Davis followed him back to where the officer had tied some horses. He found mounting the animal awkward but bearable. When the three men headed for the ridge, Chamberlain remarked, “That was a stiff fight. If we were in the classroom, Winslow, I would give you an excellent mark for your work today.” He added, “If you hadn’t made that first move, I doubt if a single man would have gone down that hill.”
“I didn’t think we had any choice, Colonel.”
“I’ll mention your name in the reports—but I want you to know I’m glad you’re in my command, Davis!”
They reached the crest and found Colonel Gilmore bubbling over with excitement. “By heaven, Chamberlain, how in the world did you ever get the idea to make a bayonet charge?”
“We didn’t have any ammunition,” Chamberlain said simply. “Sir, this is Lieutenant Winslow. He led the charge, as you perhaps saw. I might mention that he’s new with our command. As a matter of fact, this is his first action.”
“My word!” Gilmore exclaimed, extending his hand. “You deserve congratulations, Lieutenant!” He stood back and shook his head in wonder, then spoke to Chamberlain. “Colonel, I need one more thing from you—can you hold your position until support comes? That won’t be long, I think, for I’ve already sent for Fisher. Should be here in a couple of hours.”
“Yes, sir.” Chamberlain looked around and asked, “Does this hill have a name?”
“Yes—Little Round Top,” Gilmore replied. “Don’t suppose you’ll ever forget that name! By the way, could I borrow the lieutenant for a short time? I must get a message to the Sixteenth Michigan.”
“Certainly,” Chamberlain said, and turned to go, saying over his shoulder, “Winslow, report back when you’ve finished the mission.”
He rode away, and Gilmore took a leather pouch from his saddlebag. “Just see that Colonel Harry McFarland gets this.” He waved toward his left and added, “You need not report back to me, Lieutenant. When you’ve delivered the message, just go back to your brigade.”
“Yes, sir,” Davis said, taking the pouch and guiding the horse around and toward a line of trees covering the base of a rise. As he rode along, he had flashbacks of the battle, and found himself gripping the reins so tightly that his hands cramped. He was stopped several times by sentries, but had no trouble finding the Sixteenth Michigan. The colonel was a tall man with pale skin sunburned to a bright red. He took the pouch, read the message, and said, “This won’t do!” He read it again, then shrugged. “Lieutenant, you’ll have to take this to Major Shultz. He’s down that slope in the forward position—right at the base of those trees. You see them?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Deliver this to him, and then you can go back to your unit.”
He turned away, and Davis moved across the line of men on the brink of the hill, noting that they had taken heavy losses. The slope was not steep at first, but when he was no more than 200 hundred yards from the crest, he came to a steep bank that ran straight across his path. He hesitated, not certain of his way, then moved his mount to the left. He followed the ravine for a quarter of a mile, but found no place to cross. Finally the ravine ran into a clump of scrub timber, and he thought he saw it flatten out. He ducked as he pushed through the timber and out to a small clearing. He sighed with relief when he saw he could cross.
Just as he reached the ravine, a voice came from his left: “Hold it right there, Yank!”
A shot of fear coursed through him, and he drove his spurs into the horse in a furious retreat. Four Confederates stood behind him, their rifles trained on him.
One of the Rebels stepped forward, a smile on his face. “Well, boys, guess what? Looks like we done caught us a courier! Now just step down off that hoss, sir, and let us relieve you of all that hardware.”
There was no option—and Davis complied. After taking his gun, the leader said, “Well, lookee here!” He snatched the leather pouch out of Davis’s pocket. “We got us a prize! Harry, you and me will take this feller back where the officers can question him. Tim, you and Simms stay here.”
Thirty minutes later, Davis was in front of a tent, being questioned by a large bearded Rebel general. Only when one of the officers said “General Longstreet, look at this order” did Davis realize he was in the presence of the second ranking general of the Confederacy. He knew Longstreet had replaced Jackson, and was the man Robert E. Lee depended on most.
Longstreet read the message, looked up at Davis, and asked, “What’s your outfit, Lieutenant?”
Davis knew vaguely that there was nothing wrong in giving that information. “The Twentieth Maine, General,” he replied.
