Bloodlines
Title: Bloodlines
Author: maddoggirl
Pairing: House/Wilson gen later. None in this chapter.
Rating: pg-13. For gore and 19th century cussing :D
Spoilers: I'm guessing you know who won the Civil War...
Summary: Even on opposite sides of a war, Fate has a way of bringing them together.
AN: Thanks to maineac for being a great beta, and to the US Civil War community for their help regarding historical accuracy.
Manassas, Virginia - July 19th, 1861
A weary knot of men stripped to their red undershirts milled around a white, rough cloth tent, about seven feet high and ten feet square. Muttered curses escaped their dry mouths as they hammered in the final pegs. Two men climbed down from a nearby wagon, carrying between them a sturdy table bearing dark stains of blood, and took it into the tent’s interior. Three men watched them work; a Major in full dress attire, a surgeon in an unbuttoned uniform blue frock coat and a young Negro male in a patched-together assortment of military garments.
“Well, Captain House,” the Major said, “it looks like your fellows are holding up well.”
The surgeon did not respond to this comment. He ran his hand slowly over thick stubble and frowned at the workers.
“Gustafson, don’t put that case down there. Someone will run into it and smash the vials. Put it inside,” he instructed. A sweating Private nodded, and dragged the indicated leather trunk inside the tent’s flaps. The Negro looked across at the surgeon sharply, but received no look in response.
“And when the battle does arrive, do you suppose you are prepared for casualties?” the Major continued.
“I don’t know yet,” the surgeon replied tonelessly. He shifted around a little, in the direction of the large wagon of supplies being unloaded. But the Negro could tell that he was really looking ahead at the hills, beyond the dark woodland, where the enemy were. Yesterday, a scouting party had identified the enemy camp as being some way beyond the hill, and even now the high-ranking officers were clustered in a tent, the first to be erected upon the regiment’s arrival, planning the battle ahead. Word amongst the men was that a Union victory was so certain that local townspeople were going to come down to watch the fray. What fools, what damned, damned fools, House thought.
“Foreman,” the surgeon said slowly, “the stretchers aren’t on the wagon. Go and ask Captain Walsh where they’ve been put. Then have them brought up here.”
“And how many exactly am I supposed to carry? Or shall I just order a few men to help? They love being told what to do by orderlies,” Foreman replied with grim humour. The surgeon turned back around to face him.
“Use your head,” he said, smirking. Foreman shrugged, and headed past the wagon, into the main camp.
They had arrived earlier today at this strange, lonely, baking spot of Virginia. They had a few days, he had heard, before any action was likely to unfold, so a camp was being hastily constructed. The horses of the 5th US Cavalry Regiment stood in random order, some tied to posts or branches of wild trees, others wandering peacefully amongst the labouring soldiers heading to and from the dusty track, where a line of twenty unhitched wagons were stood waiting to be unloaded.
Tents were still being erected, patches hacked clear from the overgrown grass and bushes. Many of the soldiers eschewed tents altogether, preferring to sleep on the bare ground covered only by a blanket. Captain House was not one of them. He jabbed a bony forefinger at one of the resting Privates.
“Jorgensen. Pitch a tent for me while I entertain the Major.”
Jorgensen snorted like a horse as he stood up and wiped the grime from his damp forehead with a sleeve. He was a tall, burly Norwegian with a bushy brown beard.
“A’right, Doc. I go do this thing for you.”
Jorgensen’s broad back disappeared into the blazing sun. The surgeon removed a pocket watch from his coat pocket, consulted it, then dropped it back in. Foreman’s lithe figure now appeared from a tent within the camp, jogging gently towards them. The Major looked thoughtfully at him. “That Negro fellow…”
“Foreman,” the surgeon interjected gruffly.
“Yes, just as you say, Captain House. I believe I once met his father in Boston. William Foreman, the abolitionist speaker?”
“That’s the one.” House said shortly, “Foreman! I hope you’re hiding those stretchers under that shirt.”
Foreman slowed to a walk. “Captain Walsh will send a party of men with them as soon as they can be spared. Presently, they’re all engaged erecting tents, unloading other supplies, sir.”
The surgeon nodded. He lifted his blue kepi from his head, revealing hair plastered flat with sweat. It had been a long journey, two days of riding through Virginia in the midsummer heat. Seven men had simply fallen from their horses from dehydration or heat exhaustion, and one had died. House grabbed his canteen from inside his coat and poured a little water onto the top of his head. “About time to go and get something to eat,” he muttered to Foreman.
“I suppose,” the Major continued, seemingly oblivious to his companion’s attempts to cease conversation, “that you have stretcher-bearers?”
