One hot day in late September九月下旬 Dick Runner, a former slave, came to Bettie with a strange report. He had been checking a farmhouse half a mile away from the Van Metre home, a farmhouse he thought was empty. But inside, he heard low groans. Following them(指groans) to the attic, he found a wounded Union soldier, with a rifle at his side.
When Aunt Bettie told me about her first sight of the bearded man in the stained blue uniform, she always used the same words. "It was like walking into a nightmare: those awful bandages, that dreadful smell. That's what war is really like, child: no bugles and banners. Just pain and filth, futility and death."
To Bettie Van Metre this man was not an enemy but rather a suffering human being. She gave him water and tried to clean his terrible wounds. Then she went out into the cool air and leaned against the house, trying not to be sick惡心 as she thought of what she had seen —— that smashed right hand, that missing left leg.
The man's papers Bettie found in the attic established his identity: Lt. Henry Bedell, Company D, 11th Vermont Volunteers, 30 year old. She knew that she should report the presence of this Union officer to the Confederate army. But she also knew that she would not do it. This is how she explained it to me: "I kept wondering if he had a wife somewhere, waiting, and hoping, and not knowing —— just as I was. It seemed to me that the only thing that mattered was to get her husband back to her."
Slowly, patiently, skillfully, James Van Metre's wife fanned the spark of life that flickered in Henry Bedell. Of (關于、至于)drugs or medicines she had almost none. And she was not willing to take any from the few supplies at the Confederate hospital. But she did the best she could with what she had.
As his strength returned, Bedell told Bettie about his wife and children in Westfield, Vermont. And BedelL listened as she told him about her brothers and about James. "I knew his wife must be praying for him," Aunt Bettie would say to me, "just as I was praying for James. It was strange how close I felt to her."
The October nights in the valley grew cold. The infection in Bedell's wounds flared up. With Dick and his wife, Jennie, helping, she moved the Union officer at night, to a bed in a hidden loft above the warm kitchen of her own home.
But the next day, Bedell had a high fever. Knowing that she must get help or he would die, she went to her long-time friend and family doctor(一個人即醫生). Graham Osborne.
Dr. Osborne examined Bedell, then shook his head. There was little hope, he said, unless proper medicine could be found.
"All right, then," Bettie said. "I'll get it from the Yankees at Harpers Ferry."
The doctor told her she was mad. The Union headquarters were almost 20 miles away. Even if she reached them, the Yankees would never believe her story.
"I'll take proof," Bettie said. She went to the loft and came back with a blood-stained paper bearing帶有 the official War Department seal. "This is a record of his last promotion," she said. "When I show it, they'll have to believe me."
She made the doctor writer out list of the medical items he needed. Early the next morning she set off.
