Sissy Johnson

When had everything changed? Shells exploded in the distance and the sound of men dying and horses screaming filled the air along with the acrid smoke of cannon fire. Plume after plume of dark grey shot into the air from the opposite ridge and Sissy’s hand involuntarily clutched the cotton of her skirt that caught gently in the tall grass which waved in contrary serenity to the violent events unfolding nearby.

Not so long ago, life had been carefree. Horses, servants, teas and parties had been her existence. Then a whirlwind disrupted her peaceful life and threw to the air everything she had ever known. War had broken out and the country, people, and even families were completely divided. Fighting and hatred had been hanging over the entire nation for a year, like the thick smoke that floated above the fighting below. Yet here, in a Union encampment, among these hundreds of people so very different from her old family and social life, somehow Sissy had begun to feel at home.

From behind her, the sound of equipment startled her from her thoughts and she turned to see a unit of field nurses approaching - their horses beside them.

“It’s easing up now,” said the man in the front, gathering the reins in his hand. He smiled gently at Sissy as she bit her lip and glanced toward the quieting gunfire after meeting his look.

“It sounded bad, Mr. Richardson,” she murmured as the group of ten joined her at the peak of the hill and paused under the shade of the tree.

“They’re all bad,” said the youngest of them from the back. “There’s not a single one of these fights that isn’t bad. I don’t understand why those people feel the need to rebel.”

Sissy turned back to look at the man. It was Thompson, a dark-haired man in his early twenties with a square face and large brow. “They are fighting for their homes,” she said tightly, the sun filtering through her auburn hair and lighting on her green eyes as they narrowed. “They have been invaded and they are fighting for their homes and for their families.”

The young man grunted and placed his foot in the stirrup, grabbing the saddle horn. “Invaded? Like hell they were invaded. How can you be invaded by your own country?” After swinging himself into the saddle he looked down at her through cold dark eyes. “But I understand you siding with them. After all, you’re one of the damn fools.”

“That’s enough from you, Thompson!” Mr. Richardson said quietly and shortly. He replaced his cap on his blond hair. “Take your group of four toward the right flank. Ms. Johnson,” he added, turning to her as Thompson and his men rode away toward the fighting, “Ms. Trenton could use your assistance prepping the medical tents for our return. The ambulances will be coming back in soon and we are expecting overflow.”

“Yes, sir.”

Mr. Richardson’s grey eyes watched her go until she was well toward the regiment’s camp and then said, “Let’s go, men,” mounted his horse, and rode off with them.

Eleanor Trenton was the daughter of the regiment’s colonel. She had followed her father to the military when the Civil War had begun, and made herself generally useful by aiding him and helping with the nursing of the wounded before they were transported to the hospital tent facilities surrounding Washington D.C.. She was a young woman, seven years Sissy’s senior, and helped care for Sissy as an older sister would. Sissy found her setting bandages on tables to keep them out of the mud that had been tread deeper by so many footsteps. The surgeon’s table was nearby and he, with the help of his male nurses, was setting out saws and heating irons for amputations.

“Would you like some skirt ties?” Eleanor questioned as Sissy joined her. She pushed a stray wisp of dark hair out of her face and Sissy glanced down and noted that the hem of her skirt was almost dragging in the mud, despite her young age dictating she not wear full-length skirts and her hem falling only to the lower portion of her calf. “I thought you might need them so I brought them with me.” She handed Sissy a fabric belt with straps much like suspenders and Sissy silently clipped them to the middle of her skirt to pull up the hem.

“Thank you,” she said with a smile. “How may I help today?”

“We’ve got cots,” said a male orderly as he glanced back from his position on the ground leveling a cot’s legs. “Blankets are in short supply and we’ll likely not have enough, but there’s a stack over there if you would like to make up the cots as best you can.”

The first of the ambulances began arriving sometime after Sissy had completed her duties and she stood at the opening of the tent with Eleanor whose face was drawn with anxiety as the orderlies removed the wounded from the wagons. “I’m certain your father will be fine,” Sissy reassured Eleanor, placing a hand on her arm. “He’s always been. I doubt you will find him brought in in an ambulance.” Eleanor smiled and patted her hand.

“Yes, dear, I am positive I will not, but the number of wounded is always cause to mourn for me. Not to mention the dead.”

