THE BUZZING WOKE ME. I OPENED MY EYES. IT WAS morning. I saw the blowfly on the sheet that covered my chest, staring at me through his two large eyes, his wings vibrating in the still air.
I didn’t even bother to shoo him away. It was a waste of time. There were too many of them. There shouldn’t have been. It was the last week of March in Richmond in 1865, and there should have been a few in sun-warmed windows and no more.
But this was the Chimborazo Hospital and blowflies were everywhere, along with the groans and cries of wounded men— many dying—and the ever-present stench of disease, gangrene, human waste, and blood.
We were a sad lot. Too little medicine. Too little food. Too little hope. Too much pain. Too much fear. And for many, too few limbs.
But it was far better than the field hospital where I had lain for a day after being shot. Or the jolting, painful wagon ride to Richmond.
I had been here since the middle of December. First, it was the wound and the blood loss. Then, the fever had come. And, now, it was just the weakness. I didn’t have the strength to get out of bed—a pretty pitiful sight for a cavalry officer.
I heard the click of cavalry boots on the wooden floor before I saw the figure. Captain Jonathan Washburn stood at the end of my bed. His left sleeve was folded up and pinned at the shoulder. I could never get used to seeing him without his arm.
“Well, Captain, I suppose you’ve malingered long enough. You have new orders. Get yourself dressed. We’re taking you out of all this.”
“I’m being released from this hell-hole? You mean that?”
“I do, indeed. Turley, front and center, man. Get yourself out here and help the captain.”
Sergeant Josiah Turley materialized as if out of thin air. A lean, wiry mountain boy, Turley was raw-boned, with a shock of red hair and a disposition to match.
It was Turley, more than anyone else, who had saved me.
We were still riding patrols after Merritt’s burning raids, harrying the blue-bellies as much as we could. We came across a patrol near Rectorville and we charged. They ran, but one of them fired a shot over his shoulder without even looking. I felt the bullet strike. I felt the hard thud in my side, below my belt. Turley was there in an instant.
“Cap’n, you been hit hard. I got to get you to the surgeons. Can you sit your saddle?”
“Turley, are you crazy? Of course, I can . . .” And then the shock wore off. I slumped in the saddle and passed out. Turley tied my ankles to the stirrups and my hands to the saddle-bow, and he led me to the field hospital.
“Captain, get dressed,” Captain Washburn ordered.
Jonathan and I had fought together in the 3rd Virginia Calvary, and there had been no better soldier than he. We had charged the Yankees over and over again during the Seven Days’ Battles, and I had seen the shrapnel rip through his arm and shatter the bone. But he didn’t falter. He pushed the men forward before falling from the saddle. We had been only lieutenants then, but his act of bravery and duty had become my standard for judging my own actions.
“Sergeant Turley, get this man dressed. We will ride at once.”
“Yes, sir,” Sergeant Turley answered and began lifting me to the side of the bed.
Lieutenant Washburn, now a captain, had been reassigned after his recovery to the adjutant general’s office. All promotions and transfers went through that office.
“How did you manage this?”
“It wasn’t me. I wish it had been. But it was your colonel. When Colonel Mosby was in Richmond a month ago after he had recuperated from his own wounds, he had dinner with General Lee. One of his concerns, it seems, was you. Apparently, you are a very dangerous man. I understand up in the Mosby Confederacy, you’re worth more dead than alive. At least to the Yankees. Almost as much as the Colonel himself.”
“You’re right, of course. Alive, I’m barely worth the powder to blow me to hell.”
“With your face plastered on all those posters up there, the Colonel was worried that, if Richmond fell and you were found in the hospital, you’d be taken out and hanged as a guerrilla and outlaw. So, he asked General Lee to have you transferred or reassigned if Richmond was lost.”
That was like the Colonel. We all knew he cared more for his men than he did for himself.
Before the surgeons at the field hospital could do anything except slow the bleeding, Colonel Mosby had stormed into the surgeons’ tent and ordered Turley to get me to the hospital in Richmond. The only means of transportation Turley could find was a farm wagon. For the next two days, Turley had driven that wagon at break-neck speeds to Richmond, without stopping. The poor horse pulling the wagon was as good as dead when we got there. Turley’s horse tied on behind was almost as bad. And so was I.
The doctors had said the pistol ball had entered low on my left side, glanced off the hip bone, bruising it badly, and caromed upward to lodge against the third bottom-most rib near my spine. The bullet had remained in the body but had bulged against the skin of my back. They cut an incision in my back and removed it. But, by that time, it had been inside me for almost three days, along with whatever entered the wound with it—clothing, mud, and whatever was on the bullet itself.
Fortunately, for me, one of the surgeons had read a paper by a Yankee surgeon named Goldsmith that had been smuggled into Richmond. That Yankee surgeon had reported good results from using bromine on the skin around the wound and on sponges in the wound. So, this surgeon treated me in that way. It probably saved my life the second time after Turley had saved it the first time.
The wound festered, and I suffered through severe fevers for over a week. But I recovered. Slowly. Hell-hole this hospital may be, but it and my surgeon saved my life.
The wound took a long time to heal. And the blood loss had been so severe that it took almost two months to be restored. So here I sat on the edge of the bed, barely strong enough to hold myself erect.
“So, Grant’s finally broken through at Petersburg?”
“Yesterday. General Lee is falling back to Richmond, but he knows he can’t defend it. He’ll be pulling out in the next few days.”
“Am I going with him?”
“No, he thought you’re still too weak to ride. So, you’re being given a special and independent command to help guard the train evacuating President Davis, his cabinet, and the Treasury. The train leaves tomorrow. You and Turley are to report to the Richmond-Danville railroad station by noon tomorrow. But tonight you’re staying with Cynthia and me.”
“What’s going to happen to the two of you when the Yankees come?”
“Well, Cynthia is leaving tomorrow by wagon with friends for Lynchburg, and I have been re-assigned as an aide to General Lee. So I’ll be leaving with him when he pulls out.”
Turley had gotten my pants and my boots on and was now buttoning my tunic. He produced my hat from under the table beside my bed and carefully fluffed the plume feather that adorned it.
“Looks like you might make it, Cap’n. If you don’t do nothing plum foolish.”
“Thank you, Turley, for the medical opinion.”
“Ain’t no medical ’pinion. Jest common sense.”
“Jonathan, what are we to do about horses?”
“Sergeant Turley has seen to that. He had your horse, that magnificent gray you call Ghost Runner, brought down to Richmond, and his horse has recovered thanks to his care. I’d say you were pretty well mounted. Assuming, of course, you can still sit a saddle.”
“Just get me into the saddle and Ghost and I will show you how cavalrymen ride.”
It was a pleasant evening with Cynthia and Jonathan, although the meal was sparse, as food was difficult to procure in Richmond. But I could see the worry in Cynthia’s eyes and the false bravado and humor Jonathan tried so hard to maintain.
The next morning at eleven o’clock, Turley rode up to the house. He went into the stable and saddled Ghost Runner and led him to the hitching rail in front of the house. After a somber and tearful farewell to Cynthia and Jonathan, Turley and I rode to the railway station.
