In addition to this, in the Mississippi Valley, General Grant had laid siege to the fortress of Vicksburg ever since the end of May, and it was now clear to the leaders of the Confederacy that Vicksburg was doomed, and that very soon the Federals would control the entire Mississippi. For the South, it was a crisis of the war that could spell its final defeat. If they still hoped to win, something drastic and dramatic had to be done. Since Grant was winning the battle in the West, action had to be taken in the East—and quickly.
General Lee proposed a daring plan to invade the North. If Vicksburg was to fall, then he would attack and take Philadelphia and Washington! With the largest part of the Union army busy under General Grant, a successful strike against the North might, Lee hoped, force Lincoln to quit the fight. Surely, the great southern general thought, Lincoln would surrender and recognize the Confederacy’s independence before allowing the capital of Washington to be destroyed.
Other factors prompted Lee’s bold move, despite the continued weakness of his army. Ever since the beginning of the war, the Confederacy had sought to be recognized as a country of its own by the foreign powers of Europe, especially England and France. Lee hoped that a successful invasion of the North would secure such foreign recognition. This might mean financial aid, in exchange for cotton, which the factories of Europe needed in large supply. It might also mean pressure from England and France upon the United States—the Union states, that is—to recognize the Confederate States. Lee also thought that the presence of his army in the North would strike great fear into the people of Pennsylvania and New York and Ohio and the New England states. They were already weary of the war, and if he could destroy their morale further, it might lead to a northern surrender.
In addition, moving the battle north of the Mason-Dixon line would relieve Lee’s home state of Virginia from the great strain of having to support his huge army for over two years. Many battles had been fought on Virginia soil. The fields had been ravaged, and supplies were low. Since it was probably inevitable that there would be fighting somewhere during that summer of 1863, why not move north for a time and get supplies and food and meat and leather and grain from the lush farmlands and towns of Pennsylvania? Lee wanted to let Virginia farmers grow their crops without armies trampling all over them, taking everything in sight!
The very name Robert E. Lee struck fear into the hearts of loyal northerners. He had won most of his battles, and his army seemed nearly invincible. So when news of his invasion came, many in Pennsylvania were filled with dread.
But there was one man in the Union who realized that Lee’s coming into Pennsylvania might actually give the North the opportunity to turn the war in its own favor. That man was Abraham Lincoln, the man whom people had considered uneducated in military affairs. He saw the danger Lee was exposing himself to by stretching out his tired army so far from home and so far from supplies.
With Grant about to take the Mississippi Valley, if they maneuvered with skill and could cut Lee’s invading army off, they could destroy it once and for all, and the war would nearly be over. President Lincoln was not afraid of Lee’s reputation, for he saw what most others did not—both the weakness of Lee’s army and of his plan to invade the North.
Therefore, he kept careful watch on Lee’s movements throughout May and June. And when mounted Union spies brought word back that Lee’s forces were moving north from Hagerstown, Maryland, into Pennsylvania toward Chambersburg and Harrisburg, Lincoln ordered the generals of his Army of the Potomac to march northwest to meet him. The climax of the war had come, though none of those involved yet knew it.
The two armies were enormous. There were approximately 77,000 southern men marching under Lee, and 85,000 Union soldiers. It was sheer accident that the two huge armies met where they did. For the whole last week of June, Lee’s scouts failed him, and no reports reached him of the northern army’s position. He continued his march—with his infantry divisions spread out and dispersed dangerously far behind him—thinking that the Federal troops were far away and that there was still no threat.
But on June 28, a week after I arrived at the convent with Sister Janette, Lee received word that the Union army was massed and very close. He realized instantly the danger his army was in. Immediately he sent couriers galloping off that night through the fields and along the roads of southern Pennsylvania, calling all the scattered legions and divisions together. He had to get all his troops together as a solid unit or they would be destroyed!
The orders all these couriers carried were simple enough. The Army of Northern Virginia would assemble and prepare for battle outside the little town of Gettysburg. It was close to Lee’s present position, and many of the country roads led there. Once together, Lee would continue the march, depending on what the Union forces were doing.
The Federal Army didn’t care about Gettysburg. It held no particular importance. They were simply scouring the countryside trying to find where Lee’s army was, and Gettysburg happened to be where they found it.
As the month of June came to an end, therefore, and as I was walking about the fields and countryside thinking and praying, destiny was bringing thousands of young American soldiers across those same fields and through those same Pennsylvania woods and along the dirt roads toward Gettysburg, where their fateful and deadly collision would take place.
Chapter 16
Arrival at the Scene of Battle
Where are we going . . . what will we do?” I asked as we bounced along in the back of the wagon along the rutted dirt road. It was nearly dark. We had been riding for about two hours, and had just a little before crossed a covered wood bridge over the Susquehanna.
“There is a small convent and church in New Prospect,” replied Sister Janette. “It should only be about another thirty minutes. They will put us up for the night.”
“I mean when we reach Gettysburg,” I said. I don’t suppose I hid the lingering fear from my voice very well, because Sister Janette immediately tried to reassure me.
