Under the guns

by Annie Wittenmyer

The next morning early I went into the nearest hospital. The building was an old, dilapidated frame structure, that had been used as a store. Scores of wounded and sick men were crowded into these poor narrow quarters.

But it is not my purpose just now to speak of them, or of the hospital management, but of a child I found there.

He was lying on a cot in a little back room. They called him “Willie.” He said he was “goin’ on eight;” but if he was that old, he was very small of his age. His face was wondrous fair and beautiful, and his hair hung in golden ringlets about his head. He had been very ill, and was still too weak to leave his bed. But he was bright and happy, and a great favorite with the men, who, lying on their beds, whittled toys for Willie with their pocket-knives out of anything they could utilize for that purpose, such as sticks and bones.

I took a great deal of pains to ascertain the facts about the boy. He was a fatherless, motherless child, who had followed the soldiers when they marched away from the town where he was temporarily staying. No one cared, and no one followed to bring him back, and so he went on with them.

The simple story, as he told it, seemed to be sustained by the facts I afterwards gathered.

“I wanted to go to the war,” he said; “I had no mother, and I did not want to stay at that place. I did not like the people, so when the soldiers went to the war I went too. Some of the men said, that first day, ‘Little boy, you had better run back home;’ but I told them I had no home, that my mother was dead, and that I was not going back; that I was going to the war, so they put me in a wagon to ride. At night I had no place to sleep; but a man who said he had a little boy at home, about as big as me, said I could sleep with him, and he hugged me up under his blanket.

“Then after that I had a place in a wagon, the colonel said I might. Sometimes I rode on the horses behind the big officers. But they wouldn’t let me go to fight; they made me stay back in the wagon. I didn’t like that; I wanted to go to the fights.”

A few days after I found Willie I was in the hospital, when a gentleman came in seeking some one. He was from Ohio. He happened to see Willie, and was wonderfully attracted to the child, and Willie seemed to take a great fancy to the gentleman. He came daily to see Willie during his stay in Sedalia. “This child,” he said to me one day, with tears in his eyes, “looks so much like my own boy, my only child, who died a few months ago, that I want to adopt him if my wife will consent. But her heart is so nearly broken by grief, that she may shrink from the plan.”

I told him that I, too, had taken a great fancy to the boy, and had determined that he should have a good home, and that through my friend, General Curtis, who commanded at St. Louis, I should hold the boy till the best of references were furnished. To this he made no objections; and as soon as he reached St. Louis he sent the very best indorsements, furnishing the most ample evidence that he was in every way worthy of such a charge, as he was a wealthy Christian gentleman. Dr. Irwin, Acting Medical Director, readily concurred; and it was agreed that if, when the boy was able to travel, they wanted him, he should be sent.

Soon after he reached home, a telegram came: “All right—send Willie by express, C. O. D.” (collect on delivery). When the contents of the telegram became known, there was great excitement among the patients. How could they part with Willie? And yet as he was to have a good home they rejoiced with Willie, who was delighted with the news that he was to go.