Need Help: Looking for Firsthand Accounts of Wounded Soldiers Riding in Ambulances

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Sep 3, 2015
I have placed a Wheeling Ambulance on display at the Starkville Civil War Arsenal for public viewing. Now I would like to put a mannequin dressed as a wounded soldier in the ambulance.

My goal is to share with the visitors to the museum firsthand accounts of the wounded who were transported by ambulances during the war. If anyone has knowledge of letters or diaries pertaining to wounded soldiers riding in ambulances, I hope you can direct me to them.

Thank you for your interest and support.
 
I have placed a Wheeling Ambulance on display at the Starkville Civil War Arsenal for public viewing. Now I would like to put a mannequin dressed as a wounded soldier in the ambulance.

My goal is to share with the visitors to the museum firsthand accounts of the wounded who were transported by ambulances during the war. If anyone has knowledge of letters or diaries pertaining to wounded soldiers riding in ambulances, I hope you can direct me to them.

Thank you for your interest and support.

I think there is an outstanding account in Lee's Lieutenants...or maybe it's One Continuous Fight. Quotes, in fact, regarding being wounded and being hauled in that huge wagon train out of Gettysburg through the mountains back to Virginia.
 
A couple excerpts from Our Boys: The Personal Experiences of a Soldier in the Army of the Potomac by Alonzo F. Hill, 8th Pennsylvania Reserves.

Sick after drinking "bad whiskey", April 1862 (pp. 230-31):

We had been at Manassas a week, when we received orders to move to Catlett Station, on the Orange and Alexandria railroad, twelve miles from Manassas. I was too weak to walk, and was accordingly placed in a vehicle known as a "one-horse ambulance." This was my first ride in an ambulance; and, oh, how devoutly I prayed that it might be the last! For, oh, such a ride! I verily believe that a vehicle worse adapted to the transportation of sick and wounded soldiers could not be invented. Whenever the wheels came in contact with the slightest obstacle, the ambulance would rock; and jump, and spring, and surge, and shake, and quake in a frightful manner. Once, I remember, the wheel went suddenly into a gutter, and the body of the ambulance gave such a fearful leap, that it threw the driver from his seat, and he came down in the mud with a startling grunt. As for me, there I lay within that miserable contrivance, jostled from side to side, my head knocking violently against the frame-work at every revolution of the wheels, while I wondered how it would go to ride in such a jumping, jolting affair with a broken arm or leg. After being knocked about in the manner described for some hours, I was at last set down at Catlett Station, near the camp of my regiment, which had already arrived.
After being wounded at Antietam (p. 407):

I was carried directly through the strip of woods near which we had lain on the previous evening and during the night. Just in the rear of this wood stood a number of ambulances ready to convey wounded men from the field. I was placed in one—a one-horse one—another sufferer was placed beside me, and the jumping, jostling, springing, shaking, quaking vehicle moved off. I opened conversation with my companion in misery.

"Where—are—you (oh! oh!) wounded?" I asked, as the ambulance went plunging along.

"In the side—oh!" he exclaimed, as it gave a sudden leap. Then he asked—

"Where are you wo—oh!"

"In the—oh, dear—leg—thigh—oh!"

"Partners," interrupted the driver, at that moment, "we are about to go over a little rough place now, but we'll soon be over it."

"What kind of a rough—"

"Oh, it's only a little corn-field."

The ambulance now began to go over the ridges of the corn-field, and it made such a succession of starts and knocked me about so alarmingly, that I really wondered that the wounded limb stayed on at all. My companion groaned in agony.

At last the vehicle came to a stand-still, and we were lifted out and laid down in front of a barn.​
 
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d40135b689e9eff68cfbb5da2be4c986.jpg


An image I picked up on Pinterest. No accounts unfortunately.

The descriptions so far seem to be of one horse wagons, but this one looks like a two horse.
 
I think there is an outstanding account in Lee's Lieutenants...or maybe it's One Continuous Fight. Quotes, in fact, regarding being wounded and being hauled in that huge wagon train out of Gettysburg through the mountains back to Virginia.


Just what I was going to add- think it may be One Continuous Fight? Those accounts are awful to get through.
 
I have placed a Wheeling Ambulance on display at the Starkville Civil War Arsenal for public viewing. Now I would like to put a mannequin dressed as a wounded soldier in the ambulance.

My goal is to share with the visitors to the museum firsthand accounts of the wounded who were transported by ambulances during the war. If anyone has knowledge of letters or diaries pertaining to wounded soldiers riding in ambulances, I hope you can direct me to them.

Thank you for your interest and support.
 
Do you want accounts of wounded in wagons or just ambulance? The CS were also given 1 ambulance per Regiment, you can see this in returns for the A.W. in 62
 
d40135b689e9eff68cfbb5da2be4c986.jpg


An image I picked up on Pinterest. No accounts unfortunately.

The descriptions so far seem to be of one horse wagons, but this one looks like a two horse.
This happened to be a training exercise taking place. Note the camp in the background. Also for the ambulance ride, wasn't Stonewall Jackson moved to Guinea Station in such a conveyance? At the end of the war, as the armies pushed toward Appomattox, the field surgeons set up transfer points by rail for soldiers carried in from the field. The O. R. has many such surgeon reports; Series 1, Volume 46, Parts 1 and 3.
Lubliner.
 
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