Chapter 4
Encampment at Kazimierz
Grand Army of the Sunrise
South of Krakow
The campground for the Joshua Corps was busy. So busy, in fact, that Isaac Kohen nearly missed seeing Jason Gotkin among the hundreds of new Jewish volunteers who had arrived within the past several days.
He waved and raised his voice in salutation. “Shalom aleichem, Rabbi Gotkin!”
The up-timer looked up and around to find the greeter. When he saw Isaac, he smiled. “Aleichem shalom, Brother Kohen!” He waved him forward.
They met in the middle of the mass of men, greeting each other warmly. “I heard that you had arrived in camp, Rabbi. I’m so glad.”
“Call me Jason, my friend. I may be a rabbi now, but we’ve known each other long enough to dispense with such proper greetings.”
“Very well…Jason.”
Isaac’s father, Chaim ha-Kohen, was a rabbi himself. He was also Eva Bacharach’s brother, so Isaac’s family, through its intimate connection with Morris and Judith Roth, had known Jason Gotkin since his arrival in Prague. In fact, Isaac remembered when he and Jason first met: at the Battle of the Stone Bridge, when Isaac was still just a lad, aiding the wounded during the battle.
“When did you arrive?”
“Three days ago,” Jason said as they walked toward the field hospital. “Morris Roth has made me army chaplain for the Joshua Corps.”
General Roth had implemented a new faith services program where each religion represented within the ranks had a chaplain on which to rely for spiritual needs. A new Catholic chaplain had been appointed just yesterday, and tomorrow, the new Calvinist chaplain would receive his appointment.
“Mazel tov!”
“Thank you.”
But Isaac could see that the new responsibility and title weighed heavily on Jason’s spirit. “Why are you troubled, my friend? It is a great honor.”
“It is, Isaac, it is. I’m both humbled and grateful for the appointment. But, I’m concerned.”
Isaac stopped, turned to Jason and put his hand on his shoulder. “Why so?”
Jason sighed and scratched his beard. He looked around again, looked through all the young men coming and going, wandering about the camp trying to find their companies, their sergeants. So many fresh faces, so many anxious, hopeful expressions. “I don’t believe one rabbi is enough, Isaac. With so many new men arriving daily, one just isn’t enough to maintain their spiritual needs. I’ve sent word to Morris in Prague requesting at least one more, maybe two.”
Isaac nodded. “I’m sure he’ll approve.”
“Let us hope, but the thing is, I don’t want to create a problem within the army where members of the other faiths feel that their spiritual needs are being overshadowed. If so, then they’ll request more priests and pastors, and then we’ll have an arms race on our hands.”
“A what?” Isaac asked, confused by the term.
Jason shook his head. “Never mind. In short, I don’t want the Jews and Gentiles of our chaplain corps at war with one another about their own recruitment numbers when a lethal enemy force is breathing down our necks.
“Also,” he continued, “all these new, untrained, unskilled boys.” He leaned in and whispered. “They don’t know a damned thing, Isaac. And you know as well as I do: the greener they go in, the redder they come out.”
Isaac agreed wholeheartedly with that. In time, these young boys would get the training they needed to face an enemy army. They’d learn how to march, load and fire their muskets and pistols, use a sword, a knife, and all the other myriad things a soldier learns in preparation for war. But such training would take time, and did they have that kind of time? There was no word yet on when and if the Grand Army of the Sunrise would march again. No word either on where.
There were rumblings, of course, rumor and speculation. Some said they weren’t going anywhere, that they were going to stay here in Poland and hold the line for possible counter attacks. Others said that they would strike the tents soon and keep heading east. Still others suggested such radical moves as heading south, through Hungary, or the Principality of Transylvania and Wallachia, to strike the Ottomans in the Levant. Isaac did not know the truth of any of it, but he agreed with Jason completely: these new men needed to start their training soon, or they’d be paying him and his medical staff bloody visit after visit.
