I was in the midst of it all, saw war where war is worst,
Not on the battle-fields, no—in the hospital,
There war was worst, there I mixed with it;
I recall the experience sweet and sad.
Of that many-threaded drama, with its sudden and strange surprises, the mighty and cumbrous armies, the bloody battles, the interminable campaigns, and an unending, universal mourning-wail of women, parents, orphans—the marrow of the tragedy concentrated in those army hospitals. It seem’d sometimes as if the whole interest of the land was one vast central hospital, and all the rest of the affair but flanges.
You ought to see the scene of the wounded arriving—
The great army of the wounded,
The crowd, O the crowd of the bloody forms,
The collections of maimed and broken-down men—
A sight beyond all the pictures and poems ever made.
Quite often they arrive at the rate of 1000 a day, the sad legacy bequeathed by those vast armies and sanguinary battles—varieties, postures beyond description, most in obscurity, some on the bare ground, some on planks or stretchers, some of them dead, some in the death-spasm sweating, old men leaning on young men’s shoulders.
Now, after great and terrible experiences, here in their barracks they lay. In those boarded hospital barracks, whitewashed outside and in, there were about 100 in one long room; eight or ten or twelve such wards in the hospital, the yard outside also fill’d.
Then there were some 38 more hospitals here in Washington, some of them much larger.
O my land’s maim’d darlings, with the plenteous bloody bandage and the crutch,
O you regiments so piteous, with your fever, with your mortal diarrhoea.
Diarrhœa was of all troubles the most prevalent; it meant death, death,
That whole damned war business is about nine hundred and ninety nine parts diarrhoea to one part glory.
Many of the cases are bad ones, lingering wounds, and old sickness,
There ruled agony with bitter scourge, yet seldom brought a cry—
Sounds of unendurable suffering from two or three of the cots, an occasional scream or cry,
But in the main quiet—almost a painful absence of demonstration.
The doctors liked best the fellows who would yell, indescribably growl out, moan, fuss, over their wounds—to these there seemed more hope.
The quiet men—these the doctors feared for.
The look of despair on the countenances of many of the men,
The pallid face, the dull’d eye, and the moisture on the lip,
The glassy eye of the dying,
Demonstration enough—hope has left them.
I sometimes put myself in fancy in the cot, with typhoid, or under the knife—
The doctor’s shouted orders or calls,
Limbs are tied to the surgeon’s table,
Surgeons operating, the glisten of the little steel instruments,
The hiss of the surgeon’s knife, the gnawing teeth of his saw,
The odor of wounds and blood,
The amputation, the blue face, the groan, the clotted rag,
Wheeze, cluck, swash of falling blood, short wild scream, and long, dull, tapering groan.
What is removed drops horribly in a pail;
These so, these irretrievable.
Meantime the ordinary chat and business of the ward goes on indifferently. Some of the inmates are laughing and joking, others are playing checkers or cards, others are reading.
And there stalk’d death by day and night along the narrow aisles between the rows of cots, or by the blankets on the ground,
Death there up and down the aisle, tapping lightly by night or day here and there many a poor young sufferer,
Often with blessed, welcome, relieving touch—
Come sweet death! be persuaded, O beautiful death! in mercy come quickly!
Tread the bare board floor lightly here, for the pain and panting of death are in this cot,
Some soldier’s life is flickering there,
Hard the breathing rattles, suspended between recovery and death.
He felt the struggle to keep up any longer to be useless; he seem’d quite willing to die,
He had become very weak and had suffer’d a good deal, and was perfectly resign’d, poor boy.
God, the world, humanity—all had abandoned him,
It would feel so good to shut his eyes forever on the cruel things around him,
Quite glazed already the eye, yet life struggles hard.
Then the eyes close, calmly close—
Welcome oblivion, painlessness, death;
The limpsy head falls down, the arms are softly placed by the side,
All composed, all still,
And the broad white sheet is thrown over everything.
This pure souled creature died as a flower might wilt of a chilly evening, silently, and without complaint,
His fate was a hard one, to die so.
NEXT: NURSING THE WOUNDED AND DYING
In the Words of Walt Whitman 