A Stillness at Appomattox (40 page)

"Cavalry
or
infantry?"
he
demanded.
Cavalry,
he
was
told.

"Keep
moving,
boys—we're
going
on
through,"
he
ordered. "There
isn't
cavalry
enough
in
all
the
Southern
Confederacy to
stop
us."

The
men
cheered,
and
Sheridan
waved
his
hat,
and
they broke
through
the
skirmish
line
and
the
column
kept
on
going—slow,
remorseless,
powerful.
⁶

On
their
swing
away
from
the
army
the
troopers
went
back across
the
Wilderness,
and
on
the
Plank
Road
they
met
a great
wagon
train
of
wounded
men,
heading
east
toward Fredericksburg.
It
was
a
dreary
procession.
There
were
not ambulances
enough
to
carry
all
of
the
men
who
had
been wounded
in
the
Wilderness,
and
empty
ammunition
wagons, ration
wagons,
and
similar
vehicles
had
been
put
into
service. These
wagons
had
no
springs,
and
the
roads
were
very
rough, and
a
steady,
monotonous
sound
of
moaning
and
screaming went
up
from
the
long
train
and
could
be
heard
far
away,
long before
the
wagons
themselves
came
into
sight.
For
miles
the wagons
filled
the
road,
so
that
the
cavalry
had
to
get
off
to
the
side
and
go
trampling
through
the
underbrush.

Between
and
beside
the
wagons
were
the
walking
wounded, and
these
men
begged
for
water
as
the
cavalrymen
went
by, so
that
the
column
was
slowed
while
troopers
hastily
offered their
canteens.
They
were
not
supposed
to
do
this,
but
as
one trooper
wrote,
the
calls
of
the
wounded
men
were
"an
appeal that
could
not
be
denied.
.
,
.
We
had
water
in
our
canteens and
we
took
time
to
dismount
and
hold
them
to
the
lips
of
the thirsty
comrades."
The
wagons
jolted
on,
an
enormous
cloud of
dust
lying
in
the
air
above
and
all
around,
and
now
and then
the
train
would
halt
while
some
wounded
man
who
had died
was
taken
out
and
laid
in
the
woods.
⁷

Never
had
the
wounded
men
had
it
any
worse,,
The
fighting an
the
Wilderness
had
caused
more
casualties
than
Antietam itself
had
caused,
and
the
medical
corps
was
snowed
under. First
orders
had
been
to
send
the
trains
northwest
back
across the
R
apidan
to
a
spot
on
the
Orange
and
Alexandria
Railroad,
so
thousands
of
men
had
been
loaded
in
wagons
and started
in
that
direction.
But
when
the
army
moved
down
toward
Spotsylvania
those
orders
had
to
be
changed,
because the
old
route
by
Germanna
and
Ely's
fords
was
no
longer
being
guarded
and
Mosby's
raiders
would
unquestionably
capture
any
hospital
train
that
tried
to
use
it.
So
it
had
been decided
to
send
the
wounded
over
to
Fredericksburg,
and
the clumsy
procession
had
countermarched
(giving
the
men
an extra
twenty-four
hours
in
the
graceless
wagons)
and
new trains
were
made
up
to
carry
more
of
them,
and
thousands upon
thousands
of
wounded
were
now
making
the
agonizing trip
to
Fredericksburg.

The
medical
corps
that
was
taking
charge
of
all
this
was fearfully
shorthanded,
because
the
army
had
marched
off
to fight
new
battles
and
most
of
its
doctors,
hospital
attendants, and
loads
of
medical
supplies
had
to
go
along.
A
few
could be
spared
for
the
men
in
the
trains,
but
nobody
knew
what would
happen
when
they
finally
reached
Fredericksburg
because
that
was
a
firmly
secessionist
town
badly
ravaged
by war
and
it
was
not
currently
occupied
by
any
Federal
troops.

An
abundance
of
stretcher-bearers
had
been
detailed,
a
party from
each
regiment,
but
most
of
them
were
quite
useless. Human
nature
being
what
it
is,
the
average
colonel
picked
out for
this
detail
the
men
who
were
least
likely
to
be
of
any
help If
they
remained
with
the
regiment,
the
inevitable
consequence
being
that
the
worst
loafers
and
thieves
in
the
army had
been
appointed
to
help
care
for
the
wounded.
Doctors noticed
that
the
pockets
of
nearly
all
of
the
dead
men
and most
of
the
helpless
wounded
men
had
been
slit
open
for
the easier
removal
of
purses
and
watches.

The
surgeons
had
done
what
they
could.
They
began
by sorting
the
wounded
men
into
three
classes—those
who
could probably
walk
back,
those
who
had
to
be
carried,
and
those who
could
not
be
moved
at
all
and
so
would
have
to
remain an
field
hospitals
in
the
Wilderness,
which
was
still
smoldering
and
which
stank
to
the
highest
heavens,
what
with
thousands
of
iinburied
bodies.
A
very
few
doctors
could
be
spared to
remain
with
these
men—four
of
them,
two
regular
hospital stewards,
and
twenty
of
the
priceless
detailed
attendants,
as at
was
finally
worked
out,
for
about
a
thousand
totally
disabled
men.