The Warner weekly sun. (Warner, Brown Co., Dakota [S.D.]) 1883-1885, 1885-03-06
sTRAIGHTENED OUT.
An OLD War Hospital Stewards Story Of
an Amputation.

an Amputation.
From the New York Tribune.
The conversation had been running
on wooden legs-that is so far as any
thing on wooden legs could run-and
after all manner of strange stories from
various members of the company, telling
how friends of theirs, and "men they
once knew" had lost legs, and how
they had had them replaced, an old
man spoke up who had hitherto main
tanned a profound silence.
"Well gentlemen" he began, IT
know a good deal about wooden legs. /
have probably seen more legs amputated
In q day than you have seen wooden legs
in Your life time. I was a hospital
steward during the war with the 18Th
New York volunteers. But out of all
the hundreds of legs I've seen taken off,
there are only one or two which made
much impression on my mind. There
was one circumstance connected with a
leg that puzzled me at the time, has
puzzled me aver since, and will 60 on
puzzling me as long as / live. 1t was
after the battle of West Point; and
there was a Frenchman in our regiment.
/ forgot his name, but he was In Com
pany A. Well, he had his leg broken
by a ball-a compound fracture above
the knee-and it had to be taken off at
the thigh. He stood it well, and did
not want to have ch~loroform, but they
made him. Well, this leg-it was his
left one-being taken off so high up,
you see, there was a good deal of it, and
the boys did not want tothrow it out in
TO a hole, SO they looked about for some
thing to bury it In. AT last they found
a cracker box; but to get it in they had
to double it up-bend the knee sharp,
and turn the foot back. Which they
did, and then buried it.
"After the Frenchman came round
he was uneasy. There was not much
pain, he said, but he wished TO goodness
he could straighten his leg out; his left,
he said, felt all skinked upr "But
you haven't got q left Leg" we told him.
mo, / know that" he replied, ssbut,
morbleul it feels all kinked up just the
same" Well, / did not know anything
about the burning Of his leg, and when
he said this to me / thought it was just
the ordinary pain after the operation
though / had never heard any one else
describe the pain so, and believed it
would pass. But it did not. He got
more and more uneasy, and kept de-
claring that his leg was cramped, but If
he could only straighten it out it would
be all right. He went on in this way
so badly that at length one of the boys
who had buried the leg got scared, and
without telling him he went out, dug
up the leg, Strengthened it out, and re-
buried it with out the box.
well, gentlemen, do you know that
before that boy had got back the French
mar wa as easy as a lambl 'Ah, but
morbleul that is betterF he cried out
suddenly. Yes, that's better, that's
better-and for 10 or 15 minutes he
went on just as if he really had been re-
lieved by having his leg Strengthened
out. He never said another word about
being cramped, but declared his leg
was perfectly easy now. 1t wasn't till,
maybe, q week afterward, that we told
him what had been done, and then all
he said was; sAh, but / knew my leg
was kinked up all the time
There gentlemen" he added, "you
may explain that how you like, you
may believe it or not, as you like; but
all / a say is / saw it, and there were
plenty Of others who knew about it at
the time.