Longstreet eyed him for a moment. “When did you come into the line?”
Again Davis saw nothing wrong in answering, so he said, “Last night.”
The general grimaced. “You see, Armistead,” he said to an officer nearby, “I knew we’d moved too slow!” He looked back in Davis’s direction. “I don’t suppose you’d like to give us the other units perched on top of that hill, would you, Lieutenant?”
“No, sir. I wouldn’t.”
With a curt nod, Longstreet commanded, “Put him with the other prisoners, Major Lennox.”
Davis was hustled away by a short, fat major and handed over to a sergeant, who took him through the Rebel lines to a group of prisoners, perhaps twenty in all. They were kept inside a rope corral with ten soldiers keeping guard.
“Hey, Lieutenant!” he was greeted almost at once. “What outfit?”
“Twentieth Maine,” Davis replied. He found that most of them were from Sickle’s Corps. One of them, a rawboned, red-headed lieutenant, came to stand by him. “Name’s Ezra Lee. You hungry?”
“No.”
The brief monosyllable drew a look of sympathy from the other. “Know how you feel. Felt that way myself at first—thinking of going to a Rebel jail for who knows how long. But we’ll make it. How about a drink? We got a bucket over here.”
“Sure. I’m Davis Winslow.” Davis went with him to where one of the guards gave him a drink of tepid water. He had not realized how thirsty he was, and when he had downed all he could, he said to the guard, “Thanks, soldier.”
“You’re right welcome, Lieutenant.” The guard was a small man with a bristling black beard. “We’ll put you two with the other officers—soon as we catch us a few,” he commented. “You can sit here if you’ve a mind to.”
Davis sat down, and saw Lee hesitating, unsure if he should force himself on the newcomer. “Sit down, Lee. Tell me what’s been going on.”
Lee hadn’t talked very long before Davis realized the man was a strange mixture of pessimism and optimism—comically so. One of the first things he said was, “Well, if we do die in a Reb prison camp, we won’t have to be sceered of gettin’ shot in a battle, will we, Winslow?”
“Guess that’s sure enough,” Davis grinned slightly, and this encouraged Lee to keep up a patter of conversation until they were moved about two hours later to the rear and put with another group of prisoners. One of them was Captain Perry Hale from Ohio. On the heels of this move, a Confederate lieutenant announced, “You men are moving out. If you try to escape, you’ll be shot, so don’t try it. Sergeant Willis will be in charge of your guards. Sergeant, get them out of the area at once.”
Willis was a strong-looking man with a Springfield carbine in his large hands. He called out, “You heard the lieutenant—get movin’.”
They left the area accompanied by eight guards and a wagon of supplies. Soon they were on the road leading out of Gettysburg. They were marched hard until late afternoon, when they halted and cut firewood to make a quick meal of bacon and coffee. After the meal, Willis announced, “We’ll have to chain you up for the night.” The news shocked Davis, but he realized the squad had no choice. All the men, except the officers, were fitted with a pair of handcuffs. One long chain was run through the chain loop of each man’s handcuffs, then anchored at each end to a sturdy tree and left loose eno
ugh to allow some freedom of movement.
Then Willis called, “You officers, come over here. If you three will give me your promise not to escape, I won’t have to chain you up.”
“No, sir,” they all said.
Willis wasn’t surprised. “Well, you’ll have to be chained then,” he said and put the manacles on them, with a shorter chain that allowed freedom to lie down.
“Where will you be taking us?” Hale asked. He was a sturdy man with pale blue eyes and a large mustache.
“You three will go to Libby, I reckon. The rest will go to Belle Isle.”
In the North, both Libby and Belle Isle had been reputed as having inhumane conditions. Some even said it was better to get shot than captured by Johnny Reb.
Davis slept that night, and the next day they started their long, monotonous journey to Richmond. They marched all day, stopping at noon for a brief meal, then at night to eat and sleep. It was broken by one fragment of good news. A Confederate courier caught up with them on his way to Richmond. As he drank coffee, the Yankee officers heard him say, “We got whipped. The Yankees held on to that hill, and we had to retreat.”
