Night Music at Champion Hill

by Margie Riddle Bearss

Small night noises began to invade the deep silence over the Champion Hill battlefield. The raucous cricket’s noise blended with the encroaching dark. From Bakers Creek the little rain frogs called occasionally.

The day’s sunshine revealed sharp clear images of rocks, trees, and fields - the remains of a hillside that once claimed so many dead. I felt the backward zoom of time - back to when blue and gray-clad ghosts struggled in a life and death fight. The fields and ravines are now desolate and empty of everything except the spirits of those who died - Yankees and Rebels - all heroes - both fighting for what they believed and held so dear.

The sun dipped below the horizon and I gazed outward over the battlefield as the lingering shades of daylight gave way to total darkness. Then, I listened as the night music swelled into a symphony of sound.

<Click here to close window>