Page images
PDF
EPUB

Here we had an opportunity to witness the field hospital service as organized after the battles on the Peninsula, and observed how much more efficient it was than the system first adopted. At the beginning, each regimental surgeon had sole charge of the wounded of his regiment, of bringing them from the field and of treating them in the field hospital. He had under his charge three ambulances and drivers, the musicians and detailed nurses. This system was unsatisfactory in many ways. The casualties are not usually distributed equally among the regiments; the losses in one regiment might exceed those in two or three others, and the numbers in one requiring attention exceed the facilities provided, while others had no use for the means at their disposal. While all medical officers, before being appointed, were examined to determine their technical and expert knowledge, it required little time in active service to disclose the fact that not every one who passed the examination was competent to perform difficult operations, or able to decide whether they should be capital or minor ones.

A reorganization was made at Harrison's Landing which made the brigade the unit, instead of the regiment, and these units were combined into divisions and corps organizations. The medical director in the field had general supervision over all. A captain was detailed to take charge of the ambulances of an army corps, a first lieutenant those of a division, and a second lieutenant of a brigade, and the latter had under his command three ambulances with drivers, two stretcher-bearers for each ambulance, a non-commissioned officer and nine men from each regiment. A chief operator was detailed, with a suitable number of medical assistants and dressers, for each brigade hospital, except when a single hospital was designated for a division.

This system was first put into operation in the Sixth Corps at the battle of Crampton's Pass, Maryland, September

14, 1862.

First Lieutenant Wilson Hopkins, Sixteenth New York, was in command of the Ambulance Corps of General Slocum's division and had his first experience in removing the wounded from the field of battle. In a recent letter he summarizes his work and feelings on that occasion:

"Most of our badly wounded were brought to the hospital by dark. We then began to collect the wounded Confederates, who were found from the base of the mountain, increasing in numbers as we ascended, to the very top. We carried them to the field hospital until midnight, when the surgeons, overcome by exhaustion, were unable to care for more. We then collected all we could find and placed them in a group, near the top of the mountain, gave them food and water, built fires to warm them, and I directed two Confederates, found hiding behind the rocks and uninjured, to remain with their wounded comrades, attend to their wants and keep the fires burning. At sunrise the next morning, I went with my stretcher-bearers to the camp I had made for the wounded Confederates, and found the fires burned out, six of the forty dead, and learned that the two men I had placed in charge of them with directions to keep the fires burning, had, soon after I left them the night before, abandoned their charge and rejoined the Confederate army encamped in the valley beyond. We carried the survivors to the hospital, leaving a detail to bury the dead.

"This was my first experience in gathering the wounded from a battle-field after it was won. Many have visited such places and reported the sickening sights, but I cannot describe their ghastly realities. Later I became more familiar with such scenes, yet I can never forget that dreadful night; its horrors overshadow all spectacles I witnessed on other battle-fields, and the memory of what I there saw will remain with me to the end."

A large proportion of shots in battle are ineffective because of the universal habit of aiming too high. In the battle of Crampton's Pass the enemy occupied the higher

ground, and of the shots which were effective, a greater percentage was fatal than in ordinary battles, because the balls struck the heads or chests of our men. The list of casualties, found farther on, shows that nearly one-half of the number hit were killed outright or mortally wounded. In ordinary battles, the killed and the mortally wounded stand as about one to five of the wounded. The unequal distribution of casualties in a regiment was very marked in this battle. Company D lost in killed and mortally wounded more than one-third of the number taken into action, and more than one-third of fatal casualties sustained by the regiment. This was not in any way due to want of care or ability on the part of the commander, Lieutenant Walling, who was one of the most attentive and capable officers in the regiment. It fell to the lot of this company to advance on open ground over a longer distance than other companies.

After assisting in burying the dead and looking after the wounded, on the 15th, I visited the hospital containing the Confederate wounded, to ascertain whether any Mississippians from Vicksburg were among them. My brother, Andrew Jackson Curtis, had resided in that city from 1850 to 1858, when the decline, which followed an attack of yellow fever in 1855, leaving no hope for his recovery, induced him to return to his old home in St. Lawrence County, where he arrived a short time before his death which occurred on the 5th of July, 1858. When he left Mississippi, there were no signs of the approaching storm which swept the country from 1861 to 1865. In the days preceding his death he gave me the names of many men he knew in Vicksburg, and requested me to remember always that the Mississippians had been good to him. I announced his death to those whom he had referred to as warm friends, and a correspondence sprang up which continued until the suspension of mail facilities between the North and the South. I

continued to subscribe for the newspapers published in the larger cities of the South, which my brother had taken, and, from letters and papers received after the close of the Presidential Campaign of 1860, was prepared to believe that the secession of a single State would be followed by all the Gulf States at least. My statement made in the first war meeting in Depeyster, that the attack on Sumter was the beginning of a great war, was the expression of a conviction based on the statements contained in these letters and in the newspapers I had received from the South.

While the Sixteenth had met the Mississippians in battle, I had never met one off the firing line, and I visited the hospital where the Confederates were, hoping that I might find a friend of my brother, should there be any among them from that State. I soon ascertained that there was none in the battle of Crampton's Pass. The first cot I approached was occupied by a young man from North Carolina who had just come from the operating room where he had lost an arm. To my question "are there any Mississippians in this hospital?" he replied "I do not know, but I do know there are no men here who do not hate the Yankees. I regret the loss of my right arm because I cannot fight them as well as I did with two." I stated that I was not aware of his great loss or I would not have disturbed him. As I moved on, he followed me with imprecations that no well man in his senses would have uttered. I found in the hospital several to whom I was able to offer some comfort by way of relieving their apprehensions as to harsh treatment while prisoners of war. I recall two pitiable cases. One, a man with iron grey hair showing that he had passed the age of efficiency in active service, pathetically lamented the fact that he had lost all his money during the battle, and would be unable to procure articles essential to his comfort when in a military prison. I gave him a greenback

which he said was of a value nearly equal to his loss. The sincerity of his gratitude was unquestioned.

The other was a young lad, apparently sixteen or seventeen years old, who was filled with the most fearful forebodings as to his future and that of his family. His wound was not serious, but he conjured up the most unreasonable fantasies as to the effect his wounds and capture would have on his mother. He said "I fear she will die; then my younger brothers and sisters will perish, for my father was killed in one of the battles in Virginia last August." I suggested that he might be paroled, then he could go home and remain, as paroled prisoners were not put into action until exchanged. He was unwilling to listen to my suggestion that he might give his parole, and said he "could not promise not to fight the Yankees any more; if he did his mother would disown him; nor would he willingly leave his colors." He wished to fight until victory for the South was won, and if he could not do that, to die on the field as his father had. est desire was to obtain an early exchange. His heart was stout to bear every hardship and peril except that insidious disease, more common to the young than to those of mature years, homesickness. This disease is best resisted or overcome in active service, but in camp, and especially a prison camp, it is neither resisted or controlled by medicine, fortitude or valor. I learned two weeks after, from the surgeon in charge of the hospital, that this brave and interesting Georgia boy had succumbed to that disease which, in Northern and Southern prisons alike, claimed many victims, nostalgia.

His great

As I passed on, I found I was attracting unusual attention, and heard repeatedly, "looks enough like him to be his brother." I asked for an explanation and was informed that I bore a striking resemblance to a Lieutenant-Colonel Curtis, of the Georgia. I did not meet my namesake, but

« PreviousContinue »