Two Girls of Gettysburg (17 page)

To keep up my own health, I drink only the clearest water and always boil my tea. I make John do the same. The food unfortunately does nothing to strengthen the constitution. A cornmeal biscuit could break one’s teeth, and last week the only meat was putrid beef. But today Mrs. Alter, the widow, baked sweet potato pies for us to take to our men: the general, Mrs. Throckmorton’s husband and son, and my John. They devoured the pies in short order.

September 12, 1862

The news is that President Davis will sign an act accepting women nurses into the medical department. Soon I, Rosanna McGreevey Wilcox, will be an official army nurse! It is even said that we are to be paid for our service.

Wouldn’t Lizzie be surprised to see me engaged in something practical! Even Margaret, who has a kind heart, could not object to my doing works of mercy.

Sunday, September 14, 1862

John and I went to hear the camp preacher, a small man with a mighty voice. He sermonized on the promise of salvation for those who died for their country and prayed for victory over “our evil oppressors.” I was not so keen on the preaching but was moved by the singing, all the deep men’s voices and but two high ones, mine and Mrs. Throckmorton’s. Mary Ward has no religion, but Mrs. Throckmorton is attempting to convert her.

While the prospect of death makes some embrace religion, it disposes others to wilder entertainment. Every night the camp resounds with secular hymns played on fiddle and banjo, together with loud singing and dancing. There is even a troupe of actors. I wanted to see
their play, but John said it was not fit for a lady and refused to let me accompany him.

Sensing that some aspect of his gentlemanly honor was at stake, I did not insist. But all day, resentment grew in me, along with a desire to see what was so unfitting for a lady, but not for a man. Then I began to wonder if there was another reason John did not want me along. Despite his promise never to gamble again, I feared he did so secretly, for his companion Hiram Watt was a notorious gambler. I had to know if John was being true to his word.

After fretting for hours, I hit upon a scheme. The cheeky Baxter, a conveniently slight man, happily loaned me a shirt, trousers, and a hat. At Mrs. Alter’s, I changed into my disguise and on my way out came face-to-face with a startled Mary Ward. I said I only planned a little harmless mischief and hurried away.

The play had begun on the same stage from which the minister had preached in the morning. The role of a slovenly wife was acted by a soldier wearing an apron and rags stuffed into his shirt, while another, his face blackened with charcoal, played her Negro slave. They sang about tricking the woman’s foolish husband, who then caught the pair together and whipped the Negro. The men hooted and roared with laughter at their lewd gestures. John stood near the stage slapping his thighs. My face grew red and I looked down, pulling my cap low on my forehead.

Then I noticed my shoes—delicate-looking shoes with heels—poking from beneath my trousers. I heard someone say, “Who is that lad?” and looked up to see Hiram Watt regarding me with suspicion. Reaching down to hitch my skirts, I grasped only my trouser legs, a gesture that further revealed my sex. I turned and ran without looking back, afraid that I, and not the actors, was the target of all the laughter I heard!

Returning to Mrs. Alter’s I changed quickly and left a note on the kitchen table that I was laid up in my room with a headache. Truly I had given myself one, worrying that Hiram Watt would tell John that he had seen me. Then the men would mock him and John’s anger at me would be fully justified, I thought ruefully. My mind gave in to wilder fears. What if they suspected me of being a Union spy and came to arrest me? It would be the punishment I deserved for mistrusting my innocent husband!

When hours passed and nothing occurred, my fears began to subside. Finally, my sense of duty drew me back to camp. Mrs. Throckmorton felt my forehead anxiously for signs of a fever. I believe I saw a slight smile of amusement cross Mary Ward’s stern face. I borrowed Mrs. Throckmorton’s Bible and read late into the night to my patients whose pains were keeping them awake.

September 15, 1862

I wish I had never sneaked into that silly play! This morning John told me that Hiram Watt said to him last night, “Saw a pretty young lad at the show who carried hisself in a way that reminded me o’ your missus.”

