Jacob's Ladder (32 page)

The woods ahead were smoke and noise. “Dress on the colors!” Duncan's voice cracked. Gypsy sidestepped a wounded Confederate, clean jumped a dead Federal stretched out beside a fallen log. The Confederates burst into a clearing and the brigade volleyed, first the front rank, then the rear. Blue-coated troops disintegrated. Duncan yelled, “Dress on the colors!” as the Confederates advanced, walking briskly, loading, firing, loading, firing, and high-stepping over the bodies of the slain. Some bluecoats—no more than twenty—rallied behind an officer, but in a moment the Confederates whisked them away.

The officer, a major, lay dying, and as Gypsy passed, the man's agonized eyes met Duncan's. “I am slain,” the major whispered, and blood bubbled at his lips and Duncan wanted to say he was sorry.

The bluecoats tumbled back onto the plain, discarding their rifles to speed their flight. Roaring like a dragon, Walker's brigade emerged above the railroad. In good order, six full Confederate regiments flowed over the railroad tracks in pursuit. The plain they crossed was littered with Federal dead and wounded.

Federal artillery blasted the advancing Confederates. Colonel Walker's aide galloped to Duncan. “Retire to the railroad! Retire! We are not supported on our left!”

The men's blood was up, and Duncan interposed his horse between them and the Federals to stop their attack. Duncan's men cheered and cheered.

Reluctantly, they withdrew behind the railroad line. “Hold your fire,” Duncan cautioned. “You'll want every ball if they come at us again.” He detailed men to return to the woods they'd just swept, to take ammunition from the wounded and dead.

Unlike Walker's men, Atkinson's brigade did not stop, did not hold to their order of battle, but overlapped the Federals' retreat, coming on so swiftly that their front and the Federal rear were inextricable, and men slugged and bayoneted and stabbed and bit and strangled and shot and dragged fleeing officers from their horses.

The Federals jumped down into drainage ditches and threw up their hands and white flags appeared, and Federal prisoners started for the rear, five men guarded by two, fifteen burly soldiers and their captain captured by a boy private with an unloaded rifle. When prisoners passed through the lines, none of the Confederates spoke to them—as if defeat might be catching.

One of Catesby Byrd's men had a substantial slab of roasted beef which a provident yankee no longer required. As men fought to the death on the plains before him, and fresh Federal regiments came to the aid of their battered companions, Catesby Byrd sat on the railroad bank and ate beef, washing it down with tepid water from his canteen, thinking what a wonder man is and how strange his glories.

To the west firing was furious, but on Walker's front the fighting stopped by half past two. Except for the cries of hurt men and horses, the field was quiet. Some unfortunates had fallen wounded into clumps of broom sedge set afire by the artillery. They shrieked until the fire reached their ammunition pouches. Under constant battery fire, the Confederates lay behind the railroad embankment and did not talk about it, did not talk at all. Some wept. Some tore cloth from their shirttails to stuff into their ears.

General Jackson and his young aide rode beyond the tracks to inspect the enemy depositions. A minié ball whistled past. “You must withdraw!” Jackson told the young man. “You might be shot out here!”

The sun dropped below the horizon. In the twilight, a ripple ran through the ranks, officers came to the fore, and Confederate batteries sallied onto the field. Federal guns lit up the twilight, muskets flashed like a thousand fireflies, and the Confederate guns withdrew.

The soldiers of Walker's brigade learned that General Longstreet had won a signal victory that day at Marye's Heights on the left flank of the battlefield.

Sometime after nine o'clock that night, pulsating streaks—green and purple and lavender and blue—lit the northern sky. “Catesby,” Duncan said, “it is the end of the world.”

Catesby said, “I believe it is the aurora borealis, though it's a rarity this far south. My friend, what marvels you and I have seen.”

The pulsating light illumined the ghastly field while roving Confederates retrieved their wounded and foraged among the dead.

“Catesby,” Duncan called. “I think this fellow's got your shoes.”

The dead man's feet were larger than Catesby's.

“It is more difficult than one might think—untying a dead man's shoelaces,” Catesby said.

“Here's a new wool overcoat. Poor bastard. He hadn't much chance to use it.”

