Candle in the Darkness - Lynn N. Austin [166]
“So now they’re prisoners of war?”
“That’s right, ma’am. The captain was one of the last to leave, you see, making sure everybody else had a chance to get overboard. Now he’s missing. Mind you, he might have been picked up by the Yanks, so you can’t give up hope.”
I thanked Mr. Dooley for coming and offered him payment for his trouble. He refused. “I had to come, you see, because the other fellows and me . . . well, we have the highest regard for Captain Fletcher.”
I didn’t break down until after Mr. Dooley left. Then I fell into Tessie’s arms, praying, “Please, God . . . no. Not Daddy.”
That spring, Charles and Jonathan fought in some of the fiercest battles of the entire war. The fighting that took place in the wilderness, outside Fredericksburg on May 5 and 6, was so horrific that neither Sally nor I could bear to look at the casualty lists. We waited in the carriage together, praying, while Sally’s mother went to read them, then we wept and thanked God when we learned that He had spared both men.
Our grim tasks at Chimborazo Hospital began all over again, with wounded soldiers pouring in at the rate of several thousand a day. Sally and I worked for as many hours as we could bear before collapsing with exhaustion, but for all of our efforts, some days it seemed as though the angel of death laughed in our faces. I cut up the last of the linens from my hope chest to make bandages when the hospital ran out of them.
Many of the soldiers I tended wept as they described the terrible battle that had taken place in the wilderness’s dense thickets and tangled woods. They told me that more than two hundred wounded men had burned to death as fires swept through the underbrush. General Longstreet, who had been Charles’ commander for so long, had been severely wounded.
Our troops weren’t the only ones who’d suffered. The Yankees lost so many thousands of men that everyone believed General Grant would retreat, just as all the defeated Union generals before him had. But regardless of his losses, Grant kept moving forward toward Richmond, skirting around Lee’s forces to the south and east. The exhausted Rebels marched forward to meet him, battling him again at Spotsylvania on May 8. That battle surged back and forth all day, the terrible fighting continuing until after midnight. One of the thousands of wounded men I tended told me that the artillery and rifle fire had been so intense that an entire forest of trees, many more than a foot and a half thick, had been reduced to stumps by bullets and shells. In places, the dead lay piled four deep where they had fallen.
Since Charles had little time to write, his letters became more brief and, for me, more precious.
We have been fighting for six long days. When I close my eyes at night it’s very difficult to erase the horrifying sights and sounds from my mind. And so I curl beneath my blanket on the hard ground and dream of the day when you will lie in my arms at night. I study your picture before every engagement so that your face is the last thing I see before the enemy charges. I carry it in my breast pocket, above my heart. . . .
In Richmond, we felt the pressure of the enemy closing in on us from several directions. While Lee’s men held off the main body of Yankees, a smaller force under General Sheridan marched to the northern outskirts of the city. The Home Guard, along with every available man, young and old, scrambled to our defense. The Confederate cavalry under J.E.B. Stuart arrived in time to stop Sheridan, but Stuart himself was wounded in the fight at Yellow Tavern and later died. Meanwhile, more Yankee troops under General Butler set out from the south, making it as far as Richmond’s “back door” before Rebel forces drove them away. Everyone in the city knew our armies were fighting for their very lives—and for ours.
On the first three