South After Gettysburg by Cornelia Hancock Henrietta Stratton Jaquette

Author:Cornelia Hancock, Henrietta Stratton Jaquette [Cornelia Hancock, Henrietta Stratton Jaquette]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781258143312
Google: a2Q8ngEACAAJ
Publisher: Literary Licensing, LLC
Published: 2011-10-15T03:05:11+00:00

DEAR ELLEN {9}

IT is some date and I am in Fredericksburg city. I do not know where Doctor is. On going ashore at Belle Plain we were met with hordes of wounded soldiers who had been able to walk from the Wilderness battlefield to this point. They were famished for food and as I opened the remains of my lunch basket the soldiers behaved more like ravenous wolves than human beings, so I felt the very first thing to be done was to prepare food in unlimited quantities, so with my past experience in arranging a fire where there seemed no possibility of one, I soon had a long pole hanging full of kettles of steaming hot coffee, and this, with soft bread, was dispensed all night to the tramping soldiers who were filling the steam boats on their return trip to Washington. Soon the long train of ambulances containing severely wounded men commenced arriving and among them the Head Qts. ambulance with Gen. Hays’ dead body on its way to Pittsburg, I knew this ambulance had to report back to the 2nd Corps Hospital and when daylight came Dr. Detmold and Dr. Vanderpool, two eminent surgeons of New York, and I boarded it to go to Fredericksburg, where our hospital is established. On arriving here the scenes beggared all description and these two men, eminent as they are in their profession, were paralyzed by what they saw. Rain had poured in through the bullet-riddled roofs of the churches until our wounded lay in pools of water made bloody by their seriously wounded condition. On these scenes Dr. Detmold and Dr. Vanderpool gazed in horror and seemed not to know where to take hold. My Gettysburg experience enabled me to take hold. The next morning these two surgeons came to me and said; “If we open another church under better conditions than these, will you accompany us?” and I said “Yes.” After they got their nerve their splendid executive ability asserted itself and they had the pews knocked to pieces; under the backs and seats put a cleat and made little beds to raise the wounded from the floor. ‘Tis true the beds have no springs, but it keeps them from lying in the water. Here day by day things are improving. An amputating table is improvized under a tree in the yard where these two good men work indefatiguably.

Fredericksburg, Va.

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