Two Girls of Gettysburg Read online

  Today Mrs. Throckmorton and I went in search of plants to substitute for the medicines that Dr. Walker can no longer obtain. We collected bark from the red oak, taking care not to damage the layer beneath. It is said to have disinfectant and astringent properties that promote the healing of wounds. Mrs. Throckmorton also makes a salve from slippery elm that relieves camp itch, a common discomfort. While we were in the woods, I remembered that it was Lizzie’s birthday and grew melancholy with missing her. But it is no use writing to her, for the letters cannot be delivered across battle lines, and I have no wish to be accused of spying if I try to smuggle them.

  A writer once said that friendship is the most sublime of affections, cementing souls across time. Such is the nature of my affection for Lizzie, though I have at times proved a poor friend. Still, I trust my scrapbook is in her hands, my secrets locked within the treasure chest of our friendship.

  October 22, 1862

  After so many weeks in camp, the men are restless for battle again. I said to Mrs. Throckmorton that I did not understand this yearning for danger. Have they already forgotten the horrors of Antietam?

  “It is the same with mothers,” she replied. “We suffer agonies in giving birth, yet still long to have more children. We always forget the pain and the possibility of dying.”

  I was struck by her calm wisdom and began to think about children. Later, while John and I strolled through a grove of trees with their glorious red and amber leaves, I asked him how many children he wished for. He paused for a moment as if imagining a peaceful future.

  “I only require an equal number of boys and girls, for fairness’ sake.”

  Startled, but remaining calm, I said that if I bore him three sons first (or daughters) I did not relish bearing so many more simply to even the number.

  “And why not? Is that not your duty as a wife, if I require it?”

  I stopped and stared at him. Were we about to have another quarrel?

  “Are you still angry that I had my way before? So you will demand that I bear you twenty children just to even the score? I am not a brood mare.”

  At this John burst out laughing and took my hands in his.

  “Rosanna, my dear, you are like a pile of dried tinder. At the merest spark, you blaze up. I am only teasing you! But I confess, I like to see you on fire.”

  He reached for me, but I slipped away, teasing him in turn.

  “Rosanna, I will be happy with one child or twenty,” he said, tenderly and still with a twinkle in his eye. “Now come here and kiss me.”

  I sidled over to him. “I do not intend to have twenty children, or even ten, though I might consent to three,” I said, determined to have the last word.

  But his was the last move as he eased me onto a bed of crisp, pungent leaves. After a while the chill of the earth began to seep into our bones, and we rose up again to return to camp.

  October 24, 1862

  Mary Ward surprises me. Today she showed me a pair of men’s pants she intends to wear, saying she obtained them “from a soldier who won’t be needing them again.” She asked for my help in remaking her skirt to resemble mine, and I lent her my sewing supplies.

  Then she suggested, “Why don’t we wear our skirts above the knee to make them even less cumbersome? Indeed, why not dispense with them altogether?”

  “Why, that would never pass muster!” Then I saw by her wry look that she was joking, and we dissolved in laughter together. I did not suspect she had a sense of humor!

  October 27, 1862

  All morning the men polished their arms, brushed off their uniforms and hats, and made themselves clean in preparation for a grand review of the entire corps by generals Lee, Pickett, and Longstreet. At two o’clock the scattered brigades came together on an open field, making a column at least a mile long. With their colorful standards raised high, the infantry marched to the brisk, rolling drumbeat, turned neatly as one body, and presented their gleaming rifles. I reflected that men, however mortal, when gathered into an army of thousands, appear to be invincible.

  General Lee, erect in the saddle of his gray horse, conveyed a stern and quiet dignity. As he rode along the line, hurrahs sounded before him and traveled the length of the column like a wave. Passing near me, he smiled and raised his hat, then swept it before him and bowed. I was thrilled! John once said to me, “I would barter my life for General Lee’s smile.” Now I understand that sentiment.

  Among the observers today were two English lords who could not have failed to be impressed by the spectacle. I overheard one officer remark to another that it would be a sad joke on us if they turned out to be Yankee spies! But judging by their accents and the fine manners they displayed when Mrs. Gordon and I served them tea, I am certain they were genuine nobility. Everyone has high hopes that England will come to the aid of the South, which would hasten the end of the war.