“Yeah, we do. The cooks.”
“Ah, yes, of course. Personally, I am not entirely sure that that is wise.”
“Why not? It only means that you can’t get a sandwich while there’s a battle on,” the surgeon replied. The Major raised his eyebrows at this rudeness, and Foreman shook his head.
“Well surgeon, good luck. I’m sure it’ll all go as planned,” the Major said stiffly, saluting with sharp precision. House lazily raised a hand in reply, not even looking at the officer. His eyes were fixed on the construction of the medical tent.
The tent could hold four men. House and Foreman shared with another surgeon, Mussler, and his orderly, French. There was barely enough room for all of them to lie down at the same time, and Foreman often awoke sensing someone missing from the cramped space. More often than not, House would be sitting in the dewy grass outside the tent, staring into the distance, the crackling of the camp fire in air. The flames would flicker over his face, and Foreman would wonder what he was thinking about so deeply. Today, he was not inclined to make fanciful observations regarding his boss.
“That was rude,” he said, as they entered their newly-pitched tent and threw themselves and their kit onto the bare ground. It had been baked hard by the sun, and both men hissed as they sat down hard.
“That idiot never fought a battle in his life. I should creep round him like he’s a President just because he wears more buttons than I do?” House demanded, beginning to unstrap his bedroll and knapsack from his shoulders. He set them down, and detached his sword from his belt, laying it down parallel to his leg.
Foreman frowned quizzically. “You say you want a transfer to the Calvary, yet you are intentionally impolite to one of the men who could fix it for you?”
House pushed his kit aside, lay out on his back and looked disapprovingly at the tear in the cloth over his head. “I won’t get a transfer. They need surgeons too badly.”
Foreman’s face filled with indignant surprise. “You tell everyone you’re gonna be out of here soon, tell me at every opportunity that I’ll be useless when you’re gone - and now you say it’ll never happen?”
House didn’t bother replying. He closed his eyes and pretended to sleep until he could hear Foreman unpacking his things for him and setting them out. He wanted to be a cavalryman. Being a surgeon to a cavalry regiment wasn’t enough; he wanted to ride a horse at full gallop. Before the war, he had owned two horses, but now he only rode when the regiment was marching, an officers’ privilege. He was only an assistant surgeon; his disrespectful attitude holding back any chance of promotion, and as such under the command of three full surgeons.
Foreman sat cross-legged on the bare ground and surveyed his boss. “I’m going out,” he said, crawling to the exit. Halfway through the doorflaps, he stopped and twisted his head around. “And you don’t have to pretend to be asleep,” he said, gesturing to House’s newly arranged kit, “I’ve got to do this for you anyway.”
Three days later, the battle erupted like an ugly volcano, spewing up smoke and bodies in place of lava. The Union troops drove their foe back at first, but when they reached the crest of the hill over which they had forced the Confederates, they found themselves in the open. They got the full brunt of a regrouped enemy attack, and Union soldiers dropped in droves. The sun shone on their gun metal, creating a blazing reflection. Down at the bottom of the hill, the Confederates knew they were winning when more and more dull holes appeared in the gleaming strip of light lining the grassy crest.
The medical tent was chaos now, blood, and screams merging with the cannon roar from beyond the hill. Like Dante’s Inferno, Captain House thought distractedly. The three surgeons, the four assistant surgeons and two orderlies were crammed in the stifling tent. All were stripped to the waist, their wet bare flesh spattered liberally with blood. Each operation was finished only for another to begin immediately. Men were lifted onto and off of the wooden table. After the first few casualties, the wounded had to be held to the tabletop to top them sliding off the bloody surface.
House had never sweated so much in his life, and a look at his colleagues showed they were in similar states. In one hand, he held a pair of iron forceps for extraction, and in the other a pad of shredded rags, already weighted with blood. The young corporal lying on the table had been bayoneted in the stomach, and was bleeding to death fast. House pressed the rags down on his abdomen frantically, knowing he couldn’t do this alone. Two surgeons were working on casualties of their own. The third, Surgeon Mussler, was trying to explain to a disoriented middle-aged sergeant that his leg would have to come off. House could see the jagged bone sticking out under his trouser cloth, just below the knee.
“Mussler, I need your help! Foreman, give that patient some ether!”
“No!” screamed the sergeant, sitting up on Mussler’s table and kicking hysterically, “Get away from me, you damned butchers!”
“I haven’t got time to argue!” Mussler shouted, over the blast of a particularly bone-shaking cannon volley, “Yes or no?”
