While I drank the tea, she stood looking at me, and said meditatively:
"Oh, you queer little thing," and hurried off to her work.
Soon a Colonel with a badly wounded head came on board, leaned against, a post and groaned. I found a basin of water and a towel, and began bathing his head, wetting those torturing dressings and making him comparatively comfortable, when she stopped in her hurried walk, looked on an instant, and exclaimed:
"Oh, you nice little thing! Now I see what you are good for! I could not do that; but you will take care of their wounds and I will feed them! That will be grand!"
Soon Georgie came to say there was no transportation to be had, but she had found a Campbell surgeon in charge of a hospital tent, and he wanted me; said he was worn out, and had plenty of work for both of us. The doctor had a large tent, filled with wounded lying on loose hay. His patients seemed to want for nothing, but he must needs give so much time to receiving and forwarding those pouring in from the front, that he needed us. He had a little tent put up for us, and that was the only night I have ever slept in a tent.
Next morning while we were attending to a Colonel, and Lieutenant Colonel, both of the same regiment, and both badly wounded and just brought in, one said to the other: "My God, if our men in Fredericksburg could have a little of this care!" "Why?" said I, "I have heard that everything possible was being done for them?"
"Everything possible!" exclaimed one, and both together began the most terrible recital of the neglect and abuse of the wounded in that horrible place—men dying of thirst, and women spitting in their faces, kicking and spurning them. We set down our basins; Georgie started in one direction and I in another, to find transportation.
The surgeon in command of the station stood superintending the loading of oats while he looked at my pass, and said he could not possibly send us, adding: "Fredericksburg is no place for a lady. It is impossible to describe the condition of things there."
"But, Doctor, I am not a lady! I am a hospital nurse. The place where men are suffering must be the place for me. I do not look strong, but you cannot think how much I can do.
"But, Madam, you forget that our army is cut off from its base of supplies, and must be furnished with subsistence, and that we have not half the transportations we need."