Suddenly a horde of men advanced on my right, some firing, some running with bayonets on the end of their rifles. I was relieved to see a swath of navy blue. Union soldiers. One of them ran up alongside and yelled, “That way! Get behind us!”
I nodded, and as I turned, I saw now how the positions were. I pushed through the line and went a few hundred yards until I was past the fighting but still close enough to hear the commotion of gunfire. I stopped the wagon and climbed into the back to find a parcel of bandages.
Poney’s face had turned gray. He pulled open his shirt and looked down.
“Good God,” he said.
I pushed him to lean forward. He bled from two places, front and back. The musket ball must have gone through him. I bound up the wounds using what were probably the bandages I’d made that night with Belinda Chamberlain.
“It’s all right, Poney.” I kept repeating it because I didn’t know what else to say. “You’ll be all right.”
I climbed up and took the reins again. There had to be doctors somewhere. And they couldn’t be far. I figured that they would be behind the battlefield, so I kept going in the direction away from the rear of the advancing soldiers.
Soon I came upon a large pavilion made of canvas, and I could see people moving about underneath it. Then I saw the rows of cots—it was a field hospital.
“Help!” I cried out. “Help us!”
Two men reached us first—one white with a thick beard and wire spectacles and the other a colored man who jumped up to help Poney to the ground. The white man examined his wound.
“We brought supplies from Dayton for the Union soldiers,” I said. “Got caught in the fight just over there.” I climbed down from the wagon.
“Get him a bed,” the white man said. He seemed to be a doctor.
“Thank you, sir,” Poney said. He looked at me.
“Go on. I’m all right,” I said.
He leaned into the colored man, and they walked carefully toward the tent.
“Are you all right, ma’am? Do you need food?”
My legs felt weak beneath me. “I want to sit down.”
I took his arm, and he led me to the front of an enclosed tent. A small folding table and a few chairs made of wood were set out there. I sat, and he went into the tent and returned with a small metal cup filled with coffee.
“Drink this,” he said.
The warm liquid revived me. “Thank you,” I said.
He went back in the tent and brought out a bound cloth that he put in my lap.
“You’ll be hungry soon if you aren’t already. Eat those.”
The cloth contained two biscuits. My stomach suddenly rumbled to see them.
“Take your time. Not like you’ll be going anywhere anytime soon.”
He walked away. The wounded were coming in quickly now. Some walked, and some were carried on makeshift gurneys. There was yelling everywhere, filling the air—men yelling commands, men yelling in pain.
And yet I fell asleep in that chair.
I awoke to the sound of my name, from a voice that was warm and familiar. But it wasn’t Poney’s.
“Jeannette! Jeannette Bébinn!”
I opened my eyes. The face, now weathered and bearded, was still handsome. He pulled off his hat. I would have known him anywhere.
“Silas! What are you doing here?”
“I assist Dr. Nelson. Probably be a doctor myself after all this. I help him, especially when we get colored patients like the man who came in with you.”
“Poney—is he all right?” I blinked, and the events of the afternoon began to come back to me. I sat up in the chair.
“He’s gonna be fine.” Silas went into the tent and returned with more coffee. He knelt down and looked at me while I drank. “You did a good job getting him bandaged and all. Wound like that, a man can bleed to death.”
“Where are we?”
“Not far from Philippi. Fighting been going on here for weeks. We follow the action. We’ll have the wounded here sent to proper hospitals in a few days. Then we’ll move on. Like I said, we follow the action.”
“Silas, can I go with you? I can help.”
He sat back on his heels and rubbed his beard. “That’s up to Mother B. She looks after the nurses.”
“Who is that?”
“Missus Baxter. We call her Mother B.”
I stood, removed my bonnet, and brushed away what I could of the road dust on my dress. “Please, Silas. Take me to her.”
He escorted me to another tent. Inside a woman was seated at a desk writing. She looked up as we entered. She had soft white hair parted in the middle and cut almost as short as a man’s.
“Mother B., this here is Miss Jeannette Bébinn. Rode here with the wagon of supplies that just came in. Wants to be one of your nurses.”
The woman checked the watch she wore fastened to her waist and wrote a few more lines. Then she addressed me and examined me with calm, watery blue eyes. “Do you faint at the sight of blood?”
Her voice had a firm gentleness that reminded me of Missus Livingston. My heart ached to realize she might be worried sick about me. I resolved to write to her when I could.
“She and the elder gentleman who got shot rode through the fight today. He was sitting next to her. She got him here—bound the wound herself.”
Mother B. stood and looked me up and down. “This is true?”
I nodded.
“Take me to him.”
We walked through to the cots under the pavilion. At times she paused to put a hand to a forehead or check a pulse. When we got to Poney, he was asleep. His wound had been cleaned and freshly bandaged. Mother B. went to a nearby table, where she took a cloth and dipped it in a bowl of water. She wrung it out and placed it on Poney’s forehead.
“He’s a good deal bigger than you,” she said. “How did you manage?”
I described how he had fallen—my struggle to get pressure on the wound and to bind him round. Mother B. nodded her approval.
“All right. We can use you. I have an extra cot in my tent. You may stay there tonight. We will make arrangements for you tomorrow.”
Fanny had spoken often of God, and I am certain God brought me to this place, where I would have both shelter and purpose. Poney had been wounded, but he would survive. When he was well enough for the return trip home, I reminded him not to tell the inhabitants of Lower Knoll where I’d gone.
“Are you sure? Mr. Colchester be something frantic by now.”
“He won’t be there. He’s joined the fighting,” I said. “As for anyone else . . .” I paused and thought for a moment. “Tell them I took the train to New York.”
Chapter 16
When Mother B. made me a field nurse, I felt like I had my own part to play in the fighting. I even had a uniform: a white cotton cap that I wore over my hair and a dress with a high neck and long apron, both white. The white didn’t make much sense to me, considering how we worked in such dirty circumstances—dressing bloody wounds, walking through mud. But then I realized our camps were sometimes not too far from the battlefield. Wearing white, we could stand out, especially if we were outside—an enemy shooter wouldn’t aim for us.
I didn’t do much by way of healing care in those early days. The wounded who could survive were taken to schoolhouses, homes, or churches—buildings that were transformed into makeshift hospitals. The ones left in the pavilion tent under the watchful eyes of Dr. Nelson and Mother B. were dying. We kept them as comfortable as we could with whiskey and sometimes laudanum. But it seemed the best thing I could do was sit with them and talk. Some wanted to hear a friendly voice. A few asked questions about my life, how I’d turned up “in this godforsaken place.”