Wedded to War (Heroines Behind the Lines)

by Jocelyn Green

  “It will do!” said Charlotte. “The disciples fed the five thousand with their two fish and five loaves of bread. We can feed a few hundred with ten pounds of gruel.”

  “The disciples had Jesus with them,” Alice reminded her.

  “And so do we.”

  By the time Mr. Olmsted arrived with a civilian surgeon, Charlotte and Alice were ladling hot gruel out of the ship’s deck buckets and into the tin dippers of the pale, emaciated, shivering wretches covering the cabin floors. Trembling voices cried, “God bless you, miss! God bless you!”

  Within two hours, Frederick Knapp and Dr. Robert Ware came from Cheeseman’s Creek on the Elizabeth, the Sanitary Commission’s supply boat. Soon bed sacks were filled with straw, and hoisted, along with bales of blankets and stores of medicines, into the Ocean Queen. Mr. Knapp went on shore, found and shot a rebel cow at pasture, and quickly brought the beef along with another surgeon.

  By ten o’clock that night, every sick man—nearly six hundred in number—was in a warm bed, and had received medical treatment. Beef tea and milk punch had been served to all who required it. All but three of them survived the night.

  Ruby had come because she had known no other option. But now that she was here, she could not imagine a better situation for her. It was impractical and nearly impossible to do laundry on the ship, so they nailed it up and sent it north to be washed, for now. Ruby was put to use making beef tea in the kitchen with some other women, mostly contrabands. Every day, for every hundred patients on board, they were to make two and a half gallons of beef tea, four gallons of gruel, and half a gallon of milk porridge. Every day was the same, and though the work was not difficult, it did require attention—a mercy to have less energy to dwell on her past and wonder about her future.

  The haggard countryside of Ireland, the slums of New York City, the pestilential steam of the Washington hospitals—all that had happened there, seemed irretrievably far away now. Until one day, Charlotte came to find her.

  “A letter for you, Ruby,” she had said, with a question in her eyes.

  The envelope was stamped in New York City and addressed to Ruby O’Flannery in care of the Sanitary Commission, Hospital Transports, Cheeseman’s Creek, Virginia. She opened it slowly, pulled out a single sheet of paper, and gasped.

  Ruby,

  You hold your fate in your own hands. Tell Charlotte about me, and you’ll be out on the streets again when I tell her your dirty secrets. I’ll bet your husband would be quite interested to know what his little wife has been up to while he has been fighting for her, too. Keep your mouth shut, and all will be well.

  Phineas

  He had figured it out. She was not free. She would never escape her past, not ever.

  Wilson Small, York River, Virginia

  Tuesday, May 13, 1862

  Rain dimpled the river as a butter yellow sun tucked itself into folds of grey flannel clouds. Charlotte wanted nothing more than to sink right down with it, but a stack of neglected correspondence called out pitifully to her from her carpetbag.

  Mother wanted her to come home. So did Phineas. Edward Goodrich wrote from Fortress Monroe to tell her he had a military commission now and was close enough for a visit if time permitted. Caleb wrote with more tales of the hurdles in the medical care in South Carolina, and with more snippets of poetry, as always.

  Her eyelids were heavy, and she longed more for sleep than anything else. But Mother’s letters, at least, would have to be answered.

  Dear Mother, she began. Time escapes me. I am told it is Tuesday, but I certainly thought it was Thursday. Alice and I keep well. She stopped. It was such a subjective statement. She was fine, actually, satisfied and fulfilled, but her mother would never call it “well.” Charlotte and the rest of the women never knew where they would lay their heads at night, or when, or for how long.

  The hospital transport system had grown since that first day in April. The tugboat Wilson Small was the headquarters boat, where Olmsted kept his office. Several smaller coast-steamers, had been acquired to deliver patients to Fortress Monroe, Washington, and Baltimore, but could not make the trip beyond Philadelphia. As for large transports capable of sailing to New York City and back, the Daniel Webster was joined by the S. R. Spaulding, whose stable odor still lingered from the cargo of horses it formerly carried. On any given night, Charlotte never knew until the moment for sleep arrived on which ship she would lay her head. She had no bed, but curled up wherever a corner presented itself. The only thing she could be sure of was that she and Alice stayed on the peninsula while other doctors and nurses traveled north to the hospitals with the patients. They were too valuable at the front for Mr. Olmsted to part with them, he said.