Two veterans had a Federal officer's trousers off before they dropped his legs in disgust. One fussed, “Henry, I done told you. When we're lookin' for underwear, find a man's been shot in the head. They don't foul themselves.”

Kindly men cut the throats of the wounded horses. The light shimmered across the spectrum: violet, soft greeny-blue.

Two Virginians were tugging at a brigadier's coat. “I saw him first!”

“I already told you, Spottswood Bowles, I'm the one should've been a officer.” The brigadier's epaulets took on the colors of the aurora; blue, purple, gold.

Litter bearers steered silently around the bodies.

A sergeant sat on a dead horse, inspecting each object he took from the saddlebags before adding to a row along the animal's neck.

Naked alabaster corpses stretched as far as Catesby Byrd could see, and a choir of lights sang as thousands of men went about the business of the living.

TOO COMMON COIN

C
AMP
W
INDER
, R
ICHMOND
, V
IRGINIA
D
ECEMBER
14, 1862

EVERY NIGHT BEFORE
retiring, Sallie Botkin Kirkpatrick prayed for bad weather. In deep snow, or when freezing and thawing make the roads impassable, armies do not fight and men do not maim one another. It had been not quite three months since the carnage at Sharpsburg, and the weary surgeons and matrons of Camp Winder Hospital were beginning to hope that the flood of desperately wounded men had ebbed until spring.

Jammed with wounded, puffing dense, stinking woodsmoke, the first trains rolled down Broad Street shortly after midnight. The red brick depot of the Richmond, Fredericksburg & Potomac Railroad was lit by flaring gaslight, its broad platform overflowed with people. Ambulances from all the Richmond hospitals waited at the curb. Swaddled in a heavy blanket, Sallie sat beside a convalescent, Major Sponaugle, while the train's engineer banged his bell and screeched his wheelbrakes and then there was that heartbreaking dead silence before people rushed toward the cars like an exhalation of breath.

“Come, Major,” Sallie said.

Owing to his cheerfulness, the major was a great favorite among the matrons. The major had suffered his wound at Sharpsburg, and though his leg had been amputated above the knee he took his loss in good spirit. According to him, his family had been the last Unionists in his South Carolina county and had suffered opprobrium for their views. “But I have the laugh on my neighbors now,” he said. “I have confuted all their arguments. For the rest of my life I am branded: PATRIOT!”

“You know what we are to do?” Sallie now asked.

“We are to assume Saint Peter's post, separate the quick from the dead. Although I am capable of ordering boys into galling fire, I defer to you tonight. And some of my sex assert that women are the weaker vessel. . . .”

“Major, you are too clever for me.”

His smiling face fell. “I am sorry. I was just jesting to quiet my qualms.”

“Why is it that men are so eager to make messes they cannot clean up afterward?”

Supporting one another, wounded men tottered out of the cars, while behind, its locomotive belching cinders, another train waited impatiently. Lightly wounded men and civilians rolled men onto litters. Dead men, faces uncovered, formed melancholy ranks against the depot wall. Elderly men, boys, and respectable matrons sought news of their loved ones; some carried pails of cool water, and one pretty girl had a basket of the ripest, reddest apples.

Ambulances clattered on the cobblestones, steam engines chuffed importantly. With a cry no louder than a kitten's mewl a new widow fainted.

“Careful with that officer, damn you!”

“Can you walk to the ambulance? Please do lean against me.”

“No, ma'am, I've no news of the 4th Georgia. Our regiment was at Marye's Heights.”

Wounded Federal prisoners were cared for without distinction and privates were loaded as quickly as officers. When one locomotive removed its reeking cars, another took its place.

Some of the ambulances were two-wheel carts, some were farm wagons, the best had been captured from the Federals.

The major, whose infirmity prevented easy passage through the crowd, stayed in the street and directed ambulances.

“My name is Daniel McClintock. Please write my father that I did my duty and look forward to seeing Jesus,” one boy told Sallie. His wound, a tiny puncture in his chest, hadn't bled much; his dirty uniform was hardly bloodstained. “God bless you, ma'am,” he said, and died.

