"Did you see the wound?"
"No," I replied, "but I saw the death pallor on his face."
Another soldier by his side said:
"I don't think so, because I left the field hospital since dark and one of the lady nurses told him he was resting quietly and the doctors said he was doing as well as could be expected." The two friends went to see him next morning. He was dead.
This incident and some others similar gave me a reputation that brought me into bad repute with our chief surgeon, Dr. Swanson. A few days after the incident a young man named Grandstaff was on camp guard duty. He had set the butt of his shotgun on a low stump and was twirling it around when it slipped off the stump, the hammer, or hammers, struck the top of the stump, the gun was discharged and one or both loads passed through his right shoulder, entering the armpit and came out between the point of the shoulder and the neck, grazing his ear and singeing his hair. Being on duty nearby I was among the first to reach him. I took a good look at his face and saw on it the "death pallor," Drs. Swanson and Gooch dressed the wound where the boy fell and he was removed to a nearby house.
Next day Lieutenant D. W. Grandstaff came to me and said there was a wagon in camp from his neighborhood, and that if he knew his brother would die he could hold the wagon over till next day and send the remains home for interment at once by his friends without trouble or cost. The lieutenant was overcome with grief, as it was his only brother, and he a mere boy about 1 6 years old and the pride of his mother. He begged me, with tears streaming from his eyes, to give him my candid opinion as to his brother's chances to get well. For a long time I declined to say, but yielding to his pleading at last, I told him to hold the wagon till next day.
Dr. Swanson heard of it. He was an exceedingly hot-tempered man and the most comprehensive, exhaustive and fluent "cusser" in Forest's entire command. Having "cussed" me "out," he assured Lieutenant Grandstaff that his brother had a fair chance to recover. The wagon was permitted to go home. The young man died the next day.