  The women’s time was divided into three- and six-hour shifts, but emergencies sprang up requiring all hands on a regular basis. After all the patients had been fed and cleaned, wounds packed with lint, bandages soaked or changed, order enforced in the pantry and kitchen, she may get a bite to eat. Pieces of bread served as plates and her fingers as forks and knives. The top of an old stove was the dinner table, lumpy carpetbags the chairs. No, these were not details she could share with her mother.

  I am happy in my work, she wrote, and paused. This much was true. But as soon as her hands stopped working and she had any moments off duty, the sounds of fever patients moaning, amputation patients screaming, was almost too much for her.

  We do not order our days according to the sun and moon anymore, she continued. Instead, we sleep between shiploads of sick coming up to us. The idea you suggest of the possibility of infection here is perfectly ridiculous. The ships are well ventilated and we each take our daily quinine dose religiously—

  “Miss Waverly.” Mr. Knapp stood before her now, lit up by flashes of lightning cutting jagged holes in the sky behind him. “A telegram. A hundred men left on the ground at Bigelow’s Landing. Ambulance train just left them there. No food or drink all day. ‘Dying in the rain,’ it says. One other nurse is coming but I need more help. Will you come?”

  Before he had finished speaking, Charlotte had swept her letter back into the carpetbag and was now pulling a shawl around her shoulders, her feet carrying her toward the door. What was a letter, when there were lives to be saved? Who needed sleep, when the rush of emergency propelled her?

  Chapter Thirty

  S. R. Spaulding, Pamunkey River, Virginia

  Saturday, May 17, 1862

  In a rare moment of calm, Ruby rubbed her aching back and eased herself into a chair on deck as the last hour of daylight washed over her. The baby in her belly was almost out of room, and Ruby felt every stretch and somersault as tiny hands and heels pressed her from the inside out. She knew she was running out of time, but for now, just for this moment, she pushed the thought aside and relished the enchanting scenery and the song of the whippoorwill instead.

  The shore was so close to the steamer the trees leaned over and brushed its smokestacks with their branches. Trees and shrubs of every shade of green lined the river, broken up every now and then by creeks, running up through meadowlands into the distance. The river was narrow, and it doubled back on itself so many times Ruby felt as though she were floating in a watery maze.

  Like her life. So many twists and turns, some of them taking her backward, some propelling her forward into an unknown wilderness. Was she really getting farther away from the life she once knew, or was she truly just in a tangle of unnavigable, rock-bottomed creeks and streams that would only dump her on the same barren shoal from which she had begun?

  The sun set as the Spaulding rounded another bend, and the sky and water gleamed golden alike in the sunset, dazzling Ruby’s eyes until all the trees suddenly looked black.

  Suddenly, sharp pain clutched Ruby’s belly and tightened like a vice. She held her breath until it released its grip.

  Night was hastening on.

  White House Landing, Pamunkey River, Virginia

  Monday, May 18, 1862

  Ar
my tents and wagons dotted the sloping fields at White House Landing, the Army of the Potomac’s new supply depot on the Pamunkey River. The White House plantation overlooking the water had once belonged to Martha Washington and was named for the manor house they called “White House.” The original house was no longer there, however, and the home that replaced it was much darker, and not nearly as big as its name implied. The current owners had fled before the Yankees arrived. How shocked they would be to see the place now, Charlotte thought.

  Grass that was lush and green just days ago had been trampled to dust by horses, caissons, and soldiers. Pie peddlers threaded their way through the men waiting for action, selling six pies to a man. Eat while you can, they cried, you won’t find these on the battlefield! The Pamunkey River was crowded with schooners, gunboats, and steamboats, including the Spaulding, where the women waited, as directed, for Mr. Olmsted to return from his meeting with the Medical Director, Charles Tripler.

