Read Can I See Your I. D.? Online
Authors: Chris Barton
Can I See Your I. D.? (3 page)
Today, the
Cayuga
is returning to the area where the most recent raids were staged a few days ago. When you get there, the Koreans waste no time sending a junk over to greet youâand with good reason.
Cayuga
is returning to the area where the most recent raids were staged a few days ago. When you get there, the Koreans waste no time sending a junk over to greet youâand with good reason.
There are six or seven wounded men on board, three of them in bad, bad shape. There's a chest wound, another shot in the groin, and a third just as bad offâand God knows how many hours or days they've been in this condition. You're called down to have a look and determine how best to handle them.
You don't need to be an expert to know that these men are going to die if they don't get operated on soon.
Whatever you had in mind that day you showed up with Joseph Cyr's credentials at the recruiting office in Saint John, it wasn't this. No matter. You've got a job to do.
And there's not room to do it in the sick bay. Even if there were, wielding a scalpel amid these waves, with those frail bodies lying on those narrow tables . . . ? Not a chance. You're going to do it right here on this steel deck, on blankets in the shade of the torpedo tubes.
Everyone scrambles to get you what you need. Your gear is here. Hotchin is here. There's no time to delay. First up is the chest wound. The only way to know exactly what damage the guy suffered is to open him up. There's no time to consult the literature back in your cabin. You just have to do it.
And so you scalpel your way down to the ribs, then cut through one of those. The next incision will collapse the lung, allowing a better look at the wound. Could Hotchin handle the collapse? Sure. But this one is yours.
While Hotchin attends to the others, you carry on. By the time he comes back, you've covered the wound with Gelfoam to stop the bleeding. You tell Hotchin, “I removed the bullet.”
Anyone who knows you knows you'd be only too happy to show off that bullet. But you don't. You've got two other patients to tend to, Dr. Cyr.
WHAT HAPPENED NEXT?
FERDINAND WALDO DEMARA JR.
agreed to let the Royal Canadian Navy distribute the story of Dr. Cyr's surgical heroics to the newspapers back in Canada. The real Dr. Joseph Cyr saw the coverage, and the Navy quickly discharged Demara, who went on to pose as a psychology teacher at a college in Washington State and a Texas prison warden, among other roles. As a California minister under his real name, he was welcomed at a
Cayuga
reunion in 1979. Demara died in 1982.
agreed to let the Royal Canadian Navy distribute the story of Dr. Cyr's surgical heroics to the newspapers back in Canada. The real Dr. Joseph Cyr saw the coverage, and the Navy quickly discharged Demara, who went on to pose as a psychology teacher at a college in Washington State and a Texas prison warden, among other roles. As a California minister under his real name, he was welcomed at a
Cayuga
reunion in 1979. Demara died in 1982.
MAN IN UNIFORM?
PRIVATE WAKEMAN
THURSDAY, FEBRUARY 18, 1864WASHINGTON, D.C.
Your marching orders finally came through, Privateâright along with this cold snap. After sixteen months of watching this war against the Confederates from the safety of Washington and Northern Virginia, you're at last heading south to see the elephant, as they say.
Your commanders ordered you to be ready to move at a moment's notice, and for the soldiers of the 153rd New York Infantry, that moment is now. Out here in this freezing weather, you're lined up four abreast, a regiment full of volunteers. Each of you
chose
to enlist. None of you
had
to sign up for whatever now awaits you.
chose
to enlist. None of you
had
to sign up for whatever now awaits you.
Especially not you, Rosetta.
You're a volunteer among volunteers. You, who could get out of this march, out of this Army, and out of this war at just half a moment's notice, simply by confessing that you're not really a man. You could be sure to miss the next Gettysburg, the next Chickamauga. But you like this life first-rate. It suits your independent nature.
The money's good too. When you left the family farm in Chenango County a year and a half ago, you also left behind all feminine limitation on how much you could earn. As a man, you snagged yourself a wage of five dollars for just a few days' workâhauling a barge of Pennsylvania coal up the Chenango Canal and then east on the Erie, clear over to Montgomery County. That's where you ran into the Union Army recruiters.
