Not far away at a site called Marye's Heights - you could easily walk it from the Confederate burial field - will be another Memorial Day weekend observance, at the Fredericksburg National Cemetery. More than 15,000 Union soldiers are buried there, and more than 12,000 of them remain nameless.
Volunteers will light candles and place them in luminaries at each of the graves, a glowing tribute to a horribly destructive time here, a spot where the Confederacy reigned while the Union attacked in an incessant battle on Dec. 13, 1862. Taps will provide the background here, too, every half hour.
There is a story about human kindness - futile, yes, even pyrrhic - and when I heard it a few weeks ago on a sunny late-winter morning before the summer crowds had arrived to set the historic town buzzing, I felt tears well up.
It goes like this: A 19-year-old Confederate soldier named Richard Kirkland was among the victors in that battle, when the South bombarded the Union troops from behind a stone wall. The next dawn, thousands of Union soldiers lay dead or moaning for relief.
Kirkland got the reluctant approval of his commander to collect and fill canteens. At great risk, he crossed over the wall with the canteens and walked to and fro, giving his enemies whatever comfort he could.
Kirkland's statue stands today at the cemetery, canteen in hand. He is called the Angel of Marye's Heights. The year after his act of mercy, he was killed in battle.
After seeing the two cemeteries and hearing that story, I felt downright schizophrenic - a sense, I guess, that may come to Fredericksburg itself when Memorial Day approaches.