“I…I…” the sergeant’s entire jaw shook in fear, saliva running from his mouth onto his bloody jacket. House stormed towards him, and smacked his with the back of his hand, hard. The sergeant yelped, and House brought the hand back, smacking him on the other cheek with a dizzying crack.
“This man is bleeding to death because of you, you damned coward! Take the ether!” he barked. Whimpering, the sergeant limply allowed himself to be dosed by Foreman, only sobbing softly. Mussler assisted House, and together they were able to staunch the bloodflow and dig out the metal shard from the corporal’s stomach. Foreman worked fast behind them, fat beads of sweat running down his temples and onto his shoulders as he worked the bonesaw frenetically, his arm shooting back and forth with the grinding of the knife on human bone.
A stretcher-bearer stuck his head inside the tent. “Another one out here. Bullet wound, shoulder. We’ve got some more supplies, we’re leaving them with him out here.”
Their medical tent was at the edge of the camp, but closer to the battlefield was a smaller post, where soldiers could receive some basic treatment, or, if severely wounded, made stable enough for transport back to the main surgery post. Mussler nodded at the stretcher-bearer, who hurried away.
“Foreman, French - go and bring that soldier in. Captain House, could you run some bandages up to the other post?”
House bent down outside the tent and picked as many rolls of bandage as he could carry. As he walked briskly towards the distant white tent, he felt the cool air on his face and bare chest and breathed in heavily. The roar of cannons was part of the background now, a constant rolling in his ears. He could feel other men’s blood running in sweat-diluted rivulets down his back. The smell of gunsmoke pricked at his nostrils, and plumes of it rose blue and grey from the behind the hill. What the scene over there looked like he could barely imagine, but from what the wounded men had gasped as they lay on the table, things were going badly.
A flash illuminated the camp, followed by a tremendous bang which shook him on his feet, and made him realise that the artillery was getting closer. House suddenly looked at the hillside and frowned, blinked his smoke-smarting eyes and checked again. Men in blue were beginning to surmount the hill’s crest and run down it, fleeing back towards camp. House dumped the pile of bandages as he reached the post, which was really a large piece of calico stretched over four poles. Under the canopy, newly arrived casualties thrashed and bawled, and some orderlies administered ether and stopped bleeding as fast as they knew how. Immediately, one of them dived for the new bandages and scooped them up. But House didn’t even notice this; he was looking at the retreating men. Some of them were close now, pelting as fast as weary or wounded legs would carry them. There were only a few at the moment, but this, House knew, was the turning of the tide.
He turned back towards camp and began pacing towards the surgeon’s tent, when a hand clutched at his arm. A baby-faced soldier in an outsized uniform stared up into the surgeon’s haggard, bloody face.
“Doctor? Please, please…my brother’s down there,” he gestured wildly over his shoulder towards the hill, “He’s wounded, badly.”
“He’ll have to wait,” House said impatiently, shaking the youngster’s hand from his arm. “The stretcher-bearers will get to him eventually.”
“He can’t wait! He’s dying, Doc! Please, I…” his voice cracked hysterically, “Please just come and see him. He’s yelling, Doc, like hell - like nothing I ever heard. Please. Our mother already lost two sons and her brother!”
The surgeon looked the young man in the face for what seemed like whole minutes, before a fresh barrage of artillery jolted them both, physically and mentally.
“It’s getting closer,” the surgeon muttered. “All right, let’s go.”
Almost crying with gratitude, the young soldier began running back towards the hill with House following. More men were retreating, in varying states of disarray, uniforms tattered. Discarded rifles lay all over the hillside, along with any other implement the retreating men thought might slow their flight. As they reached the brow of the hill, House could feel nausea creeping up on him. The artillery was deafening now, and the flashes more frequent. The reached the top.
Down below, the masses of grey and tan uniforms, and a long row of artillery, grim and black. All this could barely be seen through the smoke. Between the Confederate cannon and the Union’s crumbling lines, small pitched battles entangled soldiers from both sides. And the churned, exploded ground between the two sides was littered with bodies. More and more soldiers passed them by as they descended the hillside, leaving their lieutenants screaming at their retreating backs.
The youngster led House down onto the battlefield. “You must really love your brother,” House muttered to himself, unable to hear over the constant roar of explosions. Now they were in the midst of what remained of the battle, shells landing so close that the mud thrown up by them rained down over their heads. The smoke was so thick that House could hardly see his guide, and the explosions so severe that he could barely stay on his feet. Dying men of both sides lay under their feet, their innards spread over the ground, making it sickeningly slippery. Their pale hands grabbed weakly at House’s trouser leg, their pleading words drowned out by the thundering artillery.