Five foot tall and nary a whisker? No matter. They offered you $152ânearly a whole year's payâright up front for joining for three years, and thirteen dollars more every month after that. Well, that was a fine test of what kind of man you were. For what kind of man would pass up the opportunity to finish off this war and keep the Union together? Besides, what kind of living could you have earned once you got known as a man willing to shirk his honor and duty?
So you added two years to your actual age of nineteen, and that was thatâyou were signed up. You stuck around Montgomery County for a couple of months until they'd filled in the ranks of the 153rd. And in October of 1862, you all mustered in and moved out, down to the captured rebel town of Alexandria, Virginia.
Some Union Army recruits have seen battleâand met their makerâless than two weeks after kissing their mothers good-bye. All these months of guarding and drilling in Alexandria and Washington have given you a chance to send many a letter home to your parents and eight younger sisters and brothers. Your family knows where you are, and what you've been doing. They've written faithfully in reply, addressing their letters to “R. L. Wakeman.”
But no one in the Army is reading your mail, telling you what you can say or can't say about the 153rd or anything else. So while nobody in the barracks has known you as anything other than Private Lyons Wakeman, you've signed your letters home with “Rosetta Wakeman,” “Sarah Rosetta,” “Miss Rosetta,” “Affectionate Sister,” “Affectionate Daughter” . . .
In those letters, you haven't pretended to be anything you're not. You haven't pretended to be a man. You haven't
pretended
to be a soldierâyou
are
a soldier. And you haven't pretended to be someone who can live at home with them again after the war ends, if you live to see it.
pretended
to be a soldierâyou
are
a soldier. And you haven't pretended to be someone who can live at home with them again after the war ends, if you live to see it.
There's been no need for your letters home to rehash all those old tensions.
You
know what they were about, and
they
know it too. All that matters is that you know you had to leave. You don't ever intend to go back to stay, no more than you could have stuck around in the first place. A farm of your own on the Wisconsin prairie sounds good. That can be your prize for getting neither found out nor killed.
You
know what they were about, and
they
know it too. All that matters is that you know you had to leave. You don't ever intend to go back to stay, no more than you could have stuck around in the first place. A farm of your own on the Wisconsin prairie sounds good. That can be your prize for getting neither found out nor killed.
You might just get there with the help of these Army wagesâthey're yours, and you get to decide what to do with them. You've sent some home and told your folks how to divvy it up, what to spend it on. It's one thing for you to extend your hand to give all you can spare, quite another for your family to stick out theirs, expecting to take. “Don't you ever ask me to lend you some money again in this world,” you snapped last October. “If you do I won't send it to you.”
There's a nervous excitement rippling through the regiment as you wait for the command to get going, and it's not just shivers from the twelve-degree air. Today is not like last Aprilâback then, you were all ready to march, loaded up with three days' rations, but nothing happened. You were all still fairly green, anyhow. Today, thoughâtoday is serious.
You feel like you're in good hands with the colonel up thereâColonel Edwin P. Davis. Colonel Davis saw action in the Battle of the Seven Days, right before you joined up. And even if he's not exactly been in a rush to get the rest of you a taste of battle, you can't help but look up to himâso much that you wish you'd thought of “Edwin” before you started going by “Lyons.”
Army food and Army drills have made you fat as a hog and tough as a bear. You've got the company and battalion drills down patâregular speed or doublequick, it doesn't matter. In Alexandria, it was guard one day and drill the nextâloading and firing blank cartridges over the shoulders of the men in front of you, as the soldiers in the row behind did the same. When the draft heated up last summer and it looked like there might be riots, the 153rd got moved to Washington, D.C.
Here on Capitol Hill, the 153rd has guarded Carroll Prison, the B&O railroad depot, and City Hall, plus the camp itself. You've seen Negroes get drafted just like whiteâthat's a big change, even just since you joined up.
Some of the others get all het up over the reasons for fighting this war, but you haven't had much to say about it. All the same, you've been hoping to see some real actionâat least, that's what you've told your parents, and isn't that the manly thing to say?
