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Battle Above the Clouds

© Virginia Marin

On the twenty-fourth of November in the year 1863, the Union forces of the North defeated the Southern Confederates at the Battle of Lookout Mountain, which occurred during the American Civil War. Part of the fighting took place in a heavy mist on the mountain, hence the name etched in time--The Battle Above the Clouds...

"Fighting Joe" Hooker had 12,000 men in blue that he had moved like ten-penny soldiers to the west of Chattanooga where 1,200 rebels in grey were ready to repel them. The rebel's daring hold at Craven House was so thwarted by heavy fire that they were ordered to retreat to the top of Lookout Mountain.

Hooker knew that his enemy was determined and would fight to the last man. No one was eager to see the next day's sunrise. But there was no sunrise. Instead, a ghostly grey fog enveloped the mountain. The Blue took Lookout Mountain with 629 causalities and 81 deaths. The Grey was totally devastated.

Ulyssys S. Grant of this would later write: "The Battle of Lookout Mountain is one of the romances of war. There was no such battle and no action even worthy to be called a battle on Lookout Mountain. It is all poetry".

But, the blood stained earth of Blue and Grey cry out to him their epithet:

If ye break faith with us who die
We shall not sleep, though poppies grow in Flanders fields.

Why did things go so terribly wrong for the Grey who were dreadfully out numbered, but heavily armed and entrenched in a most favorable position? Why did they succumb to total loss and denigration? Some mountain folk explain it like this:

Now, it was long ago upheld by settlers of the Tennessee Valley that faerie melodies, beautiful and wild, floated across the mountain and lulled the unsuspected into a melancholic forgetfulness. The mountain was also the territory of the Hurlers who were Daoine Sidhe.

These fairy folk engaged in hurling, a popular fairy sport in Ireland. Hurling always includes at least two humans who have been invited to participate. On November the twenty-fourth in the year 1863, there was a hurling match on the top of Lookout Mountain. But instead of only two human guests their number suddenly increased to 12,000 humans on the host's side but only 1,200 humans were on the side of the guests. This churned into a disagreement and the match boiled into a fight. The host Sidhe transformed themselves and their 12,001 humans into flying beetles. The beetles ate everything in sight, including the hosts and their 1,201 humans. Suddenly, hundreds of blackbirds flew in from a hole in the ground and devoured the marauding beetles.

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