June 3, 2025 • 17 mins
On this episode of Our American Stories, listener Richard Hood takes us back to the Battle of Fredericksburg to share a story of compassion amid America’s deadliest war.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:10):
This is Lee Habib and this is our American Stories,
and we tell stories about everything here on the show,
including yours. Send them to our American Stories dot com.
There's some of our favorites. Indeed. Up next is a
listener's story from Valencia, California. This is a history story
that is fascinated listener Richard Hood for a long time
(00:31):
and he wanted to share it with us. Take it away, Richard.
Speaker 2 (00:37):
You've probably heard that the darker the place, the brighter
any light appears. Well, I'd like to share with you
a story about a very dark place and a very
bright light, in fact, an angel of light known as
the Angel of Mary's Heights. It all happened back in
the month of December sixty two, and I'm talking about
(00:59):
eighteen two, during our country's bloodiest war, the Civil War,
officially known as the War between the States, but more
poignantly as the Brother's War. One reason why it was
called the Brother's War is because the war actually did
pit in some cases brother against brother. You can imagine,
you know, if you have an older brother and he's
(01:21):
gone off to Afghanistan to fight. That's one thing. What
if he was going off to Afghanistan to fight you.
That kind of changes the whole familial situation. And in
the Civil War, the brother's war that not only happened
on occasion a father was sometimes pitted against son. So complicated.
(01:45):
So let me tell you more about this angel though,
because at the Battle of Fredericksburg there was an important
vantage point, a cliff top called Mary's Heights. The Southern
Confederate Army was wisely using it as a canon emplacement.
Below this cliff was a protective wall keeping the Northern
Army from gaining that cliff top. Hunkered down behind this wall,
(02:07):
protecting the stronghold, was one of many soldiers in this case,
a Confederate sergeant who had during America's bloodiest battle to
come anteet him would later lose his life, but he
will survive this day, and a good thing for you,
because otherwise you won't survive either. So are you ready
to do a little pretending, ready to travel back to
(02:29):
your fateful day in time? Okay, Well here we go then,
So you're up before Reveley today. You've only had a thin,
dirty old blanket to cover her during the night, and
can't really sleep that well anyway. But the bugle does sound,
(02:50):
and you hear reveale, and so you get up, splash
some water on your face to believe yourself of the
dust that covers everything and adds to the dry mountain
off the battle that's to come. You look down at
your socks, filthy socks, barely holding together, and you put
on your boots that have holes in them, but you're
(03:10):
grateful because you actually have boots. You start to smell
the coffee that someone has started, and that's going to
be one of your sole pleasures today, and you're grateful
for that too. Little comforts are pretty big when that's
all you've got. You're in the army now, as they say,
and you're an infantryman in the Army of the Potomac,
(03:31):
the Northern Army of the Union. Abraham Lincoln is your president,
and you're facing off against the Confederate States of America,
the Southern States, whose president is Jefferson Davis. Want you
to take a moment and notice the coarseness of your
blue uniform. Also, I want to put on that rucksack
(03:51):
again today, and as you do so, you try and
adjust your shoulder straps to find an area of your
shoulders that have hasn't been rubbed raw yet. This is
going to be adjusted throughout the day. You're going to
be trading minor pains for greater bains. And you're also
going to notice that pack smells strongly of salt, and
(04:12):
you come to realize that's from your own sweat, and
within an hour of your pack's going to be soaked again,
just as will the back of your uniform. The enemy
sergeant behind that wall that you're approaching, he was promoted
on the battlefield, having survived the Battle of Chancellorsville, the
fabled Gettysburg, and then Chickamaugua too, and his luck better
(04:36):
not run out today because it's tied directly to yours.
