Hot Valley (29 page)

The hospital had to be closed down, and those who were not dying were transferred to safer, cleaner destinations. I could have gone with them but chose to stay. I volunteered instead to staff a new, makeshift field hospital even closer to the battle lines. If Death would not find me here, then surely it would find me there.

Getting out of the hospital and back on the road did me powerful good. For weeks, even months, the furthest I had
been from the dead and dying was around behind the hospital building—once a fine family home, appropriated from its owners—where I had disposed of soiled materials and, all too frequently, corpses. Now I was outdoors again, sleeping under canvas as we moved south to our new, perilous position. It was more dangerous than I knew; during September, Early's Confederates skirted our position and fought a bloody battle at Winchester, leaving us effectively surrounded by the enemy—though, whether by luck or planning, they did not pay us any attention. Our new base was near Fisher's Hill—and it was here that one of the bloodiest battles of the campaign would be fought.

I do not intend to go into details of that engagement—I am not a military historian, and I know nothing of the tactics and planning that resulted in that ghastly bloodbath. I heard much from my colleagues and patients about the strange formation of the Shenandoah Valley which made it possible for armies to circle each other without meeting, however much they may have wanted to. There was much talk of bandits roaming the area, snipers picking off people at random, and our status as noncombatants was no protection. However, we proceeded through the countryside unmolested.

And what countryside it was. Where once had stood trees and houses, where once the Shenandoah meandered through a paradisial landscape, now there was mud and ash, the blackened stumps of tree trunks, the ruins of houses. Cattle roamed through this nightmare scene, their udders full and distended, searching for grass and bellowing in pain. Chickens ran around, scattered from destroyed farmyards, pecking contentedly for grain; more common were the crows that clustered around dying livestock and dead humans. We even saw children wandering through that manmade hell, and took them to safety whenever we could.

Our destination was just outside the town of Strasburg, which had been badly knocked about by Sheridan's men. We took over an old school, pitched tents around it, and transformed the interior into the best infirmary we could, which was not much. We were given an armed guard, but the town was empty. We heard that Sheridan was planning a major confrontation with the enemy any day now, and we hurried to do all that we could in the time we had. Nurse Jenny worked by my side, as strong and capable as any man and much cooler in a crisis. I suppose we were brave, but we didn't think much about it. We both expected death, and perhaps, for our own different reasons, we both wanted it.

Before we were ready to receive them, sick and wounded men were arriving in scores. Sheridan had been skirmishing up and down the valleys, attacking Early's forces wherever he found them, but they weren't ready to give up yet and gave as good as they got, sometimes better. Even here there was talk of the Black Devil, who had sent many a good Yankee boy to his maker. Those who were not seriously wounded we bandaged up and pressed into service; many a soldier was transformed into a porter or an orderly or even a nurse after being under Jenny's and my command for a few days.

Suddenly, the steady trickle of admissions became a wave, and that was when we knew that Sheridan and his fellow generals had put into practice his plan to destroy the lingering resistance in Virginia and lay waste the country. The battle of Fisher's Hill and its incendiary aftermath quickly became a national scandal, and it nearly brought me the death I had expected for so long.

I will not waste words describing what I saw and did in the hospital that day, or the day after. I did all that I could, and I saw things that no man should ever see. Perhaps I helped a few, but there was often nothing that I could do. But every man who came in, however badly injured, was proud to report that the losses on the other side were infinitely greater than ours. I found this to be of no comfort whatsoever.

The battle was declared over, and the last of the wounded were stretchered in to be patched up, sawn up, or buried, as best the doctors could. Jenny and I were exhausted, and she was sick, vomiting all the time; I felt sure she would die. And then, suddenly, as we thought we had reached the very bottom of the pit of hell, we were under attack. Through the stench of blood and shit and puke, I smelled smoke. This time it was no dream; the hospital was on fire.

