Of my company (E) twenty-four were captured, the most of them strong healthy men. As the winter advanced and the cold grew more intense, many of them lost hope and dropped away. From my position in the hospital, to which I had been elected after recovering sufficient strength, I was able to be of help to them. I passed out crust-coffee and opium pills whenever I could get them. The stoutest hearted man in the company was the first to die. A native of Maine, a blacksmith by trade, Jones seemed the one best fitted to endure hardship, yet, allowing himself to become disheartened, he quickly fell a prey to disease. On one of my visits to the boys I found one of them, a corporal (Glines), failing fast. I asked permission of the superintendent to admit him to the hospital as a patient and it was granted. Two days later, I heard that another corporal (Horton) of my company, a near neighbor and friend at home, wished to see me. I found him lying in the mud of his tent, and I knew by the look of his face that he could not live. He asked me if I could do anything for him or, at least, give him some opium. I got some of the pills for him and told him I would do what I could towards getting him into the hospital. Knowing that he could not live much longer he said, "Tell the folks at home I died trying to do my duty and thinking of them." Going back to the ward, I besought the privilege of bringing him to the hospital. The superintendent replied that there was no vacancy, but would be on the morrow, but I might go after supper and get him and give him a place under a bunk. I went upstairs and cooked our scanty meal and, while doing so, the night patients were brought in. While eating my supper, one of the nurses, a pompous fellow, came in and said that one of the patients was a young fellow who insisted on seeing me before going under his bunk. On being told that I was busy upstairs the nurse said he whined, "I wish you would call Johnnie, one moment," but he put a stop to his "nonsense," as the nurse said, by showing him his place for the night and said that he had fainted in taking it. Indignant that my friend had been denied so small a favor, I hurried down to the place where he had been put and cried, "Fred," and, as no answer came I supposed him asleep and thought I would not disturb him. After finishing my work at midnight, I went upstairs to retire; shortly afterward the nurse in attendance called that a corporal, under the bunks, was dead. Hurrying down, I found my friend stiff and cold in death in the middle of the floor. A friend and playmate from boyhood, the merriest boy of us all, smart in school, most joyous in sport, he was the life of our youthful circle. We had enlisted together; his parents, brothers and sisters were all well known to me and I must tell the sad story to them—how he had died in a hospital of which I was an attendant, yet had been unable to comfort him in his dying hours. The sight of my grief was a good lesson to the nurses who were more ready to grant favors thereafter. Horton, the other corporal, died the same night.
A great many died from the effects of the cold weather; numbers of them had their feet frost-bitten and, as they were not taken care of, mortification set in, to be followed by death. Many a poor fellow, weak with disease, left his tent at night, and, stumbling in the darkness would fall and being too weak to call for help would be found in the morning a frozen corpse. Finally, without any warning, on the to us ever memorable 20th of February, '65, orders came to have the sick ready for removal. It was with joyful hearts that we obeyed and, when the gate was opened that we might carry them out, we could hardly contain ourselves for joy. Only when the cars had fully started could we realize that Salisbury, with its filth and dirt, its misery and degradation, its dying and dead, was being left for good. With feeble voices we sang "Praise God from Whom all Blessings Flow" and many a prayer of thanksgiving was breathed that we had lived to see the glad hour.
SERGT. MAJOR C. K. CONN
Sergt. Major Chas. K. Conn, originally of Company K, was wounded May 8, '64, captured and carried to Richmond. After recovering from his wounds he was retained as a clerk, one of his duties being to make out the lists of those who were to be paroled. Having a happy thought one day while preparing a roll of names, he wrote his own among those of men about to start for God's country, and when the party in charge called for those thus enumerated, Conn stepped forth with the invalids to whom parole privileges were confined in 1864. One of the Confederate officers, noticing him among the sick men, asked him what he was doing there. To the query the quick witted Yankee replied, "I heard my name called and so responded." The facts in the case were not discovered till after Conn had gone too far to be called back, though he felt extremely shaky until he was safely aboard the Union vessel.
J. F. LESLIE'S RUSE
This Company K man thought his liberty worth risking something for; captured Aug. 19, '64, he too had been taken to Richmond, "Libby" and Belle Isle, where he informed his comrades he purposed trying the sick dodge by way of the hospital, for he had discerned that the sick and wounded would go first. His friends tried to dissuade him, saying that he would surely be found out and might be made to suffer all the more on account of his attempted cheat. He tried the rebel doctor every morning with his complaints, but was careful to take none of the latter's medicine, throwing all of it away. At last the surgeon, suspecting shamming on the Yankee's part, prepared a Spanish-fly plaster, 4 x 8 inches in size, which could not be disposed of as his medicine had been. Leslie put it on his body, keeping it on all night, and when he visited the doctor in the morning and was asked if it had had any effect he was able to show a blister the full size of the plaster. This convinced the officer that our man was not shamming, for as he said, "Any man who could stand that could not be 'playing it'," so he was sent to the hospital in Richmond, "Yankee, 21," as it was called. On getting there he hardly dared move for fear of being sent back. One morning the hospital doctor, saying that he would give him something to make him sleep, left a potion with the injunction to make sure that it was taken; there was no way open but to take it, but it was spat out the moment the steward passed to the next patient. The look of astonishment on the doctor's face the next morning convinced the patient that it was a dose for final sleep that the surgeon had prepared; at any rate he never came near Leslie's cot again. In a few days the "artful dodger" was paroled, while his comrades were sent to Salisbury and Andersonville where the most of them died.