House and the boy were lost in the swirling grey which attacked their eyes and filled their heads with poisonous smoke. House coughed, and stumbled over two men who lay dead on top of each other, a piece of shrapnel having speared them both together. A crackling rally of gunfire rang out, and House guessed that the officers were trying to organise one last stand with their remaining men.
Finally, the young man stopped and dropped to his knees by the side of a limp body. House glanced down at him, and shouted, “He’s dying. Nothing to do.” He wheeled round, trying to hide the fact that his legs shook violently beneath him, and began to walk away. The kid chased after.
“How can you say that?” he yelled over the latest round of pounding blasts, “You haven’t even looked at him!”
House spun around and seized the young man by the collar. “You idiot! Have you any idea how many men we might lose because you dragged me down here? If it wasn’t for…”
He was cut off by a bang so loud that it seemed to go through him and blow through his eyes, leaving him in blackness. The roar of it filled his ears and a white-hot agony pushed a primal yell from his mouth. He felt himself hit the ground, where he drifted in and out of consciousness in the mud for several minutes before anything semi-permanent came to him in the way of awareness.
He was screaming as hard as he could, the sound warped in his ringing ears; an immense pain flowed through every nerve, and he wasn’t sure why for a moment, until his hands automatically clutched at his thigh. The screams seemed to be throttled in his throat as he realised in abject terror that there was nothing below his hands. He looked down. A gaping, hollowed mess of throbbing muscle and congealing blood where his right thigh was supposed to be. Next to his leg lay a shiny piece of shrapnel, covered in skin and bloody tissue. He arched back his head and screeched at the sky until the pain overwhelmed him and he lay still. Unconsciousness was like a cool blanket of relief.
Courtland, Alabama - July 21st, 1861
In a field just out of town, nearly two hundred young men queued in three disordered lines. The meadow’s usual occupants, forty-eight cows, had been moved out and three canopies put up at one end of the field. Under each canopy sat a Confederate Sergeant, each with a line of young men waiting in front of his table.
The sun burned down from an unclouded sky, and the young volunteers lounged in the long grass. Some played cards or craftily swigged from hip flasks, while others just lay on their backs with their hats pulled over their faces and waited for the line to progress forward.
Most of them wore shabby clothing, cheap suits or patched britches. None of them went hatless, however, a fact they all appreciated as the sun rose higher. One volunteer, a teenager with a thin doubtful beard, sighed heavily. “I feel like an ant unner a magnifyin’ glass,” he mumbled.
“You kin always get on home, Wade. They won’t take you anyways. You look younger than my baby brother.”
“You take that back, Giles Franklin,” Wade snarled at the other youth, who tossed dice lazily with a companion. Giles shrugged, and fell back into the grass, sneezing as the long blades tickled his face.
In another line, four youths compared biceps, squinting in the brightness. One of the soldiers present shook his head and cursed them loudly, to their great surprise.
Sergeant Green relaxed under his canopy, its shelter deflecting most of the sun’s rays away from him. He had processed so many recruits this morning that he barely bothered looking up anymore, unless he knew the volunteer personally. And being a native of the town, he often did. The cool dark shade fell over his papers as another recruit shuffled forward. He took the lad’s details and passed him on to one of the attendant corporals. The Sergeant dipped his pen in the inkwell which wobbled perilously due to the uneven ground on which the table stood, and prepared a fresh form.
“Name?” he said mechanically, as the shadow of one figure passed and was quickly replaced by another.
“James Wilson.”
Sergeant Green cranked his neck up sharply. “James Wilson!” he repeated, looking up to see a clear-eyed man of near thirty with a thin brown moustache standing in front of him. He wore a neat brown suit, better quality than most of the other recruits, and his hair was carefully parted under a straw boater. The Sergeant got to his feet and stuck out a hand.
“James Wilson! Well, I’ll be! What took you so long? I had your brothers sign up two weeks ago!”
Wilson lifted the boater and rubbed the back of his head. “I came as soon as I could, sir. I’ve been in Montgomery, studying medicine. My father wrote me to say that Johnny and Michael had joined up, and I came myself as soon as I could get away,” he explained, a little awkward.
“Well, that’s all fine. We’ll be right pleased to have you. You’ve got a fine character, and brains too it seems. I never knew you was away at college.”
Wilson smiled, and shrugged off his woollen jacket. Sergeant Green repeated “James Wilson,” over again, and resumed his seat.
Wilson left the table five minutes later, a soldier in the army of the Confederate States of America, and slowly made his way across the field as directed. Sergeant Green remained in his seat, the next shadow crossing him. He dipped his pen in the unsteady inkwell and prepared a fresh form.
“Name?”
This is the first chapter. Thanks for any comments you might like to make.