“Do I have a manly walk, then?” I asked with a coy innocence, while my deceitful heart pounded.

“No, you have a charming, womanly way in everything,” he said with perhaps a bare hint of sarcasm. “But I wondered what he meant, so I said, ‘Hiram, are you suggesting my good wife would spend the Sabbath, like you, in base entertainment?’ He laughed and that was the end of it.”

I meekly thanked John for defending me. But why did I not confess that I had been at the play and assert my reasons for going? Why
did John tell me of his encounter with Hiram unless he suspected I had, in fact, deceived him? Are husbands and wives always destined to have secrets from each other?

I have so much to learn of marriage.

September 16, 1862

Yesterday Mrs. Throckmorton and I drove to Shepherdstown in Virginia, where we gathered several bushels of ripe vegetables donated by the good people there. We heard the muted sounds of battle somewhere behind us but were not afraid for ourselves.

Returning to camp near dusk, we learned that McClellan and Lee had clashed nearby. The First Virginia was called to the battle but arrived too late and ended up covering a disorderly retreat from South Mountain. The good news is that General Stonewall Jackson captured a garrison with federal stores and munitions at Harper’s Ferry. The bad news is that General Lee was seen with his arm in a sling, either from being wounded or thrown by his horse.

Now the regiment will take up a new defensive position near Sharpsburg, expecting to engage the Yankees again. Once again we break camp, and I bid farewell to Mrs. Alter and her comfortable bed. I do not understand the strategy of war, but neither do the men fighting it. John says he does as he is ordered. I am amazed at how the men worship General Lee. They would follow him anywhere, even into the jaws of Death itself.

September 19, 1862 near Antietam Creek, Maryland

There are no words sufficient to describe the horrors of these past three days. I have crossed a threshold from which there is no return to a safer place. Hell has broken loose on earth in a battle with more
casualties than there are stars in the skies. Among them my beloved John is numbered—to my grief and yet infinite thanksgiving, for although he was wounded, he is still among the living.

It began about dawn on the 17th. The field of battle lay between the little town of Sharpsburg and Antietam Creek. I was about a mile behind the lines with Mrs. Throckmorton, Mary Ward, and Mrs. Gordon. Dr. Walker railed against the presence of ladies so near the battlefield and forbade us to leave the hospital area. For what seemed like hours we listened to the steady thundering of cannons and the sharper volley of rifle fire, unable to see the progress of the battle. Though the hospital tents had been erected out of range of the artillery, from time to time a shell screamed overhead, followed by an explosion of dirt or the sound of a nearby tree splintering. I jumped like a skittish horse, and Mary, though more experienced, was almost as nervous. All the while, Mrs. Throckmorton moved her lips in prayer. I could barely focus on my desperate plea, “Lord God, preserve John from harm, and I will do anything you ask.”

From time to time someone would dash through with a report that only worsened our fears: Lee was outnumbered three to one by McClellan. The fresh Union troops had gotten the better of our weary soldiers. Our flanks were weak and the enemy would shortly swarm upon us and we would all be taken prisoner.

Soon we had no leisure for worry or speculation. Following a brief lull in the fighting, the wounded began arriving in a steady stream. Ambulances disgorged their battered cargo. Men limped in using their rifles as crutches. Others staggered under the weight of wounded companions. I stood dazed with the shock of seeing the soldiers black with powder, mud, and dried blood, their torn flesh pink and bloodless white. Mary Ward thrust a basin and sponge at me. My hands shook, making me clumsy and almost useless. Soon, however, I fell into a rhythm of
watering and bandaging. I lost all sense of time until someone touched my arm. It was one of the stretcher-bearers, telling me I was needed over yonder. I blew away the hair that had fallen over my face.

“I’m needed in many places, sir. Please hold this leg up for a moment while I bandage it.”

“Ma’am, it’s your husband, he says.”

I froze with the linen and scissors in my hand.

“You’d best go, nurse. I can wait,” said the man whose leg I tended, forgetting his own suffering out of concern for me.

