Arizona republican., 1898-04-25
IN THE WAKE OF WAR.
Big Bethel and Its Light on the Red
 Badge.

Big Bethel was not only the first battle Of the civil war, but it was also the first taste of real fighting for mos of the troops engaged in it. On the northern side these were almost ex- clusively volunteers, the First, Sec ond, Third, Fifth and Seventh New York, and battalion made up of Yer mont and Massachusetts volunteers. Some, indeed, of the officers were regu- lars, who, if they had not faced an en- emy's fire, had had the training of the professional soldier. But for the ma jority of the officers as well as of the rank and file Of the 2,500 or more troops who marched out of Hampton and Newport News to meet the rebels at Little and Big Bethel on that 10th of June, 1861, actual hostilities were a new and horrid test of their patri- otic fervor. The surgeon to one of the regiments a peaceful physician and opposed, though he lives inland, to a war with Spain-lately gave the writer the following sketchy but real istic account of it:
 "In the first place it was damned hot and as the march began to tell the men began to strip. Each man had his haversack with rations. These went first, then their coats, and so on, until by the time they got to the scene of action they looked anything but mil itary. They were pretty scraggly lot anyway. There were ditches along the road filled with slimy green water, and the ignorant fools would fling them selves down on their bellies in the dirt and drink of those fetid pools. Bah, think of it! Of course, the re- suit was any number of cases of diar- rhoea and dysentery, to say nothing of malaria and ether levers. We had no ambulance, SO M. (his assistant sur geon) and on the way out had to help ourselves to a horse and carriage be- longing to a woman, who was prepar- ing to escape with it. We picked out a farm house that was well sheltered by woods from the enemy's fire; hid our ambulance some way farther to the rear and laid out our instruments, ready for work. The firing had got to be pretty lively by that time. We could hear the cannon balls crashing through the woods and the rifle balls singing, and presently our first case came to us-on his own legs. He had sun sunstroke, sunstroke in the woods! For at that time our regiment had not got cut from under cover of the trees. We were not surprised at the incident however; we all knew that was a coward
 Well, after that there was another pause, and I said to M., Let's go over and see what G. is doing G. was sur geon to Duryea's Zouaves, the Fifth New York, and he had located his hos pital right in the line Of the enemy s fire. As we walked across the fields to it they must have seen us, but they let us get there. It was one of those southern shanties, of wood with a brick chimney built on outside from the ground up. In the angles of this chimney we noticed as we approached it, man, one of our men, crouching and just then along came a cannon ball through the house, through the chimney and through him. Inside the house we found G. about to operate or a poor devil who had been brought in with a shattered arm G. was as white as sheet at the prospect He was pretty green, and probably had never operated before The moment he saw me he looked relieved. Here doctor,' he said, you finish this op eratfon, and he handed me the instru ments. So M. and I set to work ant did the job for him.
 Later on that day we strolled III through the woods toward the fighting