The Legend of Indian Stream

by Steven Landry

  “My daughter Helen is home,” Mrs. Sampson replied. “She’s only five years old. Can she come too?”

  Peta sighed and told Mrs. Sampson that it would be okay. She sent Sergeant Lane with Mrs. Sampson to the cabin to retrieve the girl, after assuring the woman that Joe would be in good hands while she was gone.

  Forty minutes later, Mrs. Sampson, her daughter Helen, Luke’s two wounded cavalry troopers, and the body bag containing Gunny Smith were all gathered with Joe at the LZ. Peta took Mrs. Sampson and Helen aside. Kneeling down, she spoke to Helen.

  “Listen honey, the ambulance ride is going to be very scary. But you need to be strong for Joe. Can you do that?”

  “Yes ma’am,” the crying girl said. Peta hoped she was answering for both her mother and herself. “Is he going to be okay?”

  “I hope so, honey.” Peta’s radio jumped to life a moment later.

  “Papa Oh Six, this is Alpha One One. Two mikes out, over.”

  “Roger, Alpha One One. Popping smoke in sixty seconds. Papa Oh Six, out.” Sergeant Lane pulled a purple smoke grenade from a pouch on his combat vest and counted to sixty, then pulled the pin and tossed the grenade about twenty feet away. The resulting plume of dense purple smoke served to both mark the LZ location, and to indicate the strength and direction of the wind across the LZ.

  The Pave Hawk came in low and fast. Every eye in the valley turned to watch, drawn by the whop-whop-whop of the rotors. Margaret Sampson clearly wanted to flee in terror, but restrained herself for Joe’s sake.

  “Don’t be afraid,” Peta said. Seeing Major Jennifer Carlton at the controls, she continued, “That’s my stepsister piloting that helicopter. She’s the best there is, and she’ll take very good care of you.”

  The helicopter flared and settled on the ground, landing between the wounded and the enemy troops in Glasgow, with its side-mounted M134 7.62mm Gatling Gun pointed in that direction. Doors slid open on both sides of the Pave Hawk and two para-rescue soldiers, known as PJs, jumped from the left side doors and went to help load the injured aboard.

  Meanwhile, a crew chief jumped down from the right side door and dragged five large pelican cases out behind him, followed by three replacement stretchers and a box of plasma bags and bandages. He left those on the ground, then beckoned to Peta to bring Margaret and Helen Sampson forward. She brought the two women to the right side of the aircraft and handed them over to the crew chief, along with the bag of clothing Mrs. Sampson had brought from her cabin.

  The PJ’s, with Doc Wilson and Sergeant Lane’s help, lifted the three litter patients and Gunny Smith into the helicopter, and locked the stretchers into the racks provided. Chief Warrant Officer, or CWO, William Carson, a physician’s assistant, immediately bent to examine the patients, while Doc Wilson provided him a status update on their condition. Wilson jumped out and the crew chief pulled both doors shut before signaling Jennifer that everyone was safely belted in. Jennifer applied power to the rotors, tilted the blades down to provide lift, and the Pave Hawk jumped into the air. The aircraft pivoted to the left and quickly dashed out of sight to the north. Spellbound, everyone watched it speed away, except the Pathfinders, who continued their preparations to receive an attack.

  Peta gave Sergeant Lane instructions to have one of the Geckos brought up to carry the pelican cases, replacement stretchers, and medical supplies back to their defensive position, and distribute the ammo according to need. She would take care of distributing the IF Pack weapons to Luke’s troopers. While they were waiting for Smith’s Gecko, Doc Wilson replenished his medical pack.

  Back at her Gecko, Peta noted that the rebel troops had gotten over their shock at seeing the helicopter and had resumed collecting their dead and wounded in the field across the river. Fortunately the screaming horses had already been silenced. She hoped that the appearance of the aircraft had sufficiently disheartened the enemy to dissuade them from attacking her position, but doubted it would.

  Using the squad radio, she called for Luke and his sergeants to meet at her Gecko. They arrived just as Sergeant Lane’s Gecko pulled up. She had Lane pull one of the IF Pack pelican cases off his vehicle and open it up. Inside were ten M1 Garand combat rifles, one M32 multiple grenade launcher, two hundred and forty rounds of ammunition for each M1, and forty-two 40mm grenades.

