A WOMAN WOUNDED IN BATTLE.
A WOMAN who had served as a private soldier in the ranks was severely wounded and taken prisoner at Chickamauga. She fell in a charge made upon the Confederates; and as the troops immediately fell back she was left with the other wounded on the field, in the enemy’s lines. As she was dressed as the other soldiers were, her sex was not discovered till she was under a surgeon’s care in the hospital. She was wounded in the thigh. No bones were broken; but it was a deep, ugly flesh wound, as if torn by a fragment of a shell.
A day or two afterwards she was sent with a flag of truce into the Union lines.
The sum and substance of the official message sent with this woman was: “As the Confederates do not use women in war, this woman, wounded in battle, is returned to you.” There was great indignation in the regiment to which this woman belonged; and officers and men hastened to protest, that, although she had been with them for more than a year, not one in the regiment suspicioned that she was a woman. She stood the long, hard marches, did full duty on the picket-line and in camp, and had fought well in all the battles in which the regiment took part. She was in the hospital at Chattanooga for some time, where I first met her. When she was able to bear the transportation, she was removed to a hospital at Nashville. I met her there again and again, and tried to ascertain why she had enlisted.
“Had you a husband in the regiment?” I questioned.
“No.”
“A lover or friend?”
“No, I didn’t know any of them.”
“Well, why did you enlist?”