Reported that the well prisoners have all left this city for
Millen and we go to-night or to-morrow. I am duly installed as nurse, and walk
with only one cane. Legs still slightly drawn up. Hub Dakin, Land and myself
now mess together. Am feeling very well. Will describe my appearance. Will
interest me to read in after years, if no one else. Am writing this diary to
please myself, now. I weigh one hundred and seventeen pounds, am dressed in
rebel jacket, blue pants with one leg torn off and fringed about half way
between my knee and good sized foot, the same old pair of miss matched shoes I
wore in Andersonville, very good pair of stockings, a “biled” white shirt, and
a hat which is a compromise between a clown's and the rebel white partially
stiff hat; am poor as a tadpole, in fact look just about like an East
Tennesseean, of the poor white trash order. You might say that I am an “honery
looking cuss” and not be far out of the way. My cheeks are sunken, eyes sunken,
sores and blotches both outside and inside my mouth, and my right leg the whole
length of it, red, black and blue and tender of touch. My eyes, too, are very
weak, and in a bright sun I have to draw the slouch hat away down over them.
Bad as this picture is, I am a beauty and picture of health in comparison to my
appearance two months ago. When taken prisoner was fleshy, weighing about one
hundred and seventy or seventy-five, round faced, in fact an overgrown,
ordinary, green looking chap of twenty. Had never endured any hardships at all
and was a spring chicken. As has been proven however, I had an iron
constitution that has carried me through, and above all a disposition to make
the best of everything no matter how bad, and considerable will power with the
rest. When I think of the thousands and thousands of thorough-bred soldiers,
tough and hearty and capable of marching thirty, forty, and even fifty miles in
twenty-four hours and think nothing of it, I wonder and keep wondering that it
can be so, that I am alive and gaining rapidly in health and strength. Believe
now that no matter where we are moved to, I shall continue to improve, and get
well. Succumbed only at the last in Andersonville, when no one could possibly
keep well. With this general inventory of myself and the remark that I haven't
a red cent, or even a Confederate shin-plaster, will put up my diary and get
ready to go where ever they see fit to send us, as orders have come to get
ready. Later —We are on the Georgia Central Railroad, en-route for Millen, Ga.
which is ninety miles from Savannah, and I believe north. Are in box cars and
very crowded with sick prisoners. Two nurses, myself being one of them, have
charge of about a hundred sick. There are, however, over six hundred on the
train.
SOURCE: John L. Ransom, Andersonville Diary, p.
108-9
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