Roger at the Battle of Savannah

*** SPOILER WARNING!! ***

If you haven't read GO TELL THE BEES THAT I AM GONE, Book 9 of the OUTLANDER series, there are SPOILERS below! Read at your own risk.

Today (Oct. 9) is the 247th anniversary of the Battle of Savannah, which took place on October 9, 1779.

I've been impressed since I first read GO TELL THE BEES THAT I AM GONE by the way Roger MacKenzie conducted himself during that battle. He hadn't intended to be on that battlefield in the first place, and he's unsure what to do at first, but he remembers the advice he'd been given as a young teenager:

“Be with them,” the major said quietly, but his eyes held Roger’s, deeply serious. “Reassure them. Tell them God is with them. That I’m with them. That they aren’t alone.”

“Help them when you can,” his father had said, softly, eyes on the worn gray oilcloth that covered the table. “Hold their hands and pray, when you can’t.”

(From GO TELL THE BEES THAT I AM GONE by Diana Gabaldon, chapter 92, "Like Water Spilled on the Ground, Which Cannot Be Gathered Up Again". Copyright © 2021 by Diana Gabaldon. All rights reserved.)

This is more or less my mental picture of what a chaplain does, in battle. It feels oddly bloodless and calm, though -- so Diana Gabaldon goes out of her way to force Roger, and the readers, to experience the full bloody horror of it, complete with body parts blown off and men dying under his hands.

“Help, help me!”

He saw the man then, on hands and knees, dragging one leg, and he splashed through the puddles to reach him. Not much blood, but the leg was clearly wounded; he got a shoulder under the man’s arm and got him on his feet, hustled him as fast as possible away from the redoubt, out of range...

The air shattered again and the earth seemed to tilt under him; he was lying on the ground with the man he’d been helping on top of him, the man’s jaw knocked away and hot blood and chunks of teeth soaking into his chest. Panicked, he struggled out from under the twitching body--Oh, God, oh, God, he was still alive--and then he was kneeling by the man, slipping in the mud, catching himself with a hand on the chest where he could feel the heart beating in time with the blood spurting, Oh, Jesus, help me!

He groped for words, frantic. It was all gone. All the comforting words he’d gleaned, all his stock-in-trade…

“You’re not alone,” he panted, pressing hard on the heaving chest, as though he could anchor the man to the earth he was dissolving into. “I’m here. I won’t leave you. It’s gonna be all right. You’re gonna be all right.” He kept repeating that, kept his hands pressing hard, and then, in the midst of the spouting carnage, felt the life leave the body.

Just ... gone.

(From GO TELL THE BEES THAT I AM GONE by Diana Gabaldon, chapter 92, "Like Water Spilled on the Ground, Which Cannot Be Gathered Up Again". Copyright © 2021 by Diana Gabaldon. All rights reserved.)

One of the men Roger tends during the battle is an officer in an unfamiliar uniform, who lies mortally wounded on the ground.

The man doubled up, hands pressing his groin, and saying something in a language Roger didn’t recognize.

“It’s all right,” he said to the man, taking him by the arm. “You’re going to be all right. I won’t leave you.”

“Bóg i Marija pomóżcie mi,” the man gasped.

“Aye, right. God be with you.” He turned the man on his side, pulled out his shirttail and ripped it off, then stuffed it into the man’s trousers, pressing into the hot wetness. He leaned on the wound with both hands, and the man screamed.

Then there were several cavalrymen there, all talking at once in multiple languages, and they pushed Roger out of the way and picked the wounded officer up bodily, carrying him away.

(From GO TELL THE BEES THAT I AM GONE by Diana Gabaldon, chapter 92, "Like Water Spilled on the Ground, Which Cannot Be Gathered Up Again". Copyright © 2021 by Diana Gabaldon. All rights reserved.)

This man turns out to be Casimir Pulaski, the Polish officer whose portrait Brianna is summoned to draw in BEES chapter 93, "Portrait of a Dead Man".

It was a terrifying experience, no doubt about it, one that has surely marked Roger (perhaps in ways we haven't yet seen), but I think he managed very well, discovering through trial and error exactly what a chaplain does during a battle.