The
court-house, one church, warehouses, stores, and hotels were converted
into hospitals. Row after row of beds filled every ward. Upon them lay
wrecks of humanity, pale as the dead, with sunken eyes, hollow cheeks
and temples, long, claw-like hands. Oh, those poor, weak, nerveless
hands used to seem to me more pitiful than all; and when I remembered
all they had achieved and how they had lost their firm, sinewy
proportions, their strong grasp, my heart swelled with pity and with
passionate devotion. Often I felt as if I could have held these cold
hands to my heart for warmth, and given of my own warm blood to fill
those flaccid veins.
Every train brought in squads of just such poor fellows as I have
tried to describe. How well I remember them toiling painfully from the
depot to report at the surgeon's office, then, after being relieved of
their accoutrements, tottering with trembling limbs to the beds from
which, perhaps, they would never more arise. This hospital-post, as
nearly as I remember, comprised only two hospitals, the Bragg and the
Buckner. Of the Bragg, Dr. S.M. Bemiss was surgeon in charge;
assistant surgeons, Gore, of Kentucky; Hewes, of Louisville, Kentucky;
Welford, of Virginia; Redwood, of Mobile, Alabama, and some others
whose names I cannot now recall.
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