The Wichita daily eagle. [volume] (Wichita, Kan.) 1890-1906, 1892-05-28

the Wisconsin boy, lit as lad seen it by
the glow of camp fire. A nd then, as if
this thought had been teleI athic, l came
across a woman standing alone on the
levee, wrapped in a faded sha wi.
She turned around, and til white face
was that CT Jenny. She looked desolate
and cold, but she was calm and self col
lected. II am going to Pitt sburg Land
ing" she said, "on the Wiscon sin hospital
boat I promised Dick if anything hap
pened I'd come and bring him home.n
''Have you heard anythinge" 1 asked
clumsily ana hesitatingly.
Nothing" she said, except from the
newspapers. Our boys were terribly cut
up, and | started at once"
She did not know what division he was
in, and had an underlined notion that he
was not in the fight.
Days went by. The north ha6tpoured its
resources and its majestic succCr upon the
scene, and the vast energies of the govern
ment had been directed to that strip OF
muddy bank along the Tennes see. When
/ stood there again an indescr Fable trans
formation scene had taken pla ce. Beaure-
gard had shut himself up in Corinth and
Halleck was approaching him with eau
tious siege movements. The river bank
was now populOus base of Operations. As
far as / could see the steamboats, lay side by
side diagonally to the shore, with their noses
in the mud. Hospital boats, transports,
barges, gunboatS, forage, enormous com.
missary supplies, artillery horses, recruits
the hustle and urgency of a city front,
and all the recklessness, the waste and the
abandonment of war
And there, upon the, second bottom, was
a long, raw mound, QUIT of which stuck the
bits of blue army cloth, where our boys
had been tumbled huiTriedly in, four Oh
five deep-a gray scar a hundred feet long,
into whose raw edges the early swamp
clematis was already striking its fresh
fibers
And somewhere in that packed ditch,
with the dirt filing great wound in his
breast, and the blue cape of his surtout
wrapped around his face, lying in the stiff
platoon of death, was the boy from Sank
county.
WANTED to get to the front, and it was
not an easy matter-twenty miles at least
before one could come up with the line
and see the augmented forces that were
now closing about Corinth. Major Pond,
commanding Wisconsin battery, gave me
L
for headquarters, only to learn the next
lesson of the unreasonable waste OF war
That road was the single quartermaster's
channel through which the improvised city
of 10000 soldiers was to be fed and clothed
and kept in fighting order. 1t presented
the appearance of long double caravan,
made up of mule teams and disappearing
teamsters. 1t was lined with dead animals
and strewn with debris-overturred wag-
ons and heaps of rain soaked bareback,
broken barrels of pork and damaged ac-
couterments fringed it with destruction.
Gullies in the road had been filled up
level with this kind of ballast. The air
was loaded with strange septic odors and
q horrible vocabulary Of oaths newly in
vented.
Long afterward we got TODD those things
better when the commissairy departments
fell into organizing hands and discipline
was enforced.
| came back to the Landing over this
same crowded track, strangely sensible
that through all the brutality and moi
someness and cruelty and destruction Of
it, spring was struggling with her blEa
skies and blossoms and her scents and
songs.
Sitting one starlight night on the bow OF
a hospital boat smoking one Of Major
Bonds cigars, he said TO me: What do you
suppose they are doing down at that trench'
There's been a lantern there for half an
hour"
! proposed that we walk down and see.
We found a detail of three men there
opening the trench. On the bank Of earth |
which their shovels had made stood a !
woman wrapped in a faded shawl and
holding a lantern by whose light the men
worked.
1t was Jenny.
The ghastliness and hopelessness Of her !
task must have struck Us both at once, for |
the majors look Of astonishment reflected /
my feeling.
We returned to the boat. About 10 /
o'clock the light disappeared and turned I
in with vague sense OF pity for woman's 4
incapacity to measure physical obstacles 4
The next morning she was there with /
fresh detail
Then it was that heard and gathered .
the story of her persisteucy. She had gone f.
TO headquarters for a permit TO open the /
trench and had been peremptorlly refused 4
Fer only appeal was, Il want my man
Sanitary considerations alone. independ- 4
emily Of the fudEty of the task, she was /
told &C the surgeons headquarters, forbade /
it. Nothing daunted, she went from gen
eral TO general. making no arguments only
saying, Il want my man" and finally she /
got the order from Halleck- l saw the I
note hastily scrawled On half sheet Of j
note paper and addressed to some one II i
command among the reserves az the river.
give this woman a detail There = -