Encounter at Cold Harbor (12 page)

She got as far as the door to the waiting area when Washington’s voice caught her. “Wait a minute,” he said. “Wait just a minute, can’t you? Don’t push a man like that.”

Eileen turned and waited. “Well, what are you going to do about these men?”

“We’re doing the best we can, ma’am. As you can see, we’ve got too many sick men here to care for.”

“I can see that already,” Eileen conceded. She thought quickly and said, “I think it might be better if I took Colonel Majors to my home. He can be better cared for there than here.”

Relief washed over the doctor’s face. “If you’ve got a place for him, that might be best. Many of the men have already been taken in by the good people of Richmond. Let me get you an ambulance, and I’ll have two men go to help you with him.”

“We already have an army ambulance. But the help would be good, Doctor. And the men can bring the wagon back.”

Washington issued orders quickly, and soon Nelson Majors was lying inside Tom’s wagon.

Eileen turned to the doctor, feeling bad about the way she had bullied him. “I’m sorry I lost my temper, Dr. Washington,” she said quietly. “It’s just that I’m so concerned about these men. It’s been hard on you, I’m sure, and you have an awful responsibility.”

Washington swallowed and said, “It’s kind of you to say so, ma’am. And I’ll do my best to see that the men have as good care as we can offer. It’ll help a lot, though, for you to care for the colonel by yourself. There’s really nothing I can do here that you can’t do there.”

“Good-bye, Doctor, and God bless you.”

Feeling somewhat better, Dr. Washington lingered at the door to watch the woman and her wagon leave the hospital.
That is some red-haired lady
, he thought.
I hope that colonel appreciates her
.

Leah stood outside and watched the army ambulance pull up in front of Uncle Silas’s house. Without waiting for help, Eileen leaped to the ground. Then she supervised the men carrying the colonel to the door.

“I got a bed all made up in case you’d bring him,” Leah said. “I gave him the front room, Eileen—it’s got more breeze there.”

“That’s good, Leah,” Eileen said. “Come this way.” She marched into the front bedroom. “Put him in the bed there!” she commanded.

“Yes, ma’am!” The two men handled the limp form of Nelson Majors carefully and laid him on the bed.

Eileen said, “Thank you very much. I appreciate your help.”

“No trouble, ma’am.”

As soon as the men were gone, Eileen and Leah went to either side of the bed.

The colonel’s eyes had been closed, but he opened them. He looked up and blinked, then whispered hoarsely. “Is that you, Eileen?”

“It’s me, Nelson. You’re home now.” She brushed his hair back and felt his forehead. “Your fever’s coming up again. We’ll have to keep it down.”

“I’m a lot of trouble.”

Eileen Fremont kept her hand on his forehead. “How could you be that, Nelson?” she whispered.

Leah watched as the two looked at each other. Colonel Majors was very sick, but she noticed that when he reached out his hand and Eileen took it, that seemed to give him relief.

Leah said, “I’ll go get some water, and we can start the cool baths.” As she left, she thought,
It’s a good thing Eileen’s here. I think God must’ve sent her for just this reason. I wish Jeff knew about it
.

J
eff raised his head slightly over the log that lay at the top of the trench where he crouched. He did it slowly because a good friend had done the same thing a week earlier and had the top of his head blown off. Both Confederate and Union troops had grown respectful of the sharpshooters.

The Yankees lay in trenches much like the one he was in, less than four hundred feet away, and everywhere Jeff looked there was a vast maze of tunnels, trenches, and fortifications.

Slipping back down into the trench, he joined the rest of the squad, who looked as tired, grimy, and disgusted as he was. “Well, I didn’t see anything,” he said.

“I reckon you won’t see much.” Sergeant Mapes spat tobacco juice down at his feet. “Even the Yankees got more sense than to attack against this kind of defense.”

“I don’t know what makes you think that!” Curly Henson remarked. He had a pack of homemade playing cards and was playing poker with Jed Hawkins. “They always done it afore!”

Mapes shook his head. “Yeah, but I saw in the newspaper that the Yankees done lost seventy thousand men since they hit us at the Wilderness.”

Jeff looked up with astonishment. “Seventy thousand men
dead?”