Hale whispered, “Well, we won anyway!”
When they entered the outskirts of Richmond many days later, the enlisted men were taken by the squad, while Sergeant Willis and one other guard took Davis, Hale and Lee to Libby Prison, a huge warehouse converted into a prison.
As the steel door clanged shut behind him, Davis was overwhelmed with a shroud of black despair. It seeped into the depths of his spirit with a crushing weight he’d never known before.
The prison was packed to capacity, but the three Yankee men stuck together, finding a bond with one another that was forged during their long journey. Each was given a thin blanket, and assigned to a large room, already packed with hungry-looking men. They ate thin soup and a single piece of cornbread, then lay down for their first night in Libby.
As Davis lay there in the foul-smelling air, listening to the grunting snores of the inmates and the cries uttered in their sleep, he found himself wishing he had been one of those who had died at Little Round Top. The future stretched out before him—a bleak line of spectral days, grim and cheerless, without end. Never again would he bask in the warm sunlight, never again breathe the exhilarating fresh air.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
CHIMBORAZO
A veil of snow floated out of a leaden December sky as Belle approached Chimborazo. She had driven through the streets of Richmond early on her way to the hospital, and the thick blanket of snow that had fallen during the night muffled the sounds of travel so much that she seemed to have gone deaf. Instead of the clatter of iron wheels over the rough cobblestones and the clip-clop of horses, there was only a faint sibilance as she guided the buggy along.
Richmond itself on that Sunday morning had a strange mystic quality, due to the robe of pure white that clothed its grimy buildings and dirty streets. The sight of shops, factories, hotels, and the many buildings hiding their dark war-stained exteriors under a mantle of pure white, like a bride’s mantle, caused Belle to think, How often a beautiful outside covers ugliness and wrong! She had been reading Shakespeare the night before, and the line flashed into her mind: “O what a goodly outside falsehood hath!”
She shook off the thought, stopped the buggy and got out, picking up the large bucket of soup she had made at home. She entered the hospital by a side door, and was immediately pulled out of a world that seemed pure and spotless into the world of sickness and pain.
Chimborazo was the largest military hospital complex in the world, with over 76,000 patients passing through it during the course of the war. Each of the five buildings had its dozens of wards. Belle was matron of Hospital Number 3, and her patients were from Virginia, Maryland, Arkansas, and South Carolina. They all had been mixed together when she first took charge, but she separated them into wards according to states because of the intense jealousy between them. If an Arkansan saw a Virginian receiving more attention, he would complain.
As she entered ward 17, the Arkansan ward, she was greeted cheerily. “Whatcha brung us, Miss Belle?” an emaciated boy no more than seventeen asked. He had yellow hair and gray-blue eyes that smiled when she looked at him.
“Home-made chicken soup, Lonnie,” she replied. “And you get the first bowl.” A protest went up from a long-haired man across the room, but she gave him a stern look. “When you let me cut that hair of yours, Coy, you’ll get some attention.”
Coy Willing was a tall lanky man from the Ozarks with a bandaged stump for a right arm. He shook his head stubbornly. “I promised my sweetheart I wasn’t going to cut my hair till we won the war. You wouldn’t want me to break my vow, would you, Miz Belle?”
She ignored him, went to the cupboard, took out a pile of dishes, and examined them to see if the orderly had washed them as she had ordered. For once he seemed to have done his job, and she ladled out some of the rich soup into one of them, and took it to Lonnie. He was lying flat on his back, and when she lifted him to a sitting position, she was shocked at how light he was. He had been brought in with critical abdominal wounds, his viscera bulging, and such patients usually didn’t live long. Lonnie had become a challenge to her, and she worked long hours over the boy, keeping him from slipping away.
“Here, you’ve got to eat every bit of this, or I’ll cut a switch to you.”
“I’ll try, Miss Belle,” he said and began to swallow the soup as she fed him. Though his wounds had been terrible when he was brought from Gettysburg, he never complained. Now he was nothing but skin and bones, she saw.
