Time slowly dragging itself along. Cut some wretchs hair most
every day. Have a sign out “Hair Cutting,” as well as “Washing,” and by the
way, Battese has a new wash board made from a piece of the scaffold lumber.
About half the time do the work for nothing, in fact not more than one in three
or four pays anything — expenses not much though, don't have to pay any rent.
All the mess keeps their hair cut short which is a very good advertisement. My
eyes getting weak with other troubles. Can just hobble around. Death rate more
than ever, reported one hundred and sixty five per day; said by some to be more
than that, but 165 is about the figure Bad enough without making any worse than
it really is. Jimmy Devers most dead and begs us to take him to the hospital
and guess will have to. Every morning the sick are carried to the gate in
blankets and on stretchers, and the worst cases admitted to the hospital.
Probably out of five or six hundred half are admitted Do not think any lives
after being taken there; are past all human aid. Four out of every five prefer
to stay inside and die with their friends rather than go to the hospital. Hard
stories reach us of the treatment of the sick out there and I am sorry to say
the cruelty emanates from our own men who act as nurses. These dead beats and
bummer nurses are the same bounty jumpers the U. S. authorities have had so
much trouble with. Do not mean to say that all the nurses are of that class but
a great many of them are.
SOURCE: John L. Ransom, Andersonville Diary, p.
88
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