The ambulance men shifted hopeless cases to the far end of the platform, where volunteer chaplains offered what comfort they could. The station tower clock struck three. The major conscripted militiamen to control the crowd. “Ambulances must have room to pass,” he cried. “Please.”

Most of the faces were young. Some were chalk-white with approaching death, others smeared with dirt and blood. “Will I live, ma'am?”

“Yes, yes. We will tend you.”

At Sallie's direction, men were loaded on ambulances or carried to the end of the platform. She forwarded all the youngest boys to Winder, no matter how badly wounded, because she could not bear to give up hope for them.

The dawn was mild and beautiful, the sky a benefaction.

Sallie swished her bloody hands in a water bucket. Another train was pulling in.

On their return to the hospital a wounded boy moaned whenever the ambulance bumped. The major said, “I am told General Lee anticipates the Federals will renew their assault this morning.”

“Perhaps General Lee will care for the new wounded,” Sallie snapped. “God knows we are overwhelmed. There is no more room at Howard's or Ligon's, and they are laying boys on the floor at Mayo's warehouse. Our poor boys. Bravery is too common coin.”

The major said, “Surgeon Lane's son is with Cobb's North Carolinians. I understand they took the brunt of yesterday's assault.”

In the still air, smoke from Winder's morning fires formed a pall over the whitewashed ward buildings. In Sallie's ward, men lay on either side of a wide center aisle. The summer netting was rolled up and tied and potbellied stoves glowed red.

Young Jimmy perched at the foot of his cot, mending one sock. “How are you feeling today, Jimmy?”

The boy had seen just one day of war at South Mountain before canister took off his leg. He would soon be furloughed home.

“Oh, Miss Sallie, I am raring to go. I can hobble around on this stick just as good as if I had two legs. But sometimes first thing in the morning when it's specially damp I swear I can still feel that ol' leg just like I still had it.”

Sallie nodded. “Others have made the same report, Jimmy.”

The boy furrowed his brow. “Miss Sallie, could I ask you . . . I don't mean to be impertinent. I just thought since I was going home soon, I could ask you. I don't know another woman I might ask.” The boy looked straight up at the ceiling and kept his eyes fixed there. “It ain't just me wondering. It's every man who lost an arm or a leg. We was wondering . . .”

When Sallie put her palm to his forehead it was cool.

“We was wondering if a decent girl would ever want to take up with us.” He hurried on. “Corporal Rexrode says women won't have no choice, that every man in the South will have been shot up. But that Irishman, Ryan? He says a woman doesn't need a man so bad as a man needs a woman, and if they got to pick one of us, they won't pick at all. Please, Miss Sallie.” He searched her eyes. “Could such a one as you care for such a one as me?”

The Georgia boy was so pale he was almost transparent, and his hand was hot parchment. “Am I to die then?” he asked.

“You will not see the morrow,” Sallie replied.

“Miss Sallie, could you sit with me for a spell? I will go easier knowing you are here.”

He opened his eyes twice more. The first time there was sense in his eyes and he made to say something but licked his dry lips instead, and Sallie gave him a sip of water. His fever was palpable as a stove. The second time he opened his eyes he died. Sallie covered his face.

Convalescents brought a breakfast of bread, baked at the hospital, a cupful of brown beans, fresh milk, an apple, and a hard-boiled egg. Sallie drank a glass of milk. They carried the Georgia boy to the shed out back, where he'd lie until they took him to Hollywood Cemetery or shipped him home.

“Miss Sallie!” the major said. “We are required again at the trains.”

Sallie took time to splash cold water on her face.

It was such a beautiful bright winter's day they might have been on a pleasure jaunt had not their ambulance stunk so.

The trains were backed up to Henry Street, twelve blocks from the RF&P depot. There were more young women at the scene than earlier; otherwise things were much the same. The major directed ambulances to the platform, and Sallie filled them. Sometime after four o'clock, one of the colored ambulance drivers called out, “Miss Sallie! Miss Sallie! Surgeon Lane don't want you sending no more. We're full up.”

“Then we shall forward them to Chimborazo.”

“Chimborazo full pretty quick, too, Miss Sallie.”

“Then inform Miss Semple we must release our convalescing patients to those private homes that will accommodate them. Matron Semple will make arrangements.”

