University of Virginia Library

21. CHAPTER XXI.
CAPTAIN COLBURNE HAS OCCASION TO SEE LIFE IN A
HOSPITAL.

When Colburne came to himself he was lying on the
ground in rear of the pieces. Beside him, in the shadow
of the same tuft of withering bushes, lay a wounded lieutenant
of the battery and four wounded artillerists. A
dozen steps away, rapidly blackening in the scorching sun
and sweltering air, were two more artillerists, stark dead,
one with his brains bulging from a bullet-hole in his forehead,
while a dark claret-colored streak crossed his face,
the other's light-blue trousers soaked with a dirty carnation
stain of life-blood drawn from the femoral artery.
None of the wounded men writhed, or groaned, or pleaded
for succor, although a sweat of suffering stood in great
drops on their faces. Each had cried out when he was hit,
uttering either an oath, or the simple exclamation “Oh!”
in a tone of dolorous surprise; one had shrieked spasmodically,
physically crazed by the shock administered to
some important nervous centre; but all, sooner or later,

had settled into the calm, sublime patience of the wounded
of the battle-field.

The brass Napoleons were still spanging sonorously, and
there was a ceaseless spitting of irregular musketry in the
distance.

“Didn't the assault succeed?” asked Colburne as soon
as he had got his wits about him.

“No sir—it was beat off,” said one of the wounded artillerists.

“You've had a faint, sir,” he added with a smile.
“That was a smart tumble you got. We saw you go over,
and brought you back here.”

“I am very much obliged,” replied Colburne. His arm
pained him now, his head ached frightfully, his whole
frame was feverish, and he thought of New England
brooks of cool water. In a few minutes Lieutenant Van
Zandt appeared, his dark face a little paler than usual, and
the right shoulder of his blouse pierced with a ragged and
bloody bullet-hole.

“Well, Captain,” said he, “we have got, by Jove! our
allowance of to-day's rations. Hadn't we better look up
a doctor's shop? I feel, by the everlasting Jove!—excuse
me—that I stand in need of a sup of whiskey. Lieutenant
—I beg your pardon—I see you are wounded—I hope
you're not much hurt, sir—but have you a drop of the
article about the battery? No! By Jupiter! You go
into action mighty short of ammunition. I beg your pardon
for troubling you. This is, by Jove! the dryest
fighting that I ever saw. I wish I was in Mexico, and
had a gourd of aguaardiente.”

By the way, I wish the reader to understand that, when
I introduce a “By Jove!” into Van Zandt's conversation,
it is to be understood that that very remarkably profane
officer and gentleman used the great Name of the True
Divinity.

“Where is the company, Lieutenant?” asked Colburne.

“Relieved, sir. Both companies were relieved and ordered

back to the regiment fifteen or twenty minutes ago.
I got this welt in the shoulder just as I was coming out of
that damned hollow. We may as well go along, sir. Our
day's fight is over.”

“So the attack failed,” said Colburne, as they took up
their slow march to the rear in search of a field hospital.

“Broken up by the ground, sir; beaten off by the musketry.
Couldn't put more than a man or two on the ramparts.
Played out before it got any where, just like a
wave coming up a sandy beach. It was only a regiment.
It ought to have been a brigade. But a regiment might
have done it, if it had been shoved in earlier. That was
the time, sir, when you went off for reinforcements. If
we had had the bully old Tenth there then, we could have
taken Port Hudson alone. Just after you left, the Rebs
raised the white flag, and a whole battalion of them came
out on our right and stacked arms. Some of our men
spoke to them, and asked what they were after. They
said—by Jove! it's so, sir!—they said they had surrendered.
Then down came some Rebel General or other, in
a tearing rage, and marched them back behind the works.
The charge came too late. They beat it off easy. They
took the starch out of that Twelfth Maine, sir. I have
seen to-day, by Jove! the value of minutes.”

Before they had got out of range of the Rebel musketry
they came upon a surgeon attending some wounded men
in a little sheltered hollow. He offered to examine their
hurts, and proposed to give them chloroform.

“No, thank you,” said Colburne. “You have your
hands full, and we can walk farther.”

