Читать книгу John Smith's Funny Adventures on a Crutch - A. F. Hill - Страница 3

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CRACK! went a rifle at the battle of Antietam. Not that it was the only one fired, for they were rattling away at the rate of a thousand per second just then; but there was one rifle in particular discharged, which, so far as I was concerned, was clearly distinguishable from all the rest. I did not see it, nor am I confident that, in the din of battle, I heard its report; yet I was made painfully aware of its existence and proximity, and shall no doubt entertain a recollection of it while life lasts, and reason retains her throne.

That rifle, evidently fired by some one whom I would have shot first, if I had had a good chance—and therefore I couldn’t blame him much for shooting me—threw a leaden ball of one ounce in weight, and similar to an acorn in shape; and that missile, travelling at the rate of five thousand miles an hour—though they rarely travel a whole hour without resting—struck and wounded me, John Smith. It passed through the thigh, lacerating that muscle vulgarly known as the tensor vaginæ femoris, and causing a compound fracture of the femur, barely below the trochanter major; that is to say, it broke the bone about three inches below the hip.

The ball had come diagonally from the direction of my right and front, passing through the outside portion of the left thigh, and coming out only an inch and a half from where it had entered; and I could not help, when I had regained my composure, making some little geometric calculations on the subject. I reckoned that if the man who had fired the rifle—allowing him to have been one hundred yards distant, and the barrel of the piece to have been four feet long—had moved the muzzle the one-hundredth part of an inch to the right, I should have been missed; if he had elevated it about the same distance I should have been missing. My next thought was that whereas my antagonist had discharged his rifle, I must request the government to discharge me.

Some of my comrades carried me from the field, and, after a little diversion in the way of fainting, got me loaded into a one-horse ambulance—a vehicle that can beat a wild-cat jumping on moderately rough ground—and away it went, plunging diagonally across a corn-field, like a schooner hove to in a storm. A shattered limb is one of the most painful things in the world, especially when its owner is jostled about like old rusty nails. For good, solid, substantial pain, I know of nothing worthy of being spoken of on the same day with it. The toothache, in its worst form, is bliss compared with it.

There was another wounded “hero” in the ambulance, lying beside me; his leg was shattered below the knee; and I reckon that the yelling he and I did, jointly, wasn’t the sort to be excelled by any other two youths of medium abilities.

We were driven to a small log schoolhouse that was used as a surgical hospital, and there unloaded. I do not know what became of my companion in misery—that is, in the ambulance—for it was as much as I could do to keep myself in view for some days following.

Within the schoolhouse were several surgeons busily engaged in amputating limbs; while without, beneath some oak trees that stood near, lay a great many sufferers awaiting their turn. I must give the surgeons credit for considerable dispatch—and no doubt they dispatched many a poor fellow that day—for I observed that every few minutes, a whole man, (in a bad state of repair, to be sure,) was carried in, and soon after carried out, in from two to four pieces. They did their work up with rapidity, and by evening, the arms and legs that were piled up against the wall of the schoolhouse without, would have amounted to a full cord—limb measure.

Well, as I do not intend to dwell on this part of the narrative very long, I will simply say that the doctors finally reached my case. I was carried into the little building, where so many pangs had been suffered that day, and laid on an operating-table; and after a slight examination of my wound, and a consultation of eight or nine seconds, they lulled me to repose with chloroform, and scientifically relieved me of my left leg. When I returned from the state of profound oblivion into which the chloroform had thrown me, I was glad to find that they had not made a mistake, and cut off the wrong limb—as a doctor was once known to do. They had amputated the right leg, because the left one was the right one—it being the wounded one—and my right leg was now my left one, because it was the only one left. Yet, the other was always the left one, and it has remained so, because it has been ever since left on the battle ground. However, that is all right.

What I suffered during the ensuing three months in Smoketown Hospital, several miles from Sharpsburg, I will pass over with but a thought and a shudder, and hasten on to tell of the curious and amusing adventures I have since met with, “on a crutch.”

I will never forget my first attempt to walk on crutches. I thought it looked easy, to see others walking about the hospital on crutches; just as an inexperienced person is apt to think rowing a boat an easy matter, because he sees others do it with apparent facility. So, one day, when my strength had so increased that I thought I could bear my weight on my only leg, I urged the nurse to lift me up and let me try a pair of crutches.

He did so. He raised me up, and I stood holding tremulously to the tent-post—for I and five other unfortunates occupied a hospital tent—while he carefully placed a crutch under each of my arms. It was the first time for several months that I had been in an erect position, and you can’t well imagine how I felt—without studying a good while about it. The ground on which I stood seemed so far beneath that it made me quite dizzy to look down on it, and I trembled at the awful possibility of falling.

With the crutches under my arms, and the nurse’s strong hand on my shoulder to keep me steady, I made two or three feeble, timid strides, and concluding that walking on crutches was not quite what it was “cracked up” to be, I faintly said:

“Nurse, put me down on the bed again: I fear I will never walk well on a crutch.”

“Pshaw!” said he, as he assisted me to return to my couch of straw; “you do well, and you’ll do twice as well next time you try it.”

“Twice as well would be but poorly,” I rejoined. “However, I will do my best.”

“Certainly! Don’t think of getting discouraged.”

As I now look back on that dismal scene, and remember the sinking heart that throbbed so feebly within me, and the wasted trembling limbs with which I attempted to flee from my prison-like bed, I cannot help smiling;—now, when I can skate as fast as any one, on my solitary foot, swim as well as I ever could, climb like a squirrel, jump on a saddled horse and ride at any pace I please, place a hand on a fence as high as my head and spring over in a quarter of a second, or walk twenty-five or thirty miles a day—all this with one good leg, a crutch and a cane!

When the spring came, and I could walk about with some ease, I went from my country home to Philadelphia, to get one of Palmer’s artificial legs, supposing that I could wear one advantageously. While on the subject, I will simply say that I got one, but never used it much, because there was too little of the thigh left to attach it to firmly. Not that I would be understood to detract from the reputation of Palmer’s patent limb; for we all liked the Doctor, and were most favorably impressed with his handiwork; and my subsequent observations have left no doubt in my mind that his are the most nearly perfect of any artificial limbs manufactured.

Major King, Assistant Surgeon-General of Philadelphia, sent me to Haddington Hospital, to wait till the proposed new limb should be ready for me; and it was there that I, John Smith, fairly began my somewhat eventful career—“On a Crutch.”

The hospital, located near the beautiful suburban village of Haddington, was set apart for such “heroes,” as had lost arms or legs, and desired to replace them with substantial wooden ones. It was not unusual at that time to see fifty or sixty one-legged men strolling about the grounds, in fine weather; or squads of fifteen or twenty, supplied with passes for the day, clambering upon a street car and going into the city for a bit of a spree.

A person once asked me if it was not a rather sad sight, and if the boys in this condition were not rather morose and gloomy. The very thought is amusing. I never, anywhere, or under any circumstances, saw a livelier crowd of fellows than the maimed and crippled soldiers at Haddington Hospital! They were nearly all young men, from seventeen to twenty-two, and a happier, noisier, more frolicsome set of boys I never saw! It was no unusual thing for some of them, in a merry mood, to carry on till they got put into the guard-house, by the impatient surgeons—sometimes when they scarcely deserved it; but of that, I will say more hereafter.