Reconstructed Rebel
1st Lieutenant
- Joined
- Jun 7, 2021
What - if anything- is going on here?
I routinely scan casualty lists looking for my somewhat obscure family names, and in reading the Bentonville battle list in the Raleigh NC Semi-Weekly Standard, published 3/24/1865, I was struck by the high number of wounds in the left hand. I've never seen this before. In the partial list below there are four solders in a row (!) listed as being wounded in the left hand. The officer list contains the type of wounds generally seen, but in the ranks there are multiple hand injuries listed.
At first I thought perhaps old guns were exploding in the hands of the soldiers - but on doing a Google search on battle wounds I came across an article saying that in WW 1 soldiers with wounds to their left hand or the top of their feet were separated from other wounded soldiers because they were suspected of inflicting wounds on themselves to avoid battle or staying in the trenches.
This is not an attempt to discredit these soldiers at all. But given that I think the Confederacy was clearly on its last legs at this point, if this is what was happening, these men were perhaps making the decision that going home and rebuilding their communities and supporting their families was a better option than dying in glory.
I routinely scan casualty lists looking for my somewhat obscure family names, and in reading the Bentonville battle list in the Raleigh NC Semi-Weekly Standard, published 3/24/1865, I was struck by the high number of wounds in the left hand. I've never seen this before. In the partial list below there are four solders in a row (!) listed as being wounded in the left hand. The officer list contains the type of wounds generally seen, but in the ranks there are multiple hand injuries listed.
At first I thought perhaps old guns were exploding in the hands of the soldiers - but on doing a Google search on battle wounds I came across an article saying that in WW 1 soldiers with wounds to their left hand or the top of their feet were separated from other wounded soldiers because they were suspected of inflicting wounds on themselves to avoid battle or staying in the trenches.
This is not an attempt to discredit these soldiers at all. But given that I think the Confederacy was clearly on its last legs at this point, if this is what was happening, these men were perhaps making the decision that going home and rebuilding their communities and supporting their families was a better option than dying in glory.