Page:The woman in battle .djvu/384

340 was bent upon accomplishing it at all hazards. I had attired myself in the uniform of an officer, had enlisted a large body of men by my own unaided exertions, had marched them from Arkansas to Pensacola, and was firmly resolved to see some fighting, and to win some military glory, if any was to be won. My desire was that my husband should command the battalion I had raised, and should permit me to serve with him. His death, however, frustrated my plans, and threw me on my own resources. I was then inspired, not only with a desire to win personal distinction, but to avenge him; and I started for the front with the vaguest possible idea concerning what warfare really was, or what I was to do. My main thought, however, was to see a battle, and to take part in one. I had been reading all my life about heroic deeds, and dreaming day and night about the achievement of glory, and was, perhaps, more impressed with the notion of becoming a second Joan of Arc than anything else.

After nearly two years and a half experience of warfare, these early ideas, when I reflected upon the hap-hazard manner in which I had started out, appeared ludicrous enough in some of their aspects, and yet I would have given a great deal could I have been impressed with some of my original enthusiasm, when, a second time a widow, I made up my mind again to take part, in some shape, in the great conflict which was yet far from its close. I had seen enough of fighting, enough of marching, enough of camp life, enough of prisons and hospitals, and I had passed through enough peril and suffering to satisfy any reasonable human being. These experiences, however, while they had made me weary of war, would also, I well knew, especially qualify me to perform any work I might undertake in a most satisfactory manner, and would render my services much more valuable than they could have been in the early days of the contest. It was a feverish desire to be in motion, to be doing something, to have occupation for mind and body, such as would prevent me from dwelling on my griefs, more than any ambitious designs or aspirations for personal distinctions, that now impelled me to seek for employment in some shape, under the Confederate government, which would enable me to do something further to advance the interest of the