Author: maddoggirl
Pairing: House/Wilson gen later. None in this chapter.
Rating: pg-13. For gore and 19th century cussing :D
Spoilers: I'm guessing you know who won the Civil War...
Summary: Even on opposite sides of a war, Fate has a way of bringing them together.
AN: Thanks to maineac for being a great beta, and to the US Civil War community for their help regarding historical accuracy.
Manassas, Virginia - July 19th, 1861
A weary knot of men stripped to their red undershirts milled around a white, rough cloth tent, about seven feet high and ten feet square. Muttered curses escaped their dry mouths as they hammered in the final pegs. Two men climbed down from a nearby wagon, carrying between them a sturdy table bearing dark stains of blood, and took it into the tent’s interior. Three men watched them work; a Major in full dress attire, a surgeon in an unbuttoned uniform blue frock coat and a young Negro male in a patched-together assortment of military garments.
“Well, Captain House,” the Major said, “it looks like your fellows are holding up well.”
The surgeon did not respond to this comment. He ran his hand slowly over thick stubble and frowned at the workers.
“Gustafson, don’t put that case down there. Someone will run into it and smash the vials. Put it inside,” he instructed. A sweating Private nodded, and dragged the indicated leather trunk inside the tent’s flaps. The Negro looked across at the surgeon sharply, but received no look in response.
“And when the battle does arrive, do you suppose you are prepared for casualties?” the Major continued.
“I don’t know yet,” the surgeon replied tonelessly. He shifted around a little, in the direction of the large wagon of supplies being unloaded. But the Negro could tell that he was really looking ahead at the hills, beyond the dark woodland, where the enemy were. Yesterday, a scouting party had identified the enemy camp as being some way beyond the hill, and even now the high-ranking officers were clustered in a tent, the first to be erected upon the regiment’s arrival, planning the battle ahead. Word amongst the men was that a Union victory was so certain that local townspeople were going to come down to watch the fray. What fools, what damned, damned fools, House thought.
“Foreman,” the surgeon said slowly, “the stretchers aren’t on the wagon. Go and ask Captain Walsh where they’ve been put. Then have them brought up here.”
“And how many exactly am I supposed to carry? Or shall I just order a few men to help? They love being told what to do by orderlies,” Foreman replied with grim humour. The surgeon turned back around to face him.
“Use your head,” he said, smirking. Foreman shrugged, and headed past the wagon, into the main camp.
They had arrived earlier today at this strange, lonely, baking spot of Virginia. They had a few days, he had heard, before any action was likely to unfold, so a camp was being hastily constructed. The horses of the 5th US Cavalry Regiment stood in random order, some tied to posts or branches of wild trees, others wandering peacefully amongst the labouring soldiers heading to and from the dusty track, where a line of twenty unhitched wagons were stood waiting to be unloaded.
Tents were still being erected, patches hacked clear from the overgrown grass and bushes. Many of the soldiers eschewed tents altogether, preferring to sleep on the bare ground covered only by a blanket. Captain House was not one of them. He jabbed a bony forefinger at one of the resting Privates.
“Jorgensen. Pitch a tent for me while I entertain the Major.”
Jorgensen snorted like a horse as he stood up and wiped the grime from his damp forehead with a sleeve. He was a tall, burly Norwegian with a bushy brown beard.
“A’right, Doc. I go do this thing for you.”
Jorgensen’s broad back disappeared into the blazing sun. The surgeon removed a pocket watch from his coat pocket, consulted it, then dropped it back in. Foreman’s lithe figure now appeared from a tent within the camp, jogging gently towards them. The Major looked thoughtfully at him. “That Negro fellow…”
“Foreman,” the surgeon interjected gruffly.
“Yes, just as you say, Captain House. I believe I once met his father in Boston. William Foreman, the abolitionist speaker?”
“That’s the one.” House said shortly, “Foreman! I hope you’re hiding those stretchers under that shirt.”
Foreman slowed to a walk. “Captain Walsh will send a party of men with them as soon as they can be spared. Presently, they’re all engaged erecting tents, unloading other supplies, sir.”
The surgeon nodded. He lifted his blue kepi from his head, revealing hair plastered flat with sweat. It had been a long journey, two days of riding through Virginia in the midsummer heat. Seven men had simply fallen from their horses from dehydration or heat exhaustion, and one had died. House grabbed his canteen from inside his coat and poured a little water onto the top of his head. “About time to go and get something to eat,” he muttered to Foreman.
“I suppose,” the Major continued, seemingly oblivious to his companion’s attempts to cease conversation, “that you have stretcher-bearers?”
