ENPages
348
giving plenty of work to the ambulances during the engagement, and they left on the field over 50 of their dead who were buried by our people, after having first stripped the bodies of their clothing, for everything in the way of wearing apparel was already getting scarce in the Confederacy.
This reconnaissance, as the enemy called their advance on the railroad, was very badly managed. There was no reason for them to have attempted to dislodge us from the grove of oaks, and although the bridge on the causeway which separated them from ourselces had been taken up, if they had had a bold leader, a small party might have advanced, perhaps with some loss, and replaced the planks which had only been laid near by, and then a rapid rush over the causeway in column would have enabled them to drive out of the grove the small numbers who were holding it. Having reached the point where their last attack was made, they should have marched through the fields between them and the railroad, leaving at the same time a small force to engage our attention at old Pocotaligo. Good guides were difficult for them to obtain, and when they were negroes they were easily alarmed by the excitement of an engagement. The general who commanded at Port Royal was named Mitchell, who had resigned from the army many years before, and had been in charge of the observatory at Cincinnati. He was a very amiable and interesting person to talk with, but he was probably too much of a star-gazer to be a good general. The reconnaissance was not commanded by him but by some brigadier under him. Mitchell died soon afterwards of a fever, which he probably contracted by exposure to the autumnal malaria of the coast region.
The hospital at McPhersonville, which had been the church of the village, was very poorly supplied with suitable beds. The one on which I was told to lie was without a mattress, and the next day Dr Isaac Gregorie sent me one from his father's house, which altered the situation, as far as I was concerned, very much for the better. There was no painful swelling that followed my wound, but during the first night a slight bleeding continued which escaped into the cellular tissue of the face just under the skin. This caused a dropsical or infiltrated condition that included the lids of both eyes, and which made them close entirely for a couple of days. In order to see anyone who approached my bed, I was obliged to draw the lower lid down with my finger, and only by doing so could I see at all. My features too were considerably bloodshot around the wound, and as my friends saw my face on coming near my bed, I appeared to them very seriously wounded.
On a bed opposite to mine there lay for a few days a dragoon named Hopkins, from near Columbia, who had been struck by a ball in the side, which he believed had entered his body. It was considered to be a mortal wound, and a clergyman who visited him prayed with him one evening as though he certainly would die.