You're up against a real hero, the last thing you're
feeling like being, and a hero, not due to what
he's already done and survived, but what he will do
from the other side of that wall. He's hunkered down behind,
from behind that wall, separating today not just the quick
(04:59):
from the dead, but the quick from those not very
quietly or quickly dye. So on that suery note, let's
load up and start marching in the direction of that
enemy wall. It's not until around noon that the first
wave of your assaults begin in front of that wall,
(05:20):
and no wave reaches as far as that wall. They
continue though, one after another, and they're also mowed down,
one after the other. The reports are not favorable. Your
comrades get as close as seventy five feet away from
that blasted wall, and that's it. It's going to be
(05:42):
your turn any minute. But before you go, you get
the chance to look around and see all the carnage
that has gone on before you, and you see how
it's likely to go for you. You see the killing field
between you and that wall, and you see a bottlenet
at a ditch that has only three possible crossable bridges,
(06:05):
and no matter which one you choose, it appears to
be nothing but a slaughter pen.
Speaker 1 (06:13):
And you've been listening to Richard Hood And by the way,
he is a listener, as we said before, from Valencia, California,
and a heck of a storyteller, putting us in the
spot in the time, in the context, which is so
important as a storyteller, and how we should always look
at history. No one knew what was going to happen
in that war when it started. No one knew it
(06:35):
was going to happen when they charged the next wall
or the next hill, except from what happened in plain
sight from the other guys who had just charged. And
it's so true. This Civil War, this war between the States,
did pit brother against brother, father against son. The Revolutionary
War did the same thing in large measure. Two, when
(06:57):
we come back, we're going to continue this remark story,
the story of the Angel of Saint Mary's Heights here
on our American story. Folks, if you love the stories
(07:31):
we tell about this great country, and especially the stories
of America's rich past, know that all of our stories
about American history, from war to innovation, culture and faith,
are brought to us by the great folks at Hillsdale College,
a place where students study all the things that are
beautiful in life and all the things that are good
in life. And if you can't get to Hillsdale, Hillsdale
(07:51):
will come to you with their free and terrific online courses.
Go to Hillsdale dot edu to learn more. And we
returned to our American stories and Richard Hood's story of
(08:13):
an impactful moment in the Civil War. When we last
left off, Richard was taking us back in time to
the Battle of Fredericksburg. Let's pick up where we last
left off.
Speaker 2 (08:25):
You're exhausted from marching and fighting, and you're fighting off exhaustion.
Now you have to fight with absolutely no adrenaline left.
It's almost gone, and your mind is shifting gears down
to its most basic and primal functions, while the world
around you appears more and more like some kind of
(08:45):
outdoor insane asylum. Above the wall up on Mary's Heights,
the opposing Confederate canons begin to let loose, so when
you hear the order to charge's going to not only
face a continuous sheet of flame from frontal small arms
(09:07):
fire directed at you, but dismembering in deadly artillery fire
raining from above as well. And later one of the
Confederate artillery men would remark that not even a chicken
could live on that field. You're looking for some way
to increase the odds of your survival, and you can't
(09:29):
think of a thing, and the insensible amount of death,
along with its apparent utter randomness, sickens you. From what
you can see, you should be one of this day's
twelve thousand, six hundred casualties, and it doesn't look like
you're going to be evacuated should you become wounded, which
is likely. Nor does it appear that you will receive
(09:52):
for a state, but instead it does appear that you're
going to lie there unattended, becoming just one more member
of the choir of Moan. You can ask veterans of
any war, and they'll tell you that of all the
horrors of war, the psychologically worst may well be the
(10:13):
tortured cries of their brothers in arms, insufferable agony when
there's nothing they can do to come to their aid
without exposing their position or putting others in danger, or
becoming just like them, another screaming casualty. And whether it's
medieval or modern weapons used to cause this carnage, you
(10:33):
will always hear cries for one thing, for water. But
this dehydration is caused from blood loss. Now, as in
any fight, your mouth is dry, and at any moment
it might become drier still from the loss of your blood.
And then, surprisingly do you, despite its overwhelming odds and predictability,
(10:57):
that indeed happens the realization of your fears having come
upon you, Pain and its companions of shock and immobility
join forces against you. You are now one casualty among
the day's eight thousand casualties. So you're asking yourself what
(11:17):
was so important about that wall? Why couldn't your commanders
simply have gone around it? As you drift in and
out of consciousness, whether half dreaming or awake, thoughts are
distilled for you and reduced to one thing and one desire,
only for water. Finally night comes on, and though your
(11:41):
groans and pleas are lost among the thousands of the
others around you, you have never felt more alone. No
one is coming, no one will be coming in time.
