Left Wounded on the Battlefield

[Tom Elmore]

After being seriously wounded upon the battlefield, additional ordeals might have to be endured by a hapless soldier, as these cases attest:

Part 1

1st Sergeant Henry Cliff, Company F, 76th New York. On July 1, he fell severely wounded in the left knee. He lay upon the battlefield unable to stir, with nothing to eat or drink, for 52 hours, until the rebels retreated, when he was removed to a hospital and his limb amputated. On one occasion, alluding to a nearby tree, Cliff asked an enemy soldier: "Please carry me to the shade of that tree." The Confederate replied, "I shan't do it; get some of your d----d Yankee horde to help you. If you had been at home where you belonged, instead of fighting for the d----d n----r, you would not have needed help." The sergeant "watched the cool shade in its slow journey around the tree, never quite reaching him, but advancing toward him and then retreating." (http://www.bpmlegal.com/76NY/76cliffh.html, 09/18/2000)

Private Samuel Henry Emmerson, Company F, 3rd Arkansas. "I was shot down about sundown. … Around me everything presented the glorious beauties of a summer's day save the havoc of the broad battlefield, which lay bestrewed with the dead and wounded. … The enemy's ball had passed across the crown of my head, cleaving the skull, and I had fallen to the ground blind and paralyzed. The sun was just setting in the west, and for a moment diverted my thoughts, but they returned with a paroxysm of agony as I beheld the gray twilight setting in. Great God! I exclaimed, and must I remain here all night? I dare not look around me but cast my eyes upward to the sky, which was garnished with millions of stars, and the pale moon shed a dim light around me, as floating toward the west she promised soon to leave me in utter darkness. … I doubted the reality of all around me, and strove to shake it off as a horrible dream. Vain efforts. Wild visions floated before me. … Then, again, all was dark. … All was silence save the groans of the dying. … Ages appeared to have rolled away and yet the day came not. … Was I in my grave, I mentally inquired? Can this be death? … At length the thick clouds of gloom began to disperse. A feeble voice seemed to call: 'Oh, Sam!' … Yet how I trembled that it should prove a delusion. O God, it was not. It was the voice of one of my comrades, who had been sent back by the captain of my company, he knowing that several had fallen in that particular locality. … For the first time in three long years did I think of home and friends as memory came rushing back to my brain. May I never witness another such night." (Biographical and Historical Memoirs of Central Arkansas, Chicago and Nashville: The Southern Publishing Company, 1891, pp. 335-337)

Private William H. Chamberlain, Company A, 56th Pennsylvania. Wounded [July 1] and while lying on the battlefield, a Confederate soldier, seeing him, fired, intending to kill him. Chamberlain, seeing the Rebel soldier halt, instinctively raised his hand to his head and thereby saved his life, as the ball lodged in the back of his hand. During the remainder of his life, the hand was withered and useless. (http://www.scots-in-the-civil-war.net/mar2001.htm, 5/3/2003)

Private Thomas W. Shiflett, Company C, 14th Virginia. On the afternoon of July 3, while attempting to "follow General Armistead over the stone fence, had a Federal soldier thrust his musket in his face, shooting him below the eye, the ball coming out through the back of his head. He fell unconscious and remained in that condition during that day and the following night, till next morning [July 4], when he was aroused to consciousness by a Federal soldier giving him a kick, supposing him dead, remarking to a comrade [that] he had killed him the day before when attempting to climb over the stone fence. The Federal, realizing the fact that Shiflett yet was alive, entered into a conversation with him … [and] at once gave Shiflett all the necessary attention and had him taken to a hospital, [where he was] placed on a cot. (The Times Dispatch, 1903, reprint, Black Eagle Company, Cumberland County, Virginia, Historical Bulletin, November 1985, vol. 2, no. 1, p. 29; Compiled service records of Thomas Shiflett, Fold3)

Private Aldin P. Burtch, Company F, 147th New York. "… wounded on Wednesday morning [July 1], in the right knee, pretty badly mangled, [and] lay on the field two days and one night with nothing to eat. He was then carried to a barn, where he lay until Sunday evening [July 5]. He has been moved to his corps hospital …" (July 6 letter from H. M. Stevens of the Christian Commission to Aldin's wife, Mrs. Jerusha Burtch, Mexico Independent, July 30, 1863)

 

[neyankee61]

