Charlotte stopped each horse-drawn ambulance and asked the drivers if they’d seen General Ramseur.
Blank, anguished stares met her inquiry. “Dear God, he can’t be wounded. Are you sure?” they had asked.
The smell of bodily fluids and fear saturated the air. Dirt, grime, and blood covered the soldiers, crusting their hands, their faces, their shaggy beards, and unwashed hair. Ripped trousers and mismatched uniforms made it hard to tell which army they belonged to. Only their tight, pinched, demoralized faces revealed their loyalties. They were from the south and, on this day, the gains made earlier in battle had now been lost in utter defeat. This was no black and white moment captured by a still photographer, but a bold, red fragment of time indelibly etched in their weary hearts.
Custer’s cavalry would arrive any moment and capture more than a thousand men. If she were with the mortally wounded general, she might be allowed to stay with him. But where was he?
“Help,” a soldier yelled. She turned to see a man leaning out of the back of yet another ambulance, waving. “Here. We need help.”
She wove her way through the retreating forces toward the wagon. “I’m searching for General Ramseur. Have you seen him?”
“He’s here,” the soldier said. “He’s been shot.”
Charlotte climbed into the back of the ambulance and knelt beside him. “General, can you hear me?” She ripped open his jacket and blood-soaked shirt. “I need bandages.”
One of the soldiers pulled a white cloth from his haversack. “Will this do? It’s the general’s clean shirt.” It would have to. She used it to stanch the bleeding from the wound under his right ribs, hoping to reduce the hemorrhaging. She couldn’t do much about the blood collecting inside his chest, though. She found the second wound near the left side of the general’s neck. Blood and air leaking from his bullet punctures were slowly collapsing the remaining functional lung tissues.
“I need a syringe and needle. Find one, now.”
“Where?” the soldier who had given her the shirt asked.
“Check the medical supply wagon.” Her tone of voice was so urgent the soldier immediately jumped from the rear of the ambulance and disappeared. He returned shortly with a metal syringe and bandages.
Using an unsanitized needle went against every standard of care she knew, but it wouldn’t matter. The general had a mortal wound and her intervention would not save him, but her care could lessen his discomfort during his final hours.
After verifying proper placement, she gently inserted the needle into Ramseur’s chest until she heard a small whoosh of air. She attached the syringe and pulled back on the plunger, relieving some of the pressure as she sucked off a mixture of fluid and air. His breathing eased a bit.
A Union officer came to the rear of the wagon, gun pointed. “Everyone out.”
Charlotte swallowed hard. She knew the cavalry would capture them all, but she’d been so engrossed with tending to the general she hadn’t paid attention to what was happening outside the ambulance’s canvas walls.
“I have a seriously injured patient. I can’t leave him,” she said.
He motioned with his revolver. “Get out.”
Charlotte asserted herself as the surgeon in charge. “Where is General Custer?” She held the syringe firmly in her still hand. “Tell him his friend Dod is mortally wounded, and I refuse to leave his side.”
Another cavalry officer joined the first. “What’s the problem here, soldier?”
“The doctor said the wounded man is a friend of General Custer.”
Charlotte spoke again in a controlled voice which still retained an urgent appeal. She had to be the general’s advocate. “General Custer will want to know. They went to West Point together, and they’re old friends. General Ramseur needs a bed, and I need supplies to treat him. He’ll die in the next few minutes if you don’t help us.”
“Get everyone else out. Guard the wagon. I’ll find the general.”
Moments later, the driver was turning the ambulance around. “Clear the way.”
The ambulance moved slowly, bumping and jostling the general as it threaded a course through the once-crowded street now lined with surrendered Confederate troops. She didn’t have to ask where the wagon was going. She knew their destination and what awaited her patient.
A Union surgeon met the ambulance at Belle Grove Plantation and directed stretcher-bearers to carry the general inside the house. “General Custer wants to know his condition.”
“He was shot in the chest. The bullet tore through his chest cavity, likely injuring the lungs. Short of clamping off the injured blood vessels and removing damaged lung parenchyma, there isn’t much I can do here except continue to relieve the pressure when his breathing becomes labored again and make him as comfortable as possible.”
“What do you need?” the surgeon asked.
“Clean bandages, soap, and water,” Charlotte said.
The stretcher-bearers carried the general down the hall and entered a room on the right, where they placed him on the bed. With modern surgical techniques and chest tubes, she might have been able to save him, but not in 1864.
She was sitting at the bedside, holding the general’s hand, when a cavalry officer wearing tight olive-colored corduroy trousers appeared in the doorway. A wide-brimmed slouch hat covered his yellow hair. His long tawny mustache needed a trim. She recognized the tall, broad-shouldered, imposing man immediately.
“Thank you for bringing him here, General,” she said.
Custer crossed the room, sat in a chair on the opposite side of the bed, and scrubbed his face with his hands, smearing smudges of dirt. A mixture of blood and mud covered his jacket. “Is there nothing you can do?”
“Not here. Not now,” she said with a solemn mix of sadness and regret.
How many times had she read the account of Ramseur’s death? Dozens. And it was happening exactly as it had been reported. She’d been doing living history demonstrations for years and now she was living history. God, how was it possible? Her fingers grazed the bump of the