I ran outside and saw that our tents were flaming. A few dark figures were running around the camp, some of them our comrades, others the insurgents who had set the fire. They were running toward the building, and there was nothing I could do to stop them. This time it was no party; war had found me at last. I was unarmed; the guards had all the weapons, and they were, as yet, unaware of the attack. I sounded the alarm, ringing the old school bell as loud and hard as I could, until I became conscious of bullets whizzing past my ears. I ran back into the ward, where I saw Nurse Jenny trying to calm a delirious soldier while the Rebels poured in through a window, upturning beds and cutting throats. I grabbed Jenny, dragged her away from the bedside and back through what had once been the kitchen. Unable to rescue any of our belongings, or to equip ourselves with the most basic necessities of life, we fled the scene. Jenny fell, and when I turned back to find her she was gone.

I had no choice but to save my own skin; we were surrounded by uncontrolled Rebel forces, themselves cut off from the lines of command, who were meting out to the “invaders” (as they saw us) the same kind of treatment that Sheridan was unleashing across the whole Shenandoah Valley region. The hospital was on fire, the roof had already collapsed onto the operating theater, and it looked as if the same would happen to the ward. I stood for a moment, indecisive, knowing that I should go back and save as many men as I could—and then I saw a gray-uniformed soldier charging toward me with a knife. I ducked behind the bins where we stored soiled dressings and linen until they could be burned and held my breath, not just for fear of detection but because of the vile smell. The bins had not been emptied for weeks, and they were now a breeding ground for maggots.

The soldier ran past, thank God—he had not seen me, or did not think me worth dirtying his blade for. I knew that I could scramble over the old perimeter fence into the woods, where at least there would be hiding places and the chance of surviving the attack. My better self told me to stand my ground, to die protecting the vulnerable—but instinct took over, and I ran. By the time I reached the trees, I was soaked with the cold sweat of terror.

The woods had been burned months before, when the Confederates had driven the Federals out of the valley the first time, and I thought that nobody was likely to pay too much attention to what now amounted to a few stacks of standing charcoal. The dust that rose from the charred forest floor was fine and choking, and within seconds my hands and face were black, the ash sticking to the sweat and forming a weird mask. I kept on running, almost blinded, and the sounds of screaming and shooting started to fade.

There was a stream in the woods that flowed through Strasburg and then joined the North Fork of the river a little further below, and it was toward this that I headed, thinking I could follow its course to some kind of shelter and at least wash my eyes. But when I reached it, the water ran foul, dyed black with the burning upstream, the surface greasy with what I could only assume was oil, or maybe blood. I did not care to find out by getting much nearer; polluted streams like this were dangerous sources of infection.

I kept a few feet between myself and the water, but followed the course downward to what I presumed was a safer part of the valley, away from the fighting. Rounding a bend, I pulled up short, took in a scene of desolation, and vomited.
The ground was covered with corpses, perhaps 20 of them in a small clearing, laid out as they had fallen, some of them touching, some of them isolated, spread-eagled. There was no time to turn away, to stop myself from seeing the fact that they were little more than children. The filthy remnants of their gray uniforms proclaimed them Confederate soldiers, but their smooth, beardless faces betrayed the truth—none of them was more than 16 years of age. Had it really come to this—that we would send our children to fight for a cause the rights and wrongs of which we had long since forgotten?

One of them moved; he was not dead. I ran to him, saw that he was badly injured but, perhaps, not fatally, and instantly set about trying to stanch the blood that flowed from a wound in his leg. I tore my shirt to form a tourniquet around his upper thigh, pressed the edges of the wound together—it was clean enough, thank God—and packed it down with what remained of my shirt. If only I had water! The boy would die of dehydration if not from loss of blood. But I had come away from the hospital with nothing but the clothes I stood up in, and I could do nothing to slake his thirst. After all I had given to men, and taken from them, I had not even a drop of water to save the life of a dying child. I cradled his head in my lap, and wept—for myself, as much as for him. A tear fell onto his lips, and his tongue—miraculously clean and pink—reached out to take it.