“Yeah, we do. The cooks.”
“Ah, yes, of course. Personally, I am not entirely sure that that is wise.”
“Why not? It only means that you can’t get a sandwich while there’s a battle on,” the surgeon replied. The Major raised his eyebrows at this rudeness, and Foreman shook his head.
“Well surgeon, good luck. I’m sure it’ll all go as planned,” the Major said stiffly, saluting with sharp precision. House lazily raised a hand in reply, not even looking at the officer. His eyes were fixed on the construction of the medical tent.
The tent could hold four men. House and Foreman shared with another surgeon, Mussler, and his orderly, French. There was barely enough room for all of them to lie down at the same time, and Foreman often awoke sensing someone missing from the cramped space. More often than not, House would be sitting in the dewy grass outside the tent, staring into the distance, the crackling of the camp fire in air. The flames would flicker over his face, and Foreman would wonder what he was thinking about so deeply. Today, he was not inclined to make fanciful observations regarding his boss.
“That was rude,” he said, as they entered their newly-pitched tent and threw themselves and their kit onto the bare ground. It had been baked hard by the sun, and both men hissed as they sat down hard.
“That idiot never fought a battle in his life. I should creep round him like he’s a President just because he wears more buttons than I do?” House demanded, beginning to unstrap his bedroll and knapsack from his shoulders. He set them down, and detached his sword from his belt, laying it down parallel to his leg.
Foreman frowned quizzically. “You say you want a transfer to the Calvary, yet you are intentionally impolite to one of the men who could fix it for you?”
House pushed his kit aside, lay out on his back and looked disapprovingly at the tear in the cloth over his head. “I won’t get a transfer. They need surgeons too badly.”
Foreman’s face filled with indignant surprise. “You tell everyone you’re gonna be out of here soon, tell me at every opportunity that I’ll be useless when you’re gone - and now you say it’ll never happen?”
House didn’t bother replying. He closed his eyes and pretended to sleep until he could hear Foreman unpacking his things for him and setting them out. He wanted to be a cavalryman. Being a surgeon to a cavalry regiment wasn’t enough; he wanted to ride a horse at full gallop. Before the war, he had owned two horses, but now he only rode when the regiment was marching, an officers’ privilege. He was only an assistant surgeon; his disrespectful attitude holding back any chance of promotion, and as such under the command of three full surgeons.
Foreman sat cross-legged on the bare ground and surveyed his boss. “I’m going out,” he said, crawling to the exit. Halfway through the doorflaps, he stopped and twisted his head around. “And you don’t have to pretend to be asleep,” he said, gesturing to House’s newly arranged kit, “I’ve got to do this for you anyway.”
Three days later, the battle erupted like an ugly volcano, spewing up smoke and bodies in place of lava. The Union troops drove their foe back at first, but when they reached the crest of the hill over which they had forced the Confederates, they found themselves in the open. They got the full brunt of a regrouped enemy attack, and Union soldiers dropped in droves. The sun shone on their gun metal, creating a blazing reflection. Down at the bottom of the hill, the Confederates knew they were winning when more and more dull holes appeared in the gleaming strip of light lining the grassy crest.
The medical tent was chaos now, blood, and screams merging with the cannon roar from beyond the hill. Like Dante’s Inferno, Captain House thought distractedly. The three surgeons, the four assistant surgeons and two orderlies were crammed in the stifling tent. All were stripped to the waist, their wet bare flesh spattered liberally with blood. Each operation was finished only for another to begin immediately. Men were lifted onto and off of the wooden table. After the first few casualties, the wounded had to be held to the tabletop to top them sliding off the bloody surface.
House had never sweated so much in his life, and a look at his colleagues showed they were in similar states. In one hand, he held a pair of iron forceps for extraction, and in the other a pad of shredded rags, already weighted with blood. The young corporal lying on the table had been bayoneted in the stomach, and was bleeding to death fast. House pressed the rags down on his abdomen frantically, knowing he couldn’t do this alone. Two surgeons were working on casualties of their own. The third, Surgeon Mussler, was trying to explain to a disoriented middle-aged sergeant that his leg would have to come off. House could see the jagged bone sticking out under his trouser cloth, just below the knee.
“Mussler, I need your help! Foreman, give that patient some ether!”
“No!” screamed the sergeant, sitting up on Mussler’s table and kicking hysterically, “Get away from me, you damned butchers!”
“I haven’t got time to argue!” Mussler shouted, over the blast of a particularly bone-shaking cannon volley, “Yes or no?”
