 | MRS. ANN HITZ. Women of the war : |  |
MRS. ANN HITZ.
IN all the large cities along the border there were a
number of ladies whose age or whose family cares
did not allow them to leave home for sanitary enterprises,
who, notwithstanding these circumstances, performed a
large amount of very valuable hospital service. Washington
city, especially, furnished many of these local visitors,
and among them none, perhaps, was more active, or impelled
by higher motives, than the wife of the resident
Swiss consul, Mr. John Hitz.
The circumstance that Mrs. Hitz is a foreign lady makes
her conduct the more praiseworthy. Many of the ladies
were drawn towards the army by the strongest ties.
They had sons, brothers, husbands, and old neighbors in
the various regiments. In hospitals they often met those
they had known all their lifetime, and when bathing a
fevered head, or bandaging a shattered arm, the thought
would often arise, "Perhaps some other woman is at this
moment doing this very kindness to my brother." But the
charity of Mrs. Hitz could have no such incentives. The
union of the American states was a political question in
which she could not be expected to feel a direct interest.
The number of Swiss enlisted in the Union ranks was small;
but the fact that she spoke the languages of Central Europe,
them in their mother tongue, made her presence in
the Washington hospitals peculiarly grateful to that large
class of recruits who could speak but little English.
"My labors among the soldiers," says Mrs. Hitz, "began
with the first arrival of volunteers in Washington. The
weary, travel-worn men, thankful for a kind word, a cup of
coffee, a piece of bread, were always made welcome by my
husband and myself. It was some time before I saw the
necessity of the Aid Societies, and other organizations,
which we afterwards found so useful.
"Among the arrivals of troops just before the first battle
at Bull Run were the twelfth and twenty-fifth New
York. They were quartered on Capitol Hill, near the
Gasparis House. Wet and weary when they arrived, no
preparation had been made to receive them, no refreshments
were at hand, and the commissary arrangements
were imperfect. Our house was near the camp, and my
husband threw open our doors, and we went to work with
a will.
"All the boilers we could find were filled with coffee,
and we collected all the bread we could either buy or beg.
Among these volunteers we found some little German
drummer boys, one of them so homesick for his mother!
`O, madame,' he would exclaim, `may I come and see you
every day? You are so like my mother!' Poor boy! In
a day or two marching orders came, and they went out to
that first, disastrous battle. When he came to bid me
good by, he said, `Please pray for me and my comrade;
he has no mother.' The tears fell as I asked God to bless
one was killed and the other taken prisoner, but managed
to make his escape.
"My husband, as Swiss consul, and a member of the German
Aid Society, visited the hospitals almost daily, and
becoming well known, whenever a patient was brought in
whose language could not be understood, we were sent for.
One poor man from New York city, whose mind was much
affected by his sufferings, could not be induced to take any
food except such as I cooked and carried him. In his
delirium he imagined that I was indeed his mother, and that
the nurse was trying to poison him.
"On his return to the North, as he passed through Baltimore,
he recognized the place where the regiment to which
he belonged had been attacked by the mob, and recovered
his wandering senses. From his brother I afterwards received
a letter of grateful acknowledgments for what I had
been able to do for him in his suffering and helpless condition.
"One of the nurses at Armory Square Hospital sent me
word that there was a patient there whose language no one
of them could understand. On going down I found a poor
German, suffering sadly from a wounded limb, unable to
make his wants known, and apparently about to die.
"As soon as I spoke to him, the effect of a few words of
his mother tongue operated like magic. For some time I
attended him daily, and all seemed well, till one day a
sudden change came upon him. He sent a special message
to me, and I took with me a priest to his bedside, as he
was a Catholic. We saw him die in peace.
"After the great battle of Antietam, when even the
Capitol was crowded with the wounded, Dr. Campbell came
to me one morning, and wished me to visit one of his
patients in the old House of Representatives. I found there
a poor fellow from Pennsylvania refusing to take either
food or medicine, but begging for some one to pray for him.
I knelt by his cot, and when I arose he was calm, and
willing to do anything I advised him. He recovered, and
always insisted that it was that prayer that saved his life.
"At Mount Pleasant Hospital there was another patient
who had not found any one who could understand a word
he said till they sent for me.
"He was delirious, and believed the nurses, and even his
own wife, who had now come to attend him, were trying
to poison him, and he would not take a mouthful of food.
After praying with him and dressing his wounds, he grew
calm, and consented to do everything I wished of him.
"Several cases like this came under my care, and I found
no difficulty in managing them. My only secret was, that I
never lost patience with them, listened quietly to all their
complaints, sympathized with their hardships, and gradually
led them to do what was for the best."
Miss Hall, Mrs. Fowle, and all who were active in the
Washington hospitals, unite in their praises of Mrs. Hitz.
Hundreds of sick and dying Germans made her their
mother confessor, and she could be seen almost every day
sitting by the cot of some sufferer, and reading blessed
words of heavenly consolation in tones that recalled the
fatherland and the home from which they were so far away.
She was beloved and honored by a great number of
faces she has forgotten.
"When travelling in the East," she writes, "I have been
at many places unexpectedly recognized by fine-looking
young men, who came forward with, `Mother Hitz,
don't you remember me?' My experience," she adds,
"among the American soldiers has been altogether a most
pleasant one. Certainly more patient, God-fearing men
could not be found in any army; and it is but a just tribute
to the young men of this country for me to say, that in all
my visits among them in camps and hospitals, as long as
the war continued, I never heard a word improper for the
ear of a lady."
| MRS. ANN HITZ. Women of the war : | |