I went ashore in a little boat with the captain, and reported to the Provost Marshall at headquarters, to show my pass from General Butler. The camp appeared rather shabby. There were only a few wooden buildings, used by army officers, a number of large tents and negro cabins, with guards and officers running from one tent to another. City Point was a barren, almost treeless country of untilled land. The United States flag floated over a small house used by General Grant as headquarters.
A small narrow, cigar-shaped, back-wheel boat, the “Gazelle,” returned with me to the “Patapsco,” and taking on board the three nurses we steamed up the narrow Appomatox River, a monotonous sail of six miles between low bluffs and sparse foliage, to the hospital tents at Point of Rocks, which were pitched on the very brink of this malarious stream. This was General Butler’s Hospital Department of the James.
For the first time I realized my strange position, and felt, when the “Patapsco” was out of sight, as if “I had burned my bridges behind me.” There were only half a dozen men and officers aboard. Feeling impelled to speak to a refined-looking man, wearing major’s shoulder-straps, I found him very courteous. I remarked on my apprehension of the strangeness of the situation, and said if I could feel assured that the surgeon in charge of Point of Rocks Hospital was a gentleman, I should have nothing to fear. I asked the Major if he knew that officer; he replied that he did, and thought I would find him a gentleman.
On reaching Point of Rocks Hospital, the Major offered to go ashore and send an ambulance for us, and this took us a short distance to the hospital tent wards, and to a small frame house near to the Hospital Headquarters.
I called a passing orderly and reported at once with my Butler pass, to the officer in charge, and found, to my consternation, while the color rose to the roots of my hair, that this man was the very Major to whom I had spoken on the boat. Rising and bowing politely he said, “Miss Smith, I trust you will always find me a gentleman.”
It was well for me that he was a gentleman, for I found myself in a very anomalous position, having been sent by the Masonic Mission to take the place of Clara Barton, who was already in charge of this work, but away at the time. I soon discovered that the Masonic Mission had taken advantage of Miss Barton’s absence and—quite without authority—had sent me to take her place. The Major, Surgeon Porter, however, courteously invited me to remain until her return.
Meanwhile he had ordered a large tent put up for my assistants and, as a compliment, assigned me to a room at headquarters. But sleeping with a strange fat woman on a feather-bed, with windows closed on a hot July night was too much honor; so the next morning I asked to be allowed to go with the nurses in their large new tent, where, with a cot in each corner, we were quite comfortable. A small tent was attached for my mess-room, while the nurses ate at the “patients’ mess.”
General Butler’s army headquarters of the Department of the James, was across the Appomattox, at Bermuda Hundreds, whence the rumbling of wagons and tramping of troops over pontoon bridges could be heard through the silence and darkness of the night. Of course I slept little on my first night in camp.
The next night I was greatly distressed by groans and cries in the distance and, much excited, I went directly to Surgeon Porter, as early as allowable the next morning, to ask if I could do something for the suffering soldiers. Seeming surprised at my question he replied that he was not aware of such suffering in camp. He asked where the sounds came from, and as I indicated the direction he said with a curious expression: “Well, Miss Smith, you may try if you wish, but the cries come from the mules in the corral, and I fear you will not succeed.” That joke followed me wherever I went.
Surgeon Porter gave me charge of the officers’ ward, of perhaps forty or more patients. Each officer having his own orderly in attendance, and the hospital being in very good running order, there was no unpleasant work for me to do. So at first I saw only the romantic side of “bathing feverish brows,” and giving comforting words, with some specially prepared diet.