country that I had never seen before. Horses and men were running everywhere. The men seemed to be shotting at each other, and I didn't know what to make of the situation. I knew that something was different--much differnt that when we had gone to sleep the night before. I looked down to see what it was that I had in my hand, because something just didn't feel right. As I glanced down, I saw a powderhorn swinging from my shoulder and a bullet bag on my belt. The thing that I had in my hand was a gun. It wasn't a modern day repeather like people use these days for hunting, but a Musket. I turned the flap from our tent back and shot at the next man in a blue uniform that I saw.

I only knew which side I was on because I noticed that I was wearing a gray Rebel uniform. The gentleman from the day before was wearing the rebel uniform too, but I can tell you right now that he was no gentleman. That man was yelling and cussing as he ran here and there. He was barking out orders to the other soldiers as he ran. He was completely different than the day before, but then I was too. I had never shot at a another man before in my life, but then I wasn't in my life anymore. Now I was in a different lifetime. General Longstreet was back in his own time, and somehow and brought me to be with him. I wondered, "Had he come to Atlanta just to get me and take me to his lifetime? How did he know where I would be? After all, I was only visiting in the Atlanta area for a few days."

Now we didn't have running water, no air conditioning, or electricity. No none of the things that I was used to and that were abundant in my own life were available; it was completely nonexistent now, but the worst part is he had brought me back to help fight in a war that was over way before I was even born. My grandpa was born around the end of the Civil War. What in the world was I doing here anyway? I had never even been in the military! Now in my older age this man had taken me back to a time that I had only read about in history books. It was a time that I should never have seen in my life-time--In any life-time. Yet, here I was in the midst of a battle of The Civil War fighting for the South. Why the South? I was glad the North had won the war and kept the Union together. If someone was going to take me back to help fight why couldn't it have been someone from the North, so I could at least have been on the winning side? Maybe the South was going to win this particular battle, but how was I supposed to know that? I didn't even know what state I was in much less what battle we were fighting in. I shot at another man and watched him fall out of the saddle. I smiled thinking that my aim was getting some better. The first man hadn't fallen at all, and so far as I knew I hadn't even scratched hit him. Maybe I could make a little difference in this battle at least. It sure would be nice to know where we were fighting at though.

Then the smile faded and my eyes closed as I screamed in pain: some men carried me from the battlefield. That was the last thing I remember for a few days. Thinking back, though, it was almost as if I could see the bullet as it came toward me. I saw the man in blue aiming his rifle at me and squeezing the trigger. I thought--I guess I should duck or something, but before I could carry through on my thoughts the bullet found its mark. The way I felt right then--I guessed that I wouldn't be making a difference in this battle or any other one either. I thought that I probably wouldn't be alive much longer. I thought, "Well, Old Pete--You Warhorse--I hope you are happy; you have really done it to me now. You brought me back here to the Civil War, and I am going to die here unless I miss my guess. I am sure that I will die here, and the sad thing is that my family will never know what happened to me. How can they, when I don't know where I am myself? Even if I had someway of letting them know where I am, I can't when I don't know my own self.