Civil War Commando by Jerome Preisler

Author:Jerome Preisler
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Regnery History
Published: 2020-10-20T00:00:00+00:00

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Will arrived at Mary Cushing’s doorstep in terrible shape. Emaciated and feverish, his hand a source of constant pain, he was suffering a severe recurrence of the hacking coughs that would plague him throughout his life.

His worried mother put him to bed at once and spent the next several weeks nursing him. For the first two weeks, there was no improvement. Confined to his old upstairs room, he soaked his sheets with sweat and could hardly sleep at night because of the aching discomfort in his hand.

As mid-April sunshine bathed the mountains of western New York, Will’s health finally took a major turn for the better. He had already grown impatient with his convalescence; most of the young men he’d known growing up were off to war, and Lon was far away with the Army of the Potomac. Gone, too, was Cousin Mary, who had settled into married life with her new husband in Wisconsin. Without those closest to him, Fredonia was a lonely place.

Shortly before May, Will’s childhood friend Ella Kingsbury told him of a social at the old First Baptist Church of Fredonia. Ella still lived in the house where she’d grown up across the street; it was her father, the pastor, whose cow a ten-year-old Will had taken out to graze for pennies a day.

The night of the get-together, a bored and restless Will slipped out his window, shimmied down the porch column, and hastened over to the church near the town common. His mother, who had restricted her patient’s activities to his bedroom, only learned of his escape, to some amusement, once he returned hours later. His time away at war had changed him, she noted; he now carried himself with his head high and his shoulders thrown back like a true military man. But underneath it, she still the saw a mischievous boy who was “impatient of restraint … quick to feel, and prompt to act.”

“You must be feeling well,” she said in a stern tone meant to camouflage her affection.

“I suppose,” he said, hardly fooled.

Both knew he would soon be leaving her tender care.

Just days later, in fact, Will received orders to report to his former ship the USS Minnesota. Having undergone extensive repairs after the Merrimack’s attack, she was now back on duty at Hampton Roads. He was to leave Fredonia at the earliest opportunity.

First, though, he took the time to stop by the offices of the Censor, where his brother Howard had worked as a printer’s devil. Thinking Will’s exploits with the Navy would be of local interest, the editor had asked him to recount them for a feature story. He happily obliged, adding some obligatory flourishes.

Mary Barker Smith Cushing wasn’t pleased. Very much a Puritan at heart, she believed his naval service a matter of duty, not glory-seeking; nor did she approve of her son’s knack for peppering his stories with detailed recollections of violence and bloodshed. But Will, who always brought a gleam to her eye, talked her into giving the editor his letters home for publication.

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