“Oh, that reminds me,” Isaac said, “I have been put in temporary charge of new recruitment and supply for the medical corps.”
“Mazel tov!” Jason said, returning the congratulations.
Isaac chuckled. “Trust me, there’s no glory in it. But it’s very important. With our chief medical officer down for a good while, I’m responsible for obtaining medical supplies and recruiting new nurses, medics, orderlies. I’d like to recruit from the Ashkenazim, if possible. As you conduct your daily faith services and prayers for them, if anyone expresses interest in assisting me and mine, I’d be most grateful if you would send them my way. And not just women for nursing positions. Men are just as qualified to perform those duties, whether they wish to admit it openly or not.”
Jason nodded. “Yes, I will do so. But that’s another thing I’m not happy about: wives and children in the baggage train. Sarah and our children will be staying in Prague, thankfully, but many, many women and children are in camp right now, and they intend on following us like it’s some goddamned parade.” The up-timer scrunched his shoulders and neck, realizing that he had made the mistake of blaspheming out loud. “Sorry, my friend. I must be careful not to allow my emotions, and latent up-time sensibilities, get the best of me.”
Isaac suppressed a laugh. “That’s quite all right. We’ve all had those outbursts of late. My father always said that, in times of war, men resort to their baser instincts. He was not saying that as a compliment, but I think he understood that, under great stress, a man often shows his weaknesses. And in those moments, it is God that we must look to, to regain our strength.”
Jason nodded. “Your father is a wise man, and his son is wise beyond his years. Perhaps you should have been a rabbi.”
Isaac shook his head. “No. I knew my calling the minute I stepped onto that stone bridge. Speaking of which… ” Isaac stopped and looked toward the large hospital tent where many soldiers still convalesced with wounds. “I must say goodbye. I have my rounds to conduct.”
They said their goodbyes. As Jason walked away, he turned and pointed at Isaac’s head. “I’m happy to see you wearing your kippah.”
Isaac touched the soft, dark fabric of his cap. “They call it a yarmulke around here.”
“Kippah, yarmulke, yamaka, whatever you call it. Wear it every day, Isaac. Now is our time, my friend. Be a proud Jew.”
“Always,” Isaac said, waving Jason away. He reached for his cap again and resisted the urge to remove it before entering the tent. In this one, there were currently more Gentiles than Jews, and even now, amidst all these young Ashkenazim recruits, regardless of what Morris Roth had accomplished in Prague, regardless of what liberation the Sunrise had brought to the Jews in Poland, he still fell back upon old habits of trying to hide his identity.
Be a proud Jew… Isaac heard Rabbi Gotkin’s words loudly in his mind. He nodded to himself, removed his hand from his yarmulke, and stepped into the tent.
I will try to be, Jason…every day. I will try.
✧ ✧ ✧
“How’s our patient, Devorah?” Isaac asked as he stood near the flap and accepted a clipboard from, in his learned opinion, the best nurse on staff.
“The one in the corner,” she said, pointing there, “or the one in bed three?” She pointed there.
The one in the corner was Doctor Oberheuser who, thankfully, for once, wasn’t filling the air with a stream of expletives. He had fussed and groused so much about being confined with common soldiers that they had agreed to, at least, give him the best space in the tent: a nice, spacious corner that gave ample light and ventilation. The one that needed the light and ventilation, however, and the one whom he wanted to visit the most, was in bed three.
“How’s Captain von Jori today?”
“Quiet,” she said. “Stoic. But polite, which is a great virtue in the tent.” She folded newly cleaned and sanitized sheets while she gave Isaac the basics. “His wounds are healing. We’ll need to redress his eye soon. No infection that I can see or smell, though you’re a better judge of that than I. Otherwise, he’s fine. His neck is swollen, his cheek, the flesh around his eye. We’ve done our best to keep the swelling down. He refuses pain medication. I can’t decide whether that’s excessive courage or stupidity.”
Isaac huffed. “Perhaps a little of both.”