First Sgt Walter Rotherham Co D 7th NJ- On July 2nd during the 7th NJ's retreat from its position near the Peach Orchard, Rotherham was struck by a ball in the side of his head, just above his ear. He was left on the field until discovered by his comrades on July 4th. He was found sitting up, dazed and confused. Taken to a field hospital, his wound was probe by a doctor who stuck his finger in the hole. The surgeon stated he could feel Rotherham's brain above his finger and the bony brain pan below. The ball was located somewhere in the middle of his head in between. Rotherham was transferred to a hospital in Baltimore where he developed a high fever which broke when he passed bits of bone and a part of his cap. He recovered and was sent home. In 1888 his sister wrote in his pension application that he couldn't not lift his head from his chest without suffering from vertigo and if he slept on his back, he had violent nightmares.

 

[Sowbelly and Hardtack]

“Unspeakable Agony:” The Union Wounded Left Behind at Chancellorsville

Read about the experience of one wounded Union soldier after the battle of Chancellorsville. Rice Bull described the terrible scenes.

www.civilwarmed.org

 

[Tom Elmore]

Part 2

Color Corporal William Henry Plummer, Company G, 4th Michigan. Plummer was badly wounded in the Wheatfield around 7 p.m. on July 2, and 26 hours or so later was found alive by a comrade, who related the story: "On the afternoon of the third day, I learned that Wm. H. Plummer of our company and a chum of mine, and who had been a member of the color-guard, was missing and inside the Confederate lines. After dark there was a detail made to go out after and care for the wounded. I asked permission to go with them. It was so dark that we could hardly see the way … I had a canteen of water, also a piece candle about 2 inches long. I could just see the trees and rocks among which we fought the rebel pickets and went for the trees, calling 'Henry' twice. The second time I heard a faint groan that I knew was his and I was soon at his side, pouring water on his wound and giving him just a little to drink. I did not dare to light the candle for only a moment at a time for fear the rebels would discover me and take me prisoner. … Plummer fainted soon after I reached his side, but with some help I saw him safely to an ambulance and he went to York, Pa., to the General Hospital. I never expected to see him again, but about a month after, I was made glad by the receipt of a letter from him which I soon answered. And then again I heard no more until I reached Detroit to be mustered out of service, when I received word from him to come to the hospital. It was another happy meeting again. He now lives in Ann Arbor and says that I saved his life and for which I came very near getting a Medal of Honor." (Harrison Daniels, The Diary of Harrison Daniels, http://www.4thmichigan.com/harrison_daniels_diary.htm, 09/02/2003) Henry had a brother named Chester who served in the same company. (National Tribune, January 6, 1910, p.7)

Corporal John W. Amey, Company C, 150th Pennsylvania. "John was wounded at Gettysburg and lay for 3 days among the dead without food or water under the burning July sun. When details arrived to bury the dead, John Amey was found to be alive and was sent to the soldier's hospital at Harrisburg. Shot through the lungs, he recovered and lived many years." (From ancestor Solomon L. Amey, http://boards.rootsweb.com/surnames.amey ... 5/18/2009; Pennsylvania Memorial, plaque to the 150th) John made sergeant on May 1, 1865 and was mustered out of the service on June 1865 at Elmira, New York. (Union Casualties at Gettysburg, by Travis W. Busey and John W. Busey, 2: 994)

Captain Edward Carter, Company K, 8th Virginia. Badly wounded in three places during the afternoon charge on July 3, "he lay in this condition for over twenty-four hours before he was found by Federal soldiers and placed in a hospital. The war was over before he was completely recovered from these wounds." (The Chief Justice, Marshal, Virginia, October 10, 1928) Carter recovered sufficiently to become one of the "Immortal 600" prisoners who were placed under fire by Federal authorities. He remained on crutches for the rest of his life. Born August 13, 1843, he matriculated at the Virginia Military Institute (VMI) and served as a drill master in 1861. Having exited early from VMI, he was later made an honorary graduate. Post-war, he became a dry goods merchant in Scott County, Virginia, married and had four daughters. He died October 3, 1928 at Warrenton, Virginia and was buried there. (Confederate Casualties at Gettysburg, by John W. Busey and Travis W. Busey, 3: 1515)