“We will see what the Lord will have us do,” she replied. “Don’t be afraid, Corrie. No harm will come to us, not when we are about his work of helping people. The fighting will no doubt be long over, though even if something should happen, nothing can take us out of God’s divine care. We will not reach Gettysburg until the middle of the day tomorrow, even if we leave New Prospect before dawn. But there will be many, many wounded, and the doctors and nurses there will need all the help we can give them.”
“But I know nothing about all that,” I said.
“Neither do most of us,” she replied. “More than anything, it takes a heart of love and a kind voice, with a dose of common sense. You’ll do fine, Corrie. I’m glad you came with us.”
I wasn’t sure I shared her optimism. I’d nearly fainted after pulling the Paiute arrow out of Tavish at the Pony Express station. I didn’t know how I’d be able to keep my stomach inside me if there were wounded and dying men all around me!
We slept at the convent and were in the wagon again before the sun was up the next morning. It was about thirty miles to Gettysburg from the convent, and we reached the town about two o’clock the next afternoon.
Sister Janette had said that the fighting would be over, but we began to hear the shots of guns and cannon fire when we were still an hour away from the town. The mood of the fifteen or sixteen women in the two wagons—all nuns but me—hadn’t exactly been jubilant. Everyone knew we were about serious business. Yet when we heard the dull sounds of explosions and sharp crack of gunfire off in the distance, an even greater somber mood settled over us, and hardly anything was said that whole last hour. Word had come to the convent the day before, on July 1, that the fighting had already begun. And if it was still going on as fiercely as it sounded the closer we drew to the town, it must surely have been an awful fight.
Nothing in my wildest imagination could have prepared me for what I saw. I would give almost anything to have the memory of that day and the next two
erased from my mind. That brother could commit such horrible atrocities against brother—loyal Americans every one—is a crime against our country I doubt I shall ever be able to forgive the leaders of the Confederacy for. Nothing—no amount of freedom, no amount of financial or economic power, no principle they believed in, and certainly not slavery itself—could be worth having caused the horrible suffering and massive death that their rebellion against the government of our country caused. I couldn’t help but think again of Cal, and it made me angry all over again, not for what he’d done to me, but that he could give his loyalty to the Confederacy at all. The South’s cause just wasn’t right!
But at the moment, there were more urgent things to think about. We had come to help, and there were plenty of innocent boys and young men—wearing both blue and gray—that needed tending to. And it didn’t take long for us to find them. There was suffering everywhere!
Several miles outside Gettysburg we began encountering straggling groups of retreating wounded, teams of medics, sometimes officers on horseback. The closer we got, the more activity there was—moving both away from and toward the battle. Occasionally a troop of reinforcements rode swiftly by in bright, unsoiled uniforms. But those limping back in the opposite direction were dirty, torn, and blood-smeared, moving slowly, with no smiles on their faces.
Sister Jane, who was driving the lead wagon, stopped as we passed one such group and asked a man, his attire clearly identifying him as a medic or doctor of some kind, what we could all do to help.
“You see these men, Sister?” he said. “There’s thousands more like them up there.”
He nodded his head back over his shoulder in the direction from which he’d come, where we could hear the sounds of battle.
“Strewn out all over the place for miles. I don’t know what to tell you, but if you’re looking for men that need patching up or just hauling out of there, you won’t have no trouble finding them. Just stay away from the front lines. The lead’s flying so thick you can almost see it!”
Sister Jane thanked him and we continued on. I was already starting to feel sick to my stomach just from looking at the battle-worn men who were going away from the battle, and we weren’t even there yet!
We had seen only Union soldiers, but as we entered the town of Gettysburg itself, now we began to see the gray of the Confederacy. At first the very sight of their uniforms struck fear into me, although I don’t know why. There weren’t many soldiers in the town at all, but there was a lot of activity just to the south. We could even see the edges of it as we came, which I later found out was a major battle going on right then for what was called Culp’s Hill. The hill was held by Union forces, and they were being attacked by the Confederate soldiers between the town and the hill. So the southern commanders were doing a lot of riding back and forth between the outskirts of the town and the battle.
Sister Jane led the horses right into town and straight to the St. Francis Xavier church. She had a feeling there would be plenty to do there, and she was right. As we approached, we could see great activity both inside and outside the church, which had already been set up as a makeshift hospital. Immediately, all the sisters jumped out of our wagons and rushed forward, talking to the nuns and one or two priests of St. Xavier’s.
They were glad for the help! It was clear from one glance that they were not prepared for the deluge of wounded.
Almost before I had the chance to wonder what I should be doing in the midst of all the activity, Sister Janette was running back to me from where she’d been talking to one of the priests.
“We must get all the supplies inside first, Corrie,” she said. “Why don’t you get up there and start handing them down to me from the wagon.”
I did so, and as Sister Janette left for the church with an armful, other sisters were there to cart in their share. Once started, I hardly had the chance to stop to think for the rest of the day. Every moment was filled with not only new experiences but awful sights and sounds, and everything so unexpected. I’d never dreamed of any of this when I started east!