“It’s still a standoff,” a driver informed the young ladies as he came around the back of the ambulance and untied the gate. “Neither side budged. They charged the line, but were held off by our boys and retreated back to their camp. The colonel is still at our line,” he added to Eleanor, whose expression immediately lightened. “The devils almost broke through our ranks on the left flank.”

Sissy tensed as he used the term devils and quietly followed the first stretcher to a cot to attend to the wounded soldier. His field bandaging was loose and poorly done and Sissy began removing it to properly clean and cover the blood-soaked leg. The soldier winced as the bandage pulled away from his wound and Sissy paused and continued slowly. She remembered the same look on one of her uncle’s horses when she had had to bandage its leg after it had broken through its pasture’s fence. As she began to re-bandage the soldier’s wound, the memory of her uncle’s voice crept into her mind.

“Gently now, darling,” he murmured in his Kentucky drawl. “You can’t do it painlessly, but you can do it softly.” She remembered his eyes by the light of the lantern that Susanna held, and Susanna’s young light-skinned son watching over the side of the stall with his feet on the bottom boards.

The screaming from the doctor’s operation table caused her to drop her pair of scissors, narrowly missing her own patient’s injured leg and a harried orderly barked, “Careful there!” as he passed with an empty bucket dripping blood.

The afternoon stretched into night and not until Orderly Newton picked up the lantern Sissy was working by, did she notice how late it had become. “You should go wash up,” Newton said in soft tones that never failed to surprise Sissy when she heard it coming from a man. She smiled tiredly at him, noticing again, as she did every time, his slim physique and fine features. “The nurses are coming in and you won’t be needed.” Newton took Sissy’s arm to help her stand and as Sissy walked toward the entrance of the tent, she averted her eyes to avoid seeing the pile of sawed-off limbs that orderlies were carrying from the surgeon’s table. Her stomach churned as the overwhelming scent of blood was wafted to her on the damp breeze.

“It’s going to rain.” Sissy turned to see Jack speaking with Thompson near the side of the tent.

“Damn the rain,” Thompson said in annoyance. “All it does is create a worse mud pen for all us pigs to wallow in. Your brother’s on patrol tonight, isn’t he, Richardson?” When Jack replied in the affirmative, Thompson grunted. “Good luck to him. I don’t envy a post in this weather.”

“He is a good choice for it.” Jack smiled. “He’s been used to the woods at night in all weather since he was a young boy. Frank’s got talents a lot of people don’t know anything about.” He puffed a moment longer on his pipe and his eyes fell on Sissy. He touched his cap briefly and wished her a good night as she nodded and hurried back to Eleanor’s tent which they shared.

As Eleanor brushed out Sissy’s hair and plaited it for the night, Sissy turned to her. “I wish Thompson would not treat me so poorly,” she said, her eyes troubled. “He called me a damn fool this afternoon, you know.”

“Thompson talks too much,” Eleanor replied, attempting to dismiss the nurse’s rudeness as unimportantly as possible to put Sissy at ease.

Sissy played with the edge of her nightgown. “Still. I wish Mr. Richardson would not be so familiar with him when he knows how I’m treated. Do you think many of the men think of me as worthless? I know they come from a very different social setting than I have and I cannot help but understand the Confederacy, Eleanor. I was raised in the South. My family is Southern ever since they settled after the Revolution.”

Eleanor placed the brush down on the small nightstand and took Sissy’s hand in hers. “If it is the Richardson brothers’ opinion of you you worry about, I can put your mind at ease. Jack views everyone as positively as any person could and he tries very hard to be fair. But in doing so, it seems he has made you to feel he is unfair in his friendship with those who have hurt you. Jack has a tendency to share his understanding with others, even those who may not be of the same opinion. I’m certain he continues his friendship with Thompson because there is good in him that perhaps is yet unseen.”

The two cots were on either side of the tent, and as Sissy climbed under her thin Army blanket, the raindrops began to fall heavily on the canvas overhead. Soldiers conversed outside the shelter and the rifles were being stacked noisily under overhangs to protect them from the rain. It was a harsh sound, but one that Sissy had grown accustomed to, and her eyes closed wearily while Eleanor sat and wrote a letter to her mother.