Libbie appraised her. She was tall, but her face and figure were childlike. But what did age matter, when one was willing to work in times like this? “Are you with the Sanitary Commission?”
“No.”
“Christian Commission?”
“No.”
Obviously she was not with the convent from Emmitsburg, Maryland.
“I’m just here with myself, and I want to help.” She crowded close to Liberty and whispered. “Only, I got a hankerin’ to work with Confederate wounded—seeing as they seem likely to be most neglected. Wouldn’t you say that’s true?”
Liberty glanced at Bella, who nodded. “Do you have any nursing experience?” Liberty asked.
“Did you, before this battle?”
Liberty raised an eyebrow. “I must warn you, a field hospital can be quite shocking. The smells and sounds are even worse than what you’ll see.”
“I’m smellin’ and hearin’ plenty right here in town. Is it worse than this?”
“No. In fact, the open air is a great benefit to us at the farm.”
“How are you set for water? Because they are sure running out of it here, folks say.”
“We have a water source nearby, Willoughby Run.”
“Is it contaminated? By the dead?”
Why had Liberty not considered this before?
“Because if it is, I can boil it. I imagine you’re short on time with five hundred patients, but if you ain’t got clean water, they ain’t gonna get any better, that’s sure.”
“Fair enough. Would you be willing to make beef tea, too, and muck out straw matted with blood and filth? Would you comb lice out of hair, moisten bandages, disinfect the trench?”
“I can do most anything you put me to do. I just want to help. Wouldn’t you be glad for another set of hands?
Liberty would. “Climb aboard. We’ve one stop to make before going home.”
Atop Seminary Ridge, the red-bricked theological school rose above the trees that flanked it, its gazebo-like cupola gleamed. A yellow flag flailed against the weathervane spiking the sky. Inside, where just weeks ago students prayed, slept, studied, and ate together, rows of patients now rested on rubber blankets on the floor. Swarming about them with food and bandages were Gettysburg women Liberty recognized and volunteer nurses she didn’t, including several visiting nuns.
Voices ricocheted between the walls and in the stairwells on either end of the building, but by now, the sound of human suffering did not jar Liberty as it once had. Now, she had the means to relieve it piled high in the wagon just outside.
Before she could bring her supplies in, a boy brushed past Liberty carrying an amputated leg.
“Why, Hugh!” Liberty touched his shoulder. It was Hugh Ziegler, no older than eleven years, and son of the seminary steward and matron.
He turned to her and shrugged, his eyes clouded. “We all do our part, Miss Holloway. Mama cooks. My sisters nurse. I carry limbs out back and pile them up like stove wood.” He turned back to his chore and trudged away.
Just then fellow townswoman Sarah Broadhead shot out of one of the stairwells, panting for breath, furrows carved into her brow. “They are drowning down there! One hundred men! What is to be done?”
One of the women bringing food to the men set down her tray and hurried to her. “What did you say? Patients? Downstairs?”
Liberty and Bella looked at each other. It was four days after the battle’s end. How could they not know?
“They are wounded in three or four places each, they cannot help themselves one mite. They are practically swimming.” Nuns and nurses now huddled around Sarah and Margaret. Liberty rushed forward to join them, heard swishing skirts behind her as Bella and Myrtle followed.
“Where are the men to be taken?” Liberty ventured.
“The fourth story.”
Sarah gasped. “I fear we cannot accomplish all of it today.”
“It must be done without delay. All of it.” Margaret’s eyes were hard and rimmed with red. “Did you not hear what happened at one of the field hospitals outside of town?”
Dread shuddered through Liberty as she waited for the answer.
“Twenty men were laid on the ground after their amputations. When it rained on July fourth, they were left there. Drowned in two feet of water. All twenty of them.”
The horrifying words slid into Liberty. Thank God, thank God she and Isaac had been able to save her own patients at Holloway Farm. But one hundred more lives were now at stake.
