The Indianapolis journal. [volume] (Indianapolis [Ind.]) 1867-1904, 1898-09-22
THE FACTS COMING OUT.

The following, written by a general officer,
portrays graphically one phase of the suffer-
ings of war 1t relates to the moving of
wagon train carrying wounded men, The
writer says:
The column moved rapidly considering the
rough roads and darkness, and from almost
every wagon for many miles issued heart
rendlng walls of agony. For four hours
hurried forward on my way to the front, and
in all that time / was never out of hearing
OF the groans and cries OF the wounded and
dying. Scarcely one in hundred had re-
ceived adequate surgical aid, owing to the
demands on the Woodworking surgeons
from still worse cases that had to be left
behind. Many of the wounded in the wagons
had been without food for thirty-six hours.
Their torn and bloody clothing, matted and
and still oozng wounds. Very few of the
wagons had even a layer of straw in them,
ana all were without springs. The road was
rough ard rocky from heavy washings OF
the preceding day. The jolting was enough
to have killed strong men If long exposed
to it. From nearly every wagon as the
teams trotted on, urged by whip and shout,
came such cries and shrieks as these:
"Oh. God, why, can't | die?"
My God! will no one have mercy and
"stopl Oh, for Gods sake stop just one
minute! Take me out and leave me to die
on the roadsider'
II am dying / am dying! My poor wife,
my dear children, what will become OF your
No war correspondent, no chaplain even,
has given more vivid picture than this of
the sufferngs incident to war. A wagon
train miles in length. laden with wounded
soldiers, many of them without food for
thirty-six hours, all without surgical atten-
ton, moving rapidly over rough and stony
roads-nothing could be more terrible than
this. But it did not happen in the recent
war. 1t describes the removal of the Con-
federate wounded from Gettysburg back to
Virginia, and was written by General I'M
boden, who was in charge of the wagon
train. He says: During this one night 1
realized more of the horrors of war than 1
had in all of the two preceding years"
If the foregoing incident had occurred dur
ing the recent war it would have furnished
a great topic for sensational correspondents
and yellow newspapers 1t is but one incl
dent out of many similar ones that occurred
in the civil war in which the spfferings on
both sides were beyond comparison greater
than anything in the recent war. Yet they
attracted but little attention at the time be-
cause the public mind was too intent on the
great issues and objects of the war to pay
attention to details or individual sufferings.
A compensatory feature of the present
clamor regarding the alleged mismanage-
ment Of the recent war and the unnecessary
suffering Of the soldiers is that it has re-
vived statistics and experiences of the civil
war showing that the same conditions ex-
listed then on a much larger scale. Records
of the War Department show that the loss
by disease in any one of the army corps
in the war with Spain does not exceed the
loss of a single regiment in the civil war.
In the latter war the Fifteenth Maine, which
served most of the time in the Gulf and
Lower Mississippi departments, lost 34S men
by disease-more than the loss by disease
of any army corps in the recent war. The
sufferings of the soldiers in the civil war
were greater, the rations poorer. the hard
ships more severe, the sickness more fatal
and the medical and hospital attendance not
as good as they were in the recent war, yet
the yellow press would have people believe
that such things never happened before. AS
the facts come out they are being put to
shame