  “We have four of these packs, enough to equip each of your troopers with some decent firepower,” Peta said. “Sergeant Lane and Corporals Nolan and Murphy will train your men one squad at a time on how to clean, maintain, load, and shoot the weapons. They’ll pick it up in no time.”

  Seeing that Luke was uncomfortable with changing weapons and tactics right before a possible engagement, yet eager to try the new weapons, Peta decided to give him a private lesson. Two hours later Barns was proficient on both the M1 and the M32, and had begun to fall for Captain Peta Carver all over again.

  41 - MACK

  Virginia, CSA, Thursday, April 16, 1863

  The Army of Northern Virginia had left two brigades in the Shenandoah Valley, both from A.P. Hill’s Division of Jackson’s Corps. The 1st Brigade had its regiments bivouacked in Harper’s Ferry, Winchester, and Martinsburg. 2nd Brigade’s units were stationed further south in Strasburg, Front Royal, and Harrisonburg. At Mack’s suggestion, Brigadier Coyle had decided to ignore the units at Harper’s Ferry and Martinsburg, reasoning they would not be in a position to interfere with the task force’s movement to the James River Gap.

  The Confederate regiment in Winchester was taken completely by surprise when two armored dragoon companies of the ISRM Dragoon regiment slammed into them at 0930 hours. Attacking with twenty-four of the eight-wheeled Gator behemoths on line, variously belching 7.62mm machine gun fire, 40mm programmable automatic grenade launcher fire, 30mm chain gun fire, and 105mm cannon fire, and supported by indirect 120mm mortar fire, the Dragoons overran the bivouac site in a matter of minutes. An astounding seventy-five percent of the rebel regiment’s soldiers were killed or seriously injured. All but a few of the survivors were captured.

  The next target was the 2nd Brigade regiment stationed at Front Royal. Mack watched via overhead drone as that unit, apparently alerted by courier or telegraph, deployed into defensive positions on the Shenandoah River north of the city. It wouldn’t do them any good.

  As Mack continued to watch, the video feed showed the six Gator-RSTAs of the Dragoon Scout platoon emerge from the woods on the northwest side of the river. Seeing the rebels across the river, the platoon commander called for the two trailing Gator Strike Observer Mission vehicles, or Gator-STORMs, to come up to the edge of the wood line. From that position the forward observers in the STORMs proceeded to call in 120mm mortar fire from the eight Dragon Fire mortars in the Dragoon companies’ mortar platoons. The onslaught drove the defenders deep into their trenches, allowing the Dragoon’s Gators to swim the river virtually unopposed.

  With no effective way of attacking the swarming combat vehicles, the Confederate infantry regiment threw down their weapons and fled. Forte elected not to pursue them.

  The Dragoon’s Gators protected the bridgehead while the M3 Mobile Assault Bridges from the Engineer platoon deployed to allow the unit’s non-amphibian vehicles to cross. Once they had crossed the river, the Dragoons proceeded south towards Port Republic without further incident.

  The confederate regimental commander in Strasburg apparently knew what he was about. He had his regiment formed up and marching north within minutes of the battle in Front Royal. Had he learned of the attack north of Winchester earlier, he might have got his infantrymen into Stephen’s City before he ran into Jake’s Grenadiers. As it was, the encounter occurred in the wide open fields south of the town. The four M2 Bradley infantry fighting vehicles of his advanced guard opened fire on the Confederate infantry as soon as they came within range, causing the rebels to go to ground in the drainage ditches along the road. While the M2’s kept up a steady stream of 25mm chain gun fire, First platoon’s remaining M1 Abra
ms main battle tanks swept around to the west to attack the rebels on their left flank. Seeing that his men were about to be destroyed with no ability to fight back and no hope of escape, the rebel regimental commander ordered his men to throw down their weapons and surrender. He raised a white flag on the tip of his sword. The ISRM soldiers immediately ceased fire. It took Jake’s Grenadiers almost an hour to round up, search and disarm the prisoners, collect all their weapons, arrange transport for the enemy wounded back to the hospital at Roberts’ farm, and take parole pledges from all of the enlisted men, who were subsequently sent home. The unit’s twelve surviving officers were sent along with the wounded to Roberts’ farm.

