Bones of Civil War dead found on a battlefield tell their horror stories

Stars and Stripes ^ | June 20, 2018 | MICHAEL E. RUANE

[robowombat]

The bullet probably hit the Union soldier as he was fleeing. It may have struck his cartridge box first, which sent it tumbling through the muscle of his right buttock, broke his right leg and buried itself sideways in his thigh bone just below the hip.

[Bellflower]

Ping

[fso301]

I hate to think what the survival odds were for soldiers receiving such "state of the art" medical treatment back then.

Of course, 100 years from now, we'll say the same about our present medical procedures.

[outofsalt]

Memorial Day was originally called Decoration Day; it referred to the practice of decorating Civil War soldiers’ tombs with bouquets of lilacs. https://www.va.gov/opa/speceven/memday/history.asp

[rlmorel]

Very interesting article. Sad. The butchery, violence, anonymous death. Being buried in a pit with a bunch of arms and legs due to necessity.

Then forgotten like the arms and legs.

The whole thing is very strange and sad, yet...completely in line with war as it has been for most of human history.

[rlmorel]

Agreed. Well, you don’t know what you don’t know.

I expect at some point, we will figure out how to re-grow limbs, regenerate nerves and such, and the procedures today, as you said, will look like blood-letting from medieval times.

[Eric in the Ozarks]

I visited the mass burial ground of Confederate soldiers near Richland, MO Saturday.
The state finally recognized the Battle of Monday Hollow from 157 years ago.

[rlmorel]

I honestly had never heard of it, so I had to look it up, and it does sound like a large skirmish, but...I would think it felt like a "battle" to those involved.

I did find this passage interesting:

"...Learning of Wyman's approach, the rebels drew up in a line of battle on a hillside overlooking the road the Union soldiers would have to pass. A wagon train hauling Union soldiers who had been wounded at Wilson's Creek happened along from the opposite direction (on its way from Springfield to Rolla) and was not allowed to pass. The Southerners and the convalescent Union soldiers reportedly exchanged a few jeers as the rebels waited to launch their attack on the approaching soldiers under Wyman. The rebels supposedly laughed that there would soon be a few more wounded Federals to haul to Rolla..."

There was something about this that seemed to me so unique to the American Civil War.

[Southside_Chicago_Republican]

Bookmark

[PUGACHEV]

Once in the ‘70s, I went to the Manassas Battelfield and located the railroad cut where Union charges were repeatedly thrown back during the second battle. The portion of the cut I found was in a light woods in which the trees were probably less than fifty years old. The cut was well defined, but unpreserved. I walked out about fifty yards from the cut and began noticing rectagonal areas of slightly sunken soil, typically ten to fifteen feet long and five to six feet wide. These were scattered in the thin woods parallel to the cut and going back toward the cut. The impression I had is that these were burial pits, arraigned for the convience of those gathering the bodies for burial.

[ExNewsExSpook]

Numerous cases from the war of soldiers being wounded in combat and undergoing those horrific amputations. They would survive the surgery, be discharged from the Army and return home, only to die a few weeks or months later from a post-op infection. In the days before antibiotics (and sulfa drugs were in short supply), there was little that could be done for those veterans, outside of something to ease their pain and final suffering.

[fella]

In many parts of the South it is still called Decoration Day.

[odawg]

“...completely in line with war as it has been for most of human history.”

And this one completely tragic and unnecessary. Neither side ever dreamed it would be that long and costly.

[bitt]

p

[rlmorel]

Which is one of the reasons I am unsettled by the talk of civil war we sometimes see.

I understand 100% the sentiment, and it may be true that we are indeed heading for a point of no conciliation with people who wish to destroy our Constitution and ways of life, as I accurately characterize the American Left, in my opinion.

But it is my feeling that people who clamor for this kind of thing get caught up in it without sufficiently recognizing or acknowledging that the death, suffering, cost, and long term misery that will be imposed cause most of the people involved to wonder how, once completely enveloped in the conflict, it ever started, and how they could get out of it.

For some reason, out of the blue, I felt like watching “Gone With The Wind” the other night, and it was the attitude “Well, the war will be over in a few weeks” that was accepted and prevalent. Granted, that was only a Hollywood movie, but I know that was the sentiment of many. Hell, that explains the crazy behavior of people at the First Battle of Bull Run (Manasses) who came in carriages with picnics to watch.

[rlmorel]

Also, like WWI. I have always thought that WWII was NOT avoidable...there was going to be war.

But WWI was just a horrible, horrible meat grinder of war that seems in retrospect that it could have been avoided.

When you read “The Guns of August”, knowing the carnage that resulted, it makes you nearly sick to your stomach, the whole, idiotic, stupid lead up to the shooting war.

[Oatka]

The bullet probably hit the Union soldier as he was fleeing. It may have struck his cartridge box first, which sent it tumbling through the muscle of his right buttock, broke his right leg and buried itself sideways in his thigh bone just below the hip.

The Minie ball caused tissue damage the surgeons had never seen before and was the cause for so many amputations.

The old smoothbore pure lead .69 cal round ball just snapped the bone and or plowed through the tissue when it hit. The pure lead .58 cal Minie ball, fired from a rifled barrel, mushroomed to about the size of a quarter and went through the body like a sideways buzz-saw. If it hit a bone, the shock splintered the bone far above the impact area and the surgeon had no choice but to cut off the shattered part.

That, plus the generals using 1812 tactics (massed troops using close range fire and in with the bayonet) against Minie rifles that could hit a standing man at 500 yards and someone in an artillery crew at 1,000 yards considerably ramped up the casualties.

If you look at the last year of that war, you can see the transitioning to WWI - trenches, with sharpened wooden stakes (barbed wire) in front, rail transport, etc.

[SunkenCiv]

Thanks Bellflower.

[robowombat]

The WBTS was considered a ‘healthy war’ with those dying from disease being no more than twice or one and a half times those killed or dying of wounds. In the Mexican War those dying from disease were as 7 to 9 to 1 for those killed or dying of wounds.

[silverleaf]

Thanks