“I detailed you to report to Dr. Brickie, corps surgeon in charge of Corps Hospital at Pulaski.”
“I won’t do it.”
“If you don’t, I will have you court-martialed.”
“All right, but I won’t go.”
After he rode away I thought more soberly. I had been in the army four years and had never been arrested. Perhaps I had better go. I went back, but I gave it to Dr. Brickie. I told him there were a hundred druggists in that army; why didn’t he get some other one? He answered that he had selected me because he knew I would not drink his whiskey nor give it away to “bums,” but keep it for the sick. I told him I would give away every spoonful of it. I told him it was all right for him to be captured. He would be paroled. But I should be sent to Johnson’s Island to freeze.
He said he would arrange that. He knew all the assistant surgeons and told them when we were captured they must address me as “Doctor.” He ordered Dr. Gray to take charge of Ward 4, but to call it my ward.
So the army went without me and I felt sad indeed. I had not been separated from my comrades before. But “It is not what you want that makes you fat, but what you have.”
Forrest’s cavalry was the last to leave. High officers would call on Dr. Brickie, cough and say they were ill, hoping he would give them a drink. He was a positive man and all men looked alike to him. The reply was always, “Not a darned drop; it is for the sick and wounded.” The cavalry surgeons would beg for some, but to no purpose, for they got the same answer.
The infantry had been gone four days. Some of our patients had been taken to the homes of the good Southern women, some had gone with the cavalry, on horseback and in wagons. There was a big decrease in our hospital. About three o’clock in the afternoon Dr. Brickie told me I could go and gave me a pass. He added, “Here are ten plugs of tobacco; you can hire some of the cavalry fellows to let you ride, and you may keep up with them.”
I left him with a glad heart, but I did not know what I was up against. A lone web-foot to keep up with Forrest’s Cavalry! I was certainly used to hardships, but that was more than I could do, to save my life. I went over the muddy road until my wind was almost gone, and I had to rest. One of our boys belonging to Hardee’s Guards, came along and spying me, rode up to where I was saying, “Bill, is that you? You have too much baggage. Give me some of it, and I will deliver it to your regiment wagons when I get back to the army.”