3rd Corporal Henry Lewis Camper, Company D, 28th Virginia. Twice wounded during the war, "he was … left on the field at Gettysburg a whole day for dead, and when he regained consciousness, he crawled off the field and was spared for many more years of usefulness." He died on October 8, 1925. (Bedford Bulletin, October 15, 1925) Camper reached the Confederate lines around dusk on July 4 and was admitted to the Charlottesville General Hospital on July 12 before being sent the following day to the Lynchburg General Hospital. He was promoted to sergeant in January 1864 and surrendered at Appomattox. (Confederate Casualties at Gettysburg, by John W. Busey and Travis W. Busey, 3: 1660)

 

[neyankee61]

Private Joseph Meyer Co E 5th NJ- suffered a severe gunshot wound to left leg July 2, 1863. Wounded as 5th made its final stand behind the Klingle farm. Left on field and recovered the evening of July 3. Left leg was amputated.

 

[neyankee61]

Private Heyward Emmell Co K 7th NJ - "July 4, 1863 Some of the boys have been hunting for our wounded & have brought in Charlie Beers & a number of the boys belonging to Company K. Some of them will not live." Among "the boys" found along with Beers was Priv Abel Gruber who's left leg was shattered, Private Robert Jolley, and Priv Jacob Hopping. Gruber's leg will be amputated and he will survive. The other 3 will succumb to their wounds.

 

[DixieRifles]

Private Samuel Henry Emmerson, Company F, 3rd Arkansas. "I was shot down about sundown. … . . . . … The enemy's ball had passed across the crown of my head, cleaving the skull, and I had fallen to the ground blind and paralyzed.

I was interested to find out when/where he was wounded. I had an ancestor in the 3rd Arkansas.

Samuel H. Emmerson enlisted at 18 years of age. His service records listed him as wounded in the Wilderness on May 6, 1864.
The Confederates' record states he was wounded in the foot. I guess they didn't know since he was captured by the Union.

 

[lelliott19]

I was interested to find out when/where he was wounded. I had an ancestor in the 3rd Arkansas.

Samuel H. Emmerson enlisted at 18 years of age. His service records listed him as wounded in the Wilderness on May 6, 1864.
The Confederates' record states he was wounded in the foot. I guess they didn't know since he was captured by the Union.

View attachment 481713

That foot wound at the Wilderness was Emmerson's second wound. After he was wounded (head) at Gettysburg, he was furloughed, recovered, and rejoined the 3d AR about January 1864. He was wounded again (foot) at the Wilderness May 6, 1864, recovered and eventually surrendered at Appomattox.

A cleaving head wound was not enough to get you excused from service in the Confederate army. Like Emmerson, lots of Confederate soldiers were wounded multiple times. One I can cite Stephen Charles O'Kelley (A/16GA) was involved in a train wreck and wounded four times in battle including once in the face by a shell. Yet he was still in active service when he was captured at Sailor's Creek April 6, 1865. O'Kelley's battlefield wounds were received at Fredericksburg, Chancellorsville, Fort Sanders, and the Wilderness. Gettysburg was about the only battle where he was present but escaped injury.

 

[Tom Elmore]

Part 3

Lieutenant Hopkins Hardin, Company C, 19th Virginia. "He took part in many battles, of which were First Manassas, Williamsburg, Fredericksburg, and Gettysburg, where he was desperately wounded and lay on the battlefield two days and nights. He was then taken in charge by the enemy and spent the remainder of the war at Fort McHenry, Point Lookout, Fort Delaware, Fort Pulaski and Morris Island. At the last place he was one of the six hundred prisoners [The 'Immortal 600'] exposed to the fire of the Confederate guns." (Confederate Veteran magazine, vol. 34, no. 4, April, 1926, p. 149)

Private John Jochum, Company B, 14th Brooklyn (84th New York). On July 1, just as the command was given to charge Davis' brigade at the railroad cut, Jochum was struck by a bullet or shell fragment. He recalled that it "entered my head directly above the temple, taking a circuitous course to the base of my head, where it ploughed a hole through the skull just above the neck … I lay unconscious for probably half an hour." When he recovered his senses, Jochum realized he was blind and wished to have died. He lay there helpless for about an hour when his sight returned. Still somewhat dazed, he began to walk when a soldier of the 6th Wisconsin shouted to him to go to the rear. He made it back to the division hospital at the Washington House (Eagle Hotel), where he was treated by Surgeon James L. Farley of his regiment. When the town was in danger of being overrun, he walked 11 miles to Littlestown and subsequently was cared for at hospitals in Philadelphia and New York City. (The Brain Laid Bare, Roanoke Times (Virginia), May 14, 1893, virginiachronicle.com, Library of Virginia)