  November 2, 1862

  Early this morning the order went out to strike camp, and within hours all the tents were dismantled, the nurses’ cabin abandoned, and the entire hospital loaded upon four wagons and a dozen mules. The sickest men we left in Winchester.

  An icy rain has turned the ground into a quagmire with garbage trodden into it. Mrs. Throckmorton, Mary Ward, and I ride in a wagon. Rain drums loudly on the canvas. Whenever we hit a rut, the bottles and medicine tins clink in their crates and my pen skitters across the page. Drat! Poor mud-splattered Dolly plods alongside with her head down, deploring, as I do, this miserable weather.

  Our destination remains unknown.

  November 11, 1862

  The routines of an army on the march quickly become habitual. When the line halts, for whatever reason, we dispense aid from the wagon, start a fire, and begin cooking. If it rains, a smoky battle ensues between the fire and the rain, sometimes ending dismally. Everyone then resorts to nibbling dried meat and moldy cornbread. At night, we nurses sleep in the wagons and Mrs. Gordon in her carriage. The soldiers huddle together on the ground with blankets and oilcloths heaped over them. The discomfort, together with the uncertainty of our movements, makes everyone tense and temperamental.

  Occasionally, however, something out of the ordinary occurs. On the road yesterday a soldier climbed into the ambulance with Mary Ward, claiming stomach pains. As she later told us, the rascal promised her a share in his whiskey-distilling business if she would marry him. She kept a stiff-lipped silence, while dosing him with magnesia. But when he got over his pains enough to try and force a kiss from her, she braced herself on the inner struts of the wagon, put her feet against him, and with one great heave, rolled him out of the wagon and onto the ground. The cart in which Mrs. Throckmorton and I were riding nearly ran him down, and it would have been just what he deserved.

  November 17, 1862 near Culpeper, Virginia

  Two weeks of marching across the Blue Ridge and down the valley of the Shenandoah have revealed grotesque and depressing sights: hillsides and meadows plowed up by iron missiles, fences broken, fields trampled and burned. Hastily dug graves wash away, exposing decaying bodies. The skeletons of burned houses and barns stand black and forlorn.

  I said to Mary Ward, unable to keep the anger from my voice, “We should retaliate against those who have done this to Virginia.”

  “No, for our soldiers would do the same, were they fighting in the North,” she said. “That’s the law of all war. It’s never courteous.”

  “Then I would call the the generals together and advise them to grant a clean divorce between the warring countries and let each one live as it will.”

  “Ha! They would say to you, ‘Who is that woman talking of marriage when we’re fighting a war? Send her back to her cooking pot.’”

  Mary’s pompous tone made me laugh. She is an abolitionist, but she favors even more sweeping change, such as giving women the vote.

  “We are more peaceable and compassionate than men and, if allowed to choose our country’s leaders, would bring about a quick end to slavery and war,” s
he argued.

  “Perhaps, but Mrs. Throckmorton is the very image of compassion, yet she does not find slavery unjust,” I countered. “I have heard her cite scriptures that uphold the ownership of slaves, and she often says that God intended for the strong to take care of the weak. She would never vote to overturn the natural order.”

  “Yet she is among the strong! Why, she would be a general if women could serve in the army.”

  “And you, Mary, would serve in Congress, if women were allowed to vote. But that will happen ‘when pigs fly from their sty’ as my cousin Lizzie would say.”

  For a while, we rolled along in the dusk of the gray November day.

  “Rosanna, I’m afraid that what we do only prolongs the war,” Mary said, breaking the silence. There was despair in her voice. “We patch up soldiers and cure their ills only to send them back into battle, where some of them will die.”

  “I can’t bear to look at our work that way,” I said, putting my arm around her shoulders. “I must believe that I am relieving the suffering around me.”

  I have not told John about my growing friendship with Mary Ward. He would not approve of her ideas, and if he should declare that she is an unsuitable companion for me, we would undoubtedly quarrel again.

