Wedded to War (40 page)

“But Tripler,” Charlotte interrupted. “What has he done—or not done—this time?”

Olmsted shook his head and paced the deck. “That fool. He is up to his ears in disarray. The sick are already collecting at White House, with no system yet conceived as to how to dispose of them. I should not be surprised if we have thousands upon our hands within days.” He rubbed the back of his mosquito-bitten neck. “
The Daniel Webster
and the
Elm City
should be here tomorrow and can take six hundred off, and Knapp has gone to Yorktown for the rest of our boats. But would you believe, that in the course of my brief meeting with Tripler, we were interrupted no fewer
than four
times by separate messengers telling us of more sick arriving, and no accommodations to be had for them?”

“What about the house?” asked Alice. “White House?”

He shook his head. “You mean the brown cottage. No, no, federal guards have been placed around it as a building of historic importance that shall not be desecrated. It belonged to Martha Washington, and
her granddaughter, Mary Anna Custis Lee—you’ll remember she’s General Robert E. Lee’s wife—has left a note requesting that we honor the memory of our first president by leaving it alone. McClellan has agreed.”

“So then, has the army no tents?” Charlotte asked.

“Tents, yes! Tents they have! But no detail on hand to pitch the blasted things. And if they were pitched, there would be no beds to put in them! And as for medicines in any adequate quantity—” He shook his head and laughed darkly.

“Dare I ask what provision has been made?” Charlotte asked.

“Tripler says he has sent numerous telegrams to various authorities, since March 15, requesting supplies for the army of 140,000 men. He asked for thirty contract surgeons and 144 four-wheeled ambulances—the two-wheeled are good for nothing. He asked for medical supplies for five thousand men.”

“And?”

“Just today he has received some cooking utensils and a little liquor and furniture, and one hundred ounces of quinine. That is all.”

“Just one hundred ounces?”

“He requested two thousand last week. There are five surgeons and assistants, one steward, no apothecary, and no nurses. Two wells have been dug but the water from neither has been found fit for use.”

Mr. Olmsted’s words hung in the air, heavy and dark, like the four black gunboats sitting in the river next to the
Spaulding.

“How much time do we have?” whispered Charlotte.

“The army marches tomorrow.” He looked at the shore now teeming with life. “A battle may occur at any time. We are not prepared for it.”

Mr. Olmsted gripped the railing of the deck until his knuckles turned white. “Hang it all!” he shouted into the wind. “We are supposed to
support
the Medical Department, not do everything for it!”

Sweat beading on his pale, pinched face, he ripped the tie from around his neck and cursed under his breath. Turning to Charlotte and Alice, he said, “I cannot ask you to go ashore and help in the field
hospitals. You are each under my responsibility, and your duties, as we have outlined them and told your families, were to be confined to housekeeping and cooking on the ships themselves.”

“We can do more than that,” said Charlotte. “I’m a trained nurse. I have worked as such in Washington City, and by now Alice could do it on her own, too, she has spent so much time in hospitals.”

“No,” he said quietly. Then louder, “No, it is not the same, you cannot pretend that what you have done was in any way similar to the devastation you are about to witness. I cannot, I will not, ask you to descend into the misery that is a field hospital after a battle.”

“And what will we do? Stay on the ship twiddling our thumbs until patients arrive?” said Alice. “Unthinkable. My husband is out there.”

“We are all well aware of that fact, Mrs. Carlisle,” he said. “So is Mrs. O’Flannery’s. But you have no idea what you are about to do.” A heavy sigh slumped his shoulders. “I wash my hands of this stain that will forever mark you.”

Charlotte’s heart thudded in her chest. But she would not be swayed.

Mr. Olmsted sighed. “As I said, I cannot ask this of you. You are ladies. You were meant to be protected.” He looked them in the eyes now with eyes like burning coal. “But if you desire of your own accord to go ask the surgeons if they would be agreeable to your services, I will not stop you.”

Trains of wounded and sick men had begun arriving from the Battle of Fair Oaks two days before, and still they did not stop. A thousand men, two thousand, three, four … Charlotte could avert her gaze from the ghastliest sights, but she could not get away from the constant sound of moaning and crying, even screams.

Or from the smell. It wasn’t just the sickly sweet, metallic scent of blood she remembered from her father’s sick room. It wasn’t just the sour smell of fever and body odor, or the eye-watering stench of dysentery. No, it was more. It was worse. The horrible odor of rotting flesh crawled up into Charlotte’s nostrils and lodged there, filling her mouth with the taste of spoiled meat.

The Sanitary Commission had set up a large tent that housed the kitchen, storeroom, and bakery, along with twenty Sibley tents along the railroad. But it was not enough.

The war-trampled plain surrounding the White House was littered with bodies stretched out and exposed beneath the merciless, glaring sun. Whippoorwills were replaced by circling vultures and buzzing flies.

The Sanitary Commission and the government had been reinforced by more civilian volunteers. The Sisters of Charity were there, as well as men and women from the Christian Commission. Since the government had made no plan for stretcher bearers, Mr. Olmsted had rounded up a work crew of Negro contrabands for the job. Four Negroes from the Lee estate helped in the kitchen tent, and nine of them did the hospital washing in their cabins.

Civilian doctors picked their ways through row upon row of ill and wounded patients, refusing to help. They were only interested in
surgical cases
, they insisted.
Looking to get some experience with the amputation knife and the bow saw.