1st Lieutenant Jonathan Augustus "John" Shaw, Company D, 5th Florida. Shot through the thigh on the evening of July 2, he was not taken off the field in a stretcher until the night of July 3. One of the stretcher bearers was Private Joseph H. McClellan of Company E. Shaw's leg was amputated at a field hospital by a Confederate surgeon, and he was left behind when the army retreated. Private George W. Worrell, one of those left as a nurse, cared for Shaw until his death "a few days" later. Shaw was buried near Cashtown, which was a staging area for the wagon train of wounded. It may be that Shaw was originally slated to have been taken back to Virginia, but at the last minute was determined to be too badly injured to make the arduous journey. (Pension application of Mrs. E. W. Shaw, Muscogee County, Georgia, Georgia Virtual Vault)

Lieutenant Colonel John B. Callis, 7th Wisconsin. Carried to a clover field north of the Seminary after being wounded in the lung on the late afternoon of July 1, Callis lay there for 43 hours, subject to the burning sun and annoying flies, although two passing Confederate officers met his requests for water and assigned him a guard against ill-intentioned stragglers. His guards deserted toward the close of the fight and carried him to a private citizen's residence in town, where he began a slow recovery. (Bachelder Papers, 1:142-144; https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Benton_Callis)

1st Lieutenant Robert R. Ferguson, Company K, 53rd Virginia. During the charge on July 3, he received two wounds. "The last time he was struck the bullet shattered the bones in one of his legs. He lay on the field sixty hours without food and was without water until it rained [on July 4] and he dipped it up as it gathered in puddles around him. He was taken to a Northern prison, where he remained fourteen months. … From having gone so long without attention [the wound] did not heal for twelve years after the war closed." (Obituary of Captain R. R. Ferguson, News Leader (of Richmond and Manchester, Virginia), May 6, 1909)

 

[Conquerordie]

Horrifying yet unbelievably interesting. It never amazes me what man can suffer and endure, even when they've given up.

 

[Tom Elmore]

Part 4

Corporal William H. Boyd, Company E, 2nd Wisconsin. Shot in the leg in Herbst woods on July 1, he fell forward on his face. A comrade, Ben Davids, pulled Boyd over to a tree and left him there with his canteen of water (in addition to Boyd's own). Boyd improvised a tourniquet to stem the flow of blood. A Confederate soldier came by and took both canteens. Boyd lay unattended for about 31 hours, but during that time managed to crawl ten yards to a muddy water puddle. He wrote: "I lay there through that day and that night and the next day until 11 o'clock at night. … It was Billy Bryant of our company who found me. I was carried to the courthouse, but my wound was not dressed for several days." Boyd afterwards developed typhoid fever. On November 18, 1863, he was sent to a hospital in York. However, he lived to relate his story in 1911. (Oshkosh Northwestern, April 27, 1911, Wisconsin Historical Society, content.wisconsinhistory.org)

An unidentified soldier of Brigadier General James L. Kemper's Virginia brigade. Federal artillery fired on Pickett's division during its advance on July 3 and Colonel E. Porter Alexander later recalled one casualty: "One of the pictures of the war, stamped in my memory, is one of Kemper's men, whose entire mouth and chin was carried away by one of those flanking shots. I came upon him, sitting in a fence corner, as I was advancing the guns … We had to halt while the cannoneers threw down gaps in the fence for the guns to go through. … A solid shot had carried away both jaws and his tongue. I noticed the powder smut from the shot on the white skin around the wound. He sat up and looked at me steadily, and I looked at him until the guns could pass, but nothing, of course, could be done for him." (Fighting for the Confederacy, The Personal Recollections of General Edward Porter Alexander, ed. by Gary W. Gallagher, Chapel Hill and London: The University of North Carolina Press, 1989, p. 262; The Great Charge and Artillery Fighting at Gettysburg, by E. Porter Alexander, Battles and Leaders of the Civil War, vol. 3, p. 365)

Private James McGeehen of Company K, 107th Pennsylvania. Struck on the right thigh by a "conoidal musket" (minie) ball, he lay on the field for five hours before being conveyed to a field hospital, where his wounds were dressed. More than three months later, on October 11, he was moved to a hospital in Chambersburg. He may never have fully recovered. On April 21, 1866, his leg was amputated, and he died of a hemorrhage eleven days later, on May 2. (The Medical and Surgical History of the War of the Rebellion, Surgical History, part III, vol. II, Washington D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1883, p. 10)

