Wild Rose

Chapter 1 Rose's Game The summer sun beat down on a wooden milk cart rumbling along a dirt road that stretched up the Washington side of the Potomac River. A long, lazy cloud of yellow dust trailed from the wheels and hung in the heavy summer air. The driver, wearing a frayed gray frock, passed one sprawling Union army encampment after another. To soldiers moving supply wagons upriver to reinforce newly dug-in positions, the slender figure seemed but a simple farm girl returning home from a morning of selling sweet cream and buttermilk at the city market. She was, in fact, not a country girl at all, but a beautiful, well-bred sixteen-year-old named Bettie Duvall, on a secret mission to Confederate territory. It was Tuesday, July 9, 1861, and the untested troops of North and South were spoiling for their first real fight. Heading out of the Federal City through Georgetown, Miss Duvall rode by Camp Banks at Georgetown Heights, headquarters of the First Massachusetts Infantry. Some of the soldiers had left that morning, trudging up the road to Great Falls to relieve another unit that had lost two men, shot by rebels from across the river. The two were among the first casualties of war, and the city was in mourning. The Union troops occupied themselves as best they could. "We have received some new pants today, dark blue," one wrote in his diary. "Are to have blue jackets, I believe."1 When he was hungry, the soldier sneaked out of camp to look for apples, gooseberries, and currants. He also picked a rose from the garden of a departed secessionist and sent it to his parents. A few soldiers beat the heat by taking a dip in the river. They had been told to be ready to march at a moment's notice. All around camp, thin wisps of dark smoke curled up from cooking fires, carrying the smell of burnt sugar to hungry soldiers. Boiled rice with sugar sauce was being prepared for dinner. It was a simple meal, but the men liked the sweet taste, and it was certainly a step up from skillygalee, hard bread soaked in cold water and fried brown in pork fat. "I must say that Uncle Sam don't feed his soldiers as he ought," wrote a soldier who signed his letter "C.B.L." "Hard crackers and salt junk is not the thing for a man to fight on." Farther up the road, the cart passed Camp Winfield Scott, headquarters of the Second Michigan Infantry, "Richardson's Brigade." It was, in the words of soldier Charles B. Haydon, "a beautiful location," that rose "almost to the dignity of mountains." There had been some fighting upriver two days before, and the infantrymen were eager for more action. "I for one am ready to work & give if need be all I am worth which is very little, til the last secessionist is dead or subdued," Haydon wrote. The men's provisions were poor, and theft was a problem. Disease was worse. Measles had broken out, and the sick list lengthened daily. Many were also suffering from severe diarrhea and bloody flux, or dysentery, the result of their insufficient diet. When the surgeon expressed bafflement about how to cure it, some men took to doctoring themselves by drinking the juice of boiled blackberry root. They knew they had to get better quickly, because they had been ordered to pack their knapsacks and expected to move out that night. A mile beyond the camp, the cart turned sharply left and rattled onto the loose old boards of Chain Bridge. Union artillerymen at Battery Martin Scott, a new, two-tiered stone-and-turf fortification overlooking the bridge, could see the cart and driver from their outpost with its commanding, panoramic view of the Potomac. Twelve-pounder guns mounted at the end of the bridge coBlackman, Ann is the author of 'Wild Rose', published 0000 under ISBN 9781400061181 and ISBN 1400061180.