  By the time Mr. Olmsted appeared on the gangway, Charlotte could tell he was angry.

  “God forbid,” he muttered, “that there should be a battle tomorrow.” He forcefully wiped the sweat from his forehead with a damp, balled-up handkerchief.

  “What happened?” Charlotte ventured, almost afraid to hear the answer.

  “What didn’t happen, is the more suitable question, Miss Waverly It’s what didn’t happen that boggles the mind.”

  Not again, thought Charlotte. She glanced at Alice to see if she were listening. She was.

  “For the life of me, I can’t understand why the government insists on keeping that Tripler fellow as the army’s Medical Director! No—” He paused to correct himself. “I know why—he’s of the old guard. He’s been in the service longer than most, so they let him have the position. Thank heavens the Sanitary Commission doesn’t get a dime from the government. At least our independence from the bureaucracy means we can do things our own way. A far better way than the path they’re taking, that’s for sure.”

  “But Tripler,” Charlotte interrupted. “What has he done—or not done—this time?”

  Olmsted shook his head and paced the deck. “That fool. He is up to his ears in disarray. The sick are already collecting at White House, with no system yet conceived as to how to dispose of them. I should not be surprised if we have thousands upon our hands within days.” He rubbed the back of his mosquito-bitten neck. “The Daniel Webster and the Elm City should be here tomorrow and can take six hundred off, and Knapp has gone to Yorktown for the rest of our boats. But would you believe, that in the course of my brief meeting with Tripler, we were interrupted no fewer than four times by separate messengers telling us of more sick arriving, and no accommodations to be had for them?”

  “What about the house?” asked Alice. “White House?”

  He shook his head. “You mean the brown cottage. No, no, federal guards have been placed around it as a building of historic importance that shall not be desecrated. It belonged to Martha Washington, and her granddaughter, Mary Anna Custis Lee—you’ll remember she’s General Robert E. Lee’s wife—has left a note requesting that we honor the memory of our first president by leaving it alone. McClellan has agreed.”

  “So then, has the army no tents?” Charlotte asked.

  “Tents, yes! Tents they have! But no detail on hand to pitch the blasted things. And if they were pitched, there would be no beds to put in them! And as for medicines in any adequate quantity—” He shook his head and laughed darkly.

  “Dare I ask what provision has been made?” Charlotte asked.

  “Tripler says he has sent numerous telegrams to various authorities, since March 15, requesting supplies for the army of 140,000 men. He asked for thirty contract surgeons and 144 four-wheeled ambulances—the two-wheeled are good for nothing. He asked for medical supplies for five thousand men.”

  “And?”

  “Just today he has received some cooking utensils and a little liquor and furniture, and one hundred ounces of quinine. That is all.”

  “Just one hundred ounces?”

  “He requested two thousand last week. There are five surgeons and assistants, one steward, no apothecary, and no nurses. Two wells have been dug but the water from neither has been found fit for use.”

  Mr. Olmsted’s words hung in the air, heavy and dark, like the four black gunboats sitting in the river next to the Spaulding.

  “How much time do we have?” whispered Charlotte.

  “The army marches tomorrow.” He looked at the shore now teeming with life. “A battle may occur at any time. We are not prepared for it.”

  Mr. Olmsted gripped the railing of the deck until his knuckles turned white. “Hang it all!” he shouted into the wind. “We are supposed to support the Medical Department, not do everything for it!”

  Sweat beading on his pale, pinched face, he ripped the tie from around his neck and cursed under his breath. Turning to Charlotte and Alice, he said, “I cannot ask you to go ashore and help in the field hospitals. You are each under my responsibility, and your duties, as we have outlined them and told your families, were to be confined to housekeeping and cooking on the ships themselves.”

  “We can do more than that,” said Charlotte. “I’m a trained nurse. I have worked as such in Washington City, and by now Alice could do it on her own, too, she has spent so much time in hospitals.”