“I…I…” the sergeant’s entire jaw shook in fear, saliva running from his mouth onto his bloody jacket. House stormed towards him, and smacked his with the back of his hand, hard. The sergeant yelped, and House brought the hand back, smacking him on the other cheek with a dizzying crack.
“This man is bleeding to death because of you, you damned coward! Take the ether!” he barked. Whimpering, the sergeant limply allowed himself to be dosed by Foreman, only sobbing softly. Mussler assisted House, and together they were able to staunch the bloodflow and dig out the metal shard from the corporal’s stomach. Foreman worked fast behind them, fat beads of sweat running down his temples and onto his shoulders as he worked the bonesaw frenetically, his arm shooting back and forth with the grinding of the knife on human bone.
A stretcher-bearer stuck his head inside the tent. “Another one out here. Bullet wound, shoulder. We’ve got some more supplies, we’re leaving them with him out here.”
Their medical tent was at the edge of the camp, but closer to the battlefield was a smaller post, where soldiers could receive some basic treatment, or, if severely wounded, made stable enough for transport back to the main surgery post. Mussler nodded at the stretcher-bearer, who hurried away.
“Foreman, French - go and bring that soldier in. Captain House, could you run some bandages up to the other post?”
House bent down outside the tent and picked as many rolls of bandage as he could carry. As he walked briskly towards the distant white tent, he felt the cool air on his face and bare chest and breathed in heavily. The roar of cannons was part of the background now, a constant rolling in his ears. He could feel other men’s blood running in sweat-diluted rivulets down his back. The smell of gunsmoke pricked at his nostrils, and plumes of it rose blue and grey from the behind the hill. What the scene over there looked like he could barely imagine, but from what the wounded men had gasped as they lay on the table, things were going badly.
A flash illuminated the camp, followed by a tremendous bang which shook him on his feet, and made him realise that the artillery was getting closer. House suddenly looked at the hillside and frowned, blinked his smoke-smarting eyes and checked again. Men in blue were beginning to surmount the hill’s crest and run down it, fleeing back towards camp. House dumped the pile of bandages as he reached the post, which was really a large piece of calico stretched over four poles. Under the canopy, newly arrived casualties thrashed and bawled, and some orderlies administered ether and stopped bleeding as fast as they knew how. Immediately, one of them dived for the new bandages and scooped them up. But House didn’t even notice this; he was looking at the retreating men. Some of them were close now, pelting as fast as weary or wounded legs would carry them. There were only a few at the moment, but this, House knew, was the turning of the tide.
He turned back towards camp and began pacing towards the surgeon’s tent, when a hand clutched at his arm. A baby-faced soldier in an outsized uniform stared up into the surgeon’s haggard, bloody face.
“Doctor? Please, please…my brother’s down there,” he gestured wildly over his shoulder towards the hill, “He’s wounded, badly.”
“He’ll have to wait,” House said impatiently, shaking the youngster’s hand from his arm. “The stretcher-bearers will get to him eventually.”
“He can’t wait! He’s dying, Doc! Please, I…” his voice cracked hysterically, “Please just come and see him. He’s yelling, Doc, like hell - like nothing I ever heard. Please. Our mother already lost two sons and her brother!”
The surgeon looked the young man in the face for what seemed like whole minutes, before a fresh barrage of artillery jolted them both, physically and mentally.
“It’s getting closer,” the surgeon muttered. “All right, let’s go.”
Almost crying with gratitude, the young soldier began running back towards the hill with House following. More men were retreating, in varying states of disarray, uniforms tattered. Discarded rifles lay all over the hillside, along with any other implement the retreating men thought might slow their flight. As they reached the brow of the hill, House could feel nausea creeping up on him. The artillery was deafening now, and the flashes more frequent. The reached the top.
Down below, the masses of grey and tan uniforms, and a long row of artillery, grim and black. All this could barely be seen through the smoke. Between the Confederate cannon and the Union’s crumbling lines, small pitched battles entangled soldiers from both sides. And the churned, exploded ground between the two sides was littered with bodies. More and more soldiers passed them by as they descended the hillside, leaving their lieutenants screaming at their retreating backs.
The youngster led House down onto the battlefield. “You must really love your brother,” House muttered to himself, unable to hear over the constant roar of explosions. Now they were in the midst of what remained of the battle, shells landing so close that the mud thrown up by them rained down over their heads. The smoke was so thick that House could hardly see his guide, and the explosions so severe that he could barely stay on his feet. Dying men of both sides lay under their feet, their innards spread over the ground, making it sickeningly slippery. Their pale hands grabbed weakly at House’s trouser leg, their pleading words drowned out by the thundering artillery.