“Doctor, I don't mind taking a little stimulant,” observed
Van Zandt, picking up a small flask and draining
it nearly to the bottom. “Your good health, sir; my best
respects.”

A quarter of a mile further on they found a second surgeon
similarly occupied, from whom Van Zandt obtained
another deep draught of his favorite medicament, rejecting

chloroform with profane politeness. Colburne refused
both, and asked for water, but could obtain none. Deep
in the profound and solemn woods, a full mile and a half
from the fighting line, they came to the field hospital of
the division. It was simply an immense collection of
wounded men in every imaginable condition of mutilation,
every one stained more or less with his own blood, every
one of a ghastly yellowish pallor, all lying in the open air
on the bare ground, or on their own blankets, with no
shelter except the friendly foliage of the oaks and beeches.
In the centre of this mass of suffering stood several operating
tables, each burdened by a grievously wounded man
and surrounded by surgeons and their assistants. Underneath
were great pools of clotted blood, amidst which lay
amputated fingers, hands, arms, feet and legs, only a little
more ghastly in color than the faces of those who waited
their turn on the table. The surgeons, who never ceased
their awful labor, were daubed with blood to the elbows;
and a smell of blood drenched the stifling air, overpowering
even the pungent odor of chloroform. The place resounded
with groans, notwithstanding that most of the injured
men who retained their senses exhibited the heroic
endurance so common on the battle-field. One man, whose
leg was amputated close to his body, uttered an inarticulate
jabber of broken screams, and rolled, or rather
bounced from side to side of a pile of loose cotton, with
such violence that two hospital attendants were fully occupied
in holding him. Another, shot through the body,
lay speechless and dying, but quivering from head to foot
with a prolonged though probably unconscious agony. He
continued to shudder thus for half an hour, when he gave
one superhuman throe, and then lay quiet for ever. An
Irishman, a gunner of a regular battery, showed astonishing
vitality, and a fortitude bordering on callousness.
His right leg had been knocked off above the knee by a
round shot, the stump being so deadened and seared by
the shock that the mere bleeding was too slight to be mortal.
He lay on his left side, and was trying to get his
left hand into his trousers-pocket. With great difficulty
and grinning with pain, he brought forth a short clay
pipe, blackened by previous smoking, and a pinch of
chopped plug tobacco. Having filled the pipe carefully
and deliberately, he beckoned a negro to bring him a coal
of fire, lighted, and commenced puffing with an air of
tranquillity which resembled comfort. Yet he was probably
mortally wounded; human nature could hardly survive
such a hurt in such a season; nearly all the leg amputations
at Port Hudson proved fatal. The men whose
business it is to pick up the wounded—the musicians and
quartermaster's people—were constantly bringing in fresh
sufferers, laying them on the ground, putting a blanket-roll
or havresack under their heads, and then hurrying away
for other burdens of misery. They, as well as the surgeons
and hospital attendants, already looked worn out
with the fatigue of their terrible industry.

“Come up and see them butcher, Captain,” said the
iron-nerved Van Zandt, striding over prostrate and shrinking
forms to the side of one of the tables, and glaring at
the process of an amputation with an eager smile of interest
much like the grin of a bull-dog who watches the cutting
up of a piece of beef. Presently he espied the assistant
surgeon of the Tenth, and made an immediate rush at
him for whiskey. Bringing the flask which he obtained
to Colburne, he gave him a sip, and then swallowed the
rest himself. By this time he began to show signs of intoxication;
he laughed, told stories, and bellowed humorous
comments on the horrid scene. Colburne left him,
moved out of the circle of anguish, seated himself on the
ground with his back against a tree, filled his pipe, and
tried to while away the time in smoking. He was weak
with want of food as well as loss of blood, but he could
not eat a bit of cracker which a wounded soldier gave him.
Once he tried to soothe the agony of his Lieutenant-Colonel,
whom he discovered lying on a pile of loose cotton,

with a bullet-wound in his thigh which the surgeon whispered
was mortal, the missile having glanced up into his
body.

