We were driven to a small log schoolhouse that was used as a surgical hospital, and there unloaded. I do not know what became of my companion in misery—that is, in the ambulance—for it was as much as I could do to keep myself in view for some days following.
Within the schoolhouse were several surgeons busily engaged in amputating limbs; while without, beneath some oak trees that stood near, lay a great many sufferers awaiting their turn. I must give the surgeons credit for considerable dispatch—and no doubt they dispatched many a poor fellow that day—for I observed that every few minutes, a whole man, (in a bad state of repair, to be sure,) was carried in, and soon after carried out, in from two to four pieces. They did their work up with rapidity, and by evening, the arms and legs that were piled up against the wall of the schoolhouse without, would have amounted to a full cord—limb measure.
Well, as I do not intend to dwell on this part of the narrative very long, I will simply say that the doctors finally reached my case. I was carried into the little building, where so many pangs had been suffered that day, and laid on an operating-table; and after a slight examination of my wound, and a consultation of eight or nine seconds, they lulled me to repose with chloroform, and scientifically relieved me of my left leg. When I returned from the state of profound oblivion into which the chloroform had thrown me, I was glad to find that they had not made a mistake, and cut off the wrong limb—as a doctor was once known to do. They had amputated the right leg, because the left one was the right one—it being the wounded one—and my right leg was now my left one, because it was the only one left. Yet, the other was always the left one, and it has remained so, because it has been ever since left on the battle ground. However, that is all right.
What I suffered during the ensuing three months in Smoketown Hospital, several miles from Sharpsburg, I will pass over with but a thought and a shudder, and hasten on to tell of the curious and amusing adventures I have since met with, “on a crutch.”
I will never forget my first attempt to walk on crutches. I thought it looked easy, to see others walking about the hospital on crutches; just as an inexperienced person is apt to think rowing a boat an easy matter, because he sees others do it with apparent facility. So, one day, when my strength had so increased that I thought I could bear my weight on my only leg, I urged the nurse to lift me up and let me try a pair of crutches.
He did so. He raised me up, and I stood holding tremulously to the tent-post—for I and five other unfortunates occupied a hospital tent—while he carefully placed a crutch under each of my arms. It was the first time for several months that I had been in an erect position, and you can’t well imagine how I felt—without studying a good while about it. The ground on which I stood seemed so far beneath that it made me quite dizzy to look down on it, and I trembled at the awful possibility of falling.
With the crutches under my arms, and the nurse’s strong hand on my shoulder to keep me steady, I made two or three feeble, timid strides, and concluding that walking on crutches was not quite what it was “cracked up” to be, I faintly said:
“Nurse, put me down on the bed again: I fear I will never walk well on a crutch.”
“Pshaw!” said he, as he assisted me to return to my couch of straw; “you do well, and you’ll do twice as well next time you try it.”
“Twice as well would be but poorly,” I rejoined. “However, I will do my best.”