  “No,” he said quietly. Then louder, “No, it is not the same, you cannot pretend that what you have done was in any way similar to the devastation you are about to witness. I cannot, I will not, ask you to descend into the misery that is a field hospital after a battle.”

  “And what will we do? Stay on the ship twiddling our thumbs until patients arrive?” said Alice. “Unthinkable. My husband is out there.”

  “We are all well aware of that fact, Mrs. Carlisle,” he said. “So is Mrs. O’Flannery’s. But you have no idea what you are about to do.” A heavy sigh slumped his shoulders. “I wash my hands of this stain that will forever mark you.”

  Charlotte’s heart thudded in her chest. But she would not be swayed.

  Mr. Olmsted sighed. “As I said, I cannot ask this of you. You are ladies. You were meant to be protected.” He looked them in the eyes now with eyes like burning coal. “But if you desire of your own accord to go ask the surgeons if they would be agreeable to your services, I will not stop you.”

  White House Landing, Pamunkey River, Virginia

  Tuesday, June 3, 1862

  Trains of wounded and sick men had begun arriving from the Battle of Fair Oaks two days before, and still they did not stop. A thousand men, two thousand, three, four … Charlotte could avert her gaze from the ghastliest sights, but she could not get away from the constant sound of moaning and crying, even screams.

  Or from the smell. It wasn’t just the sickly sweet, metallic scent of blood she remembered from her father’s sick room. It wasn’t just the sour smell of fever and body odor, or the eye-watering stench of dysentery. No, it was more. It was worse. The horrible odor of rotting flesh crawled up into Charlotte’s nostrils and lodged there, filling her mouth with the taste of spoiled meat.

  The Sanitary Commission had set up a large tent that housed the kitchen, storeroom, and bakery, along with twenty Sibley tents along the railroad. But it was not enough.

  The war-trampled plain surrounding the White House was littered with bodies stretched out and exposed beneath the merciless, glaring sun. Whippoorwills were replaced by circling vultures and buzzing flies.

  The Sanitary Commission and the government had been reinforced by more civilian volunteers. The Sisters of Charity were there, as well as men and women from the Christian Commission. Since the government had made no plan for stretcher bearers, Mr. Olmsted had rounded up a work crew of Negro contrabands for the job. Four Negroes from the Lee estate helped in the kitchen tent, and nine of them did the hospital washing in their cabins.

  Civilian doctors picked their ways through row upon row of ill and wounde
d patients, refusing to help. They were only interested in surgical cases, they insisted. Looking to get some experience with the amputation knife and the bow saw.

  Butchers! Charlotte thought, shuddering at the screams that filled her ears. They did not come from the patients themselves, for with a little chloroform, they were unconscious during the five-minute procedure. No, the shrieking came from those waiting in line, watching man after man go to the table with four limbs, and come off of it with three. Or two.

  So this is what Caleb had to do, she thought darkly, and watched with morbid curiosity as a surgeon some distance from her tent wiped his knife on his blood-covered apron between patients. As he brought the metal down to meet body, she quickly looked away. But the loud rasping of the saw on human bone would stay in her memory forever, she was sure, followed by the dull thud of the limb falling to the ground. Bile rose in her mouth, but she swallowed the bitterness back down until her stomach roiled with churning acid. Mr. Olmsted was right, she thought. These moments will mark me for ever, yet I cannot turn my back on these men.

  The only way to stop the noise was to drown it out with something else.

  “Mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord,” she began singing, softly at first, voice quavering with emotion. “He is trampling out the vintage where the grapes of wrath are stored.” Alice joined her voice to Charlotte’s. “He hath loosed the fateful lightning of His terrible swift sword: His truth is marching on.”

  One by one, other women raised their voices while their hands remained busy at their tasks: baking bread, simmering beef tea, pouring brandy and water down the soldiers’ throats, washing fever-blistered faces, sponging over crusty bandages. Glory, glory, hallelujah! Glory, glory, hallelujah! Glory, glory, hallelujah! His truth is marching on.