  November 22, 1862

  Why is it that the thing we fear passes us by, while that which we ignored stops and strikes us instead?

  On the evening of the 20th, I took John a bowl of stew and found him shivering though he lay close enough to the fire to become singed. He was in the throes of fever and speaking nonsense about his head being a cabbage. I took him into an ambulance and tended to him all night, keeping him warm by curling my body around his. We lay like two spoons nestled in a drawer. I hardly slept due to his twitching and murmuring. The next morning I told Dr. Walker he was not fit to march or to stand picket duty. I have made him ride the last two days, dosing him with Dover’s powder for the fever, and ipecac and tea for his dry mouth and nausea.

  November 23

  No change in John’s condition. He shakes and sweats, which makes him shudder again with cold. Twice today I changed his fever-soaked clothes & dried them. Dribbled tea between his parched lips. Dr. Walker says it is typhoid. I am so weary and afraid.

  November 25

  More men die from camp fevers and other illness than from battle wounds. I cannot bear to think that John, having survived being shot in the shoulder, might be carried off by typhoid fever. Oh God, help him!

  November 26

  Little change. He is alternately lucid & delirious mostly. I am almost sick myself with worry. Mary Ward made me rest while she tried to feed him. Several new cases of typhoid. An officer was carried off in two days.

  November 29

  At last! John’s fever has subsided, but he lies flat with exhaustion and weakness. Mary declared him “almost out of the woods.” Heedless in my joy, I kissed his forehead and hugged Mary. Said a prayer of thanksgiving and allowed myself to sleep.

  December 8, 1862 camp near Fredericksburg

  A damp and bitter cold has settled upon us. Overcoats and blankets are scarce, and those who threw them away in the summer to lighten their load now regret it. The lucky ones wear coats taken from dead Yankees. Pneumonia and typhoid are on the rise, and when they occur together, the outcome is usually fatal. John’s strength increases daily, but he could relapse, for that is the habit with remittent fevers. Even Mary Ward has a touch of something but shrugs it off.

  The Yankees are demanding the surrender of Fredericksburg, and if the city falls, they will press on toward Richmond again. There is likely to be a battle any day, and we are all wound as tight as watch springs.

  December 10, 1862

  Mary Ward has contracted the fever! I feel responsible, for what if she became ill by treating John? I wanted to nurse her myself, but Dr. Walker said she must be sent home. “We can’t have womenfolk dying here,” he said, as if camp were a place only for men to die. So we put her on a train for Richmond, where she will be treated, then transferred home. I made sure she was comfortably settled and gave precise instructions to the steward for her care. Then I said farewell, assuring her that she would come through this, strong as she was. Although she was dazed with fever and could not tell me her hometown, she murmured my name and gripped my hand. I could not hold back my tears. I shall miss her terribly.

  December 12, 1862 Fredericksburg

  The battle for Fredericksburg has ended in a victory for the South.

  John’s regiment was held in reserve and assigned to build a stone wall that served its purpose in stopping wave upon wave of advancing federals. Hiram Watt took a minié ball in his buttocks, by some accident or mistake of one of his fellows. Mrs. Throckmorton assisted Dr. Walker in that operation. The seriously injured have been sent to Richmond, and our hospital, an abandoned barn, shelters those beyond the hope of medicine. We do not have enough morphine to dull their pain, and their moans echo in the cavernous place.

  One of my patients was a Yankee boy who had dragged himself by mistake behind our lines. He had a belly full of shrapnel, the kind of wound no surgeon can fix. He was afraid of dying, so I stayed with him, though many of our own men were also in dire need. The boy’s name was Joshua Fuller, and I was surprised to discover that he was with Company K of the First Pennsylvania Reserves. Beyond that, I could learn nothing from him about the late battle or cousin Luke or Uncle Albert, for he rambled in his speech. But he did recount the story of his life, all eighteen years of it, from his birth on a farm in York, Pennsylvania, to this sad day.