“It's a lie!” exclaimed the sufferer. “It's all nonsense,
Doctor. You don't know your business. I won't die. I
sha'n't die. It's all nonsense to say that a little hole in the
leg like that can kill a great strong man like me. I tell
you I sha'n't and won't die.”

Under the influence of the shock or of chloroform his
mind soon began to wander.

“I have fought well,” he muttered. “I am not a
coward. I am not a Gazaway. I have never disgraced
myself. I call all my regiment to witness that I have
fought like a man. Summon the Tenth here, officers and
men; summon them here to say what they like. I will
leave it to any officer—any soldier—in my regiment.”

In an hour more he was a corpse, and before night he
was black with putrefaction, so rapid was that shocking
change under the heat of a Louisiana May.

Amid these horrible scenes Van Zandt grew momentarily
more intoxicated. The surgeons could hardly keep
him quiet long enough to dress his wound, so anxious was
he to stroll about and search for more whiskey. He talked,
laughed and swore without intermission, every now and
then bellowing like a bull for strong liquors. From table
to table, from sufferer to sufferer he followed the surgeon
of the Tenth, slapping him on the back violently and shouting,
“Doctor, give me some whiskey. I'll give you a rise,
Doctor. I'll give you a rise higher than a balloon. Hand
over your whiskey, damn you!”

If he had not been so horrible he would have been
ludicrous. His Herculean form was in incessant stumbling
motion, and his dark face was beaded with perspiration.
A perpetual silly leer played about his wide mouth, and
his eyes stood out so with eagerness that the white showed
a clear circle around the black iris. He offered his assistance
to the surgeons; boasted of his education as a graduate

of Columbia College; declared that he was a better Doctor
than any other infernal fool present; made himself a torment
to the helplessly wounded. Upon a Major of a Louisiana
regiment who had been disabled by a severe contusion
he poured contempt and imprecations.

“What are you lying whimpering there for?” he shouted.
“It's nothing but a little bruise. A child, by Jove!
wouldn't stop playing for it. You ought to be ashamed
of yourself. Get up and join your regiment.”

The Major simply laughed, being a hard drinker himself,
and having a brotherly patience with drunkards.

“That's the style of Majors,” pursued Van Zandt. “We
are blessed, by Jove! with a Major. He is, by Jove! a
dam incur—dam—able darn coward.” (When Van Zandt
was informed the next day of this feat of profanity he
seemed quite gratified, and remarked, “That, by Jove! is
giving a word a full battery,—bow-chaser, stern-chaser
and long-tom amidships.”) “Where's Gazaway? (in a
roar). Where's the heroic Major of the Tenth? I am going,
by Jove! to look him up. I am going, by Jove! to
find the safest place in the whole country. Where Gazaway
is, there is peace!”

Colburne refused one or two offers to dress his wound,
saying that others needed more instant care than himself.
When at last he submitted to an examination, it was found
that the ball had passed between the bones of the fore-arm,
not breaking them indeed, but scaling off some exterior
splinters and making an ugly rent in the muscles.

“I don't think you'll lose your arm,” said the Surgeon.
“But you'll have a nasty sore for a month or two. I'll
dress it now that I'm about it. You'd better take the
chloroform; it will make it easier for both of us.”

Under the combined influence of weakness, whiskey and
chloroform, Colburne fell asleep after the operation. About
sundown he awoke, his throat so parched that he could
hardly speak, his skin fiery with fever, and his whole body
sore. Nevertheless he joined a procession of slightly

wounded men, and marched a mile to a general hospital
which had been set up in and around a planter's house in
rear of the forest. The proprietor and his son were in the
garrison of Port Hudson. But the wife and two grownup
daughters were there, full of scorn and hatred; so unwomanly,
so unimaginably savage in conversation and
soul that no novelist would dare to invent such characters;
nothing but real life could justify him in painting them.
They seemed to be actually intoxicated with the malignant
strength of a malice, passionate enough to dethrone the
reason of any being not aboriginally brutal. They laughed
like demons to see the wounds and hear the groans of the
sufferers. They jeered them because the assault had failed.
The Yankees never could take Port Hudson; they were
the meanest, the most dastardly people on earth. Joe
Johnson would soon kill the rest of them, and have Banks
a prisoner, and shut him up in a cage.

