eated. Grant, Sherman, Sheridan or Thomas, if in command
at the time, would have plunged the fresh Sixth Corps on to the rear of
Lee's routed men, and effectively crushed him. Meade was new to the
place and preferred a respectable certainty to possible disaster. Things
quieted down, and that night,

"Mr. Lee who had come to see
What he could do about going through,
The North, turned South."

The boys who were toting me came to a stone house with a wide piazza
clear around it. I was laid on the floor of it, which made a hard bed. I
ached in every bone, but there was nothing to do but "grin and bear it."
After a while Frank Garland of Co. G was brought and laid on the floor
near me. He could raise upon his elbow, but his breathing was painful to
hear. A bullet had gone through his lungs and every time they filled a
portion of the air went through the wound with a ghastly sound. I said
to him, "Are you badly wounded, Frank?" He replied, "Oh, yes!"

I had eaten nothing since the morning of the day before, and was faint.
Some of our drummer boys found a bin of ground oats, and they made a
gruel that tasted good, and I made quite a meal of it. That evening
about 10 o'clock, an ambulance came for me, and I was taken to the
ground selected for the 2d Corps hospital. It was another rough ride
across lots. Once there I was taken out of my stretcher, the one Phil
Comfort took me off the field on, and taken at once to the operating
table. A napkin was formed into a tunnel shape, a liberal supply of
chloroform poured into it and the thing placed over my nose and mouth. I
was told to take in long breaths. To me it seemed a long time before the
effect came, probably it was a short time, but at last my head seemed to
grow big and spin around. At this stage I remember a doctor had his
fingers in the wound in the shoulder and said to the others "Here is a
fine chance for a resection." I did not know what that meant, but
learned afterwards. When I came to myself, I looked down far enough to
see a quantity of bandage wound about a stump of a leg eight inches
long. My shoulder was bound up, but otherwise not operated on. Failure
to resect may have been due to the great amount of work pressing upon
the surgeons. They were worked as many hours continuously as they could
stand, and still many a man had to be neglected. I was taken off the
table and put back on my stretcher, which was set down in a wall tent,
this tent was as full as i