Page:Southern Historical Society Papers volume 37.djvu/248

 up. I told him I was wounded and "perhaps bleeding to death. He gazed at me an instant and soliloquized: "What a likely fellow! What a pity! What a pity!" and moved on a few yards, when a shot from the woods fatally wounded him. He came staggering back, saying, "Johnny Reb, please kill me"—fell a few yards off crying out with pain—got up and staggered a few yards further fell and all was hushed in death. The skirmish line then retired into the trenches until after dark, when they covered the ground and commenced removing the wounded.

The enemy treated me with great consideration and kindness. I was the ranking living officer of the brigade they had to deal with. General Anderson (I think that was the officer's name), who commanded the Pennsylvania reserves, whom we fought, had me carried on a stretcher to his headquarters, administered whiskey to me with his own hands as I was cold and chilly—offered me something to eat—gave directions that I should have special medical attention and said that "I, and every man I had, should be well treated—that he had never seen men come up at a 'right-shoulder shift arms' and meet death like mine did before." He asked me specially about the "red cap" "color bearer," whose taking off he saw.

The next morning I was taken to a field hospital in the beautiful yard of Dr. Brockenbrough, the brother of my old friend, Judge John W. Brockenbrough, and his tiny little girl bravely came into the enemy's tent with the maimed and dying and fed with a spoon her fallen defender. (God bless her.) All of their ambulances being engaged hauling their own wounded to the "White House" for shipment North, they fitted up a spring wagon drawn by four horses, by filling the body with pine tags, specially for me alone, and detailed one of my own men, slightly wounded, to wait on me. On my arrival at the wharf, while waiting, my three officers—Captain Stratton, Lieutenant Reid, and Lieutenant Anderson (under guard), found me in the wagon. I made one of the "Sanitary Commission," constantly passing, dispensing every known delicacy to eat and to drink to their wounded, give them a drink of French brandy, and made the driver fill their haversacks from the barrel of provisions in the wagon. I never saw but one of them again.

I was shipped hence to Lincoln Hospital, Washington, D. C.