The Soldiers' journal. (Rendezvous of Distribution, Va.) 1864-1865, 1864-04-20


walls of water bent and swayed and came wav~
ing and laundering down on Pharoah's hopeless
hosts, for there, high up in heaven, streaming
out through parting smoke, is the flag, torn,
blood-stained, ball-riddled, but the dear old red
white, and blue, waving over the enemy works;
and then the telegraph flashed out the brave
news over the exulting country, and the press
took up the story, and women said, with kind
ling faces, " My son, my brother, or my h1s.
band may be dead but, oh, our boys have done
glorious things at Lookout Mountain l'-and
History will tell how grander charge was never
made and calmly note the loss in dead and woun-
ded-so many thousands-and pass on.
But we not History, and dead-well,
we will give them graves that shall be ever green
with laurels, and their swords shall be most
precious legacy to our children, and their memo
ries shall be part of our household; but our
wounded, for whom there is yet hope, who may
yet hve,--the cry goes from Wisconsin, and
Maine, and Iowa, and New York, Pennsylvania
Ohio, Massachusetts,. Where are they, and how
cared for? We are all, as said, bound by the
heart-strings in a common interest. The Bos-
ton woman with her boy in the Army of the Cum
berland, and the Maine mother with one in the
army at New Orleans Texas, and the Kan
father, a son in the Army of the Potomac, all
clamor, is mine among the wounded, and do
care and science for him, all that care and sci
ence should p?
The Field Relief Corps of the Sanitary Com
mission are prompt on the battlefield, reaching
sufferers even before their own surgeons. Said
one man, lying there, badly wounded
and what do they pay yez for this? What
do you get?' 81.
"Pay! We ask nothing, only the soldiers God
bless you.'"
'And is that all? Then sure here's plenty of
the coin, fresh minted God bless you God
bless you! and the good Lord be good to you
and remember yez as you have remembered u.s.
and love yez and your children after you and
sure, if that is ALL it's plenty of that sort of pay
the poor soldier has for you
God bless such men ! we echo; but after that
what then? Our beloved are taken to the hospi-
tails, and we know, in general way, that hospi.
tails are buildings containing long rows of beds,
and that science is doing it's utmost in their be.
half; but when our friend writes us from across
the seas, they tell us not only how they are, but
where,- jotting down little pen-and- ink pictures
to show us how stands the writing table, and how
hangs the picture and where is the f0uteuiI, that
we may see them they are daily so we crave
something more, feel shut out, we want to
get at their daily living, to know something of
hospital life.
Hospitals have sprung up as if sowp broad
cast, and these, too, of no mean order. True, in
our first haste and inexperience, viciously plan
ned hospitals were erected but these and the
Crimean plumbers have served us beacons,
and the anxious care of the government has been
untiring, the outlay of money and things more
precious unbounded; and those who have had
this weighty matter in charge have no reason to
fear account of their stewardship