Private Frank G----, a Texas soldier who was not further identified, was wounded in the left thigh by a "grapeshot" on July 2. He remained on the battlefield with very little attention until July 4, when he was brought to a Fifth Corps field hospital. There he was operated on by Surgeon Benjamin Rohrer of the 10th Pennsylvania Reserves, assisted by two surgeons from the 12th Pennsylvania Reserves, Joseph A. Phillips and Henry A. Grim, but he died 36 hours later. (The Medical and Surgical History of the War of the Rebellion, Surgical History, part III, vol. II, Washington D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1883, p. 140)

Private George Lawton of Company H, 16th Massachusetts. He was badly wounded near the Emmitsburg road at 7 p.m. on July 2. Three hours later, Private Patrick Connelly from his company ventured to that location to find dead or wounded comrades. Confederate pickets were nearby, but they allowed him to approach Lawton, whom he found in great pain with wounds to both legs and shoulder, with his left leg broken below the knee. Connelly covered him up in the chilly night and left him a canteen of water. Later that night a Federal ambulance appeared and carried Lawton to a field hospital, where he died just 15 minutes after his arrival. (July 25, 1863 letter of Patrick Connelly, from Carver General Hospital in Washington D.C., which was published in the Waltham Sentinel)

 

[Conquerordie]

E.P.A's account is haunting, they all are.

 

[observator]

Lets not forget J. Hood left arm cripped at Gettysberg right leg lost at chickamauga

 

[Our Wisconsin Boys]

Part 4

Corporal William H. Boyd, Company E, 2nd Wisconsin. Shot in the leg in Herbst woods on July 1, he fell forward on his face. A comrade, Ben Davids, pulled Boyd over to a tree and left him there with his canteen of water (in addition to Boyd's own). Boyd improvised a tourniquet to stem the flow of blood. A Confederate soldier came by and took both canteens. Boyd lay unattended for about 31 hours, but during that time managed to crawl ten yards to a muddy water puddle. He wrote: "I lay there through that day and that night and the next day until 11 o'clock at night. … It was Billy Bryant of our company who found me. I was carried to the courthouse, but my wound was not dressed for several days." Boyd afterwards developed typhoid fever. On November 18, 1863, he was sent to a hospital in York. However, he lived to relate his story in 1911. (Oshkosh Northwestern, April 27, 1911, Wisconsin Historical Society, content.wisconsinhistory.org)

An unidentified soldier of Brigadier General James L. Kemper's Virginia brigade. Federal artillery fired on Pickett's division during its advance on July 3 and Colonel E. Porter Alexander later recalled one casualty: "One of the pictures of the war, stamped in my memory, is one of Kemper's men, whose entire mouth and chin was carried away by one of those flanking shots. I came upon him, sitting in a fence corner, as I was advancing the guns … We had to halt while the cannoneers threw down gaps in the fence for the guns to go through. … A solid shot had carried away both jaws and his tongue. I noticed the powder smut from the shot on the white skin around the wound. He sat up and looked at me steadily, and I looked at him until the guns could pass, but nothing, of course, could be done for him." (Fighting for the Confederacy, The Personal Recollections of General Edward Porter Alexander, ed. by Gary W. Gallagher, Chapel Hill and London: The University of North Carolina Press, 1989, p. 262; The Great Charge and Artillery Fighting at Gettysburg, by E. Porter Alexander, Battles and Leaders of the Civil War, vol. 3, p. 365)

Private James McGeehen of Company K, 107th Pennsylvania. Struck on the right thigh by a "conoidal musket" (minie) ball, he lay on the field for five hours before being conveyed to a field hospital, where his wounds were dressed. More than three months later, on October 11, he was moved to a hospital in Chambersburg. He may never have fully recovered. On April 21, 1866, his leg was amputated, and he died of a hemorrhage eleven days later, on May 2. (The Medical and Surgical History of the War of the Rebellion, Surgical History, part III, vol. II, Washington D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1883, p. 10)

