Sargent of the Patrol: Gabriel Horton

Character from a short story

Sargent of the Patrol: Gabriel Horton

Sargent Gabriel Horton leads a well-trained company of civil war soldiers through the mess and mires of battle. Horton, an unrecognized hero, suffers with his men over the heartlessness, pain, and torture of war.

Sargent Horton: School Teacher

Broad shoulders with a rolling gait that ate up the miles during a pushed march. Sargent Gabe wasn’t afraid to push his men to the point of thirst and hunger if he achieved his superior’s orders. The soldiers in his patrol did not see him as cruel or uncaring. Sarge pushed himself as hard as he pushed his men. He drank the same water and ate the same food. As a result, he carried the same lice and dysentery as his men. His mustached face, bright red and hardened by the sun, dirt, and gunpowder, rarely smiled. The death and tragedy of this war did not escape him. The weight of every man lost in his patrol caused hi broad shoulders to stoop as an older man. At the age of twenty-three, Sargent Gabriel Horton, seasoned and tenacious soldier, felt mentally and physically aged beyond years.

As a volunteer in the Union Army of New York State, 1st Infantry battalion, Gabriel Horton knew why he volunteered. As a schoolteacher and historian, he realized the sacrifices made founding fathers. He studied the dangers concerning the separation of North and South. He, also, knew the world, particularly Great Britain and France waiting behind the scenes, as vultures over struggling, dying carrion. The vultures of the world contributed to the efforts that split the young nation. The British and French, each country with it’s own agendas, plotted and schemed behind the political scenery, covertly assisted by the Northern Union. When the young Confederated States fall to the North, then the South becomes open to invasion and pillaging. The South becomes nothing more than a deserted swamp with mosquitoes and malaria.

Sergeant Horton talked and taught his men as they marched, as the kept pace with the rhythm of his baritone voice. Horton was a natural leader knowing his men needed nourishment for their brains and hearts more than their bodies. He taught them Aristotle, Copernicus and Leonardo Da Vinci. He taught them to triangulate and read the topography of his maps. He endeavored to educate his men so that he would not lose them because of ignorance. The schoolteacher, as he was sometimes known, recited Shakespeare, Thomas Paine and the Declaration of Independence to free their minds from the toils and tragedies of war.

Sargant Horton: Family Man

Sarge carried the soul of every man is his patrol as he carried the souls of his family. The family he held close to his heart survived without him for the last few years. The New York homestead in Platteville is his reality; his legacy is his land not this God-forsaken war. The small farmhouse, hay barn, hay fields and orchards will outlive the remains of this war’s folly.

His wife, blonde and buxom relieved his mind from the war when he allowed himself a few moments. The children she raised on her own were his pride and joy. He waited impatiently for the time he could walk through the front door of his home and breathe.

Three red-headed boys were blessed with the hair pf Gabriel’s ancestors. They worked beside their mother until the day of his return. Until their father’s return, the boys practiced many of the old Irish sports, jousting and swordplay, with weapons forged by their father. He is an accomplished blacksmith.

Reading filled the quiet moments for the sons of a schoolteacher. Even a farmer and homesteader, Gabriel allotted abundant space tor his book collection that had traveled miles on ships, wagons, and horses. In their father’s home, the boys were expected to understand the rudiments of arithmetic, English grammar, German and Latin. They also practiced the art of handwriting. Sergeant Horton believed that a farmer had no need for ignorance.

Learning the basics of civilized education guaranteed against money shortages and crop failures. Gabriel believed that a man’s books relieved the darkest solitudes and loneliness.

The Cost of War

The man known as Gabriel Horton rearranged his union cap which barely harnessed the curls and frizzes of his knotted red hair. Rarely cutting his hair as in the tradition of his warlike Irish ancestors, Gabriel appeared as a combatant for the fields of Erin. His battle cries, heard above the fighting, rallied his men in the New York infantry. Many close to him said that if Gabriel’s war cries did not scare the Rebs, his fiery bush of hair did.

One thing, however, brought the Sarge to his knees and that was the sight of a young Johnny Reb lying dead on the battlefield. How many of these children must he kill before the armies withdrew and counted the losses of such young minds?

Gabe heard through the grapevine that the Government Accounting Office counted at least 750,000, more than that in physical and mental injuries. Enlisted and conscripted soldiers were not privy to such information. The desertion rate was high enough. The faces of dead children haunted many of the deserters. The men in gentlemen’s clothing would eventually count the dead children; safe in their offices with counting machines. Eventually, they would be haunted by the children’s faces.

General William Tecumseh Sherman

General William Tecumseh Sherman failed to impress Sergeant Horton for many reasons. Sherman, considered a heartless and ruthless tactician, wiped away regiments and battalions with the nod of his head. Family homes and crops were ravaged without mercy in the name of the Union War effort. Sherman began his scorched earth policy from Atlanta, Georgia to Savannah, Georgia. All was leveled against his fellow Americans.

The End

Sargent Horton did not understand the destruction of Southern lands without plans for reparations. Horton, a decent man with a war mangled heart and soul, suffered. His oath of loyalty prevented him from freeing the choice of desertion. Yet, he understood the men’s needs to protest the atrocities and wastefulness brought by Sherman’s decisions and actions.

Gabe Horton was a soldier. Regardless of physical pain and mental anguish, he marched his men over every patch of grass that came between them and their orders. Each blade of grass, covered with blood, each tree riddled with bullets was a reminder that brothers died side by side. The marching soldiers of Horton’s company moved past these signs with haggard faces, pain filled eyes wondering when the end would come, for the war and their souls.

Sargent Gabriel Horton couldn’t answer their eyes. He wouldn’t answer his own heart’s cries. The end would come. The next field, the next bend in the road, the end would come.