To us chaps, who got nothing
better than whiskey, this was a rare treat, and we emptied the remainder
of his half pint, at a pull apiece. After tapping this rum, we carried
the poor lad up to the house, and turned him over to the doctors. We found
the rooms filled with wounded already, and the American and English
doctors hard at work on them.
As we left the hospital, we agreed to get a canteen apiece, and go round
among the dead, and fill them with Jamaica. When our canteens were about a
third full, we came upon a young American rifleman, who was lying under
an appletree. He was hit in the head, and was in a very bad way. We were
all three much struck with the appearance of this young man, and I now
remember him as one of the handsomest youths I had ever seen. His wound
did not bleed, though I thought the brains were oozing out, and I felt so
much sympathy for him, that I washed his hurt with the rum. I fear I did
him harm, but my motive was good. Bill Southard ran to find a surgeon, of
whom several were operating out on the field. The young man kept saying
"no use," and he mentioned "father and mother," "Vermont." He even gave me
the names of his parents, but I was too much in the wind, from the use of
rum, to remember them. We might have been half an hour with this young
rifleman, busy on him most of the time, when he murmured a few words, gave
me one of the sweetest smiles I ever saw on a man's face, and made no more
signs of life.
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