While working here the Surgeon of the First Division came hurrying past, and peremptorily called on Mrs. Spencer to go and help form a hospital. When she and Mr. Spencer found that many men of their own regiment were in the train of ambulances which was going slowly past with the sufferers, they followed.
They crossed to the White Church, on the Baltimore turnpike, about four miles from Gettysburg, and reached there after dark. They had sixty wounded undergoing every variety of suffering and torture. The church was small, having but one aisle, and the narrow seats were fixtures. A small building adjoining provided boards which were laid on the tops of the seats, and covered with straw, and on these the wounded were laid.
The supply train had been sent back fourteen miles. A number of surgeons were there, but none had instruments, and could do very little for the wounded, and Mrs. Spencer found the stores contained in her knapsacks and haversacks most useful in refreshing these sufferers.
In the course of a few days the confusion subsided. The hospital was thoroughly organized. The Sanitary and Christian Commissions and the people came and aided them, and order came out of the chaos that followed this awful battle.
On the 5th of July, the buildings and tents which formed this hospital contained over six hundred Union troops, and more than one hundred wounded prisoners, and Mrs. Spencer found herself constantly and fully employed, nursing the wounded, and daily riding into town for supplies.
It was here that she gained, and very justly as it would seem, the credit of saving the life of a wounded soldier, a townsman of her own. The man was shot in the mouth and throat, a huge gaping orifice on the side of his neck showing where the ball found exit. The surgeons gave him but a few days to live, as he could swallow nothing, the liquids which were all he even could attempt to take, passing out by the wound. Tearfully he besought Mrs. Spencer's aid. Young and strong, and full of life, he could not contemplate a death of slow starvation. Mrs. Spencer went to the surgeons and besought their aid. None of them could give hope, for none conceived the strength of will in nurse or patient.
"Do as I tell you ——, and you shall not die," said Mrs. Spencer. "Can you bear to go without food a week?"
Gratefully the man signed "yes," and with the tough unyielding patience of a hero, he bore the pains of wound and hunger. In the meantime the chief appliance was the basin of pure cold water from which he was directed to keep his wound continually wet, that horrid wound which it seemed no human skill could heal.
In a few days the inflammation began to subside, even the surgeons decided the symptoms good, and began to watch the case with interest. The ragged edges of the wound, when the swelling subsided, could be closed up. Then, by direction of his kind nurse, he plunged his face into a basin of broth, and supped from it strength, since it did not all escape from the still unhealed wound. Every day witnessed an improvement. In a little time he took his food like a human being; each day witnessed new strength and healing, and then he was saved, and the nurse proved wiser, for once, than the doctor!
For three weeks Mrs. Spencer remained in the White Church Hospital. She then accompanied some wounded to New York City, and took a brief respite from her duties, and the awful scenes she had witnessed.