Strength - VIII

Section of a Novella from Tarot Blanco

Strength – VIII

Battle of Königgrätz 3 July 1866

Slow tremolo resounds each nothing - gone to hell. And yet his hands were sturdy as If they were found in a Lion's mouth. But here that was nothing unusual because the walls were dripped with blood and the effluvia of the surgeon’s art. Every machine is tuned for battle and the most important are the men in their roles. Luke let slide leather go around the chest and pulled aside the brass buttons from the blue jacket. All was ripped to get down to the chest. There was very little the doctor could do and this doctor was going to not do it well.

Dr. Luke von Weidenfeller – You could tell by his name that there was something wrong because his last name sounded very German all the way from von to feller, but his first name would have been “Lucas” to be properly German about it but it wasn’t. So this man who was spending out globs of red from his fingertips could be heard swearing in both a good Prussian version of German and the variation of English used in New York. And he did so with gay abandon as the sweat rolled over his forehead and down his nose. It was a long nose and it pierced between two eyes which saw far more than most. He saw his corpsman make a scowl for some reason and then hurry off to fetch the next bag of bones to operate on.

He could sense within his retina that this man was going to live, after a fashion. Which is more than he could say for many of the men who laid on his table. 2 years ago he had been doing this same thing but on the other side of the pond near a small town known as Gettysburg. It was up on a small mountain creased below the town where he was plying his trade and it was so much worse. There was no time to do what he was doing now which was pulling slugs from the gut but a ceaselessly sawing of bone from limb and piling them up in neatly ordered dumps on the denuded dirt. He could smell the rancid iron blood that came out of every pore of his patients. He could feel the energy that moved his hands dispersing as if there was no end in sight. And still, there was no closing his eyes because even with his eyes closed he could see the warped faces as the casualties came in on stretchers waiting to have their arm or their leg dispatched. They were begging for this because the pain was too intense to bear.

He shoved his rubber arm in two the ghastly whole. He was one of the few people who used rubber gloves to prevent infection as he was convinced that spraying carbolic acid and using rubber gloves would save lives. His Col. thought him mad; the way he went on about how in the new world he had seen a surgeon from Johns Hopkins doing this, one William Stewart Halsted, and he swore by the results. Going around he then caught a piece of the lead and yanked it out. He then bent back to see if it was whole or whether he needed to fish again for another chunk. But he saw that the whole, and then he sutured the gash closed.

That is when he and his back and he thought he would have another patient but instead, he straightened up and there was an officer. An officer who had been waiting to deliver a message. He took the message and departed.

Outside he saw that the battle had turned since he went into the canvas tent. He realized he did not know how long he had been in for and the sun was nearing its dusk. There was a yellow cast in the sky and there were a few trees that bumped and bustled along the horizon. The difference was that instead of seeing hard cold faces determined to do their duty he saw a grin on almost every face. Just as had been on the winning side at Gettysburg he was also on the winning side of Königgrätz. He could feel a breeze that hinted at the taste of victory.

He then marched across the encampment to the headquarters of the Army he served, barely noticing the claw marks of as yet untreated men. It was too usual, and it became part of the pattern. A pattern that still clung to the odors of death even in this moment of triumph.

Once inside the white canvas, he saw groups of men shuffling back and forth over a map drenched in blood and dirt. Blocks of wood represented the forces of both the Prussian and Austrian men, and he noticed that the other side was retreating with full force. But then he turned his head to look for his Colonel and repaired himself for the haranguing and harassing that would follow. He knew that the Prussian way of doing things was harsh.

He waited because there was something else that was taking his Colonel’s time. Fortunately, or unfortunately, he did not have weight loss.

“Capt. von Weidenfeller, You have been using the carbolic acid and use rubber gloves, which is not allowed in this unit. Do you have an explanation?”

“Sir, if you check the results of my surgery against the others you will find that over half of their patients died whereas only 1 in 5 of mine met the same fate. Sir.”

“I have checked, but that does not seem enough reason to slow your pace down. The space that this equipment uses could be better spent on having an entire regiment in the field of battle. In the future, you will use your hands and I want to see no more of this contraption which sprays and spreads carbolic acid. Is that understood?”

Von Weidenfeller heard the call of his father brought up in the old Prussian style, and the words he heard were “Obey, obey, obey!” He also heard the whisper of his American mother, who was also Hebraic. This meant that while his father was oppression to his core he was also in love with women who were American and of the other. It never attained the complete story of how this had happened and he thought that there was some secret that the two of them kept from him and everyone else.

First Von Weidenfeller stood and saluted in the Prussian way, but then relaxed, as he had seen Grant due at Appomattox and almost diffidently said:

“Col. since I am here as a volunteer, I submit formally my resignation. This war will be over soon and I think I shall head back to America, where I shall find my strength elsewhere.”