“This appealed to the common sense of the sergeant, who did n't seem to be a bad fellow, but simply ignorant. He sent for his captain, and in a little while the captain came. It was hard to distinguish the captain from the soldiers, as they were all dressed alike; some of them had pieces of red cloth sewed on their sleeves, and the captain had stripes on his shoulders that looked just a little like shoulder-straps.
“The doctor delivered his message, and the captain told him to wait awhile till he could report to General Price. Then the fellows of the picket began to talk to us, and we got on pretty well, though we thought they boasted a little too much under the circumstances about having just licked our army and made us go back to Springfield.
“They asked us for tobacco, but we had n't any, and then they hinted that a little coffee would taste very well. We told them we had been short of coffee for the last two weeks. They would hardly believe us, but declared that while we had n't had as much as we wanted, they had been forced to go without it altogether. Fact is, they did n't look as though they had been well fed. One of'em took an ear of corn from his pocket and said it was to be his supper, his breakfast having been just like it.
“The captain came back with another officer, and then we went on to where the general's body was lying. The soldiers crowded around us, the same sort of butternut fellows as we met at the picket. One of 'em started to say something insulting to us, but the captain shut him up with a word, and after that the only affronts we had were scowls and occasional mutterings about the Yankees and Dutch. The captain came with us to the place where the picket was, and then let us go. The doctor thanked him for his politeness, and offered him a cigar, which he accepted with the remark that it was the first he had seen for two months.”
CHAPTER XIV. LOSSES IN BATTLE—THE RETREAT.
We expected to pick up one or two of the wounded men into my wagon on our way back,” said Harry, “but found we did n't have to. The other wagons had followed close behind us, and gathered up all who could n't walk or take care of themselves. Some of the country people were out looking after them, too, and by this time everybody ought to be cared for in some way. But, of course, there 'll be a great deal of suffering under the best of circumstances, as there is a great number of wounded men on both sides.” And Harry was right; there was a great number of wounded in proportion to the number of men engaged. It has been said by students of warfare that down to that time there had never been in the United States a battle in which the proportion of casualties was as great as at Wilson's Creek, and without stopping to examine the histories of all previous battles this is a safe assertion. Let us look at the figures:
The total of the Union forces was not far from five thousand four hundred, including officers and men. They lost in the battle two hundred and fifty-eight killed, eight hundred and seventy-three wounded, and one hundred eighty-six missing, a total of casualties of one thousand three hundred and seventeen; or, deducting the missing, we have of killed and wounded on the field of Wilson's Creek, one thousand one hundred and thirty-one, or more than one in five of all who were present; and it is generally considered by military men that where the killed and wounded are one-tenth of the total on the field the battle is a severe one.
The rebel reports place their effective force on the tenth of August at ten thousand one hundred and seventy-five, of which two hundred and seventy-nine were killed and nine hundred and fifty-one wounded, a total of one thousand two hundred and thirty, or about one man in nine of the whole force. Even this was a heavy loss, but much smaller in proportion when compared with that of General Lyon's army.