L. P. Brockett, Women's work in the civil war: a record of heroism, patriotism and patience

“ [335] shells began flying?” “Well, no. ” You see we was all a-baking bread around here for the soldiers, and had our dough a-rising. The neighbors they ran into their cellars, but I couldn't leave my bread. When the first shell came in at the window and crashed through the room, an officer came and said, “You had better get out of this ;” “but I told him I could not leave my bread; and I stood working it till the third shell came through, and then I went down cellar; but” (triumphantly) “I left my bread in the oven.” “And why didn't you go before?” “Oh, you see, if I had, the rebels would ” a “ come in and daubed the dough all over the place.” And here she had stood, at the risk of unwelcome plums in her loaves, while great holes (which we saw) were made by shot and shell through and through the room in which she was working.

The streets of Gettysburg were filled with the battle. People thought and talked of nothing else; even the children showed their little spites by calling to each other, “Here, you rebel;” and mere scraps of boys amused themselves with percussion-caps and hammers. Hundreds of old muskets were piled on the pavements, the men who shouldered them a week before, lying underground now, or helping to fill the long trains of ambulances on their way from the field. The private houses of the town were, many of them, hospitals; the little red flags hung from the upper windows. Beside our own men at the Lodge, we all had soldiers scattered about whom we could help from our supplies; and nice little puddings and jellies, or an occasional chicken, were a great treat to men condemned by their wounds to stay in Gettysburg, and obliged to live on what the empty town could provide. There was a colonel in a shoe-shop, a captain just up the street, and a private round the corner whose young sister had possessed herself of him, overcoming the military rules in some way, and carrying him off to a little room, all by himself, where I found her doing her best with very little. She came afterward to our tent and got for him clean clothes, and good food, and all he wanted, and was perfectly happy in being his cook, washerwoman,