Ping
Of course, 100 years from now, we'll say the same about our present medical procedures.
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
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.
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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.
The novel Unto This Hour by Tom Wicker is a superb fictional account of Second Manassas. Highly recommended.
One of the reasons for all the Civil War memorials in the south is they were built in tribute to the dead who never returned to their loved ones.
Visited Andersonville, GA and the cemetery there.