The story furnishes no further interest, but the result was very annoying. She was put into my ambulance very drunk by this time and sent away, her trunks sent after her. The next day, neatly dressed, she managed to get an interview with the medical director, enlisted his sympathy by a plausible appeal and description of her desolate condition. “A refugee,” or “refewgee,” as she called herself, “trying to make her living decently,” and receiving an order to report at our hospital, was back there by noon. Explanations had to be written, and our surgeon-in-chief to interfere with his authority, before we could get rid of her.
Work.
About this time (April, 1863), an attack on Drewry’s Bluff, which guarded Richmond on the James river side, was expected, and it was made before the hospital was in readiness to receive the wounded. The cannonading could be heard distinctly in the city, and dense smoke descried rising from the battle-field. The Richmond people had been too often, if not through the wars at least within sight and hearing of its terrors, to feel any great alarm.
The inhabitants lying in groups, crowded the eastern brow of the hill above Rocketts and the James river; overlooking the scene, and discussing the probable results of the struggle; while the change from the dull, full boom of the cannon to the sharp rattle of musketry could be easily distinguished. The sun was setting amidst stormy, purple clouds; and when low upon the horizon sent long slanting rays of yellow light from beneath them, athwart the battle scene, throwing it in strong relief. The shells burst in the air above the fortifications at intervals, and with the aid of glasses dark blue masses of uniforms could be distinguished, though how near the scene of action could not be discerned. About eight o’clock the slightly wounded began to straggle in with a bleeding hand, or contused arm or head, bound up in any convenient rag.
Their accounts were meagre, for men in the ranks never know anything about general results—they almost always have the same answer ready, “We druv ’em nowhere.”
In another half-hour, vehicles of all kinds crowded in, from a wheelbarrow to a stretcher, and yet no orders had been sent me to prepare for the wounded. Few surgeons had remained in the hospital; the proximity to the field tempting them to join the ambulance committee, or ride to the scene of action; and the officer of the day, left in charge, naturally objected to my receiving a large body of suffering men with no arrangements made for their comfort, and but few in attendance. I was preparing to leave for my home at the Secretary of the Navy, where I returned every night, when the pitiful sight of the wounded in ambulances, furniture wagons, carts, carriages, and every kind of vehicle that could be impressed detained me. To keep them unattended to, while being driven from one full hospital to another, entailed unnecessary suffering, and the agonized outcry of a desperately wounded man to “take him in, for God’s sake, or kill him,” decided me to countermand the order of the surgeon in charge that “they must be taken elsewhere, as we had no accommodations prepared.” I sent for him, however. He was a kind-hearted, indolent man, but efficient in his profession, and a gentleman; and seeing my extreme agitation, tried to reason with me, saying our wards were full, except a few vacant and unused ones, which our requisitions had failed to furnish with proper bedding and blankets. Besides, a large number of the surgeons were absent, and the few left would not be able to attend to all the wounds at that late hour of the night. I proposed in reply that the convalescent men should be placed on the floor on blankets, or bed-sacks filled with straw, and the wounded take their place, and, purposely construing his silence into consent, gave the necessary orders, eagerly offering my services to dress simple wounds, and extolling the strength of my nerves.
First Essay.
He let me have my way (may his ways be of pleasantness and his paths of peace), and so, giving Miss G. orders to make an unlimited supply of coffee, tea, and stimulants, armed with lint, bandages, castile soap, and a basin of warm water, I made my first essays in the surgical line. I had been spectator often enough to be skillful. The first object that needed my care was an Irishman. He was seated upon a bed with his hands crossed, wounded in both arms by the same bullet. The blood was soon washed away, wet lint applied, and no bones being broken, the bandages easily arranged.
“I hope that I have not hurt you much,” I said with some trepidation. “These are the first wounds that I ever dressed.”
“Sure they be the most illegant pair of hands that ever touched me, and the lightest,” he gallantly answered. “And I am all right now.”