“Greta is quite taken with him,” Devorah continued with a wry smile, motioning toward a small group of nurses tending to Doctor Oberheuser. “She keeps casually stopping by his bed, even when she’s not assigned to him, and chatting. She laughs at everything he says. She’s even loaned him an up-time book that’s been translated into German.”
Isaac wagged a finger at her with his own wry smile. “You keep that she-wolf away from my patient, Devorah. He needs to devote his full energies to recovery…nothing else.”
He tucked the clipboard of Christian’s chart under his arm and made his way through the maze of beds. He greeted all nurses and orderlies moving from patient to patient, and stopped to give solace to a young Jewish footman crying for his mother. They prayed together, and Isaac held his hand. He then took off his yarmulke and placed it on the boy’s head. That calmed him immediately. The boy then laid his head back, smiled, closed his eyes, and died.
Isaac didn’t bother retrieving his cap. He just left it on the poor boy’s head as two orderlies came up and carried him away.
Isaac took a moment to gather himself. Then he greeted the cavalry officer, two beds away.
“Good morning, Christian. How are you feeling?”
Christian propped himself up on his elbows. He winced in pain. “Did that man just die?”
Isaac nodded. “Yes. A gut wound. Very severe. There was never much chance that he would survive it.”
“You gave him your cap.”
“It’s called a yarmulke, and yes, I did. We wear the cap as a sign of respect and fear of God. It reminds us that there is a great separation between us and God, and that He is above us all. The boy needed that connection in his last moments, to remind the world, perhaps to remind himself, that he was Jewish.” Isaac sighed and looked down at his shoes. “So many of us have to hide that fact just to survive. I’m glad he was able to be himself at the end.”
He grabbed a stool nearby and placed it alongside Christian’s bed. He took a seat. “But what is done is done. Let us talk about you. I’ll ask again: how are you feeling?”
Christian laid back carefully with a long exhalation of breath. “I’m doing fine, I suppose.”
Isaac picked up the book that young Greta had loaned the captain. “The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. Do you like it?”
“For the most part, yes. I don’t understand a lot of the context, though. The way they talk bothers me. I don’t know if it is a very good translation. But Fräulein Greta said it was—”
“You let me know if Greta is causing you trouble, and I’ll take care of her.”
“No, no. She is very sweet. She reminds me of my sister.”
Isaac smiled. “Just so it stays that way. Your energies must be confined to recovery right now, nothing else.”
“Oh, don’t fret about that. I’m in no shape for such things.”
“Speaking of which”—Isaac leaned in—“may I check your wounds?”
Christian nodded and lay still while Isaac did his examination.
Christian was naked from the waist up, a pair of loose tan breeches from the waist down. A thin sheet covered his legs. His right arm, neck, face, and eye were wrapped with up-time gauze and bandages. Isaac carefully reviewed each afflicted area and reported his findings aloud, as he was trained to do at Imperial Tech in Magdeburg. “Your arm and shoulder are fine. The stitches are holding, your cuts are healing well, though I will caution you that you must keep moving them both or they may grow stiff and never fully recover. Human muscle, Christian, takes great offense at trauma. Scar tissue will develop and harden, severely undermining your mobility. Unless you fight against it.”
He examined the neck and peeled away the dressing just enough to have a look. He nodded. “Neck is doing fine. Swollen, but again, stitches are holding and cuts are healing.” He put his nose near the wound and sniffed. “No infection that I can see or smell, though you do need a bath.”
Christian snickered. “Every soldier here needs one, I suppose.”
Isaac moved to the eye. He ever so gently peeled away the dressing. He winced, though made sure Christian did not notice. “Your stitches are holding, praise God. No sign of infection, but your eyelid is swollen shut. And that will be so, I imagine, for quite a while. I’ll have Nurse Devorah come over soon and clean and redress—”
“Am I going to lose my eye, Isaac?”
“I don’t know yet, to be honest. The eye is one of the most delicate organs in the human body. I successfully removed all the debris and there’s no evidence of any serious structural damage. But it suffered a great trauma. It will take time.”