Private Frank G----, a Texas soldier who was not further identified, was wounded in the left thigh by a "grapeshot" on July 2. He remained on the battlefield with very little attention until July 4, when he was brought to a Fifth Corps field hospital. There he was operated on by Surgeon Benjamin Rohrer of the 10th Pennsylvania Reserves, assisted by two surgeons from the 12th Pennsylvania Reserves, Joseph A. Phillips and Henry A. Grim, but he died 36 hours later. (The Medical and Surgical History of the War of the Rebellion, Surgical History, part III, vol. II, Washington D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1883, p. 140)

Private George Lawton of Company H, 16th Massachusetts. He was badly wounded near the Emmitsburg road at 7 p.m. on July 2. Three hours later, Private Patrick Connelly from his company ventured to that location to find dead or wounded comrades. Confederate pickets were nearby, but they allowed him to approach Lawton, whom he found in great pain with wounds to both legs and shoulder, with his left leg broken below the knee. Connelly covered him up in the chilly night and left him a canteen of water. Later that night a Federal ambulance appeared and carried Lawton to a field hospital, where he died just 15 minutes after his arrival. (July 25, 1863 letter of Patrick Connelly, from Carver General Hospital in Washington D.C., which was published in the Waltham Sentinel)

 

[observator]

who is man in photograph message Number 14?

 

[13 IL Cav & 64 GA Inf]

After being seriously wounded upon the battlefield, additional ordeals might have to be endured by a hapless soldier, as these cases attest:

Part 1

1st Sergeant Henry Cliff, Company F, 76th New York. On July 1, he fell severely wounded in the left knee. He lay upon the battlefield unable to stir, with nothing to eat or drink, for 52 hours, until the rebels retreated, when he was removed to a hospital and his limb amputated. On one occasion, alluding to a nearby tree, Cliff asked an enemy soldier: "Please carry me to the shade of that tree." The Confederate replied, "I shan't do it; get some of your d----d Yankee horde to help you. If you had been at home where you belonged, instead of fighting for the d----d n----r, you would not have needed help." The sergeant "watched the cool shade in its slow journey around the tree, never quite reaching him, but advancing toward him and then retreating." (http://www.bpmlegal.com/76NY/76cliffh.html, 09/18/2000)

Private Samuel Henry Emmerson, Company F, 3rd Arkansas. "I was shot down about sundown. … Around me everything presented the glorious beauties of a summer's day save the havoc of the broad battlefield, which lay bestrewed with the dead and wounded. … The enemy's ball had passed across the crown of my head, cleaving the skull, and I had fallen to the ground blind and paralyzed. The sun was just setting in the west, and for a moment diverted my thoughts, but they returned with a paroxysm of agony as I beheld the gray twilight setting in. Great God! I exclaimed, and must I remain here all night? I dare not look around me but cast my eyes upward to the sky, which was garnished with millions of stars, and the pale moon shed a dim light around me, as floating toward the west she promised soon to leave me in utter darkness. … I doubted the reality of all around me, and strove to shake it off as a horrible dream. Vain efforts. Wild visions floated before me. … Then, again, all was dark. … All was silence save the groans of the dying. … Ages appeared to have rolled away and yet the day came not. … Was I in my grave, I mentally inquired? Can this be death? … At length the thick clouds of gloom began to disperse. A feeble voice seemed to call: 'Oh, Sam!' … Yet how I trembled that it should prove a delusion. O God, it was not. It was the voice of one of my comrades, who had been sent back by the captain of my company, he knowing that several had fallen in that particular locality. … For the first time in three long years did I think of home and friends as memory came rushing back to my brain. May I never witness another such night." (Biographical and Historical Memoirs of Central Arkansas, Chicago and Nashville: The Southern Publishing Company, 1891, pp. 335-337)

Private William H. Chamberlain, Company A, 56th Pennsylvania. Wounded [July 1] and while lying on the battlefield, a Confederate soldier, seeing him, fired, intending to kill him. Chamberlain, seeing the Rebel soldier halt, instinctively raised his hand to his head and thereby saved his life, as the ball lodged in the back of his hand. During the remainder of his life, the hand was withered and useless. (http://www.scots-in-the-civil-war.net/mar2001.htm, 5/3/2003)