  The rebel regimental commander in Harrisonburg was not quite as quick to get his unit on the road as his counterpart in Strasburg, but they were on the march well before the battle outside Stephen’s City was concluded. It was a nice tight formation that would have made any 19th Century drill instructor proud. Unfortunately, drill instructors of the era had never heard of M1 Abrams main battle tanks and Bradley fighting vehicles.

  Alerted to their presence by the drone operators at Raven’s Roost, Jake deployed his company in an ambush position. The road the enemy was using crossed a wide field north of New Market, which was bordered on the west by a lightly wooded hill. Mack was pleased with Jake’s positioning of his force along the wood line, facing downhill across the enemy route-of-march. When Jake gave the order, twelve Abrams tanks and thirteen Bradley fighting vehicles opened fire on the enemy flank.

  The rebel infantry regiment ceased to exist. The Grenadiers continued south to Port Republic, and from there, the James River Gap. Mack wondered if they would arrive in time to relieve Peta’s Pathfinders.

  42 - MARGARET

  Hand-assisted Laparoscopic Surgery: a type of laparoscopic surgery in which the surgeon inserts a hand or hand-held instrument into the abdomen while maintaining positive gas pressure within the abdominal cavity. Glossary, An Illustrated History of the Republic, Helen O’Shea, Ed.

  Roberts Farm, Springfield, Virginia, CSA, 1530 hours, Thursday, April 16, 1863

  Margaret Sampson, still shaken from the terrifying ride in the helicopter, sat on a bunk in the post-op ward of the medical company’s surgical unit. She clutched her daughter, Helen, to her side, and cursed her bad luck. The family had moved to the Shenandoah Valley from King George County after a lynching in Stafford County, which compromised the Underground Railroad network she and her husband supported. Despite his anti-slavery sentiment, her husband was drafted into the Army of Northern Virginia when the war started, then killed at Fredericksburg in March of 1863.

  Margaret watched a monitor that showed a team of gowned doctors and nurses working on her son in the operating suite a dozen yards away. She had tried unsuccessfully to stay with her son as he was being treated, but the ward nurse had refused, explaining the need to maintain a sterile field in the suite. Earlier, Margaret and Helen had managed to stay with Joe as he was wheeled into triage, where a doctor assessed Joe’s wounds, along with those of the two Union cavalry men who had been brought here in the helicopter with Joe. He was then taken to a pre-op ward where a nurse and an orderly cut off his clothing and carefully washed him with a smelly liquid they called disinfectant. There she met the doctor that would be operating on Joe.

  She didn’t understand how any of this worked, but she did recognize a confident doctor when she met one, even if she had never before met a female doctor. And Doctor Sheila Flynn was certainly confident. Margaret knew that gunshot wounds to the stomach were nearly always fatal, but Doctor Flynn had said that Joe had a very good chance of surviving. She showed Margaret a dark picture, called an X-ray, and explained that the bullet in Joe’s abdomen had not struck any of his bones, which showed as white in the picture, and thus had not shattered into pieces, which was a good thing. She explained that she would be performing hand-assisted laparoscopic surgery on Joe, mostly using a thin tube that wouldn’t require her to do any more cutting into the child’s abdomen than necessary.

  Margaret hardly recognized Joe on the monitor. He was unconscious, with a tube down his throat connected to a respirator, which a passing nurse had told her was breathing for him. A bag of dark liquid hung near his head, feeding blood into one of his veins through a thin tube. Doctor Flynn had asked her if she knew what Joe’s blood type was, but she hadn’t even known that blood had a type. The doctor had told her not to worry about it; there was test they could do. Two other bags were also feeding liquids into veins in his arms. One held what the nurse had called antibiotics. She had said these would help Joe fight off infection. The other held an anesthetic that would keep Joe from feeling any pain as the doctor worked on him.

  There were three people assisting Doctor Flynn. One person, who had introduced himself as an anesthesiologist in the pre-op ward, asked her a lot of questions about Joe’s previous health problems. He was seated near Joe’s head, keeping one eye on Joe and the other on a monitor that had a lot of colored lines and numbers on it. He was easily recognizable because of his height; seated, he was almost as tall as Doctor Flynn standing. Two nurses were passing various items to the doctor, and taking away others, including bloody cloths. The monitor had no sound, but Doctor Flynn had at one point held up a long set of tweezers and pointed to what looked like a bloody bullet held in its grip, before passing the item to one of the nurses.