Though I looked in the direction the orderly had indicated, my confused senses could not distinguish John among the dirty and bloodied men. Then I saw Tom kneeling and holding a man who was half sitting, half lying against a tree, his chest covered with blood. I ran to him and fell to my knees, covering his dirt-blackened face with kisses.

“Hello, darling,” John said weakly.

I bit my lip to keep from crying. Tom and I lifted John and carried him to the hospital tent. It was already full, but even as we stood there, a dead man was carried out, so we placed John on his cot. Using my scissors I cut off his jacket and his shirt, exposing the wound in his upper chest. I felt dizzy and had to lower my head and close my eyes.

“I took a minié ball … near my collarbone, I think.” He winced with pain.

I looked around in desperation. “Doctor! We need a doctor here now!” I shouted, but my plea was lost in the chaos.

“Rose. Don’t panic,” John said, plucking at my sleeve. “Tom, you can go. Help where you can.”

“No, don’t leave us, Tom. Tell me what to do,” I said.

“You stay here. I’ll find the doctor,” Tom said, and I could see the look of fear in his eyes.

John lay perfectly still on the cot. His face was pale, his eyes
closed, the only sign of pain his contracted brow. I could not believe how calm he was. Too calm. Mary Ward said that some men become serene when death is near. I started to sob, thinking I was about to lose him, and grasped his hand, squeezing it hard. His eyes opened. The pupils were wide and dark.

“I’m not going to die,” he said. “I can breathe. It missed my lung.”

Was he only asking me for reassurance? I felt for his pulse and there it was, beating against my fingertip.

“Yes, that’s good,” I said, encouraged. I seized a nearby basin and began to pour water on his chest and wipe the grime away with a sponge. Blood swirled when I rinsed my cloth, until the water in the basin was bright red, yet still more blood spilled from his shoulder. I began to panic again. His breathing was shallow.

“Oh, God, what now?” My voice was a ragged plea.

“Press on it. With your hand,” John reminded me. I did, with both hands, and the blood seeped through my fingers, making them slick, until it finally slowed. My hands stopped shaking. I nudged the damaged tissue into place, then covered the whole area with lint and a clean, soft bandage. I folded his blanket beneath his head and whispered, “I love you” at his ear.

“No man … in the history of war … was ever better cared for—”

I shushed him, and he promptly fell asleep. Aware that I was shivering, I looked down to discover my sleeves and bodice soaked through with blood and water. My skirt was also stained. John’s shirt lay in pieces on the ground, trodden into the dirt. I would clean up later. Only one thing mattered now: keeping John alive.

Tom returned with a strange doctor who, when he saw that there was nothing to cut off, said John was “in good shape” and left again. I went out behind the tent and gave way to great shoulder-shaking sobs that soon exhausted me. Then I returned to the man with the injured
leg. I treated his wound as carefully as I had John’s. He had been shot in the muscle and not the bone. I said I thought the leg would heal.

It was two hours or more before I had the opportunity to check on John. He was still sleeping. I also longed to sleep and decided to find Tom and ask him to stay with John while I rested. But these intentions fled the moment I stepped out of the hospital tent to see hundreds of men lying on the ground, illumined by the cooking fires, which flickered like torches of the devil. In the throes of their suffering, they bled and groaned and cried for mercy, for water, even for death itself. Mary Ward and Mrs. Gordon stepped between the bodies, carrying pitchers of water and broth. Forgetting my intent to sleep, I followed their example. I saw men with unimaginable injuries, wounds too horrible for words. I prayed they would be blessed with a quick death. My back as well as my feet began to ache from constant stooping. I nearly fell asleep on my feet and lost all track of time as diabolical images and the cries of the wounded mingled in my mind like a waking nightmare.

Vaguely I wondered why I didn’t see Mrs. Throckmorton there. Later I learned that she had been with her son, holding his hand as he died of a wound to his stomach. Although I hardly knew him, I cried as if he had been my brother. I wondered if John would be the next to die.