I saw a doctor cut off the end of a young man’s mangled arm that had been blown apart by an explosion of cannon fire. I don’t mean I actually watched, but I knew what he was doing, and I heard the poor man’s tortured screaming. I saw more blood that one day than I’d ever seen in my life—outside the church and even inside it, on the blankets where we put the wounded to lie on the floor. I saw men coming in without hands, without legs, wounded and bleeding from every part of their bodies. They’d come in from the battlefield, sometimes still bleeding from fresh wounds, or sometimes with makeshift bandages wrapped around an arm or a shoulder or even all the way around the chest, and then we’d have to unwrap them and dress the wounds.
At first I hung back, aghast at how horrible it all was. I gaped with my eyes wide and my mouth hanging open, while Sister Janette and Sister Jane and all the others rushed forward to help without seeming squeamish at any of it. They couldn’t ever have seen anything like this before, yet their hearts were so full of sympathy and compassion for the poor wounded young men that they never stopped to worry about what they felt.
Even as I was carrying the last load inside from the wagon, Sister Janette called out to me from where she knelt on the other side of the church beside a boy who had just come in on a stretcher.
“Corrie, come help me for a minute,” she said, glancing up at me. I rushed toward her, throwing the blankets down on the floor against the wall. “This poor lad’s got a dreadful gash from his shoulder down across his chest,” she said. “Would you help me bandage it up?”
I don’t know what I said, but the next moment I was kneeling down on the floor beside her, the boy staring blankly up at us. I didn’t realize it until later, but what Sister Janette was doing was initiating me into the role of nurse’s assistant with a mild wound that wouldn’t be too difficult to deal with nor would repulse me too badly. Before the next two days were over I would see so much worse. But for my first exposure to battlefield nursing, even this young boy’s wound was bad enough. As she unbuttoned his tunic and peeled it away to reveal his skin, I couldn’t help looking away. There was a long red gash, still bleeding a little, about eight or nine inches long. It was a clean cut and didn’t look dirty, although I could hardly stand the mere thought of how painful it must be for him.
“What . . . what happened?” I found myself asking as Sister Janette dabbed alcohol on a clean white rag.
“I got thrown off my horse,” he said, “and a da—”
He winced sharply in pain as Sister Janette applied the soaked cloth to the cut and gingerly cleaned the whole area of his chest.
“—a Yankee swatted down at me with his sword,” the boy went on, still grimacing from the alcohol.
“That’s awful!” I exclaimed.
“Nothing more’n I’d have done to him if I’d had the chance!” he said. “I’m just lucky my lieutenant shot him before he ran me through a second time.”
“He shot him?”
“Yep, killed him dead in a second.”
I winced and looked away, but not from the pain. I couldn’t believe how casually he spoke about another man dying. All the while Sister Janette was dabbing away at the cut.
“Did . . . did it hurt terribly?” I asked.
“Yeah, but only at first. It kinda went away. ’Course, I think I fainted for a spell, too, before I woke up here. That alcohol there, that hurts worst of all.” He turned toward Sister Janette. “But I’m obliged to you, Sister,” he said, “for helping me out. Don’t want you to get the wrong idea.”
She smiled down sweetly at him.
“Corrie,” she said, turning to me. “There’s some salve there in that bag just to your left. Will you get it for me? We’ll dress the wound.”
I found it and handed it to her.
“Now, Corrie,” she went on, “get some of it out of the bottle and apply it—use your fingers—up and down the cut.”
I did
. There was nothing any worse about it than Claude Tavish’s arrow, though I couldn’t help shuddering when I first touched the open wound. The boy lay there calmly as I put the ointment on. After the alcohol, I suppose it was a relief.
“Now that roll of gauze,” Sister Janette said.
I got it out and handed it to her. She unrolled several lengths, wrapping it over the wound, then up and around his shoulder, diagonally across his back, under the opposite arm, and around across his chest and over the wound again. She repeated the process several times until there were three or four thicknesses over the cut. Then she cut it off and tied it firmly in place. We would not follow that pattern too long, because there were far more wounds to treat than there were supplies. By the end of the day we were forced to be stingy with bandages and ointment. But as yet we did not know the full extent of the battle’s severity.
“There you are, young man,” she said cheerily. “That wound should heal just fine.”
He nodded, thanked us both again, and we rose and moved away.
“You did very well, Corrie,” said Sister Janette. “We will see where else we might be useful. Did everything get in from the wagons?”
“Yes,” I answered.
“Good,” she said, stooping down beside another wounded man, again dressed in gray, although much older this time, and with his eyes closed.
“Are you in much pain?” she asked, laying her hand gently across the man’s white forehead. Slowly he opened his eyes, saw that it was a nun speaking to him, tried to force a smile, then closed them again.
“Yes, Sister,” he whispered, “but nothing that will kill me. Take care of the others first. I’ll live.”
Into the Long Dark Night Page 7