“Will I be able to see again?”
That was an even more difficult question to answer. “That, I do not know. My instinct suggests that yes, you will. But you may have some impairment. We will have to wait until the swelling goes away and you can open your eye again to know for sure.”
Christian sighed deeply and shook his head. “A half-blind cavalry soldier. Might as well have died up there.”
It looked as if Christian was about to cry. Isaac wondered if he might be suffering from what the up-time medical texts called PTSD: Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder.
“The way Colonel Renz tells it,” Isaac said, shifting to the positive, “you saved a lot of lives in the fight. You prevented a near full slaughter of an infantry company. Can you tell me what happened?”
Christian huffed. “Colonel Renz is too kind. I did very little.”
“Tell me anyway.”
Christian paused to rub away a tear before it ran down his cheek. He cleared his throat and winced at the pain of doing so.
“It was right before General Mercy ordered a withdrawal of his cavalry to allow Colonel Higgins and the Hangman Regiment to come up and engage. My unit, Captain Tideman’s company, Colonel Renz’s regiment, were at the spearhead of a charge that had initially gone well. We’d smashed into the flank of dismounted dragoons. We had them flailing and on the run.
“Not too far away from us, a company of Brethren was heavily engaged with Lithuanian infantry. They seemed to be doing rather well, but they had been pulled into an almost untenable salient that was concerning to my captain. When we got word that a column of hussars was trying to move around the Brethren and strike them from the rear, Captain Tideman ordered a redress of the lines and a redeployment to try to catch those winged bastards unawares before they could commit to their own charge.
“We moved quickly and took the interior line. We were ready. When they came up over the ridgeline, Captain Tideman ordered the charge, and just as he raised up in his saddle to make it, he took a round right in the face from, I assume, the infantry brawl going on nearby. You’ve never been in battle, Isaac, so perhaps you don’t understand just how rare it is for a single shot from a musket to strike the face. Point-blank from a pistol, sure, especially if it’s from one of our Santees. But a down-time musket from distance? A one-in-a-million shot that tore right through his face, through his mouth and out the other side. His face was gone, Isaac. Just…gone.
“I tried catching him as he fell from the saddle, but I was too slow. I jumped down to him and I held him, praying to God that he was all right. I’m a Calvinist, Isaac—my family is—but I’ve hardly ever prayed in my life. I did that day, but God wasn’t listening, or perhaps he was busy elsewhere. It did not work. My captain was gone, and my company was in disarray.
“Men up and down the line were reining their horses back, shouting retreat and all manner of blasphemy. I was angry. I wasn’t brave or noble or anything else. I was just mad! I saw those winged devils coming on, and I remember standing up, pulling my sword, and screaming, Attacke! Attacke! I got back onto my horse, and I charged the sons of bitches.
“Suddenly, company men were all around me, charging too, and we slammed into them. Next thing I remember, I was crossing swords with an officer, I think, though there was so many colorful men and horses moving in and out of my view and range, all that horrifying whistling from their wings, I couldn’t be sure. One of my stirrups broke, and I slipped in the saddle. I raised up my arm to try to maintain balance. That’s when he struck and slashed me right across my face, neck, and shoulder. I remember shouting my uncle’s name, hearing and feeling the explosion of a cannon shell nearby, and then falling from my horse.
“Next thing I remember was being dragged from the field by none other than Colonel Renz. He and one of the other fellows you saw when they brought me to the tent. On the way here, Colonel Renz gave me the field commission of captain.” He paused, then, “That’s all I remember.”
Impressive. “I suspect you got that shard of metal in your eye from the exploding cannon shell.”
Christian shrugged. “Maybe, though it could have come from the man’s sword. A cavalryman’s sword can get pretty beaten up during a fight, Isaac. Hacking and slashing thick buff coats, armor, flesh, bone. It’s not uncommon. When he made that final slash, it could have chipped right off.”
