Friend with the Countersign

9781417926183

141792618x

1901. The book begins: We were at the Sanitary Commission's field hospital. There were ambulances, tents, surgical appliances. The doctor and his daughter had been busy all morning. On a bed, swung by pulleys and ropes, lay the outstretched form of a gallant enemy who had been picked up on the field of Bristoe by one of Dr. Khayme's ambulances. Colonel Paull's wound was in the throat, so near an artery that the most delicate care was required in handling him. Lydia, a nurse trained in the British hospital at Bombay, and proficient through experience in the campaigns of McDowell, McClellan, and their successors, was giving herself to this seemingly fatal ease with great patience, while the skill of Dr. Khayme had already affected a little alleviation of the poor man's agony; the Colonel was yet speechless, indeed great fear was felt that he would never regain his power of speech.