With the Rank and File

by Thomas J. Ford

"Yes, doctor, probe away now all you mind to." And he did, and said it was no use in punishing me. He could not locate the bullet, and even if he did, it could not be removed without loss of life; it may never injure me, but he could not tell now what the result might be in the future.

I was assigned to a place to lie down on the floor. I soon fell asleep, and when I awoke my neck, face and breast seemed to be one thickness. Well, I thought I would get up, but no, my head would not rise by my will. I thought if I just had somebody to lift my head for me I would be all right, when, seemingly by instinct, my right hand raised and caught myself by the hair of my head, and I was on my feet.

An order came to the surgeons to send the wounded to Chattanooga. All who were shot in the legs and not able to walk would be carried in ambulances to Resaca and there take the train for Chattanooga. I came under the order of able to walk, as the meaning of that term is applied in cases of emergency, where transportation is limited, as it was in that case. We struck out, a lot of us that had to walk, but soon commenced trudging along according to our strength, until there were hardly two together. Every stream I would cross I would dip my head in the water and then fill my old Kossuth hat full and put it on my head. Arriving at Calhoun early in the afternoon, I stopped at the first house. There were two rebel ladies standing on the porch looking at the wounded as they passed by. I was very weak and wanted some milk, as I could not eat or chew anything, my mouth being nearly closed. By a great many signs and mutterings I succeeded in getting one to understand what I wanted, but she said they had no milk; that there was a Union woman in the next block over there that had two or three cows and she most always had some milk.

"You got hit, did you?" she asked. "Well, we don't like to see you'uns get hurt, but we do like to see you'uns get licked. You'uns killed my true love when you went by here the other day. He stayed behind his command to bid me good-bye and to have a little talk, when you Yankees came onto him and three others of our boys. They ran into the brush down there," pointing in the direction that she wanted me to know, "and there you killed my true love."

I listened very attentively, with my eyes fixed on a picture that she wore on her breast. I recognized the picture and muttered out to her as best I could that if she thought so much of her true love she ought to see about it and have him buried. He was lying down there a little ways from the turnpike road, swelled up as big as a two hundred pounder.

The circumstances concerning my knowledge of this incident are: Those four rebels ran from the brush to a small log-house about fifteen or twenty rods from the road where we were marching, and were firing from their hiding place. A squad was sent out there and surrounded the little log-house. This true love escaped by jumping through the window, and was shot and killed. The other three were taken prisoners.

I made my way to the Union woman in the next block. I saw a dozen wounded men go into the house. Thinks I to myself, "There is no chance there for me to get any milk," but before I reached the house they came out again, and I went in. She was a fine, clever-looking woman, with three little girl children. I made known my wants.

"Yes," she said, "I have plenty of milk for you, although I have been refusing it all day; so many came together that the little I had would do them no good." At the same time she poured the milk out into a cooking utensil and placed it on the stove and said, "As you came alone I have plenty for you; and indeed you need it more than any one who has come in here to-day."

She broke some round crackers into the milk, inquired about my wound, said it smelled bad, took off the bandage, washed it and dressed it with new linen and threw my old bandages out doors. By this time my milk and crackers were cooked. As I could not chew or open my mouth to take in coarse food, she fixed it so it was thin, like gruel; cooled it sufficiently, spread a table cloth on part of the table where I sat, and I felt just ninety-nine per cent. better than when I first entered that house. Her cheerfulness and willingness to do good made me feel so much better that I could not express it by words. I drew that food through my teeth with such force that it did not take a very great length of time to put it where it was much needed for a nourishment.

I will say right here when you found a Union man or woman in the Southern States, you found them as loyal and as true as steel. I was now ready to go on my journey to Resaca. The train was to leave there at 8 o'clock. Before I left Adairsville hospital I changed a $5 bill and gave half of it to a comrade of mine, John Howard, who was shot in the elbow. Twenty-six pieces of bone were taken out of his elbow. Dr. Hasse wanted to cut it off, but Howard said he would rather die with it on than live with it off. The doctor thought possibly that he might save it. The weather was very warm. Gangrene set in. His arm was cut off three times, and the poor fellow, after a long season of suffering, went to the other shore. Changing the $5 bill, which was all the money I had, left me with two dollars and a half in fifty cent shinplasters, as we called that kind of money. In bidding good-bye to my good Union woman, with tears in my eyes I offered her all the money I had. She would not take any. She said it did her so much good to do something for a Union soldier that she only wished she could do more. I took her address and bade her good-bye. Her three little girls followed me out to the gate leading on the sidewalk, and I slipped fifty cents apiece in their little hands. I felt so much better, and my heart was so filled up with the kindness that I received from that good Union woman in the very heart of the Confederate States, that if I had had it I could have given those little ones one hundred dollars apiece as willingly as I gave them fifty cents each. That woman saved my life, for gangrene was beginning to show itself, and I never could have reached Resaca without that nourishment and the cleansing of my wound. I reached Resaca just as the train was pulling out, grabbed hold of the side door of the last box-car and the boys pulled me in while the train was moving quite fast.