Butchers!
Charlotte thought, shuddering at the screams that filled her ears. They did not come from the patients themselves, for with a little chloroform, they were unconscious during the five-minute procedure. No, the shrieking came from those waiting in line, watching man after man go to the table with four limbs, and come off of it with three. Or two.

So this is what Caleb had to do
, she thought darkly, and watched with morbid curiosity as a surgeon some distance from her tent wiped his knife on his blood-covered apron between patients. As he brought the metal down to meet body, she quickly looked away. But the loud rasping of the saw on human bone would stay in her memory forever,
she was sure, followed by the dull thud of the limb falling to the ground. Bile rose in her mouth, but she swallowed the bitterness back down until her stomach roiled with churning acid.
Mr. Olmsted was right
, she thought.
These moments will mark me for ever, yet I cannot turn my back on these men.

The only way to stop the noise was to drown it out with something else.

“Mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord,” she began singing, softly at first, voice quavering with emotion. “He is trampling out the vintage where the grapes of wrath are stored.” Alice joined her voice to Charlotte’s. “He hath loosed the fateful lightning of His terrible swift sword: His truth is marching on.”

One by one, other women raised their voices while their hands remained busy at their tasks: baking bread, simmering beef tea, pouring brandy and water down the soldiers’ throats, washing fever-blistered faces, sponging over crusty bandages.
Glory, glory, hallelujah! Glory, glory, hallelujah! Glory, glory, hallelujah! His truth is marching on.

The a capella chorus floated above the mewling of the sick and wounded. Those men who could find the strength and voice joined in, too.

In the middle of the next stanza, a gentle touch on Charlotte’s elbow made her jump.

It was a surgeon, haggard and bloodstained. The few strands of hair that had once been pomaded over his bald head now blew wildly in the wind.

“I need to take an arm off a patient on the government ship just over yonder, and, well—he hasn’t eaten all day. As it turns out, we—we have no food—on board, you see. Would you bring over some beef tea and eggnog for him?” He did not meet her eyes, and for good reason. When Mr. Olmsted had asked this very doctor if his ship had everything it needed some time ago, the response had been
Yes, we are all ready,
spoken with burning condescension.

So, you’re not ready at all, then are you?
Charlotte thought. But “Yes, of course,” was all she said.

With flasks of the beef tea and eggnog tied to her waist Charlotte packed soft bread in her pockets and crossed the coal barges to the government ship. After she fed the soldier about to undergo amputation, she fed two others with what she had left. The ship was packed with patients, but as far as Charlotte could tell, there were no provisions for them, and they were about to set sail on a three-day voyage North.
Criminal!
she fumed.

Her pockets and flasks now empty, Charlotte marched up to the officer in charge and introduced herself.

“I understand you’re about to carry your cargo north, sir; is that correct?” she began.

“Yes, just as soon as I get the all-clear from my superior.”

“And how will you feed them once you are at sea?” Charlotte asked.

“Excuse me?”

“Well, they are human beings, aren’t they? Not your regular shipment of cargo. They will need to eat, you understand. Do you have any beef?”

The officer cleared his throat. “No.”

“I see. Lemons?”

He shook his head.

“What food do you have then?”

“Hardtack.”

“No nutrition whatsoever, most of it either moldy or rock hard … I’d hardly call that food. You
do
have clean water then, for drinking and bathing?”

He tugged at the collar of his uniform and looked around.
He wants someone else to blame
, thought Charlotte. But she would not let him go so easily.

“No water? Really? For three days’ time? Well, that’s an interesting choice, isn’t it? Have you any cups?”

Silence.

“No, of course not. What use is a cup without any water? How very right you are. Maybe this lot just isn’t hungry. Or thirsty. But it’s very obvious they do have wounds. You do have lint and bandages for fresh dressings, don’t you? Or do you prefer to smell the festering wounds all the way to New York and have a deck covered in blood from their saturated bandages?”

The officer’s face darkened into a deep red. “Do you have some military rank or authority I don’t know about? Has McClellan himself sent you? Just who do you think you are, anyway, addressing me in this manner?”

Charlotte stood her ground. “I’m a member of the United States Sanitary Commission, and it is my right and my responsibility to make sure these men are cared for in the absence of their own mothers and wives. As the officer in charge of this ship, I would think you would feel the same responsibility, but as you clearly do not, I am stepping in.”

“No, you are stepping off. Get off my ship. Now.”

Charlotte lifted her chin, leveled a steely gaze at the man, and said, “I’m sending supplies to this ship immediately. If you are not here to receive them, our Commissioners will stock your ship without your signature.”

She whirled around and marched off, seething inside at the officer and all others like him.
Stupid! Imbeciles! I could run that ship better myself, but just because I’m a woman, I have to argue my way onto
one just to hand out tea! Hateful, wasteful, shameful, criminal behavior. Idiot! Doesn’t he know there are lives in the balance?

Back on shore, Charlotte spotted Mr. Knapp’s bald, sunburned head. He was absent-minded enough to forget his own hat, but when it came to supplying the soldiers, he held all details firmly in his mind. At once, he set the wheels in motion to supply the “all ready” government ship from the Sanitary Commission stores. If it weren’t for Mr. Knapp, Mr. Olmsted, Dr. Ware, and Caleb, Charlotte would have been ready to condemn the entire lot of men in authority.

Her errand complete, she shielded her eyes against the sun’s relentless rays and looked out over the masses of those who still needed help. It was overwhelming. Each soldier represented a family back home, a wife about to be widowed, a mother about to be childless, a little boy or girl about to be fatherless. The dull ache of helplessness encircled her heart and squeezed until she had to shut her eyes to the scene.