The longer the war lasts, the longer you get to enjoy living this way. Too often, though, there's been nothing to doânot what some expect from life in a wartime army, but it's true. And when there's nothing to do, the more time folks have to stick their noses into somebody else's affairsâand the greater the risk that someone will stumble onto your secret and try to send you home.
It would be at their peril, you believe. “I can take care of my Self and I know my business,” you wrote your folks. “I will Dress as I am a mind to . . . and if they don't let me Alone they will be sorry for it.”
That brings to mind something you haven't written to your family about, something that's none of their concern nor anybody else's: how you've managed to keep secret that you're a woman. In such close quarters as those enjoyed by members of the Union Army, it can be a bit challenging to find the privacy you need day to day and month to month, but not so much as folks might think. The doctor's examination you got when you joined up was hardly worthy of the name, and not even your bout with the measles a year ago brought you much attention.
It's something of an odd position you're in. In a way, Rosetta, you can be yourself in the Army, even if that self wears britches and goes by the name of Private Wakeman. You fit in: You can bluster and grumble as well as the rest of themâabout those Copperhead Democrats trying to quit the war before you've won it, and about officer pay, and how good you are with an Enfield rifle, and of course about the long odds those rebels would face should they choose to tangle with you. You use up your share of tobacco too.
But the soldiers who see you every day, you can't let them truly
know
you, not even a little. And the people who know youâyour familyâthey can't see you, other than in the black-and-white likeness you sent home, with you in your Army coat and cap, standing as stiff as the rifle in your right arm and looking straight ahead. “Do you think I look better than I did when I was to home?” you asked in the letter you sent along with it. Just how did you expect them to answer?
know
you, not even a little. And the people who know youâyour familyâthey can't see you, other than in the black-and-white likeness you sent home, with you in your Army coat and cap, standing as stiff as the rifle in your right arm and looking straight ahead. “Do you think I look better than I did when I was to home?” you asked in the letter you sent along with it. Just how did you expect them to answer?
Here's a question for you, though: Who are you going to be when this war is over, and if you're around to see that day, God willing? You're earning a man's wage now, and you expect to earn a man's wage when you get outâfor your family's debts, and for yourself. It's hard to see yourself ever getting to have that independent life if you don't stick it out now, if you don't put up with the risk that there might be a rebel's bullet or cannonball out there with your name on it.
If there is one, you won't be seeing it soon. Assuming you don't freeze to death while waiting, you'll set out any moment now, but you're not about to march right into battle. For now, you're just heading a few miles down the road. All you've heard is that you're getting on the boat in Alexandria, getting off in New Orleans, and heading toward Texas.
A little bit ago, you took pen in hand to tell your family as much. When that was done, what else was there to say? “I bid you all good-by,” you wrote. “Don't never expect to see you again.”
And below that, you signed, “Edwin R. Wakeman.”
Forward, march.
WHAT HAPPENED NEXT?
SARAH ROSETTA WAKEMAN
marched with the 153rd from Franklin, Louisiana, and battled Confederate troops at Pleasant Hill and Monett's Bluff during the Red River Campaign of spring 1864. “I was under fire about four hours and laid on the field of battle all night,” she wrote after her first engagement. Like many in her unit, Wakeman soon developed acute diarrhea. As it did to tens of thousands of soldiers on both sides, the ailment killed her: She died in a New Orleans hospital on June 19. Of the hundreds of women who posed as men in order to fight in the Civil War, Wakeman is the only one whose letters home are known to have survived.
marched with the 153rd from Franklin, Louisiana, and battled Confederate troops at Pleasant Hill and Monett's Bluff during the Red River Campaign of spring 1864. “I was under fire about four hours and laid on the field of battle all night,” she wrote after her first engagement. Like many in her unit, Wakeman soon developed acute diarrhea. As it did to tens of thousands of soldiers on both sides, the ailment killed her: She died in a New Orleans hospital on June 19. Of the hundreds of women who posed as men in order to fight in the Civil War, Wakeman is the only one whose letters home are known to have survived.
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