Page:Memoirs of Henry Villard, volume 2.djvu/91

 to the skin. General Johnson invited me to share his tent, and had a big fire built under a large “fly” stretched over the entrance to it. Having no change of clothing, as even the extra underwear in my saddle-bags was wet, I had to spend the night in my soaked condition. In a few hours I became very feverish, and felt rheumatic pains all over my body. I suffered intensely, too, all night, from a fearful headache. In the morning, the fever was so high and the rheumatism so acute that I was entirely unable to move. The General sent for the chief surgeon of the division, who came promptly, and, after examining me thoroughly, expressed the opinion that I was suffering from a very severe attack of malarial fever and inflammatory rheumatism. He added that it was altogether out of the question for me to keep on with the army, and that the best thing I could do would be to return to Murfreesboro' or Nashville and go into a hospital. He offered to send me to the former place on an ambulance-train that was soon to start with our wounded of the day before. The thought of having to abandon the field within the first twenty-four hours was most irksome, but as I began to feel confused in my mind and could not stand on my legs, and had to choose between being taken back or left alone in a wild rebel region, I submitted to the inexorable.

An ambulance soon drove up, into which I was lifted on a stretcher. There were already two wounded officers in it, one of whom was able to sit up, so that there was room enough for me to be carried in a lying position. A surgeon accompanied us. The rain continued to come down heavily, and, what with its effect and that of the passage of artillery and trains, the roads had become so bad that our team had to be walked all the forenoon till we struck the turnpike. The ride was very rough, and would have discomforted me greatly had I not been partly out of my senses. It was late in the evening when we arrived at Murfreesboro', where I was transferred to a military hospital that had been established in a large brick building ordinarily used for