Fire by Night (33 page)

The earthshaking explosions jolted Julia awake. It took her a moment to recall where she was—in a canvas tent provided by the Sanitary Commission, camping in a farmer’s field outside Sharpsburg, Maryland. But she recognized the sounds of battle right away from her experience at Bull Run—the thunder of artillery, the scream of falling shells. The sun was barely up, but the battle had already begun. She rubbed the sleep from her eyes and hurried outside to join the other nurses, doctors, and ambulance drivers, all waiting grimly for their work to begin.

When the Union Army began moving into Maryland, the newly formed ambulance corps went along with it. Once again, Dr. McGrath had been called into field service. Julia had gone downstairs to his office as he’d packed up his surgical instruments and volunteered to join him. He had cut off her words before she’d even finished her sentence, waving her away like a fly.

“I don’t want to hear it, Mrs. Hoffman. The answer is no.”

“Why not?” she asked from the doorway. “You know I’m a good nurse. You trained me yourself.”

“Women don’t belong near the battlefield—especially women who are as young and nai
ve as you are.”

“That’s what you said the last time, remember? And I volunteered on an evacuation ship.”

He rested both hands on his desk and leaned toward her. “And do you remember how ugly those sights were? Well, it was a picnic compared to a field hospital. Stay here.”

Of course she had ignored his orders. The fact that he had demanded she stay behind had made her even more determined to go. Who did he think he was to order her around? She had gone to the Sanitary Commission’s offices that same day and volunteered.

The train of ambulances carrying medical supplies and volunteer surgeons and nurses had followed well to the rear of the army. Julia had seen Dr. McGrath on the first night they’d camped, standing near a fire, sipping from a tin cup. He had seen her, too. He had turned his back and walked away.

But there was no sign of the doctor this morning as Julia stood in the chilly fog, waiting for instructions. By the time they moved several loads of medical supplies up to the barnyard and commandeered the farmhouse for an operating room, the casualties were already streaming in. The field hospital was very close to the battleground in a nearby cornfield, so close that Julia could hear the roar of gunfire and the screams of dying men. On top of a nearby hill, she could see Union artillerymen getting ready to fire their cannons.

What began as a trickle of casualties quickly became a deluge. For the next few hours, Julia saw wave after wave of devastating injuries too horrible to comprehend—arms and legs blown off or shattered by Minie balls; chests and stomachs ripped open; faces mutilated beyond recognition. Bloodied, mangled soldiers flooded the barnyard outside the farmhouse, many of them crying out to God for mercy as they waited.

As she struggled to cope with the devastation all around her, Julia knew that Dr. McGrath had been right once again. There was a world of difference between tending wounded men in the safety of White House Landing and trying to keep her wits about her with shells exploding nearby. She mumbled unending prayers as she tied tourniquets and bandaged wounds and offered medicinal brandy to weeping, dying soldiers. Some of the men grew hysterical when they learned they were about to have amputations, and she wept along with them as she tried to calm them, reassuring them that everything would be all right—though she couldn’t imagine the horror of having an arm or a leg sawn off. She gave the men food and water, listening to deathbed confessions and tender last words whispered to wives and sweethearts and children.

All the while, Rebel shells continued to explode nearby, crashing in the cornfield and shaking the ground underfoot. The sheer number of casualties and the horrifying nature of their injuries testified to the appalling violence that raged all around her. Long before noon, a swirling cloud of dust and smoke had blotted out the sun. Then the battle shifted in a different direction, and they enjoyed a brief reprieve from the fearsome noise of bombardment. The screams and cries of the wounded quickly filled the void.

Around four o’clock a barrage of artillery suddenly opened fire nearby. The furor of sound and smoke seemed like the end of the world to Julia. As the earth quaked and debris fell from the sky like hail, all the nurses and as many of the men as possible fled into the barn to escape the holocaust. But there was no escape from the fear. Julia cowered in the straw, trembling, wishing with all her heart that she had listened to Dr. McGrath. She was certain that she was about to die.

A long hour later it finally stopped. The world felt strangely quiet. As she ventured outside again, the yard stank of sulfur and smoke. Some of the farmhouse windows had shattered, and there was a gaping hole in the roof, but a light still shone in the kitchen, where the doctors continued to operate. The ambulance drivers soothed their frightened horses, then quickly returned to their duties.

Julia had worked without stopping, without thinking, all day. Now the sun was setting in the west, staining the sky blood red. She leaned against the doorframe of the barn and looked around as if for the first time, slowly comprehending the enormity of what she was witnessing. It wasn’t the horror of the scene that stunned her, as gruesome as it was, but the incomprehensible loss of life—all the vibrant young men who had been alive only this morning, laughing and sipping their coffee, now lying shattered and dead. The waste of it—the terrible waste. She slowly slid down the doorframe to the ground, then buried her face in her folded arms and cried.