“Well,” Isaac said, his heart racing from the story, “however it happened, you survived. And you may think you failed, and yes, I suspect conducting that charge in lieu of your captain’s death, did cause some of your fellow cavalrymen to die as well. But I’ve no doubt that you saved many lives.” He put his hand on Christian’s hand. “That matters. Colonel Renz seems to think that your quick action prevented the Brethren from being slaughtered.”
Christian nodded. “Colonel Renz is a good man, a good commander. I just hope that I can live up to his expectations. Now, I need to get out of this damned bed.”
He moved as if he were rising. Isaac stopped him. “Hold on, Christian. You need to start exercising, yes, but not today. You’ve still got a few days here before I’ll release you.”
Christian pulled away and glared at Isaac. “You don’t have the authority to keep me here. If I want to leave, I will.”
Isaac held his tongue and temper. He breathed deeply, rubbed his brow, paused to collect his thoughts. “Christian, you see that son of a bitch in the corner? That’s Doctor Oberheuser, chief medical officer of the Grand Army of the Sunrise. If I tell him you are in no condition to leave, he will place guards around your bed, and they won’t let you even get up to piss. Now, please, be still, and trust me. Trust your doctor.”
Christian fell back into his bed, clearly despondent, restless, and more than a little angry. Isaac let him stew for a few moments, then continued. “Christian, the most important thing I’ve learned as a care provider is that a person’s health is comprised of three basic things: physical, mental, and spiritual well-being. Body, mind, and spirit. I promise you, your body is healing, and on my honor, I vow to make sure that you recover fully. You are feeding your mind by reading; I fully approve. Your spirit? Well, we’ll take care of that later.”
“If you think I’m going to become a Jew,” Christian blurted, “you have a—”
Isaac waved him off. “Not on your life. I’m no rabbi. I wouldn’t dream of proselytizing or witnessing as you Protestants may call it. Besides, you reek of Gentile.”
There was an awkward pause, and then they both laughed. It felt good. It was clear to Isaac that they both needed that, Christian perhaps more so. There were so few moments in his profession where laughter was afforded. It felt, and sounded, good.
“I’m worried, Isaac,” Christian said, sitting up again, “that if I don’t get back to my company soon, they may pick another captain. Colonel Renz may require it. A company cannot go long without a leader, especially those men. If they don’t have one, they’ll just disband the company, drift away or sign up with another captain and company.”
“I’ll speak to Colonel Renz and make sure he doesn’t move on that.” Now was the time to set the hook. “On one condition.”
Christian wrinkled his brow. “Yes?”
“That when it is time for you to be discharged, you come and work for me.”
“What are you talking about?”
“Due to Doctor Oberheuser’s continued convalesce, I’ve been put in charge of medical supply and refit. And this is an order straight from General Morris Roth. I need a good second to help me coordinate the effort with the quartermaster. Since I must share responsibilities between that and my normal medical duties, I need someone who can step in for me when I am otherwise occupied, a person who can both handle the mental and physical rigors of the position. It’ll be a great way for you to recover your physical strength and mental acuity.” And, it’ll help allay your depression and general malaise. “Do you accept?”
Christian took a long time to decide. So long, in fact, that Isaac stepped aside a moment to address an issue with a patient in bed seven. When he returned, Christian said, “Very well. I will agree, if you agree to speak to Colonel Renz immediately, and allow me to return to my men as soon as I am able.”
Isaac nodded. “On my professional honor.”
“Isaac!”
Doctor Oberheuser’s voice was loud and obnoxious. As always. “Come over here. I’ve a bowel movement ready for your examination!”
Isaac put his face in his hands and groaned. “You Gentiles will be the death of me.”
He stood slowly. “I’ll be by again later to check on you.” He bid farewell and turned to leave.
“Isaac,” Christian said. Isaac stopped and turned. “Thank you for saving my life. I—I just wanted to tell you that.”
Isaac smiled. Hearing that was as welcome as the man’s laughter. “You are quite welcome, my friend.”