“I hope to see you all dead,” laughed one of these female
hyenas. “I will dance with joy on your graves. My
brother makes beautiful rings out of Yankee bones.”

No harm was done to them, nor any stress of silence
laid upon them. When their own food gave out they
were fed from the public stores; and at the end of the siege
they were left unmolested, to gloat in their jackal fashion
over patriot graves.

There was a lack of hospital accommodation near Port
Hudson, so bare is the land of dwellings; there was a lack
of surgeons, nurses, stores, and especially of ice, that absolute
necessity of surgery in our southern climate; and
therefore the wounded were sent as rapidly as possible to
New Orleans. Ambulances were few at that time in the
Department of the Gulf, and Colburne found the heavy,
springless army-wagon which conveyed him to Springfield
Landing a chariot of torture. His arm was swollen to
twice its natural size from the knuckles to the elbow.
Nature had set to work with her tormenting remedies of
inflammation and suppuration to extract the sharp slivers

of bone which still hid in the wound notwithstanding the
searching finger and probe of the Surgeon. During the
night previous to this journey neither whiskey nor opium
could enable him to sleep, and he could only escape from
his painful self-consciousness by drenching himself with
chloroform. But this morning he almost forget his own
sensations in pity and awe of the multitudinous agony
which bore him company. So nearly supernatural in its
horror was the burden of anguish which filled that long
train of jolting wagons that it seemed at times to his
fevered imagination as if he were out of the world, and
journeying in the realms of eternal torment. The sluggish
current of suffering groaned and wailed its way on board
the steam transport, spreading out there into a great surface
of torture which could be taken in by a single sweep
of the eye. Wounded men and dying men filled the state-rooms
and covered the cabin floor and even the open deck.
There was a perpetual murmur of moans, athwart which
passed frequent shrieks from sufferers racked to madness,
like lightnings darting across a gloomy sky. More than
one poor fellow drew his last breath in the wagons and on
board the transport. All these men, thought Colburne,
are dying and agonizing for their country and for human
freedom. He prayed, and, without arguing the matter,
he wearily yet calmly trusted, that God would grant them
His infinite mercy in this world and the other.

It was a tiresome voyage from Springfield Landing to
New Orleans. Colburne had no place to lie down, and if
he had had one he could not have slept. During most of the
trip he sat on a pile of baggage, holding in his right hand a
tin quart cup filled with ice and punctured with a small
hole, through which the chilled water dripped upon his
wounded arm. Great was the excitement in the city when
the ghastly travellers landed. It was already known there
that an assault had been delivered, and that Port Hudson
had not been taken; but no particulars had been published
which might indicate that the Union army had suffered a

severe repulse. Now, when several steamboats discharged
a gigantic freight of mutilated men, the facts of defeat and
slaughter were sanguinarily apparent. Secessionists of
both sexes and all ages swarmed in the streets, and filled
them with a buzz of inhuman delight. Creatures in the
guise of womanhood laughed and told their little children
to laugh at the pallid faces which showed from the ambulances
as they went and returned in frequent journeys
between the levee and the hospitals. The officers and
men of the garrison were sad, stern and threatening in aspect.
The few citizens who had declared for the Union
cowered by themselves and exchanged whispers of gloomy
foreboding.

In St. Stephen's Hospital Colburne found something of
that comfort which a wounded man needs. His arm was
dressed for the second time; his ragged uniform, stiff with
blood and dirt, was removed; he was sponged from head
to foot and laid in the first sheets which he had seen for
months. There were three other wounded officers in the
room, each on his own cot, each stripped stark naked and
covered only by a sheet. A Major of a Connecticut regiment,
who had received a grapeshot through the lungs,
smiled at Colburne's arm and whispered, “Flea-bite.”
Then he pointed to the horrible orifice in his own breast,
through which the blood and breath could be seen to bubble
whenever the dressings were removed, and nodded
with another feeble but heroic smile which seemed to say,
“This is no flea-bite.” Iced water appeared to be the only
exterior medicament in use, and the hospital nurses were
constantly drenching the dressings with this simple
panacea of wise old Mother Nature. But in this early
stage of the great agony, before the citizens had found it
in their hearts to act the part of the Good Samaritan, there
was a lack of attendance. Happy were those officers who
had their servants with them, like the Connecticut Major,
or who, like Colburne, had strength and members left to
take care of their own hurts. He soon hit upon a device