So weary from battle himself and desperate for rest, the
Confederate sergeant has been kept from sleep all the same
(12:03):
night thanks to yours and all the other pitiful, disturbing,
and debilitating cries of those not quite yet dead. By morning,
he can't take it any longer, and so this enemy
soldier asked permission to put you out of your misery.
In both his sides and your own sufferings, he's just
(12:25):
stared at. He stared at as if he's lost his
senses or has battle fatigue. Sniping at the wounded is
just not done. But he's no sniper, and what he's
asking his commanders for is permission to go over that
wall and meet you head on, to come not to
silence you, but to bring you water. His commanders tell
(12:48):
him of the bullets awaiting him on such a fool's
errand making him a casualty of well, either enemy or
mistaken friendly fire, And they tell him no, But he
is totally aware and totally determined and persistent. Yes. Most
of the wounded are like you, his enemy, or were
(13:09):
now you seem more like fellow mortals, just bleeding out
and drying up. He requests to carry a white handkerchief
as a sign of cease fire, and he keeps asking
until he gets permission he seeks, but he is told
that no handkerchief, no flag of truce, will be allowed.
(13:30):
He'll be on his own, and he'll be all. You've
got your last chance for tomorrow, meet your sworn enemy.
Richard Kirkland, Confederate Army sergeant, aged twenty. The odds of
help coming to you via Kirkland are less than the
(13:51):
odds were of being wounded. There are just too many
wounded sprawled in front of that wall, and Kirkland has well,
he's alone, and he has no plan except for the
filling of every canteen he can find, and it seems
time itself holds its breath, is over the wall. He
slips with you in that no man's land between earthly
(14:14):
consciousness and eternity. Eventually he does, indeed stumble upon you,
literally falls over you, and reaching down to support your head,
he gives you all he can from the canteen's left.
He takes off his jacket and covers you with it.
You try to raise your hand and astonished thanks, but
(14:38):
there's no need, as he can read the gratitude in
your eyes. Not a shot is heard in that hour
and a half that Kirkland spends racing from soldier to soldier,
as if in respectful awe of what is happening and
what he's risking. All that is heard are the plaintive
(14:59):
cry for the water that is now at least a possibility.
He attends to friend and foe alike, both sides Americans,
both sides brothers of a sort once again, even if
only brothers of the dust. Years later, some will claim
(15:19):
it wasn't Kirkling, but someone else, or many other someone else's.
Others will claim that he was sniped at, even wounded,
but you know better because you were there, although you're
a wonder for the rest of your life. Why he
did it? What was it that was worth more to
him than his own physical life? How could he be
(15:43):
so certain there was something even more important than his
own fears? What or who puts that instinct or knowledge
into people that results in bringing the Kingdom of Heaven
not just onto earth, but overcoming hell on earth. You
won't hear Kirkland's name mentioned nowadays, but you see it
(16:05):
doesn't matter. He's not a household name because heroes don't
do heroic things for the fame. Their self lessness can
inspire us to other, if lesser acts of love. Love,
we must remember, is an action. While Kirkland indeed survived
this day as a result, you did as well. His
(16:28):
eventual dying concern was still for others, particularly his father,
whom he wanted to know that his son had died right.
Perhaps more important is living right day by day, and
to do that you and I must know what we
are living for. Why we were given life. This is
(16:52):
everyone's foundation, so that building up and out from that
foundation brings meaning and purpose to our lives. So that
as much of our lives as possible bring relief and
life to others. You know, you have to wonder why
such stories of heroism create such a unique response in
(17:13):
us psychologically, physiologically, spiritually. It seems to contradict a spirit less,
self serving, survival of the fittest and purposeless worldview. Perhaps
the Brothers War was but one act in a long
play designed to help us recognize and appreciate the true
(17:37):
cost of love, of redemption and reconciliation.
Speaker 1 (17:45):
And a special thanks to Monte Montgomery for the production.
