bullet in the left shoulder, which had passed from the front through the
flesh and out behind, fracturing the shoulder blade and inflicting a
severe but not dangerous wound. He thinks he was the mark of a
sharpshooter of the enemy hid in the bushes, near where he and I had
sat so long during the cannonade; and he was wounded and taken off the
field before the fire of the main lines of infantry had commenced, he
being at the time he was hit near the left of his division. Gen. Hancock
was struck a little later near the same part of the field by a bullet,
piercing and almost going through his thigh, without touching the bone,
however. His wound was severe, also. He was carried back out of range,
but before he would be carried off the field, he lay upon the ground in
sight of the crest, where he could see something of the fight, until he
knew what would be the result.
And then, at Gen. Gibbon's request, I had to tell him and a large
voluntary crowd of the wounded who pressed around now, for the wounds
they showed not rebuked for closing up to the Generals, the story of the
fight. I was nothing loth; and I must say though I used sometimes before
the war to make speeches, that I never had so enthusiastic an audience
before. Cries of "good," "glorious," frequently interrupted me, and the
storming of the wall was applauded by enthusiastic tears and the waving
of battered, bloody hands.
By the custom of the service the General had the right to have me along
with him, while away with his wound; but duty and inclination attracted
me still to the field, and I obtained the General's consent to stay.
Accompanying Gen. Gibbon to Westminster, the nearest point to which
railroad trains then ran, and seeing him transferred from an ambulance
to the cars for Baltimore on the 4th, the next day I returned to the
field to his division, since his wounding in the command of Gen. Harrow.
On the 6th of July, while my bullet bruise was yet too inflamed and
sensitive for me to be good for much in the way of duty--the division
was then halted for the day some four miles from the field on the
Baltimore turnpike--I could not repress the desire or omit the
opportunity to see again where the battle had been. With the right
stirrup strap shortened in a manner to favor the bruised leg, I could
ride my horse at a walk without serious discomfort. It seemed very
strange upon approaching the horse-shoe crest again, not to see it
covered with the thousand
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