to lessen his self-healing labors. He got a nurse to drive
a hook into the ceiling and suspend his quart cup of ice
to it by a triangle of strings, so that it might hang about
six inches above his wounded arm, and shed its dew of
consolation and health without trouble to himself. In his
fever he was childishly anxious about his quart cup; he
was afraid that the surgeon, the nurse, the visitors, would
hit it and make it swing. That arm was a little world of
pain; it radiated pain as the sun radiates light.

For the first time in his life he drank freely of strong
liquors. Whiskey was the internal panacea of the hospital,
as iced water was the outward one. Every time that the
Surgeon visited the four officers he sent a nurse for four
milk punches; and if they wanted other stimulants, such
as claret or porter, they could have them for the asking.
The generosity of the Government, and the sublime beneficence
of the Sanitary Commission supplied every necessary
and many luxuries. Colburne was on his feet in forty-eight
hours after his arrival, ashamed to lie in bed under
the eyes of that mangled and heroic Major. He was promoted
to the milk-toast table, and then to the apple-sauce
table. Holding his tin cup over his arm, he made frequent
rounds of the hospital, cheering up the wounded, and finding
not a little pleasure in watching the progress of individual
cases. He never acquired a taste, as many did,
for frequenting the operating-room, and (as Van Zandt
phrased it) seeing them butcher. This chevalier sans
peur, who on the battle-field could face death and look upon
ranks of slain unblenchingly, was at heart as soft as a
woman, and never saw a surgeon's knife touch living flesh
without a sensation of faintness.

He often accompanied the Chief Surgeon in his tours of
inspection. A wonder of practical philanthropy was this
queer, cheerful, indefatigable Doctor Jackson, as brisk and
inspiriting as a mountain breeze, tireless in body, fervent
in spirit, a benediction with the rank of Major. Iced water,
whiskey, nourishment and encouragement were his cure-alls.

There were surgeons who themselves drank the
claret and brandy of the Sanitary Commission, and gave
the remnant to their friends; who poured the consolidated
milk of the Sanitary Commission on the canned peaches of
the Sanitary Commission and put the grateful mess into
their personal stomachs; and who, having thus comforted
themselves, went out with a pleasant smile to see their
patients eat bread without peaches and drink coffee without
milk. But Dr. Jackson was not one of these self-centred
individuals; he had fibres of sympathy which
reached into the lives of others, especially of the wretched.
As he passed through the crowded wards all those sick
eyes turned to him as to a sun of strength and hope. He
never left a wounded man, however near to death, but the
poor fellow brightened up with a confidence of speedy recovery.

“Must cheer 'em—must cheer 'em,” he muttered to Colburne.
“Courage is a great medicine—best in the world.
Works miracles—yes, miracles.”

“Why! how are you, my old boy?” he said aloud, stopping
before a patient with a ball in the breast. “You look
as hearty as a buck this morning. Getting on wonderfully.”

He gave him an easy slap on the shoulder, as if he considered
him a well man already. He knew just where to
administer these slaps, and just how to graduate them to
the invalid's weakness. After counting the man's pulse
he smiled in his face with an air of astonishment and admiration,
and proceeded, “Beautiful! Couldn't do it better
if you had never got hit. Nurse, bring this man a
milk-punch. That's all the medicine he wants.”

When they had got a few yards from the bed he sighed,
jerked his thumb backward significantly, and whispered
to Colburne, “No use. Can't save him. No vitality. Boneyard
to-morrow.”

They stopped to examine another man who had been
shot through the head from temple to temple, but without

unseating life from its throne. His head, especially about
the face, was swollen to an amazing magnitude; his eyes
were as red as blood, and projected from their sockets, two
awful lumps of inflammation. He was blind and deaf, but
able to drink milk-punches, and still full of vital force.