The sound of crashing from near the stream brought me back to the danger of my situation, and I had barely time to look up before a huge dark figure bore down on me, as if it had materialized from the burned earth. It was as black as soot, as huge as a tree trunk, its arms stretched out as if to sweep me and the boy up and drag us down to hell. A gun waved in one hand, a knife in the other. As the man ran through the ash, a fine gray dust rose up around him, like smoke. I remembered those feverish tales of the Black Devil and composed myself for death. I could not even stand to fight him; to have done so would have meant dropping the boy in the dust, which I could not do. And so I bowed my head, muttered a quick prayer, and braced myself for the blow.

It never came. There was a crash, a cloud of choking ash, and the Black Devil fell on the ground, a foot in front of me, like an ox that has been poleaxed, a tree that has been felled. I lifted the filthy head to one side, so that he would not choke to death in the ash, and I saw his face.

It was Aaron Johnson.

HIS SKIN WAS BLACK, BUT THAT SIGNIFIED NOTHING; MY SKIN was black, the dying boy's skin was black, everything was black in that burnt valley. But as I looked at the eyes, the lids fluttering as he struggled to remain conscious, I saw that the lines around them were black too, unlike the tracery of dirty white wrinkles and tearstains that surrounded mine and the boy's. I recognized in an instant the thick, cropped hair, the strongly molded skull, the firm jaw, the full lips—and I knew that this was Aaron Johnson, thrown at my feet, vomited up by the war, delivered to me as if by some miraculous courier. The years between us disappeared, and for a moment we were back in Vermont, riding over the mountains, bathing in the streams, the war a distant rumble that could be easily ignored in the eternal summer of my youth.

But now the war could not be ignored. Aaron was sick, maybe wounded, maybe dying. The boy in my lap, too, would bleed to death unless I could treat him. I had no water, no equipment, barely any strength in my limbs, certainly not enough to carry two men to safety. I grabbed Aaron by
the shoulder of his filthy tunic, pulled him toward me, and rolled him over. He sighed, a huge, deep sigh, as if he was falling into the most contented sleep in a feather bed with his beloved by his side. I could not let him sleep; I feared there would be no awakening. It was all-important to me that Aaron Johnson did not die—more important than saving my own life, or finding my way home, or having a future after the war. All that mattered was that he did not slip away before I had a chance to tell him—what? That he had been right all along, way back then in a land and time that seemed as remote as a fairy tale? That I had learned my lesson the hard way? That I had tasted life's cup to the bitterest dregs? That I loved him? Did I love him, after all? Is that what was making my throat close up, my chest heave, and my eyes water? Or was it the smoke, the ash, the fear, and the stench of death in that desolate place?

Still cradling the boy in my lap, I leaned over Aaron and felt his brow; it was burning. I knew that fever was rife, the dreaded yellow jack that was wiping out hundreds if not thousands throughout the war zones. His face looked gaunt; he could easily be ill. But I didn't care. He must not die, that was all. I wanted, somehow, to give him life. My tears splashed down onto his skin, making little clearings in the soot where his beautiful brown skin showed through. Without thinking what I was doing, heedless of possible infection and against all my medical training, I bent down and kissed him on the lips. If he was going to die, I might as well follow him—that, I suppose, was my thinking, although it was not a conscious thought. I only wanted to impart something of my life to his.

It was like kissing a corpse—but then, miraculously, his lips twitched and parted, and the kiss was returned, weakly but unmistakably. Aaron Johnson was alive, and kissing me. If we had both died then, I should not have complained.

But we did not die. After Aaron had crashed to the ground, the valley had gone eerily quiet, so quiet that I could hear myself breathing, and the struggling breath of the boy in my lap. I came to my senses and realized that fate had given us a chance—the attentions of the war were engaged elsewhere, and if I could get these two to safety we might yet survive. Of one thing I was certain—I was not going to run.

“Please wake up, Aaron,” I murmured, my lips still hovering around his. “Please. I need your strength now.” His eyelids opened a little, I saw his pupils—thank God he did not have the pale, fading look of death in those eyes—and he smiled.