CHAPTERIX
Pointof Rocks Hospital consisted of about a dozen tents, each perhaps fifty feet long, pinned as usual to the ground with wooden pegs. These contained bunks and cots on either side, for about forty or more patients to each tent, and sometimes, when crowded, patients had only straw or hay bags with a blanket on the bare ground, all of which the men nurses were expected to keep in perfect order and cleanliness.
To enter at one end of these tents and see the rows of sick and suffering, despondent men, at once aroused an earnest desire to help them to a little comfort and cheer.
One day, passing through a long ward, I was startled by the sight of a little pinched face with great dark eyes, that looked as if its owner might be about ten or twelve years old. Stepping quickly to the cot I said, “Why, who are you, and where did you come from?”
A feeble voice replied, “I’m Willie, I was here yesterday when you passed, but you didn’t look at me.”
“But where did you come from?”
“I belong to the 37th New Jersey Infantry, in camp a few miles off, and I got sick and they brought me here.”
“How could you be enlisted? How old are you?”
“I’m fifteen. I lied, and swore I was eighteen, and my parents wouldn’t let me go, so I ran away, an’—an’ I guess, I’ll never see mother any more.”
The soldier nurse said he was a typhoid case, with a chance of living, if he could have good care, but that he would not be persuaded to eat. I returned to him at once, saying, “Willie, I hear that you don’t eat anything.”
“I can’t eat.”
“O, but you must. Now, Willie, can’t you think of something you’d like?”
“Well,” with a suppressed sob, “if I could get anything like mother used to make, perhaps I could.”
“Now tell me, Willie, what it was, what did it look like, and how did it taste?”
The sick boy’s description was not very clear, but I said cheerfully, “O, I can make that,” and ran off to my tent and soon prepared something which, with a silver cup, spoon, and a tidy serviette, at least looked inviting in contrast with the battered tin cups and plates of camp life. He showed some interest as I said, “Here, Willie, is just what mother used to make.” And he took a few spoonfuls quite cheerfully as I fed him. I asked if it did not taste something like mother made. He thought it did.
Feeling sure that only the greatest care would save him, I went at once to Surgeon Porter, saying, “Doctor, I’d like to have that boy, Willie, for an orderly.”
“What, another?” he replied, laughing. “You have more orderlies now than General Grant himself.”
“This is true, doctor,” I said, for I had four who had been assigned to me by the doctor that they might have special care, “and not one of them can stand alone for one hour.”
“Well, you may have him, and I wish you success.”
I then asked Willie if he would like to be my orderly, and he seemed quite delighted. I directed the nurse to dress him early next morning, and to let him lie down till I came for him. The poor boy staggered to his feet, but we almost carried him to my tent, where I removed his army shoes and put a pair of my slippers on his poor, little thin feet. I then laid him on my cot, bathed his hot head, neck and hands, gave him nourishment, and told him to try to sleep while I was away caring for other patients. All this was repeated for several days, and thus he escaped the sight of dying and suffering men. Each night I took him back to his tent, where he slept soundly until morning. He improved slowly.
One day, while taking my dinner alone in my little mess tent, I was surprised to see him standing at “attention” beside me. “Miss Smith,” he said, while the fever burned his cheeks and brightened his dark eyes, “I’ve been here five days, and it’s time I did something for you.” The fever had burned out for the time, and, turning quickly I caught his falling, emaciated form. Realizing his own helplessness, the poor child wept bitterly.
Meanwhile his youthful officers had come to see him, which greatly pleased the poor boy. He improved very slowly, but evidently would not quite recover in these surroundings. I decided to make an effort to send him home as soon as possible. With permission of Surgeon Porter, and with his ambulance and an orderly, I rode a few miles to a camp of the 37th New Jersey Infantry, in the woods, which was composed entirely of boys and officers of not more than twenty or twenty-four years of age.
The little “dog” or A tents allowed only one to crawl in on either side of the tent pole, and lie on his blankets on the bare ground with knapsacks for pillows. No wonder malaria made havoc in their ranks!
While I was there, an order came to send forward a small detachment of men for picket duty. All clamored to go, shouting in a most informal manner, quite regardless of discipline. “Say, Cap, let me go.” “I say, Maj, you know me.” “Cap, let me go, won’t you?” etc., etc. A dozen men were selected, not one fully grown, and these boys staggered off in high spirits, each carrying a knapsack weighing sixty pounds, a gun and an overcoat.
The colonel and captain of this regiment very cheerfully made the necessary application for a sick furlough, and on my return to camp Surgeon Porter at once endorsed it. Then, having waited a few days for some one to take charge of Willie, I had the satisfaction of seeing him start in an ambulance for the boat at City Point, supplied with brandy and nourishment. His head lay on the knee of an officer who was going to Fortress Monroe, and there was a happy boyish smile on his face as they drove away.
In a few weeks came the good news that he had reached home and mother and was fast recovering.
In the same ward with Willie were a number of Ohio “ninety days selected men,” chiefly farmers, nearly every man six feet or more in height. They were typhoid cases, who were really suffering more from nostalgia than from fever. They had already served half their term, yet nothing could arouse them from despair and homesickness, from which many of them actually died, while the wiry, irrepressible city boys generally recovered.
One day, while I was trying to bathe away the fever from the head and hands of a young officer, General Butler entered the tent with some of his staff, and thanked me for my care of this favorite, asking that I would do all in my power to make him comfortable.
Another patient, Chaplain Eaton, of a Connecticut regiment, was recovering from typhoid, and, though not very ill at this time, still claimed a good deal of my attention. I felt, however, that it was a waste of time to spend many minutes talking with him, or in reading the Bible to him, while so many others were really suffering and needing special care. But I wrote to his wife and did what I could. He was very grateful, and wished to prove it by presenting to me a handsome black horse, that his orderly brought daily to the tent for inspection and petting. The animal was so intelligent that he seemed really to recognize me. The chaplain’s insistence upon my accepting the horse was quite annoying; and at last I said to him that “it would be a great pity to turn such a beautiful creature into an ‘elephant’, which he would certainly become on my hands.”