“Sarah, you and I will find the most able among the patients to carry the men,” Margaret ordered. “The rest of you, please find all the stretchers you can and bring them here.”
Bella frowned. “You’re asking wounded men to carry wounded men?”
“Some are injured only slightly and are already working as hospital attendants. What else would you have me do, order the weaker sex to do it? Besides, we nurses have our own duties to attend to.”
“I’m not as weak as these patients here.” But Margaret had already scurried off to find more help.
Liberty sent Myrtle to begin unloading the wagon of its supplies and turned back to Bella, waiting for the words she knew were coming.
“These men are going to wear out fast with this work.” Bella’s jaw was set. “Delicate ladies and nuns may not be much good for this kind of labor, but my arms are strong for the task. I’m helping.”
“Are you certain?” Liberty’s muscles ached at the mere thought. A nun swept over to them and dropped off a stretcher.
“These are Union men. If I have been willing to help the Rebel wounded at your farm, Miss Liberty, it should not surprise you that I want to help the patients wearing the same color as my Abraham. You and Myrtle go back to the farm, I’ll walk there when I’m done.”
Bella picked up one end of the stretcher as a plaintive cry for help floated up the stairwell. Liberty furtively glanced around. Others may be coming to help, but there was no sign of them yet. The patients downstairs had already waited long enough.
“If you’re helping, I’m helping.” Libbie snatched up the other end of Bella’s stretcher. “Let’s make sure these men live to enjoy everything we just brought them from the Sanitary Commission.” Out of the corner of her eye, she noticed a couple of men slowly coming toward the stairwell to assist. She could read in their gait and posture that though they may not have been seriously injured, they were famished and exhausted. Their help may add to Bella and Liberty’s efforts, but not replace them. With every breath she took her spirit hissed. Make haste. Make haste. Make haste.
With pairs of men eventually following, Liberty and Bella descended to the basement and waded almost up to their knees into water contaminated with the waste of a hundred helpless men. Breathing fetid air above ground was bad enough—but swimming in liquid stink was far worse. The water soaked through her clothing. The stench was a thick paste in her mouth.
Soiled skirts and aprons floated in circles around each of them like water-logged halos. Each pair worked as quickly as they could. Bella held one end of the stretcher while Liberty guided a patient’s body through the water and onto the canvas. Cringing at the sight of the foul water soaking his bandages, she stooped, gripped the wet wooden handles, and lifted until the patient was horizontal. He was of average height and weight, about five feet nine inches tall, she guessed, and perhaps one hundred fifty pounds. Divided the weight by two women, that was only seventy-five pounds to carry. Only seventy-five pounds! To carry through water, then up four flights of stairs!
Liberty scanned the dark basement and became overwhelmed at the number of wounded.
“When thou passest through the waters, I will be with thee; and through the rivers, they shall not overflow thee.” In a hoarse voice, the patient on her stretcher quoted from the book of Isaiah. “Seems fitting, doesn’t it? Just never thought I’d need to be saved from the waters of a theological school!” He closed his eyes as he gripped the edges of the narrow stretc
her and whispered, “Thank you, thank you.” Whether he was talking to his earthly saviors or his heavenly one, Liberty could not tell.
Slowly, carefully, Liberty and Bella waded through the water toward the stairs, the patient’s weight digging into her palms, her heart beating out of her chest. One patient at a time, she told herself.
“How long have you been down here, soldier?” She glanced at the bearded face between her hands.
“Don’t know what day it is. But we were injured in the first day’s fight.”
That was last Wednesday. It had been a week.
God have mercy. Mercy!
Her throat closed up with tears as they neared the shaft of light. Bella went backwards up the stairs, while Liberty was given the luxury of walking face forward. As they emerged from the water, their sodden skirts tangled around their legs. Since they were not wearing hoops under their dresses for their nursing work, their hems hung lower than their heels even without water weighing them down. Now, Liberty felt like she was trying to climb the stairs with a wet bed sheet hanging from her waist, and no hand free to hitch it above her ankles.