“Come, Sallie,” the major said kindly, “you must take some nourishment.”

When Sallie wiped her hands on her dress, she left streaks of blood. “Soup. Some soup would be nice.”

The public rooms of the Spottswood Hotel were packed with men drinking, some to the victory, some to the death toll. One gray-faced elderly man sat on the stairs sobbing into his hands.

Before the war, the Spottswood had been Richmond's most fashionable hostelry. Important planters and visiting dignitaries called it their Richmond residence. French wallpaper still adorned the walls and chandeliers (no longer glistening) still hung overhead, but the tables had been pushed together into long rows, the manager collected his twenty dollars (Confederate) at the door, and luncheon consisted of potato soup and cornbread. The clamor was Babylonian, conversation nearly impossible.

The man on the bench beside Sallie wore a cavalryman's uniform and smelled like horse sweat and fresh manure. The backs of Sallie's hands were blood-spattered. The crosspiece of the major's crutch, a smoothed length of curved hickory padded with cloth, was propped against the table. The soup was light on potato content, but satisfactory as to broth, and the cornbread was hot and filling.

The room raised three cheers for General Lee.

What had life been like before the war? Unable to talk over those who were cheering Stonewall Jackson and intending to work through the entire Confederate command, Sallie and the major went back to work.

The last train emptied at dusk, nearly five o'clock, and when Sallie and the major left for Winder, the only men on the station platform were dead or dying.

Camp Winder's three surgeons had been cutting since yesterday midnight. Unlike smoothbore musket balls, which broke bones, the new minié ball shattered them. Sometimes when the ball struck softer bone near the joint, salvage was possible. Usually, even when flesh and muscle were intact, the bone was splintered and the shattered limb had to be amputated. Most surgery was amputations, and almost all successful surgery was. Although the surgeons did search abdominal wounds for fragments, that work was futile and they knew it: a man shot in the bowels nearly always died.

Convalescents carried a patient into the ward, and on his litter what could be done was: the cloth saturated with chloroform was clapped over the patient's dirty face, the affected limb was stripped of clothing and washed, the surgeon's knife slashed quickly and completely through muscles, exposing the bone, before the fine-toothed saw went to work. As the surgeon cut, a matron kept the tourniquet tight so the man wouldn't bleed to death.

In the pool of light the patient, a middle-aged Irish corporal, said, “And it is sorry I am to be meeting you under these circumstances. Can I keep my hand?”

A weary Surgeon Lane shook his head no.

“Well, that'll be all right then. Me mother warned me about pinchin' the girls. Religious she was.”

Underneath the stink of blood was the stink of men's sweat and urine and feces and the faintest tang of gunpowder.

Men were brought to cots, laid on the floors between cots, finally in the aisles.

Cousin Molly came in and touched Surgeon Lane's shoulder. The paper she held out to him was a telegram.

Surgeon Lane made no sound but he went white and tears leaked from his eyes and he did nothing to stop them. “I am obliged to you for this news, Matron . . . Molly . . .”

“I am so sorry, James.”

Tears pouring down his cheeks, Surgeon Lane amputated a left forearm, a foot, then a right arm at the shoulder. The next litter bore a Federal lieutenant. After his shirt was cut away, a bulge was apparent above his collarbone, perhaps a minié ball under the flesh or a canister ball. The lieutenant's eyes rolled in terror. Surgeon Lane dropped his knife in the filthy bucket of surgical appliances and rubbed a bloody forearm across his eyes. “Take this man to Surgeon Chambliss,” he ordered. “I will not operate on this officer nor any other Federal soldier tonight. I cannot promise I will not do them harm.”

At noon the next day, Surgeon Lane lay down for an hour in the room Sallie had made over for her own use. At five that evening, Surgeon Lane lost patience with a convalescent who had failed to empty the limb tub so an arm rolled under the surgeon's feet and he misstepped, slashing his patient's thigh. “We are worse than our enemies!” he shouted. “We are better killers through carelessness than they are intentionally!”

Cousin Molly Semple brought a hand basin of clean water. “Wash up, James,” she said. “I have a meal for you outdoors. It's time you came away.”