Richard Hood's story the Angel of Saint Mary's Heights story
here on our American Stories
This is Lee Habib and this is our American Stories,
and we tell stories about everything here on the show,
including yours. Send them to our American Stories dot com.
There's some of our favorites. Indeed. Up next is a
listener's story from Valencia, California. This is a history story
that is fascinated listener Richard Hood for a long time
(00:31):
and he wanted to share it with us. Take it away, Richard.
Speaker 2 (00:37):
You've probably heard that the darker the place, the brighter
any light appears. Well, I'd like to share with you
a story about a very dark place and a very
bright light, in fact, an angel of light known as
the Angel of Mary's Heights. It all happened back in
the month of December sixty two, and I'm talking about
(00:59):
eighteen two, during our country's bloodiest war, the Civil War,
officially known as the War between the States, but more
poignantly as the Brother's War. One reason why it was
called the Brother's War is because the war actually did
pit in some cases brother against brother. You can imagine,
you know, if you have an older brother and he's
(01:21):
gone off to Afghanistan to fight. That's one thing. What
if he was going off to Afghanistan to fight you.
That kind of changes the whole familial situation. And in
the Civil War, the brother's war that not only happened
on occasion a father was sometimes pitted against son. So complicated.
(01:45):
So let me tell you more about this angel though,
because at the Battle of Fredericksburg there was an important
vantage point, a cliff top called Mary's Heights. The Southern
Confederate Army was wisely using it as a canon emplacement.
Below this cliff was a protective wall keeping the Northern
Army from gaining that cliff top. Hunkered down behind this wall,
(02:07):
protecting the stronghold, was one of many soldiers in this case,
a Confederate sergeant who had during America's bloodiest battle to
come anteet him would later lose his life, but he
will survive this day, and a good thing for you,
because otherwise you won't survive either. So are you ready
to do a little pretending, ready to travel back to
(02:29):
your fateful day in time? Okay, Well here we go then,
So you're up before Reveley today. You've only had a thin,
dirty old blanket to cover her during the night, and
can't really sleep that well anyway. But the bugle does sound,
(02:50):
and you hear reveale, and so you get up, splash
some water on your face to believe yourself of the
dust that covers everything and adds to the dry mountain
off the battle that's to come. You look down at
your socks, filthy socks, barely holding together, and you put
on your boots that have holes in them, but you're
(03:10):
grateful because you actually have boots. You start to smell
the coffee that someone has started, and that's going to
be one of your sole pleasures today, and you're grateful
for that too. Little comforts are pretty big when that's
all you've got. You're in the army now, as they say,
and you're an infantryman in the Army of the Potomac,
(03:31):
the Northern Army of the Union. Abraham Lincoln is your president,
and you're facing off against the Confederate States of America,
the Southern States, whose president is Jefferson Davis. Want you
to take a moment and notice the coarseness of your
blue uniform. Also, I want to put on that rucksack
(03:51):
again today, and as you do so, you try and
adjust your shoulder straps to find an area of your
shoulders that have hasn't been rubbed raw yet. This is
going to be adjusted throughout the day. You're going to
be trading minor pains for greater bains. And you're also
going to notice that pack smells strongly of salt, and
(04:12):
you come to realize that's from your own sweat, and
within an hour of your pack's going to be soaked again,
just as will the back of your uniform. The enemy
sergeant behind that wall that you're approaching, he was promoted
on the battlefield, having survived the Battle of Chancellorsville, the
fabled Gettysburg, and then Chickamaugua too, and his luck better
(04:36):
not run out today because it's tied directly to yours.
You're up against a real hero, the last thing you're
feeling like being, and a hero, not due to what
he's already done and survived, but what he will do
from the other side of that wall. He's hunkered down behind,
from behind that wall, separating today not just the quick
(04:59):
from the dead, but the quick from those not very
quietly or quickly dye. So on that suery note, let's
load up and start marching in the direction of that
enemy wall. It's not until around noon that the first
wave of your assaults begin in front of that wall,
(05:20):
and no wave reaches as far as that wall. They
continue though, one after another, and they're also mowed down,
one after the other. The reports are not favorable. Your
comrades get as close as seventy five feet away from
that blasted wall, and that's it. It's going to be
(05:42):
your turn any minute. But before you go, you get
the chance to look around and see all the carnage
that has gone on before you, and you see how
it's likely to go for you. You see the killing field
between you and that wall, and you see a bottlenet
at a ditch that has only three possible crossable bridges,
(06:05):
and no matter which one you choose, it appears to
be nothing but a slaughter pen.
