Bunker Hill by Howard Fast

fallen one.”
    “Then you
must come to Providence, Feversham, where you’ll find a round number of
Catholics as well as Jews.”
    “Someday, certainly.”
    Warren went
on with the introductions, the attention of the other men fixed on these two
rather astonishing outsiders in a world of Protestants.
    “Make yourselves comfortable,” Feversham said. “I’ll try not to
bore you.” There were two benches in front of the Palmer house. Some of the men
sat on the benches. The others squatted. Warren sprawled wearily on the ground.
“Who of you were with the wounded after Concord?” Three of them raised their
hands, two barbers and a young man, who apologized that he was merely a leech,
only a few months into learning his trade. Bones, a Welshman, explained that he
had been with the British army years before.
    “Then you
know what a musket ball will do,” Feversham continued. “The habit is to probe
for the bullet, and I’ve seen men bleed away their lives while a surgeon probed
and cut away. There are simply not enough of us to take the time to probe in a
wound. The thing is to close the wound and put the man in a litter. Stop the
bleeding and get him to the hospital—”
    “We have
no hospitals,” someone interrupted.
    “There’ll
be at least three houses for that,” Warren said. “We have two in Cambridge and
another in Roxbury. We’ll portion them out. There’ll be men and women there to
help.”
    “Do we try
to amputate where the battle is?” Gonzales asked.
    “I would say no. And unless the tibia or the femur is
smashed by the ball, we don’t rush to amputate.” “And the humerus and the
radius and the ulnar?” “No, not on the battlefield. If
the arm or leg must come off, the
    poor devil has some small chance in the hospital, where
the light is good and the surgeon can work slowly and carefully. The odds are
all against the man who is hit, but if you try to cut away with bullets flying
around you, he has no chance at all. Use a tourniquet, stop the bleeding, and
pack the wound. But above all, wherever the wound is, we must try to keep it
clean.”
    “What
difference does it make?” someone asked.
    “The
difference between life and death,” Gonzales put in.
    “Now let
me tell you this,” Feversham said. “If we had a fortnight, we could argue this
matter. We don’t. Dr. Warren tells me that we are already fortifying the
peninsula, both hills beyond Charlestown. So you hear me well. A wound festers
because the living filth spreads through the body and poisons it. It is not
evil humors; it is not even the bullet. It is filth. You must carry water to
wash the wound, and you must have a flask of rum, and when the wound is washed,
pour a measure of rum into it—”
    “What!”
“Be damned!” “Are you mad, sir?” The outcries exploded all around Feversham.
    Bones,
white-haired and gaunt, cried out, “Be damned, Doctor, sir, here’s a man in
screaming pain and you want to pour a liquor in the
wound? I’m no tyro, sir. The very pain will kill.”
    “The pain
won’t kill, and better the pain than the fester. You were a surgeon in the
French war. How many men have you seen to survive an amputation or a belly
wound?”
    “Some do.
I never served one who did.”
    “Have you used the liquor, Feversham?” Gonzales asked.
    “I have.”
    “And did
it do a miracle?”
    “There are
no miracles. But I’ve seen a man here and there who survived when the odds told
me he was dead.”
    “Will you
provide the rum, Dr. Warren?” a leech asked him.
    “You come
to Hunt’s place. I’ll have the rum there. You all come by Hunt’s this afternoon
and bring your tools and probes and saws and forceps and knives. Ay, bring a
couple of buckets. We’ll have some kind of plan and give your orders.”
    Finally,
they drifted away. Feversham asked Gonzales to stay. Warren remained sprawled
out on the grass, telling Feversham, “I want desperately to sleep, and I don’t
sleep. They’ll be after me—