- Joined
- Jan 16, 2015
One gun of Battery B/1st Rhode Island was indeed temporarily captured by Wright's brigade:
With the phrase about a shell bursting above them, it sounds more like case shot than a different brand of rifled cannister such as the Dyer which used smaller lead balls.I know it seems impossible, but here's another member of the 2nd Georgia Infantry Battalion who was also wounded by canister shot in the left leg, and he carried his own iron ball for many years! [I'm assuming that the ball described is canister shot?]
Sgt. Simeon E. Theus (B/2nd GA BN) was captured in the hospital after the battle and sent to the Union General Hospital 19 July 1863. He appears on a Roll of Prisoners of War at General Hospital, Chester, PA dated 31 July 1863. He was sent to City Point for exchange 17 August 1863, furloughed, and detailed at Macon, GA. He is then listed as disabled. He returned to his regiment September 6, 1864 and apparently had recovered sufficiently to march.
His canister shot was removed in May 1892 - after having languished in his left leg for nearly 29 years! Theus seems to indicate that his wound was inflicted by a Rhode Island battery?
View attachment 394071
Theus' wounding in the manner reported is also confirmed by Lieut (at the time Sgt.) Lorenzo Dow Ripley (B/2nd GA BN) in a post-war reminiscence, published in The Macon Telegraph. (Macon, Ga.), October 31, 1897, page 1.
View attachment 394077
For those who may be interested in reading Ripley's entire account, I posted it over in another thread here
https://civilwartalk.com/threads/wrights-brigade-gettysburg-accounts.183342/#post-2379976
Great! Glad you enjoyed the articles!Thanks for these two great articles. My favorite part is the phrasing by Dr. Wood (formerly Private Wood) about comparing the sensation of his shoulder wound to the use of a "persuasive hickory . . . to instill fractions in fractious . . . boys". I think my teachers used pine rather than hickory, but the concept was similar.
lelliott19, I don't know how you come up with all these great news articles. They're really interesting.
Gotta wonder how often line soldiers had to change their undergarments in a campaign. Walking briskly, shoulder to shoulder directly into rifle and cannon...can’t be good for composure.His account of what it feels like to be advancing against an enemy is one of the more descriptive I have read.
Lubliner.
Unit cohesion and morale among the men, with the ever-present peer pressure to perform and not run allowed the advance. But I know I would be whispering some frightful words of feeling into my head if I was one of them.Gotta wonder how often line soldiers had to change their undergarments in a campaign. Walking briskly, shoulder to shoulder directly into rifle and cannon...can’t be good for composure.
I’m likely exaggerating it all, as I’m sure a properly trained infantryman would have been properly able to deal with this kind of stress.
No normal person deals with this kind of stress its like anything after a while you get used to it , Training does not prepare you for battle nothing can its how you act as an individual that really counts as many men would have reacted differently.Gotta wonder how often line soldiers had to change their undergarments in a campaign. Walking briskly, shoulder to shoulder directly into rifle and cannon...can’t be good for composure.
I’m likely exaggerating it all, as I’m sure a properly trained infantryman would have been properly able to deal with this kind of stress.