My letter was promptly received, and Mr. Stuart answered by telegram:—
“Everything ordered will be sent this afternoon. Also crates of dishes. Go ahead. You shall have all you need.”
I had already telegraphed to Mrs. E. W. Jones, one of my most reliable workers, to come to me immediately, and Miss Hattie Noyes, another superior worker.
They both came as fast as steam could bring them, reaching there before the kitchen was completed. A cabin had been prepared for them; but as shingles were not at hand, it was covered with canvas. As the ladies were entirely competent to complete the arrangements, I left them for another point. In less than a week a most remarkable change had been wrought in that hospital. When the first meals were issued from that well-regulated kitchen in the nice white dishes and bright tinware, the sick men, many of them, cried and kissed the dishes, and said it seemed most like getting home. Instead of the slops dished out of vessels that looked like swill-buckets, there came to the beds of the very sick and severely wounded, baked potatoes, baked apples, beef-tea, broiled beefsteak (when allowed), and especially to the wounded, toasts, jellies, good soup, and everything in the best home-like preparation.
The surgeon looked on in utter surprise. But the patients fared better than my heroic women. There came a beating, driving rain, and their canvas roof leaked like a sieve. They wrapped rubber blankets about their clothing, put rubber blankets on their bed, raised their umbrellas, and slept. Of this trial Mrs. Jones wrote me. I quote from her letter:—
“This has been a trying day. All night and all day the rain has come down in torrents in our quarters and the kitchen, as well as out-of-doors. Quarts of water ran off our bed while we slept. Almost everything had to be dried, even to bed and bedding, and in the kitchen it was even worse. But to-night finds us in good spirits, and our zeal undampened, though our work has been most thoroughly soaked.
Affectionately,
E. W. J.”
The putting on of new roofs was only a question of a day or two, and they had no more trouble from rain after that.
This hospital became so large that another kitchen had to be established, and three other ladies were added to the force.
These kitchens were the most important in the entire service, except, possibly, the great kitchen at Cumberland Hospital, Nashville, Tenn. The fame of the cookery there extended all along the line. Surgeons came long distances to see for themselves if the reports were true about them. To many it seemed incredible that the cooking for the very sick could be so well managed right along the front lines in these field hospitals.