House and the boy were lost in the swirling grey which attacked their eyes and filled their heads with poisonous smoke. House coughed, and stumbled over two men who lay dead on top of each other, a piece of shrapnel having speared them both together. A crackling rally of gunfire rang out, and House guessed that the officers were trying to organise one last stand with their remaining men.
Finally, the young man stopped and dropped to his knees by the side of a limp body. House glanced down at him, and shouted, “He’s dying. Nothing to do.” He wheeled round, trying to hide the fact that his legs shook violently beneath him, and began to walk away. The kid chased after.
“How can you say that?” he yelled over the latest round of pounding blasts, “You haven’t even looked at him!”
House spun around and seized the young man by the collar. “You idiot! Have you any idea how many men we might lose because you dragged me down here? If it wasn’t for…”
He was cut off by a bang so loud that it seemed to go through him and blow through his eyes, leaving him in blackness. The roar of it filled his ears and a white-hot agony pushed a primal yell from his mouth. He felt himself hit the ground, where he drifted in and out of consciousness in the mud for several minutes before anything semi-permanent came to him in the way of awareness.
He was screaming as hard as he could, the sound warped in his ringing ears; an immense pain flowed through every nerve, and he wasn’t sure why for a moment, until his hands automatically clutched at his thigh. The screams seemed to be throttled in his throat as he realised in abject terror that there was nothing below his hands. He looked down. A gaping, hollowed mess of throbbing muscle and congealing blood where his right thigh was supposed to be. Next to his leg lay a shiny piece of shrapnel, covered in skin and bloody tissue. He arched back his head and screeched at the sky until the pain overwhelmed him and he lay still. Unconsciousness was like a cool blanket of relief.
Courtland, Alabama - July 21st, 1861
In a field just out of town, nearly two hundred young men queued in three disordered lines. The meadow’s usual occupants, forty-eight cows, had been moved out and three canopies put up at one end of the field. Under each canopy sat a Confederate Sergeant, each with a line of young men waiting in front of his table.
The sun burned down from an unclouded sky, and the young volunteers lounged in the long grass. Some played cards or craftily swigged from hip flasks, while others just lay on their backs with their hats pulled over their faces and waited for the line to progress forward.
Most of them wore shabby clothing, cheap suits or patched britches. None of them went hatless, however, a fact they all appreciated as the sun rose higher. One volunteer, a teenager with a thin doubtful beard, sighed heavily. “I feel like an ant unner a magnifyin’ glass,” he mumbled.
“You kin always get on home, Wade. They won’t take you anyways. You look younger than my baby brother.”
“You take that back, Giles Franklin,” Wade snarled at the other youth, who tossed dice lazily with a companion. Giles shrugged, and fell back into the grass, sneezing as the long blades tickled his face.
In another line, four youths compared biceps, squinting in the brightness. One of the soldiers present shook his head and cursed them loudly, to their great surprise.
Sergeant Green relaxed under his canopy, its shelter deflecting most of the sun’s rays away from him. He had processed so many recruits this morning that he barely bothered looking up anymore, unless he knew the volunteer personally. And being a native of the town, he often did. The cool dark shade fell over his papers as another recruit shuffled forward. He took the lad’s details and passed him on to one of the attendant corporals. The Sergeant dipped his pen in the inkwell which wobbled perilously due to the uneven ground on which the table stood, and prepared a fresh form.
“Name?” he said mechanically, as the shadow of one figure passed and was quickly replaced by another.
“James Wilson.”
Sergeant Green cranked his neck up sharply. “James Wilson!” he repeated, looking up to see a clear-eyed man of near thirty with a thin brown moustache standing in front of him. He wore a neat brown suit, better quality than most of the other recruits, and his hair was carefully parted under a straw boater. The Sergeant got to his feet and stuck out a hand.
“James Wilson! Well, I’ll be! What took you so long? I had your brothers sign up two weeks ago!”
Wilson lifted the boater and rubbed the back of his head. “I came as soon as I could, sir. I’ve been in Montgomery, studying medicine. My father wrote me to say that Johnny and Michael had joined up, and I came myself as soon as I could get away,” he explained, a little awkward.
“Well, that’s all fine. We’ll be right pleased to have you. You’ve got a fine character, and brains too it seems. I never knew you was away at college.”
Wilson smiled, and shrugged off his woollen jacket. Sergeant Green repeated “James Wilson,” over again, and resumed his seat.
Wilson left the table five minutes later, a soldier in the army of the Confederate States of America, and slowly made his way across the field as directed. Sergeant Green remained in his seat, the next shadow crossing him. He dipped his pen in the unsteady inkwell and prepared a fresh form.
“Name?”
This is the first chapter. Thanks for any comments you might like to make.