Speaker 1 (06:13):
And you've been listening to Richard Hood And by the way,
he is a listener, as we said before, from Valencia, California,
and a heck of a storyteller, putting us in the
spot in the time, in the context, which is so
important as a storyteller, and how we should always look
at history. No one knew what was going to happen
in that war when it started. No one knew it
(06:35):
was going to happen when they charged the next wall
or the next hill, except from what happened in plain
sight from the other guys who had just charged. And
it's so true. This Civil War, this war between the States,
did pit brother against brother, father against son. The Revolutionary
War did the same thing in large measure. Two, when
(06:57):
we come back, we're going to continue this remark story,
the story of the Angel of Saint Mary's Heights here
on our American story. Folks, if you love the stories
(07:31):
we tell about this great country, and especially the stories
of America's rich past, know that all of our stories
about American history, from war to innovation, culture and faith,
are brought to us by the great folks at Hillsdale College,
a place where students study all the things that are
beautiful in life and all the things that are good
in life. And if you can't get to Hillsdale, Hillsdale
(07:51):
will come to you with their free and terrific online courses.
Go to Hillsdale dot edu to learn more. And we
returned to our American stories and Richard Hood's story of
(08:13):
an impactful moment in the Civil War. When we last
left off, Richard was taking us back in time to
the Battle of Fredericksburg. Let's pick up where we last
left off.
Speaker 2 (08:25):
You're exhausted from marching and fighting, and you're fighting off exhaustion.
Now you have to fight with absolutely no adrenaline left.
It's almost gone, and your mind is shifting gears down
to its most basic and primal functions, while the world
around you appears more and more like some kind of
(08:45):
outdoor insane asylum. Above the wall up on Mary's Heights,
the opposing Confederate canons begin to let loose, so when
you hear the order to charge's going to not only
face a continuous sheet of flame from frontal small arms
(09:07):
fire directed at you, but dismembering in deadly artillery fire
raining from above as well. And later one of the
Confederate artillery men would remark that not even a chicken
could live on that field. You're looking for some way
to increase the odds of your survival, and you can't
(09:29):
think of a thing, and the insensible amount of death,
along with its apparent utter randomness, sickens you. From what
you can see, you should be one of this day's
twelve thousand, six hundred casualties, and it doesn't look like
you're going to be evacuated should you become wounded, which
is likely. Nor does it appear that you will receive
(09:52):
for a state, but instead it does appear that you're
going to lie there unattended, becoming just one more member
of the choir of Moan. You can ask veterans of
any war, and they'll tell you that of all the
horrors of war, the psychologically worst may well be the
(10:13):
tortured cries of their brothers in arms, insufferable agony when
there's nothing they can do to come to their aid
without exposing their position or putting others in danger, or
becoming just like them, another screaming casualty. And whether it's
medieval or modern weapons used to cause this carnage, you
(10:33):
will always hear cries for one thing, for water. But
this dehydration is caused from blood loss. Now, as in
any fight, your mouth is dry, and at any moment
it might become drier still from the loss of your blood.
And then, surprisingly do you, despite its overwhelming odds and predictability,
(10:57):
that indeed happens the realization of your fears having come
upon you, Pain and its companions of shock and immobility
join forces against you. You are now one casualty among
the day's eight thousand casualties. So you're asking yourself what
(11:17):
was so important about that wall? Why couldn't your commanders
simply have gone around it? As you drift in and
out of consciousness, whether half dreaming or awake, thoughts are
distilled for you and reduced to one thing and one desire,
only for water. Finally night comes on, and though your
(11:41):
groans and pleas are lost among the thousands of the
others around you, you have never felt more alone. No
one is coming, no one will be coming in time.
