The boys in white : $b The experience of a hospital agent in and around WashingtonWheelock, Julia S. (Julia Susan)
History
The boys in white : $b The experience of a hospital agent in and around Washington
Wheelock, Julia S. (Julia Susan)
United States -- History -- Civil War, 1861-1865 -- Hospitals
The coat in which he fell was left in my care, and forwarded to her
the first opportunity. Oh! sad reminder of bloody scenes and a hero’s
death! His last words were about wife and country. He would have her
know that, even in death, she was not forgotten. “But,” said he, “I
would live that I might _serve my country longer_.”
“Rest on, embalmed and sainted dead,
Dear as the bloody grave;
No impious footsteps here shall tread
The herbage of your grave.
Nor shall your glory be forgot
While Fame her record keeps,
Or honor points the hallowed spot
Where valor proudly sleeps.”
There was one I cannot fail to mention. A noble Massachusetts soldier
was mortally wounded, yet unconscious of his fate, until informed of
it by a Christian surgeon, who advised him, if he had any accounts
with eternity to settle, to attend to them at once. “What,” he quickly
replied, “am I going to die?” He appeared greatly distressed, for
the thought of death had not before entered his mind. Taking from
under his pillow photographs of a beautiful-looking woman and sweet
little girl--his wife and child--he looked at them a few moments with
tear-dimmed eyes, and then exclaimed: “My God! Can I leave them? Shall
I never see them again?” Oh, it was hard for him to die and leave them,
but he never saw them more, for in a few days he was numbered with the
“Boys in White.”
The 10th inst., having received a call from Surgeon Bonine--who was
in charge of the third division Ninth Corps hospital, situated at
the extreme front--for supplies, I sent an ambulance load of stores,
consisting of canned fruits and meats, condensed milk, loaf-sugar,
pickles, lemons, wine, brandy, etc., which I drew from the Sanitary
and Christian Commissions, and to his care they were entrusted for
distribution, as the appeal was for himself as well as those in his
charge. Hear his words: “For God’s sake, Julia, send me something I can
eat, or I shall die.”
Perhaps there are those who might think I did wrong in trusting to
care of a “doctor” sanitary stores. Now while I would not, for a
moment, excuse the course pursued by many army surgeons during the
war, in appropriating for their own use articles designed only for the
sick, yet there were times and places--especially during an active
campaign--when a faithful surgeon, working night and day among scenes
the most revolting, needed, and was justly entitled to, something more
than “hard tack.” When far from the base of supplies, and not even a
sutler in the army, money was of little account. Let one such as Dr.
Bonine have fainted at his post of duty, and many lives would have been
sacrificed in consequence. All honor to surgeons, as well as to other
officers who are faithful in the discharge of duty.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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