Another fine day,
and another trip downstairs. My legs behaved better this time. Am not near so tired.
Now that I can write without getting tired I must put down some things I
remember, but which I could not write at the time. I shall always remember them
of course, but I want to see how near I can describe them on paper. First I
want to say how very kind my comrades have been all through. I can think of
many acts of kindness now that I paid little attention to then, but they kept
coming along just the same. Whatever else I think of, the thought of their care
for me and how they got passes and tramped miles to get me something to eat,
always taking it to Dr. Andrus first to see if it would do for me these
thoughts keep coming up and my load of gratitude keeps getting heavier. Can I
ever repay them? God has been good to me, better than I deserve. I was first
taken to the room where I am now writing. I remember but little of what
happened before I was taken out and put in the big hospital tent. It is a large
affair, made up of several tents joined together endwise and wide enough for
two rows of cots along the side, with an alley through the middle, towards
which our feet all pointed.
I remember the head
medical man coming through every day or so and the doctors would take him to
certain cots, where they would look on the fellows lying there and put down something
in a book. I soon noticed that most always such a one died in a short time, and
I watched for their coming to my cot. One day they did, and I remember how it
made me feel. Dr. Andrus was so worked down that a strange doctor was in
charge, but under Dr. Andrus, who had charge over all. When he came through I
motioned to him and he came and sat on the next cot, when I told him I would
get well if I could get something good to eat. "All right," said he,
"what will you have?" I told him a small piece of beefsteak. He sent
one of the nurses to his mess cook and he soon came back with a plate and on it
a little piece of steak which he prepared to feed me. But the smell was enough
and I could not even taste it. The doctor then proceeded to eat it, asking if I
could think of anything else. I thought a bottle of beer would surely taste
good and so he sent to the sutler's for it. But he had to drink that too, for I
could not. He laughed at me and though I was disappointed, it cheered me up
more than anything else had done for a long time. When I got so I could eat, I
surely thought he would starve me to death.
A poor fellow across
the tent opposite me got crazy and it took several men to hold him on his cot.
The doctor came and injected something in his breast which quieted him for the
night, but when it wore off he was just as bad and he finally died in one of
them. On my right lay a man sick unto death, while on my left lay another whose
appetite had come and who was begging everybody for something to eat. His company
boys brought him some bread and milk which he ate as if famished. The next
morning when I awoke and looked about to see how many faces were covered up I
found both my right and left hand neighbors had died in the night and their
blankets were drawn up over their faces. The sights I saw while I was able to
realize what was going on were not calculated to cheer me up and how I
acted when I was out of my head I don't know. At any rate I got better and was
brought back to this room, where I have since been.
SOURCE:
Lawrence Van Alstyne, Diary of an Enlisted Man, pp. 92-4
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