Private Thomas W. Shiflett, Company C, 14th Virginia. On the afternoon of July 3, while attempting to "follow General Armistead over the stone fence, had a Federal soldier thrust his musket in his face, shooting him below the eye, the ball coming out through the back of his head. He fell unconscious and remained in that condition during that day and the following night, till next morning [July 4], when he was aroused to consciousness by a Federal soldier giving him a kick, supposing him dead, remarking to a comrade [that] he had killed him the day before when attempting to climb over the stone fence. The Federal, realizing the fact that Shiflett yet was alive, entered into a conversation with him … [and] at once gave Shiflett all the necessary attention and had him taken to a hospital, [where he was] placed on a cot. (The Times Dispatch, 1903, reprint, Black Eagle Company, Cumberland County, Virginia, Historical Bulletin, November 1985, vol. 2, no. 1, p. 29; Compiled service records of Thomas Shiflett, Fold3)

Private Aldin P. Burtch, Company F, 147th New York. "… wounded on Wednesday morning [July 1], in the right knee, pretty badly mangled, [and] lay on the field two days and one night with nothing to eat. He was then carried to a barn, where he lay until Sunday evening [July 5]. He has been moved to his corps hospital …" (July 6 letter from H. M. Stevens of the Christian Commission to Aldin's wife, Mrs. Jerusha Burtch, Mexico Independent, July 30, 1863)

My family suffered only two significant wounds and one killed during the Civil War. My Confederate gg grandfather on my mother's side was killed at Olustee. My gg grandfather Zachary Rodgers of the 64th GA Infantry lost his left arm at Deep Bottom II, and my wife's gg grandfather was shot in the side of the head, fracturing his skull, at Hatcher's Run, south of Petersburg (he continued to serve until captured on picket duty on April 2, 1864).

 

[mwalker6043]

An unidentified soldier of Brigadier General James L. Kemper's Virginia brigade. Federal artillery fired on Pickett's division during its advance on July 3 and Colonel E. Porter Alexander later recalled one casualty: "One of the pictures of the war, stamped in my memory, is one of Kemper's men, whose entire mouth and chin was carried away by one of those flanking shots. I came upon him, sitting in a fence corner, as I was advancing the guns … We had to halt while the cannoneers threw down gaps in the fence for the guns to go through. … A solid shot had carried away both jaws and his tongue. I noticed the powder smut from the shot on the white skin around the wound. He sat up and looked at me steadily, and I looked at him until the guns could pass, but nothing, of course, could be done for him." (Fighting for the Confederacy, The Personal Recollections of General Edward Porter Alexander, ed. by Gary W. Gallagher, Chapel Hill and London: The University of North Carolina Press, 1989, p. 262; The Great Charge and Artillery Fighting at Gettysburg, by E. Porter Alexander, Battles and Leaders of the Civil War, vol. 3, p. 365)

This could be Colonel Waller T. Patton, 7th Virginia.

 

[Rhea Cole]

The photograph of Jacob Miller is a gob stopper. He was struck just above the bridge of his nose.

A bullet between the eyes: The most remarkable survivor of the Civil War

Years later, Jacob Miller was able to recount the events of his injury and escape despite a bullet to the brain.

www.indystar.com

William Francis Bartlett climbed the ladder from private to general. Without doubt he survived more wounds than any other general officer. His is a remarkable story. He was captured at the Crater when his wooden leg was shot off… does that count as being shot again?

This Union officer might be the most wounded soldier in the Civil War

At a time when being wounded in combat meant losing a limb or other such large chuck of your body, being wounded more than once in the Civil War was a

www.wearethemighty.com

 

[Reconstructed Rebel]

The photograph of Jacob Miller is a gob stopper. He was struck just above the bridge of his nose.

A bullet between the eyes: The most remarkable survivor of the Civil War

Years later, Jacob Miller was able to recount the events of his injury and escape despite a bullet to the brain.

www.indystar.com

Being shot just above the bridge of the nose (depending on the trajectory) looks like it could have missed messing with a large part of the brain….but I'm not a doctor or a neurosurgeon. However it impacted him, he was one lucky guy.

 

[frontrank2]

I had an uncle, Henry Schildt, of CO. F, 6TH Wisconsin who was wounded at Gettysburg the first day during their famous charge at the Railroad Cut. When the 6th was forced to withdraw to Cemetery Ridge, they were unable to take Henry with them. He then fell into the possession of the Rebs who attended to him for the next few days. Upon their withdrawal from Gettysburg, the Federals recovered him and sent him to the Union Hospital over in York. When he recovered sufficiently, he was assigned to the Veterans Reserve Corps and ultimately sent back to the 6th.