Walk the deck, my Captain lies,
Fallen cold and dead.
Walt Whitman.
CHAPTER XXVI
A RECENT LETTER FROM DOCTOR MARY BLACKMAR BRUSON
“Jacksonville, Florida,
April, 1910.
MY DEAR ADA:
At your request I send some incidents of camp life as they come to mind.
After one of the fearful onslaughts at Petersburg, the wounded came pouring into my tent, which was nearest to the firing line, so that a drummer-lad had named it ‘The Half Way House’. One lad dropped from the wagon in which he was being transported, as they passed my tent. I ran and cried out to the driver. He coolly replied ‘He is dead, what does it matter!’
I knelt by the boy’s side and found a remote evidence of life, but hemorrhage was so profuse it seemed he could not survive. I called the attention of surgeons, but all said ‘We must go on’. So with my knowledge that life was not extinct, and that he was so young and had the force of youth, (moreover the hardships of the Confederates had toughened him), I remained on the ground at his side not daring to leave him, but compelled to use my fingers as a tampon.