Faces of Civil War Nurses by Ronald S. Coddington

Author:Ronald S. Coddington
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Johns Hopkins University Press
Published: 2020-11-15T00:00:00+00:00

Mary Ann Ball Bickerdyke. Carte de visite by Samuel Montague Fassett (1825–1910) of Chicago, Illinois, about September 1863.

Foard Collection of Civil War Nursing

The Nurse of Nurses during the War

BITTERLY COLD WINDS HOWLED ACROSS SOUTHERN TENNESSEE, roared over Lookout Mountain, and swept into the valley below during the last day of 1863. Torrents of freezing rainfall followed in their wake and tore with a vengeance into the Union army troops encamped in and about Chattanooga. No one suffered more than the sick and wounded. In a field hospital on the edge of a forest about five miles from town, mountain gales overturned tents and left about 1,500 patients exposed to the elements. Medical personnel stoked firepits with more and more wood as night set in and the cold intensified. Before long a cordon of crackling blazes provided much-needed warmth around the battered camp. About midnight, the wood ran out. The fires began to die—and when they did, so might the suffering soldiers. The head surgeon believed it would be futile to order men into the icy forest to cut trees and replenish the fuel. He encouraged everyone to hold on as best they could until morning and went to bed.

In this dire moment a nurse stepped up and took charge. Mary Bickerdyke appealed to soldiers of the Pioneer Corps in camp. She asked them to pull down nearby breastworks and harvest the logs. The tired, shivering men were reluctant to do so without orders from a superior officer, but Mary persuaded them to act. She provided them with steaming cups of panado—a concoction of hot water, sugar, crackers, and whiskey—to warm their bones. Thus reinforced, they set out with mules, axes, hooks, and chains. While the members of the Pioneer Corps threw themselves into their life-saving work, Mary directed others to brew caldrons of panado and other hot drinks for the rest of the men. She even prepared warm meal to keep up the strength of the mules as they hauled logs to feed the hungry fires. According to one account, Mary ran from tent to tent with hot bricks in one hand and steaming drinks in the other as she cheered and comforted all.

Just when the crisis appeared to be averted, thirteen ambulances that had been stranded in the storm creaked into camp. Mary and the rest of the medical personnel leapt into action to aid half-frozen drivers and mules, as well as frostbitten patients with bandages stiff with ice crystals. Soon the surgical staff geared up and sawed off bloodless limbs.476 Night finally gave way to a cold gray dawn and the realization that many lives had been saved, thanks in large part to Mary’s courage. These herculean efforts added to her legend. Beloved as “Mother” Bickerdyke by throngs of soldier boys, one veteran colonel spoke for many when he stated, years later, “She stands distinguished as the nurse of nurses during the war.”477

Born Mary Ann Ball on the Ohio frontier in 1817, her biographers scoured her past for clues to explain her wartime greatness.

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