  After that, one of the two nurses inserted a thin tube into Joe’s wound, and then reached behind herself and turned a knob on the wall behind her. Suddenly, the view on her monitor changed, and she saw what looked like a tangle of bloody snakes. With a start, she realized she was looking inside Joe’s abdomen.

  “What’s that, mama?” Helen asked.

  “I think that’s the inside of Joe’s belly,” she answered.

  “Yuck,” Helen said. Then they watched in silence as another tube appeared on the monitor. This must be the laparoscope that Doctor Flynn had told her about earlier. It somehow began to sew up a hole in Joe’s intestines, then moved on to fix two more holes. The view moved around some more, as the doctor apparently searched for more holes. Finding none, the laparoscope was removed and another tube appeared, this one flushing the area with a blue liquid.

  After a few minutes of this, the monitor view switched back to the overhead shot of the operating suite, and showed Doctor Flynn stitching up the muscles and skin on Joe’s abdomen. When she finished, one of the nurses spread some of the dark liquid over the wound, then began wrapping Joe’s abdomen in a bandage. The anesthesiologist removed one of the tubes from Joe’s arm, and then began fiddling with the machine next to him. A short while later, he removed the tube from Joe’s throat as well. After watching Joe carefully for a few minutes, he gave Doctor Flynn a thumbs up, and everyone in the room appeared to relax. The last thing Margaret saw before the monitor switched to another operating suite was Joe being lifted off the operating table onto a gurney, and rolled out of the suite.

  After an agonizing wait, which in truth lasted only five minutes, Joe was wheeled into the post-op ward, followed by Doctor Flynn.

  “Joe did very well,” the doctor said. She took Margaret’s hands in hers. “I expect him to make a full recovery.”

  “Thank you so much,” Margaret said. “Are you sure?”

  “As long as he doesn’t develop an infection, he’ll be fine. We’ll have to watch him for any signs of infection. Listen carefully to the instructions from the nurses on the ward, and everything will be fine.” Then the doctor hurried away to treat other patients.

  Joe, however, did not look fine. He was unconscious, with a clear mask over his face and tubes coming from both arms. The ward nurse explained that one tube was giving Joe more antibiotics, and the other providing something called blood plasma, to replace what he had lost. Oxygen was flowing into the mask to help Joe recover from the anesthesia. She said he should wake up in the next few minutes, but would be very drowsy and it would be difficult for him to speak bec
ause of soreness from the breathing tube. Both proved to be true. The nurse also explained that the monitor, from which wires and tubes led to other parts of Joe’s body, showed Joe’s vital signs. According to the monitor, Joe was doing fine.

  Margaret and Helen sat by Joe’s bed the rest of the day, feeding Joe ice chips a little at a time as the nurse instructed. She had no idea how the machine at the end of the tent made the ice chips, but she understood almost nothing else about this place either, so she didn’t worry about it. At some point an orderly had brought her and Helen something to eat, but she had barely touched it. Helen delighted in telling Joe about the helicopter ride, which she had found almost as exciting as Margaret found it terrifying. Joe spoke little and dozed in and out of sleep.

  Margaret became aware of a steady stream of wounded filling up the other beds in the ward. Many were missing arms or legs. One of the men was a Union soldier that had come in with Joe, and had what she heard described as a sucking chest wound, which didn’t sound at all good. The rest of the men were Confederate soldiers.

  With Joe asleep in his bed, and Helen finally sleeping on a nearby cot, Margaret asked if there was anything she could do to help. The new ward nurse, who had replaced the first one a few hours earlier, said the best thing she could do was what she had done for Joe; talk to them and feed them ice chips, except for those with throat wounds. She also showed Margaret the refrigerator where they kept small boxes of apple juice, and showed her how to insert the straws into the boxes. These could be given to the wounded soldiers whose wounds allowed it, whom she pointed out to Margaret. Unable to sleep, Margaret passed the next few hours tending to the wounded, frequently stopping to check on Joe.