Wild, Beautiful, and Free(83)

The day was clear and not cold, so everyone delighted in being outside in each other’s company and enjoying the feast. Several hogs were roasted whole over large fires. Extra portions of coffee and bread went around. The soldiers who had recently returned from a march that had gone beyond the supply lines were especially eager for all the delicious food. They’d had nothing but water and hardtack for days. There was a lot of shouting and cheering. I don’t know where it came from, but someone had a fiddle and played the most joyous, foot-stomping tunes. I’m not one for dancing, but I clapped my hands and enjoyed the bursts of singing that went on throughout the day. Emotional spirits ran high, and the liquid kind was plentiful too. Those who imbibed were warm and delighted with drink. But I admit a few soldiers did get ornery, as some drunks will do. Their army brothers, though, kept them from getting into too much trouble.

Sometimes I think about that barbecue and how it really was a perfect gift wrapped up and handed to us like a holiday bauble. It was like it was meant to settle us and give us a nice memory to look back on when the fighting continued. You could remember the day and think about the fellowship and the happiness and the gratitude and know it was all about what the fight was for. And I don’t believe anyone that day was thinking about the fighting, even though it would have been easy to sit there and wonder who wouldn’t be alive in six months. But you can’t think that way and go on living. Wouldn’t last a week with all that in your mind.

After that barbecue General Grant set his men to work cutting a canal around Vicksburg. He thought he could divert the river and use the canal to transport supplies, but again, I didn’t see how that could work. For a different kind of river, maybe, like a smaller one. It seemed to me you’d have to dig deep and long to even make a dent in the Mississippi. And even then, with a river that big, you’d be more likely to cause a flood that might kill you. But they kept at it and, much to my disappointment, even got slaves from nearby plantations to help. While they were doing that, Mother B. and I were driven over to a hotel not too far away in a city that the Union soldiers controlled. We had to transform it into a hospital, where men would be taken once they had been stabilized at the field hospital. Mother B. had done this type of work before, and I followed her instructions. Being at the new hospital turned out to be a good place for us, because the rebels had turned the tables and taken to shelling the Union camps. At one point Colonel Eshton had all the nurses sent from the field hospital to the hotel hospital because the shelling was too close to their tents and he feared for their safety.

I saw fires burning in the distance and thought we were on the verge of battle. The whole valley by the river seemed to be in flames. There were clouds in the sky, and the fires were big enough to stain their bottoms with an orange coloring. It was an awful sight. I hurried to Reverend Grisholm, who was standing near his tent calmly smoking a pipe, to find out what was happening.

“No, Miss Bébinn, that’s not a battle.” He blew a stream of smoke into the evening air. “The rebels, God help them, are burning their cotton harvest.”

“Burning it? Why? So our army won’t have it?”

He nodded slowly. “Yes, so our army won’t confiscate it.”

I knew the will of the Confederacy was deep and stubborn, but to burn cotton? I realized then just how deep this fight was ingrained in them. I knew the blood and sweat of the thousands of slaves who had grown and picked such cotton. To burn it was another sad, senseless waste in the whole of the conflict.

Another fearsome sight: there were days when common people, white and colored, ran from the shelling and streamed past our tents. I’d been used to our regiments setting up operations in the woods. Now we were near a city, and I was stunned to see regular people who were not soldiers, people who lived right where the fighting was, fleeing for their lives. Some weren’t even dressed and ran shirtless or in their night clothing. I saw one man who’d managed to escape with his unconscious wife in his arms. She must have fainted.

I thought of Poney and how he and I had stumbled into the middle of a battle. No one had shouted, Stop! There are civilians on the battlefield! Cease fire! It hadn’t stopped after Poney had been shot or after the soldiers had seen me, a woman, driving through the artillery fire. They’d only told me which direction to go to get out of the way. The nature of the conflict, involving a question of how people, namely Southerners, lived their lives, could only mean, I supposed, that some of the fighting would take place in the fields and on the streets where people lived. And that meant ordinary people would be in the line of fire.

I didn’t teach the groups of soldiers anymore. The fighting was different from before, so an orderly way of expectations, about when the soldiers would have time off or even when they would eat, was now impossible. The regiments were all over, on the water and the ground. Shelling and gunfire happened day and night. It was just one huge battle, day after day.

At the hospital we were fighting another vigorous enemy: illness. Yellow fever and typhus were regular occurrences in the South—I knew it all too well from Papa’s illness and death. But with so many soldiers and all of us being so closely packed in at the camps, the contagion moved quickly through the troops. The yellow fever and typhus devastated us even more than a Confederate battalion. I felt sad that we couldn’t do more for the sick. With a wounded man we could extract minié balls or perform amputations, which, though awful and unsightly, did save some of the men who were threatened by gangrene. But men lingering with typhus lay with fever and their skin sometimes covered in red lesions. Their stomachs would bloat from distemper. There was nothing we could give them. No medicine other than an opiate or whiskey if they were in pain. The only thing we could do was wait to see if they recovered or died. Both happened, but I think more died than got well.