“Fetch him round, I guess,” whispered the Doctor with
a smile of gratification. “Holds out beautiful.”

“But he will always be blind, and probably idiotic.”

“No. Not idiotic. Brain as sound as a nut. As for
blindness, can't say. Shouldn't wonder if he could use his
peepers yet. Great doctor, old Nature—if you won't get
in her way. Works miracles—miracles! Why, in the
Peninsular campaign I sent off one man well, with a rifle-ball
in his heart. Must have been in his heart. There's
your room-mate, the Major. Put a walking cane through
him, and he won't die. Could, but won't. Too good pluck
to let go. Reg'lar bull terrier.”

“How is my boy Jerry? The little Irish fellow with a
shot in the groin.”

“Ah, I remember. Empty bed to-morrow.”

“You don't mean that there's no hope for him?”

“No, no. All right. I mean he'll get his legs and be
about. No fear for that sort. Pluck enough to pull half
a dozen men through. Those devil-may-care boys make
capital soldiers, they get well so quick. This fellow will
be stealing chickens in three weeks. I wouldn't bet that I
could kill him.”

Thus in the very tolerable comfort of St. Stephen's Colburne
escaped the six weeks of trying siege duty which
his regiment had to perform before Port Hudson. The
Tenth occupied a little hollow about one hundred and
fifty yards from the rebel fortifications, protected in front
by a high knoll, but exposed on the left to a fire which hit
one or more every day. The men cut a terrace on their
own side of the knoll, and then topped the crest with a
double line of logs pierced for musketry, thus forming a
solid and convenient breastwork. On both sides the sharpshooting

began at daybreak and lasted till nightfall. On
both sides the marksmanship grew to be fatally accurate.
Men were shot dead through the loopholes as they took
aim. If the crown of a hat or cap showed above the breast-work,
it was pierced by a bullet. After the siege was
over, a rebel officer, who had been stationed on this front,
stated that most of his killed and wounded men had been
hit just above the line of the forehead. Every morning at
dawn, Carter, who had his quarters in the midst of the
Tenth, was awakened by a spattering of musketry and the
singing of Minie-balls through the branches above his head,
and even through the dry foliage of his own sylvan shanty.
Now and then a shriek or oath indicated that a bullet had
done its brutal work on some human frame. No crowd
collected; the men were hardened to such tragedies; four
or five bore the victim away; the rest asked, “Who is it?”
One death which Carter witnessed was of so remarkable a
character that he wrote an account of it to his wife, although
not given to noting with much interest the minor
and personal incidents of war.

“I had just finished breakfast, and was lying on my back
smoking. A bullet whistled so unusually low as to attract
my attention and struck with a loud smash in a tree about
twenty feet from me. Between me and the tree a soldier,
with his great coat rolled under his head for a pillow, lay
on his back reading a newspaper which he held in both
hands. I remember smiling to myself to see this man start
as the bullet passed. Some of his comrades left off playing
cards and looked for it. The man who was reading remained
perfectly still, his eyes fixed on the paper with a
steadiness which I thought curious, considering the bustle
around him. Presently I noticed that there were a few
drops of blood on his neck, and that his face was paling.
Calling to the card-players, who had resumed their game,
I said, `See to that man with the paper.' They went to
him, spoke to him, touched him, and found him perfectly
dead. The ball had struck him under the chin, traversed

the neck, and cut the spinal column where it joins the
brain, making a fearful hole through which the blood had
already soaked his great-coat. It was this man's head, and
not the tree, which had been struck with such a report.
There he lay, still holding the New York Independent,
with his eyes fixed on a sermon by Henry Ward Beecher.
It was really quite a remarkable circumstance.

“By the way, you must not suppose, my dear little girl,
that bullets often come so near me. I am as careful of myself
as you exhort me to be.”

Not quite true, this soothing story; and the Colonel
knew it to be false as he wrote it. He knew that he was
in danger of death at any moment, but he had not the
heart to tell his wife so, and make her unhappy.