The Battle of Chickamauga in September of 1863 resulted from the efforts of the Federals to destroy the confederate forces south of Chattanooga. By moving an entire Confederate Army corps by rail from the Eastern front, the Confederates achieved a tremendous tactical victory and took thousands of Union prisoners.

Readers sometimes tell me stories that have been handed down through generations in their families. What follows is my version of one such telling. It is a tender reminder that, thankfully, our humanity can transcend our belief in causes. I have not used the true names of those involved.

After Chattanooga, Tennessee fell to union forces in 1863, a new advance southward into Georgia was begun by the federal army. Anticipating this, the confederate generals had moved an entire army corps by rail from Virginia to confront the coming union offensive into Georgia. This daring counter move by the confederates enabled them to inflicted a humiliating defeat on the union army at Chickamauga. Thousands of Union prisoners were captured. Many captive Union soldiers were held in the field awaiting transport to the infamous prison camp at Andersonville in southwest Georgia.

In the aftermath of so great a battle, some union prisoners were able to escape. Some made their way back to Union lines; some were arrested as deserters when they did so. The rest were hounded to earth by the old men and boys who made up the Georgia “Home Guards.” But not all.

Men or boys in blue who were able to escaped could turn up in unexpected places, as did Carl Schroeder of the 21st Ohio Infantry Regiment. He ended up on a Georgia family farm in Pickens County, my correspondent explained, the farm of his great-great-grandfather, Samuel. Samuel, his wife Sarah and daughter Carrie, aged 16, were asleep one warm night in late September of 1863 when they were awakened by the neighing of their plow horse. Samuel grabbed his shotgun and ran outside in his nightshirt. In the moonlight he could see a slim man trying to mount the family’s unsaddled horse.

Samuel fired and the man (boy as it turned out) fell to the ground as the frightened horse raced off. “I couldn’t let him steal our horse,” Samuel said in the story as passed down. “How would we get the crops in or plow in the spring?” His wife Sarah and daughter Carrie rushed to his side, relieved that Samuel had survived the encounter. In the next instant they were confronted by the reality that the thief was not dead, as a groan rose from the crumpled figure on the ground.

“He’s still alive,” Carrie shouted in her fright. “What will we do?” No one suggested shooting the writhing figure and Samuel approached him cautiously, poking the young man with the barrel of his shotgun. The boy cried out in pain, but made no effort to rise.

The three of them half carried, half-dragged the intruder into the house and got him onto the bed in the “Preacher’s Room,” a room set aside for traveling Methodist preachers and occasional family visitors. Sarah lit a kerosene lamp and set to work. By first light, Sarah had found where the heavy shot had pierced the boy’s back and bandaged the wound as best she knew how. “He is so young,” she thought and cradled his head against her arm. His restless dreams were of the volleys of fire and screaming men at Chickamauga.

All that following morning, the boy lay unmoving on the bed, his breathing labored, the blood soaking his bandages. Another day came and went as the family speculated on who the boy was and if he might die.

By the third day, young Carl Schroeder was aware of his situation and spoke to his captors. He even took a meal of corn bread and buttermilk and a little soup. Samuel tied one of the boy’s ankles to the bed frame, fearing the boy might awaken in the night and in a delirium murder them all. There was no need. Carl was a simple farm boy with a strong German accent, as he told them in whispers the following morning when he was stronger.

Carl was a member of an Ohio infantry company made up of sons of mostly recent German immigrants. Samuel and Sarah were reminded of their own son, David, who was away in Virginia fighting with General Wright’s Georgia Brigade. What would become of their son if he had to rely on the kindness of a Union family? Carl’s blond hair and slender body seemed familiar. As they nursed him, it was clear he shared their own son’s easy friendliness and earnest expression.

At Carl’s pleading, Carrie took down letters to be sent to his parents back in Ohio -in case he did not make it home. But Mother Sarah would not allow the letters to be sent until the war was over. Sending the letters of an escaped “Yankee” prisoner could get the family in trouble. It could even get them killed. So, the reassuring words from a boy’s lonely heart were secreted away.

During the days of his bed care, Carl endeared himself with his politeness and with his homesick descriptions of his own family back in Ohio. His effort at cheerfulness under these difficult circumstances made them heart-sick for their own far- away son who was only eighteen. It was a long and cruel war they had endured. Carl’s description of the fighting at Chickamauga only increased the family’s fears for their son, David.

As their uninvited guest improved, Samuel and his family talked of how Carl might safely return home, or at least return to his own army and its doctors. No ready answer came to mind.

Finally, two weeks to the day after he was wounded, Carl took a sudden turn for the worse. His body became swollen and fever-racked day and night. On a Sunday night in October, he died, an enemy soldier surrounded by a family that had come to care for him as the god-sent embodiment of their own son so long away in war.

Samuel dug a resting place for Carl near the great red oak that shaded their yard in summer and gently laid the boy down and covered him. The grave was left unmarked to avoid unwanted questions. This new grave was beside the small grave of Mary, Samuel and Martha’s own infant girl lost to fever so long ago.

When the war ended, Sarah sent a packet of letters -the letters Carl had asked Carrie to write- by a friend traveling north who was to mail them once above the Mason-Dixon line. Sarah was fearful a response from Carl’s mother might somehow incriminate her, so she did not sign the simple note she enclosed. The note only told of the wounded boy who died with a family who gave him care and shelter.

Ten years later, when the scars of war had faded, Samuel ordered a gravestone from the marble quarry. It was inscribed only with the words, “Carl Schroeder 1863, A Boy Far from Home.” The sight of the stone through their kitchen window served as comfort to Carl and Sarah, whose only son, like so many others, had simply not come home from the war, his fate unknown. The stone is there to this day.