“Not all of them dead,” Mapes said. “Some of ’em wounded, some just missin’.” He spat an amber stream of juice again. “We can’t go at them, and they can’t go at us.”

“I don’t like this kind of life,” Jed Hawkins said. He looked at his hand of cards, threw it down, and picked up his guitar. Somehow Jed always managed to have his guitar with him, even in the midst of battle. He strummed for a while, then began to sing. His clear, tenor voice rose over the trenches so that likely even the Federals, lying nearby, could hear him:

Jeff gave Jed a disgusted look. “I swear, that’s a mournful tune! Don’t you know any happy songs about soldiers?”

“Ain’t any.” Jed grinned at him crookedly. He sang another verse. Then he laid the guitar down and began to walk along the trench, careful to bend over. He was met by another man who was carrying a bucket. Hawkins said, “Looks like it’s dinnertime. What’s in this, Cookie?”

“Don’t ask,” the cook said grimly. “You’ll be better off not knowin’.” He surrendered the bucket, and Jed returned with it. “Get your mess gear out. Time for our usual seven-course dinner.”

Jeff picked up his tin plate and held it out while Hawkins spooned some sort of stew onto it. As soon as he got it, he ducked back and sat leaning against the earth trench. He tasted the stew, and Charlie Bowers, sitting across from him, said, “What does it taste like, Jeff?”

“It tastes like fox to me.”

Charlie stared at him. “What does a fox taste like?”

“About like an owl.” Jeff grinned. “I don’t know what it is, Charlie. Probably mule. Just eat it, and don’t ask any questions.”

The men ate hungrily, for at least it was food, and men had to eat. The daily ration of meat amounted usually to three or four ounces, about a mouthful per man. Food boxes from home had stopped now that the Confederates had been cut off by the siege line. An Irish member of Parliament, who had come to visit the Confederates, had dinner with General Lee; he reported to those back home, “He had two biscuits, and he gave me one.”

In the trenches, constant skirmishing and sharp-shooting took their deadly toll. Continual shelling back and forth raked the nerves of all the men. The heat was terrible, and dust, alternating with mud, made the situation worse. The mud and the filth brought disease, and some of their friends had died. More friends had died of disease than of musket balls. Jeff had seen strong men sink into apathy and brood for hours.

He finished his stew, wiped his plate with a handkerchief that was none too clean, and said, “I’m goin’ down the line to see what’s happenin’.”

Sergeant Mapes gave him a questioning look.
“The same thing that’s happening here—nothing!” he said.

But Jeff was restless and got up, careful to keep his body in a crouch so that none of it showed over the top of the logs that lined the trenches. He had gone no more than five steps when suddenly he was knocked completely off his feet. A tremendous roar half deafened him, and he thought with shock,
A shell’s gone off in the trench!

He lay facedown in the dirt for a moment, wondering if he had been hit, then he struggled to his feet. But no sooner had he done so than dirt, dust, and wooden objects began to rain down upon him. Something struck him on the shoulder but caused no damage.

“What’s goin’ on?” he cried.

“Don’t know!” Sergeant Mapes said. He, too, was dodging the raining dirt. “A bomb must’ve gone off. Ain’t no shell can do that! It looks like it hit down the line.”

By now all the troops were scrambling to their feet and staring with amazement to their left.

“Look at that, will you!” Curly Henson said with awe.

Jeff looked, along with the others, and saw a huge cloud of dust and debris rising in a column. Some of it was already beginning to fall on the part of the trench where he was. “What kind of a shell would do
that?”
he asked.

No one answered, for no one knew of a shell that big. What they did not know was that the gigantic explosion was a result of work by a Colonel Pleasance. This Federal colonel was a mining engineer, and many of his men who came from Pennsylvania had been miners. Pleasance had watched the futile
efforts of his officers to break the Confederate resistance. When all else failed, he came up with the idea of tunneling underground and planting a huge charge of powder under the Confederate line.

With tremendous effort, a tunnel more than five hundred feet long was dug. When it was completed, eight thousand pounds of black powder were placed at the end of it. A hundred-foot fuse was attached to the powder and lighted. It burned out. Two men went back in to relight it. Finally, the powder had gone off.