  When Joshua stopped breathing, I closed his eyelids. I cut off a lock of his hair and a button from his jacket to send to his mother. Writing the letter, I chose my words with the greatest care, knowing she will read them over and over, seeking comfort. Then I went to find John and poured out the boy’s story, along with my tears for all the suffering and grief occasioned by this war. He simply took me in his arms, and I realized that it is his love alone that sustains and strengthens me.

  Lizzie

  Chapter 21

  The rebels didn’t come to Gettysburg after all, not on that night of the dinner party for Frederick Hartmann. It proved to be a false alarm that sent the town into a panic. The Confederate cavalry had rushed into Pennsylvania and captured the town of Chambersburg, twenty-five miles to the west. General Stuart’s men had looted farms, stolen horses, and burned the railroad depot and the government warehouses, exploding the ammunition stored there. Then they had ridden toward Gettysburg but turned off the road at Latshaw’s tavern, barely four miles from the edge of town.

  We didn’t sleep well for weeks after. Everyone expected the rebels to come galloping through our town without warning. Mama hid our silver and valuables in the woodpile. Many farmers decided not to risk losing their livestock to raiders, so Amos was busier slaughtering animals than he had been since the war started, and we processed a ton of cured beef in a single week.

  In the middle of December came news of a battle at Fredericks-burg, and, with surprising swiftness, a letter from Luke. I read it while walking home, then lied to Mama when she asked if there had been a letter at the post office. She worried that I looked pale, but I assured her that everything was all right, though it most decidedly was not.

  December 14, Fredericksburg, Virginia

  Dear sister,

  This letter is for your eyes only. I know it is the fashion to write home what a lark it is to be a soldier but I cant lie anymore.

  Yesterday I was on duty with the ambulance corps near Fredericksburg. Our men attacked Marys Hill but were forced back and the situation was growing desperate. On the last charge I picked up a rifle from a fallen soldier and no one made a move to stop me, every man being sorely needed. I ran forward in the dark with bullets whizzing by me until I came to a stone wall at the foot of the hill built by the rebels to stop us. It was doing the job and the ground was thick with the dead. I climbed over the bodies and aimed up the hill hopi
ng to hit a reb and shot and reloaded I dont know how many times. Then the call came to retreat and I could not run fast enough. I was bawling with fear but thank god no one heard me through all the noise. Then I discovered that my rifle was rammed full of six or more loads, so in all the chaos I had not fired it. Or it had misfired and I had not known. Lord, it was enough to explode and kill me! We lost Fredericksburg badly in the end.

  Our company is in a pitiful condition with 60 out of 94 men disabled by wounds and disease, besides those who died. Papa was not at Marys Hill because he was laid up with dysentery but now he is eating again.

  I suppose I am considerd a man now and it will be my duty to bear a rifle in battle and to kill as many rebels as I can. The truth is I dread it. Do not tell Ma any of this for she will be angry with me for fighting. Let her think I am safe. Only you know what a coward your brother is.

  Luke

  How I ached for my brother! I longed to share my knowledge of his pain, but knew that I could not. It would only trouble Mama. I had to keep Luke’s secret as well as Rosanna’s. So I hid the letter at the bottom of my deepest bureau drawer. But I could not banish from my mind the image of my brother running in the dark and trying to fire his rifle while tears coursed down his muddy face. For the first time I knew in my heart—not just in my head—that war was frighteningly real and that Death itself pursued my brother.

  The tidings from Luke enveloped me like a dark cloud all the way through December. Reverend Essig’s familiar Christmas sermon about the Prince of Peace born in a stable struck me as hollow. Not even the little presents Mama, Ben, and I shared with each other cheered me up. But when the season’s first snowstorm blew in just before the new year, it dispelled my gloom somewhat. I watched as giant wet flakes fell from a leaden sky. They hit the ground with a sound like fingertips lightly tapping on a coverlet. The snow fell so fast that soon it shrouded everything in white. Then it abruptly stopped and the sun shone again, blinding the eye. All along York Street, children ran outside to play, and their laughter and shouts filled the air. Ben and I shoveled a path to the well and the woodpile, then pelted each other with snowballs. Grace stepped outside into the snow for the first time in her life, a look of amazement on her face. Amos helped Ben fix the old sled and grease its runners with tallow.