catch was for me to write to his family, who were living near
Mt. Pleasant. I asked him if he was badly wounded. He only pulled down
the blanket, that was all. I get sick when I think of it. The lower
part of his body was hanging to the upper part by a shred, and all of his
entrails were lying on the cot with him, the bile and other excrements
exuding from them, and they full of maggots. I replaced the blanket as
tenderly as I could, and then said, "Galbreath, good-bye." I then kissed
him on his lips and forehead, and left. As I passed on, he kept trying
to tell me something, but I could not make out what he said, and fearing
I would cause him to exert himself too much, I left.

It was the only field hospital that I saw during the whole war, and I
have no desire to see another. Those hollow-eyed and sunken-cheeked
sufferers, shot in every conceivable part of the body; some shrieking,
and calling upon their mothers; some laughing the hard, cackling laugh
of the sufferer without hope, and some cursing like troopers, and some
writhing and groaning as their wounds were being bandaged and dressed.
I saw a man of the Twenty-seventh, who had lost his right hand, another
his leg, then another whose head was laid open, and I could see his brain
thump, and another with his under jaw shot off; in fact, wounded in every
manner possible.

Ah! reader, there is no glory for the private soldier, much less a
conscript. James Galbreath was a conscript, as was also Fain King.
Mr. King was killed at Chickamauga. He and Galbreath were conscripted
and joined Company H at the same time. Both were old men, and very poor,
with large families at home; and they were forced to go to war against
their wishes, while their wives and little children were at home without
the necessaries of life. The officers have all the glory. Glory is not
for the private soldier, such as die in the hospitals, being eat up with
the deadly gangrene, and being imperfectly waited on. Glory is for
generals, colonels, majors, captains, and lieutenants. They have all
the glory, and when the poor private wins battles by dint of sweat, hard
marches, camp and picket duty, fasting and broken bones, the officers get
the glory. The private's pay was eleven dollars per month, if he got it;
the general's pay was three hundred dollars per month, and he always got
his. I am not complaining. These things happened sixteen to twenty
years ago. Men who never fired a gu