With every painstaking step, Bella bent lower and Liberty hoisted her end of the stretcher higher, so the patient stayed as level as possible. Liberty kicked her skirt off her shoe before securing every foothold, then brought the other foot next to it on the same stair, like some sort of Irish jig.
Kick, step, together. Lift the stretcher higher.
Kick, step, together. Lift higher.
Kick, step, together. Lift higher.
The patient groaned as the stretcher rocked its way up the stairs. Her concentration breaking, Liberty took a step without flinging the skirt out of her way first. She teetered backward, then drove her shoulder into the rough brick wall to keep from falling backward. Bella lurched, Liberty jerked, and the patient cried out again. Poor fellow, she would be terrified too if she were him. She seethed at her dirty, soggy skirt.
“Wait,” gasped Liberty when they reached the first floor, with more women trudging up behind them with their living cargo. “I cannot stand this a moment longer. May we set you down for just a moment before continuing on?”
They lowered him gently and Liberty pulled the back of her skirt up between her legs and tucked it into the belt at her waist, forming pantaloons.
“Miss Liberty!”
“I don’t care what it looks like. I’m completely covered, anyway. There is simply no way I would be able to carry these men up four flights of stairs tripping over this skirt with every step. I’m quite sure the patients prefer their safety to propriety.” She paused. “Try it!”
Chuckling, Bella came up with her own solution by simply gathering her hem and tying a knot at one side of the skirt, effectively freeing her ankles for movement. “Ready.”
They bent at the knees, grasped the handles of the stretcher and hefted the patient up once more. Three more flights of stairs to go.
At the second floor landing, Liberty’s arms ached from holding the man’s weight above her head while climbing the stairs. They switched places, and Liberty went backwards for the next flight, stooping low while Bella held high.
At the third floor, her muscles quivered with effort.
By the time they reached the fourth floor, they fairly screamed for mercy. Compared to the damp cool of the basement, this top level of the building felt like an oven. Once they moved the patient to a blanket on the floor, Liberty pulled Bella aside. “I don’t know how many more times I can do this!”
“Can you do once more?”
Liberty blinked. “Yes.”
“Then just think about the one more time. One more patient, one more life saved from drowning in a seminary.”
And they did. Again, and again, and again.
After just five patients, they had carried a total of seven hundred fifty pounds of soldier up twenty flights of stairs.
There were many more to carry.
Both women were panting for breath on the first floor before going down for their sixth man. “How on earth did this happen?” Liberty asked a patient not far from where they stood.
The man pulled on some new woolen stockings, then told the story. “Last Wednesday, the wounded men were taken into the seminary for shelter during the heat of battle. On Thursday and Friday, the Rebels planted a battery just behind the seminary. Our boys, attempting to silence it, could not avoid throwing some shells into the building.”
Some entered several of the rooms, and injured one of the end walls, and the basement became the only safe place for the patients. The Rebels took control of the town and building on July 1 and captured all medical supplies. Some Union doctors stayed with the wounded in captivity but had no instruments to perform amputations, no medicines to relieve pain, no food or refreshment of any kind.
“Then the rains came after the battle,” Liberty prompted.
“Sure enough, and the basement flooded. But the door had been closed over the stairway this whole time, until one of your ladies there heard someone calling out today.”
Liberty shuddered. “The poor men. How much they have endured.”
“We’ve many more to fetch.” Bella arched her back and rubbed her sore muscles. “‘The LORD is my strength and my shield; my heart trusted in him, and I am helped.’ Do you remember that psalm, Miss Liberty?”
She nodded.
“Your turn. Give me a verse with strength.”
Liberty smiled. From the time Liberty was a child, whenever Bella wanted to encourage her, she quoted the Bible to her. At some point in her adolescence, Liberty began quoting it back. “The Lord will give strength unto his people; the Lord will bless his people with peace.”
Her soft brown skin shining, Bella slid her glance toward the stairs. “Let’s take our strength and peace to His people. Ready?”