The hole blasted by the huge charge was enormous. Federal troops, black soldiers under General Ferrero, started to enter. But the Confederates, after the first shock, began to rush toward the huge, gaping crater.

Officers shouted commands. “Put your men on the edge of that crater!” And that was what the following battle would be called: the Battle of the Crater.

“Come on!” Sergeant Mapes yelled.

Rubble was still swirling in the air, and dust was thick, but Jeff could see the enemy flooding into the break. He grabbed up an extra musket. Every man counted. With a hole in the Confederate line, the Yankees could rush in and Richmond would be taken.

“It’s a good thing for us they don’t have ladders,” he said. “But look! Look! They can’t get up out of the hole!”

Anyone looking down could see that this was true. The Federals had poured into the huge crater, but they could not get out because the sides were so steep.

Muskets began to go off, and Union soldiers began to fall. Jeff felt bad about it. “Like shooting fish in a barrel,” he muttered. But more and more Union soldiers kept coming, and the line had to be held.

The battle grew hot, and the bottom of the crater was a terrible thing to see. The sun blazed down on it with fierce heat. Men were dying everywhere. And at last the Federals drew back.

The Confederate victory was almost completely won when Jeff suddenly felt a blow on his left arm. He supposed for a moment that Ocie had struck him, and he turned to say something. But then he fell to the ground and thought with astonishment,
Why, I’ve been shot!

Jeff felt no pain, but his whole arm was numb. He looked down, saw bright red blood gushing, and desperately put his hand over the wound. But the bleeding did not stop.

“Jeff, you’ve been hit!”

Ocie threw down his musket and leaped to kneel beside him. “You’re gonna bleed to death!”

Jeff tried to speak, but the shock was too great. He watched as Ocie whipped off his belt and quickly wrapped it around his arm. Then he saw that the blood had stopped running so freely.

“Hey, you fellas! Jeff’s been hit! Help me get him back!” Ocie cried.

Jed Hawkins took one look and said, “Can you walk, Jeff?”

“I—I reckon I can,” he managed to say.

Jeff was able to get to his feet. Ocie kept the belt tied around his arm, and soon they were back behind the lines, where a tall, skinny doctor said, “Sit down there. I’ll have to patch you up.”

Jeff then knew pain, for feeling returned to his arm, but he kept his lips clamped tightly together.

When the doctor finished treating him, he said, “You’ll be OK. Didn’t break the bone, or I’d have had to take that arm off.” Before leaving, he looked down again and grinned. “Whoever put that belt around your arm saved your life, soldier.”

Jeff looked at Ocie. He was faint from the loss of blood, and Ocie’s face seemed to be wavering. “I guess you saved my life, Ocie.”

“Well, you saved mine back in the Wilderness, and turnabout’s fair play.” Ocie was looking much relieved. “I thought you was a goner, Jeff. How do you feel?”

“OK.” He lay quietly, his head swimming, and he felt slightly nauseated. Ocie got him a drink of water, and when he had sipped it he said, “You know, I think maybe God had all this figured out.”

“What do you mean, Jeff?”

“I mean He knew I was gonna have to have some help. So that’s why I went to get you out of that fire back in the Wilderness.”

Ocie thought about that. “Well, it’s nice to have somebody to take care of us. Like the Scripture says, two are better than one.”

Jeff felt himself slipping into unconsciousness, and he whispered, “Yes, two are better than one, Ocie …”

Jeff cautiously got down out of the ambulance and waved at the driver. “Thanks for the ride,” he said.

The driver stepped down and nodded at him. “You got off easy. Some of those we got in here are a lot worse off.”

“I know it,” Jeff said soberly.

He was still weak and had developed a slight fever, but finally the doctors had told him, “Go home. Go back to Richmond and get healed up. Then you can come back and fight some more. Get shot in the other arm, maybe.”

Jeff had said, “I don’t think I want to try that.” But he’d come home to Richmond, and now he was looking for his father. He had not heard about the colonel and feared he might not have survived.

He walked into the long, low building that the driver had told him was headquarters for Chimborazo. A woman sat behind a desk.

“I’m looking for Colonel Nelson Majors.”