Charles Barney Dennis at Stones River Part IV: Gresham House Field Hospital December 31, 1862-January 1, 1863
The doctor looked at my wound and said an
ambulance would be after me before long, but have patience he said, there’s a
lot of you fellows scattered over this field, your ambulances are gone and ours
are limited. He was right and when an
ambulance came along it was what they used to call a prairie schooner, the
bottom of the box filled with straw. The little doctor that I had been talking
with said that while my wound was not serious, it would probably keep me from
walking for a few days. I was thrown into the wagon on the straw; not exactly
thrown in but lifted about as if I had been a sack of meal. Others were put in
with me, including my little artillery friend, and we were driven to what had
been the general field hospital of our army for the benefit of the right wing.
[Gresham House]
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| Colonel Leander Stem 101st Ohio |
Arriving at the hospital we were delighted
to find our own surgeons still in charge. An assistant surgeon of our regiment
Dr. [Walter] Caswell was still there and it was to him that I went for relief.
He probed the wound and I believe caused the only real pain it ever gave me. He
located the bullet and identified the type. In the front line of the Rebel
battle line were a lot of sharpshooters armed with what is called down South a
‘deer rifle’ and it was doubtless a ball from one of these that hit me. It was
a half-ounce ball but I have never felt like complaining that it was not a
larger one.
About this time I began to realize that I
was not only wounded but that I was in a hospital that, although established by
the Union forces and in charge of Union surgeons, was inside the Rebel lines.
That became evident when in compliance with Dr. Caswell’s advice to keep on my
feet all that I could, notwithstanding that for two days the wound bled pretty
freely, I started to go out into a grove to the north of the hospital building
to gather some hickory nuts. The hospital building was a large plantation house
surrounded by groves of maple, hickory, oak, and black walnut. The grove was
inside the hospital guard line and immediately I reached the edge of the grove
I was halted by a big, burly Irishman dressed in Rebel uniform. He was he was
guarding the beat and that I couldn’t go out into the grove.
So I turned back and commenced a
conversation with him. He didn’t seem at all loathe to talk, so I asked him
where he was from. He said he had enlisted at Savannah and that his regiment,
the 3rd Confederate Infantry, was made up in Savannah and
Charleston. I asked him how he liked the service. He said oh pretty well, but
whether he liked it or not he had to go sooner or later, so he gave up the job
as policeman and went sooner. I told him finally that I was going after the
nuts because I was hungry and told him how I happened to come to that hospital
without anything to eat, and also that rations in the hospital were very scarce
and had to be held for those that were helpless. At that he handed me a big
piece of corn bread and a chunk of fresh boiled beef. It was not bad just at
that time.
I asked this Irishman if his regiment had
not been given powder and whiskey the night before the battle. He said it had,
that it was to give them pluck to stand up to the fight without getting scared.
I told him that one of his regiment had given me a drink of it when I lay on
the field and that in exchange for the beastly drink he had taken my gun and
cartridge box. ‘Beastly did you say?’ he replied. I said yes, I wanted a drink
of water and when I got that rotten dope I felt like killing the fellow that
gave it to me. All right, he says, I was about to offer you a drink of the same
stuff, but since you have such a high regard for it, I’ll keep it. He was not a
bad fellow, only he had the blustering, bullying way that a good many Irish policemen
have.
The scene within the hospital grounds was
anything but cheerful, although the best possible care had been given the
wounded, there was much that could have been done for their comfort, and many a
poor chap died from lack of proper nursing. The ground outside were covered
with badly wounded men, some of them mangled horribly, waiting for room to be
made in the operating rooms. Before they reached there many of them died. In a
place screened off by brush, there was a row of more than a hundred dead that
had died after being brought to the hospital. I concluded that I would ask the
surgeon in charge (Dr. Blount) if he could not give me some light work that I
could do- anything that would distract my attention from the gruesome sights of
the hospital and grounds, and incidentally get me a little nearer the culinary
department. I began to feel the need of substantial food.
The surgeon put me writing tags that were
pinned to every dead man; the tag was his record so far as it could be
obtained. Passing around the grounds the next day [January 1, 1863] I found the
body of a man and raised the blanket to see his face. It was our own Lieutenant
Colonel Moses Wooster. He had died the night before and had been laid out there
in his uniform, a card pinned to him but the name on it was as far from Wooster
as Wooster was from life. I got another card, wrote his name on it together
with his rank and home address of Norwalk, Ohio. His remains were sent there
later on for burial. [The Norwalk
Reflector reported that Wooster’s remains were brought home from Nashville
by his brother. ‘We are told that Colonel Wooster’s overcoat was pierced by
seven balls during the fight in which he was killed. The wounds which caused
his death were received in the lower limbs.’]
During the day a flashy little Confederate
French major appeared on the grounds and asked to see the surgeon in charge. He
was shown in while I was still in Dr. Blount’s room. He was very courteous and
begged the doctors effusively, saying that it was his painful duty to ask that
all the men in and about the hospital who could walk be ordered into line and
that he would march them into Murfreesboro where they would take trains for the
various Southern prison camps. The doctor told him that he had a number of men
who could walk but that their services in the hospital were absolutely
indispensable. The major offered no objection to his retaining those that were
needed but said that every man so retained must take the oath of parole, an
oath that binds him not to take up arms against the Confederate States until
rightfully exchanged. I took this oath but broke it within two days.
The little French major was the only thing
we had seen to laugh at since we came to the hospital, and he sure was funny,
twisting his head to one side and shrugging his shoulders, talking with his
hands, and flying about like a hen with its head off. During his antics one of
our batteries, way off to the northwest a mile and a half opened up on some
object which brought the hospital directly in the line of the shots. The little
major was furious, stormed about calling Dr. Blount’s attention to this woeful
disregard of the civilized rules of warfare and finally wound by saying that if
the doctor did not find a way to stop that battery, every dead and wounded man
in the hospital would be killed! A very large yellow flag was put up higher
than it had been, and after a little the shooting stopped, but whether on
account of the flag or because the major took exception we never knew.
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