“I’m sure they are.”
The work went slowly, but steadily. Though their muscles still burned, Bella and Liberty volleyed Scriptures up the stairs whenever they could spare the breath, and down the stairs as they passed other laboring women, Catholic and Protestant, all grateful for the reinforcements from God’s Word. A few men even joined in with their own favorite verses on God’s strength.
God is our refuge and strength, a very present help in trouble.
My flesh and my heart faileth: but God is the strength of my heart, and my portion for ever.
But they that wait upon the Lord shall renew their strength; they shall mount up with wings as eagles; they shall run, and not be weary; and they shall walk, and not faint.
Fear thou not; for I am with thee: be not dismayed; for I am thy God: I will strengthen thee; yea, I will help thee.
And He did. Though it had taken hours to accomplish, thestretcher bearers had moved one hundred men out of a flooded basement and up to the fourth floor of the seminary. Fifteen thousand pounds of living, breathing cargo, four hundred flights up, and four hundred flights down, covering a total of thirteen thousand stairs. Liberty’s muscles felt like rubber, her palms bubbled with blisters, and another dress was ruined.
But not one man had been lost.
“WHAT IN MY GIRLHOOD was a teeming and attractive landscape spread out by the Omnipotent Hand to teach us of His Goodness, has by His direction, become a field for profound thought, where, through coming ages, will be taught lessons of loyalty, patriotism, and sacrifice.”
—MATILDA “TILLIE” PIERCE ALLEMAN, Gettysburg schoolgirl, age 15
“WHILE I WOULD NOT care to live ever that summer again, yet I would not willingly erase that chapter from my life’s experience; and I shall always be thankful that I was permitted to minister to the wants and soothe the last hours of some of the brave men who lay suffering and dying for the dear old flag.”
—ELIZABETH SALOME “SALLIE” MYERS, Gettysburg schoolteacher
Lutheran Theological Seminary, Gettysburg, Pennsylvania
Wednesday, July 8, 1863
Liberty dredged up a smile as a bandage-w
rapped soldier shuffled over to her in red plush—slippered feet, a handkerchief in his hand. She had gotten somewhat used to her own smell, but obviously, her stink was ripe to those who hadn’t. Still he approached.
“Hello, beautiful.” His tobacco-stained smile looked more like a sneer. Liberty bristled.
“Do I know you?”
“Of course you do. I’m Jonathan Welch. And you’re Liberty Holloway.”
He looked to be at least forty years old, pale and puffy, with eyes like raisins sunk into a hot cross bun. Shock tremored through Liberty. No. “No.”
“No? What do you mean, no? Aren’t you Liberty Holloway? Widow of a man who fought at First Manassas?”
Confusion fogged her mind. “Yes, but—how do you know that?” She glanced at Bella, whose brown eyes were narrowed on this soldier.
“I told you. I’m Jonathan Welch. We’ve been writing letters nigh unto two years now—except for when you stopped responding to me about eight months ago. Why was that, anyhow, Libbie? Or did they just get lost in the mail?” He sneered again and snorted. Was that a laugh?
“Her name is Liberty.” Bella’s voice was firm. “But you may call her Miss Holloway.”
“Well excuse me, Chocolate! But after so many letters, I do believe I’ve earned the right of using her first name. Or maybe I’ll just call you Gorgeous.”
“You? You’re Johnny?”
He rolled his eyes. “As in Johnny Reb? No, never. It’s Jonathan, only. Or you can call me Handsome.”
Johnny Reb. Just call me Johnny. Had she been such a fool? The room spun. She fought to maintain her composure.
“When is the last time you wrote me a letter?” She steeled herself for the answer.
“I wrote you one as soon as we got to Gettysburg. Best one I ever wrote, too. Pinned it to the inside of my jacket.”
Bella hissed in Liberty’s ear. “Miss Liberty, I don’t trust this man. We’d best be on our way.” She helped Libbie to her feet, and her muscles throbbed in protest.
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