“Ike! Ike, where are you?” Ted wove in and out among the wounded men, searching for his friend, calling her name. Hundreds and hundreds of blue-uniformed men blanketed the ground around the barn and the farmhouse, and he searched every face in desperation. Some of the men looked up at him as he called out; others gazed sightlessly into the distance, their bodies already growing stiff.

He made his way into the barn where there were more wounded, searching for a thatch of yellow hair, a pair of oversized feet. He saw nurses bending over their patients, tending them. None of the soldiers was as tall as Ike.

He came out of the barn again, wondering if he had missed her somehow. A soldier reached out a hand to grab Ted’s pant leg.

“Please, I need water,” the man begged. He had a huge hole in his side. His other hand was barely attached to his arm. Ted crouched beside him and gave him a drink from his canteen.

“I’m trying to find my friend,” Ted told him. “He was wounded early this morning. Have you seen a big fellow with yellow hair? Ike saved my life. I-I didn’t thank him.”

The man sighed gratefully when he’d drunk his fill, then licked his lips. “Maybe the ambulance took him.”

Ted hurried over to two stretcher-bearers who were loading a man with one leg into the back of a covered wagon. “Do either of you remember a big, tall fellow with yellow hair? He was wounded this morning. In the shoulder.”

One orderly shook his head and turned away. The other mumbled, “Needle in a haystack, pal.”

Ted ran from wagon to wagon, asking the same question, getting the same weary responses. None of the men would look Ted in the eye, and he knew they weren’t looking too closely at the grisly cargo they carried, either.

“Come on, one of you must remember him,” he begged. “Ike is very tall. His feet would have hung off the stretcher.”

Ted remembered his frustration earlier that morning when he’d wished he were taller himself so he could carry Ike off the field instead of dragging her. He’d been surprised at how light she felt, how bony her ribs were beneath her wool uniform. She had lost a lot of weight while she was sick with malaria.

He’d been so afraid that he would hurt her, dragging her that way. But then the stretcher-bearers had appeared out of nowhere, hurrying toward him, and he’d let them load Ike onto a litter and carry her away. He had wanted to go with them to make sure she was going to be all right. But he’d wanted revenge even more. Once the orderlies assured him that his friend would be taken care of, Ted had run back to where he’d dropped his rifle and charged forward into battle.

“Where are the ambulances taking them?” he now asked one of the drivers. “Maybe my friend is there already.”

“There’s a train depot not far from here,” the driver said, climbing onto the wagon seat. “They’ll go by train to a hospital in Washington or Baltimore.”

“Have the trains taken anybody yet? Can I ride along with you and look for him on the platform?”

“Sorry. We need every inch of space to transport the wounded. Why don’t you talk to the surgeons? Maybe one of them will remember.” He snapped the reins and drove away in a cloud of dust.

Ted found three surgeons inside the farmhouse, covered to their elbows in blood. They were arguing as one of them gave chloroform to a man who was laid out on the kitchen table. “I can save this arm,” one of the doctors shouted. “Feel his hand. I’m telling you, there’s circulation.”

“We don’t have time for that kind of surgery, James. There are two hundred more just like him out there. The arm’s coming off.”

There was blood everywhere; the floor was slippery with it. Ted had to look up at the ceiling to keep from getting sick.

“What are you doing in here?” one of the doctors shouted when he saw Ted. “Get out!”

“I’m looking for my friend Ike—a tall fellow with yellow hair. Have you—”

“We look at wounds, not faces. And we don’t ask names.”

“He was wounded in the shoulder—”

“Him and a hundred others. Out!” The doctor pointed his bloody finger at the door.

Ted finally wandered around to the rear of the barn where the dead bodies were being stacked. Some of them were so badly shattered and bloated they hardly seemed human. He couldn’t take any more. This was too horrible. If Ike was among these pitiful souls, he didn’t want to know. He didn’t want this to be how he remembered his friend.

He wished he could tell Ike how much he liked her, how lonely he’d felt the past few days without her, how sorry he was that he’d gotten mad at her. When he’d heard that shell whistling toward him today, he’d known it was going to hit him. He remembered thinking that he was about to die. Then Ike had flown at him from behind, tackling him the way he had—the way
she
had—on the day the sniper fired. She had covered his body with her own. Ted would have been the one lying here wounded or dead if Ike hadn’t saved his life.

Why had she done it? Why had Ike jumped into the path of a shell that was meant for him? Ike—his funny, odd, faithful friend. All this time, Ike had been a girl. And Ted didn’t even know her real name. He sat down behind the woodpile where no one would see him and wept.

“Mrs. Hoffman…” Julia looked up. The head nurse was standing over her. “Go back to your tent and rest for an hour.”

Julia stood, supporting herself on the doorframe of the barn. “I’m sorry. I’m so sorry—”

“You’ve been working all day. You’re no good to us exhausted. People make mistakes when they’re exhausted. Go have a short rest and something to eat. Come back in an hour.”