When the force debarked on the Sixteenth. She marched with the
regiment fourteen miless through the mud of Neuse River bottom, and
early the next morning attired herself en the coast uniform, as it
was called, and was in readiness, and was earnest in the wish and the
hope that she might carry the regimental colors at the head of the
stormers when they should charge upon the enemy's field works.
She begged the privileges and it was finally granted her, to go with
them up to the time when the charge should be ordered. Here, by her
promptness and courage, she performed an act which saved the lives of
perhaps a score of brave fellows, who were on the point of being
sacrificed by one of those blunders which cannot always be avoided
when so large a proportion of the officers of any force are civilians
whose coolness is not equal to their courage.
As the various regiments were getting their positions the Fifth Rhode
Island was seen advancing from a belt of wood, from a direction that
was unexpected. They were mistaken for a force of the rebels and
preparations Instantly made to open on it with both musketry and
artillery, when Lady ran out to the front, her colors in hand,
advanced to clear ground, and waved them till it was apparent that
the advancing force were friends. The battle now opened in good
earnest. Shot and shell were flying thick, and many a brave man was
clenching has musket with nervous fingers and looking at the
bristling line of bayonets and gun-barrels which they were about to
charge with anything but cheerful faces, when Kady again begged to
carry her colors into the charge. But the officers did not see fit to
grant her request and she walked slowly to the rear, and immediately
devoted herself to the equally sacred and no less important duty of
caring for the wounded
In a few moments word was brought that Robert had fallen and lay
bleeding in the brick-yard. That was the part of the line where the
Fifth Rhode Island had just charged and carried the enemy's works She
ran immediately to the spot, and found her husband lying there, his
thigh bone fearfully shattered with a minie ball; buts fortunately,
the main femoral artery had not been cut, so that has life was not
immediately in danger from bleeding.
She went out where the dead and wounded were lying, thick along the
breastwork, to get blankets that would no longer do them my good, in
order to make her husband and others more comfortable.
Here she saw several lying helpless in the mud and shallow water of
the yard. Two or three of them she helped up, and they dragged
themselvess to dryer ground. Among them was a rebel engineer, whose
foot had been crushed by the fragment of a shell. She showed ham the
same kindness that she had the rest; and the treatment she received
in return was so unnatural and fiendish that we call hardly explain
it, except by believing that the hatred of the time had driven from
the hearts of some, at least, of the rebels, all honorable and and
Christlan sentiments.
The rebel engineer had fallen in a pool of dirty water, and was
rapidly losing blood, and growing cold in consequence of this and the
water in which he lay.
She took him under his arms and dragged him back to dry ground,
arranged a blanket for him to lie on, and another to cover him, and
fixed a cartridge box, or somethlug similar, to support his head.
As soon as he had grown a little com�ortable, and rallied from the
extreme pain, he rose up, and shaking his fist at her, with a volley
of horrible and obscene oaths, exclaimed, "Ah, you d----- Yankee -----
, if ever I get on my feet again, if I don't blow the head off your
shoulders then God d---- me!" For an instant the blood of an insulted
woman, the daughter of a soldier, and the daughter of a regiment, was
in mutiny She snatched a musket with bayonet fixed that lay close by,
and an instant more has profane and indecent tongue would have been
hushed forever. But, as she was plunging the bayonet at his breast, a
wounded Union soldier, who lay near, caught the point of it in has
hand; remonstrated against killing a wounded enemy, no matter what he
said; and in her heart the woman trinmphed, and she spared him,
ingrate that he was.
She returned to the house where Robert had been carried, and
spreading blankets under him, made him as comfortable as he could be
at a temporary hospital. The nature of his wound was such that his
critical time would come two or three weeks later, when the shattered
pieces of bone must come out before the healing process could
commence. All she could do now was simply to keep the limb cool by
regular and constant applications of cold water.
From the middle of March to the last of April she remalned in
Newbern, nursing her husband, who for some time grew worse, and
needed constant and skilfill nursing to save hls life. When not over
him she was doing all she could for other sufferers, Notwithstanding