So weary from battle himself and desperate for rest, the
Confederate sergeant has been kept from sleep all the same
(12:03):
night thanks to yours and all the other pitiful, disturbing,
and debilitating cries of those not quite yet dead. By morning,
he can't take it any longer, and so this enemy
soldier asked permission to put you out of your misery.
In both his sides and your own sufferings, he's just
(12:25):
stared at. He stared at as if he's lost his
senses or has battle fatigue. Sniping at the wounded is
just not done. But he's no sniper, and what he's
asking his commanders for is permission to go over that
wall and meet you head on, to come not to
silence you, but to bring you water. His commanders tell
(12:48):
him of the bullets awaiting him on such a fool's
errand making him a casualty of well, either enemy or
mistaken friendly fire, And they tell him no, But he
is totally aware and totally determined and persistent. Yes. Most
of the wounded are like you, his enemy, or were
(13:09):
now you seem more like fellow mortals, just bleeding out
and drying up. He requests to carry a white handkerchief
as a sign of cease fire, and he keeps asking
until he gets permission he seeks, but he is told
that no handkerchief, no flag of truce, will be allowed.
(13:30):
He'll be on his own, and he'll be all. You've
got your last chance for tomorrow, meet your sworn enemy.
Richard Kirkland, Confederate Army sergeant, aged twenty. The odds of
help coming to you via Kirkland are less than the
(13:51):
odds were of being wounded. There are just too many
wounded sprawled in front of that wall, and Kirkland has well,
he's alone, and he has no plan except for the
filling of every canteen he can find, and it seems
time itself holds its breath, is over the wall. He
slips with you in that no man's land between earthly
(14:14):
consciousness and eternity. Eventually he does, indeed stumble upon you,
literally falls over you, and reaching down to support your head,
he gives you all he can from the canteen's left.
He takes off his jacket and covers you with it.
You try to raise your hand and astonished thanks, but
(14:38):
there's no need, as he can read the gratitude in
your eyes. Not a shot is heard in that hour
and a half that Kirkland spends racing from soldier to soldier,
as if in respectful awe of what is happening and
what he's risking. All that is heard are the plaintive
(14:59):
cry for the water that is now at least a possibility.
He attends to friend and foe alike, both sides Americans,
both sides brothers of a sort once again, even if
only brothers of the dust. Years later, some will claim
(15:19):
it wasn't Kirkling, but someone else, or many other someone else's.
Others will claim that he was sniped at, even wounded,
but you know better because you were there, although you're
a wonder for the rest of your life. Why he
did it? What was it that was worth more to
him than his own physical life? How could he be
(15:43):
so certain there was something even more important than his
own fears? What or who puts that instinct or knowledge
into people that results in bringing the Kingdom of Heaven
not just onto earth, but overcoming hell on earth. You
won't hear Kirkland's name mentioned nowadays, but you see it
(16:05):
doesn't matter. He's not a household name because heroes don't
do heroic things for the fame. Their self lessness can
inspire us to other, if lesser acts of love. Love,
we must remember, is an action. While Kirkland indeed survived
this day as a result, you did as well. His
(16:28):
eventual dying concern was still for others, particularly his father,
whom he wanted to know that his son had died right.
Perhaps more important is living right day by day, and
to do that you and I must know what we
are living for. Why we were given life. This is
(16:52):
everyone's foundation, so that building up and out from that
foundation brings meaning and purpose to our lives. So that
as much of our lives as possible bring relief and
life to others. You know, you have to wonder why
such stories of heroism create such a unique response in
(17:13):
us psychologically, physiologically, spiritually. It seems to contradict a spirit less,
self serving, survival of the fittest and purposeless worldview. Perhaps
the Brothers War was but one act in a long
play designed to help us recognize and appreciate the true
(17:37):
cost of love, of redemption and reconciliation.
Speaker 1 (17:45):
And a special thanks to Monte Montgomery for the production.
Richard Hood's story the Angel of Saint Mary's Heights story
here on our American Stories
Host
Lee Habeeb
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