The ward was quiet. Many of the men were still asleep. Lamps burned softly on ledges over their beds. As she fed Lonnie, Belle glanced at the clean floor. She thought back to that first week and the filthy conditions of the wards. She had soon learned that the assistant surgeons would drink the men’s whiskey supply, then lock themselves in their offices all day while the wounded died on their cots and the chamber pots overflowed.
She smiled, remembering the showdown she’d had with the ringleader. It had been in the middle of the afternoon, and a young Marylander had died in his own filth. She had stormed into the office of the assistant director of the hospital and in a voice that every patient, orderly, and assistant surgeon could hear clearly, she had scalded him verbally. He had blustered and threatened to have her removed, but she’d smiled coldly at him, saying, “We’ll see who’s removed, you sorry excuse for a human being! When I tell the President what sort of trash is in charge, you’ll be out of this hospital—and I’ll do all I can to see that you get drafted and sent to the front!”
He had sneered at her, but when President Jefferson Davis and his wife Varina marched into the Chimborazo the next day for a surprise inspection, the careless doctor turned pale. He turned even paler when after the inspection he was sent for by Dr. Keller Stevens and dismissed for incompetence. Later, word came back to the hospital that he had been assigned to Hood’s division as a private. An older man named Elmer Gibbs had taken his place, and under Belle’s direction the wards had been transformed.
Suddenly as she inserted the spoon into Lonnie’s mouth, a spasm of pain seized him and he bit down hard, his body arching upward. She threw her arm around him and held him as he writhed in agony, his eyes closed, his lips a pale line. Finally he relaxed, and she took the spoon out of his mouth, saying, “That was a bad one, Lonnie.”
“Not too bad, ma’am,” he whispered. “I can’t complain.”
“You never do, Lonnie,” she said, laying him down gently and smoothing his brow. “I’ll bring you something for the pain if it becomes unbearable.”
She went around the room dispensing the soup, giving a word of encouragement, and filing information about patients’ conditions in her mind. The doctors were amazed at her ability to remember not only every patient but the fine details of their condition. Most of them didn’t realize that in addition to the long hours she spent in the wards, she kept
a written record of each man. She also wrote letters for many of them. In this way she felt as if she had come to know their families and their problems.
After all the men were fed, she walked over to Coy Willing with a basin of water and fresh bandages. He stared up at her with a stubborn frown. “I ain’t gonna let nobody cut my hair,” he stormed.
“If you want to look like a ridiculous fool,” she shrugged, “that’s fine with me.” She sat down and removed the bandages, dropping them into a sack at her feet. As she dressed the stump, she remembered how she had reacted the first time she had seen a bad wound. She had become nauseated and run to the bathroom to recover. She had fought against the overwhelming desire to flee from the hospital. Instead, she had washed her face and gone back to the man, who had looked at her in surprise and muttered, “Ma’am, you don’t have to do nothing for me.”
“Yes, I do,” she had said, and had proceeded to dress his wound. “If you can take a wound for our Cause, I can dress it.”
The stump of Willing’s arm had been infected when he first arrived, and she had feared gangrene, but it had healed nicely. She studied the knob of muscle, nodded and said, “The doctor did a good job on you. He left a nice pad of flesh over the bone.”
“I reckon so,” he growled in a lifeless voice.
“What’s the matter?” she asked.
He picked at the cover with his remaining hand for a long moment before raising his eyes. “Miz Belle,” he asked. “Do you reckon . . . ?”
She saw him struggle, and asked quietly, “What is it, Coy?”
“Oh, I jest git to thinking—about my sweetheart. You know? And the thing is—well, they’s lots of fellers with two arms.”
Belle stared at him. He had been in the ward for over a month, and had given her more trouble than any other patient. Now his arrogance was gone, and she saw the fear and doubt that had lain beneath his blustery behavior.
“A man is more than an arm, Coy,” she said evenly, impulsively pushing the stringy hair back from his brow. “You’re the same man you were before you lost that arm—no, better! Because you gave it for your country. If your girl loved you before, she’ll love you more now.” She saw the doubt flicker in his eyes, and said pertly, “If you’d get a haircut and clean up, we could get your picture made in your uniform and send it to her.”
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