Addresses and other papers / by William Williams Keen.

  • William Williams Keen
Date:
1905
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Addresses and other papers / by William Williams Keen. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    459/486 (page 423)
    whose arm I was bandaging that it was time for him to leave, and he broke away from me, rushing for the more distant woods. As he ran, four or five yards of the bandage unwound, and I last saw him disappearing in the distance with this fluttering bobtail bandage flying all abroad. My experience in this battle is a good illustration of the utter disorganization, or rather want of organization, of our entire army at the beginning of the war. It was wittily expressed in a statement which appeared in “ Vanity Fair/7 the “Puck” or “Life77 of 1861. The editor announced that he had received from their correspondent on the field a dispatch which far surpassed that of Caesar: it stated the location of the battle, described the varying fortunes of the day, and announced the final result. Their correspondent’s laconic telegram also “ran:77 “Bull Run, They Run, We Run.77 Later in the day the Quartermaster of my regiment brought the Colonel, who had been badly injured by a falling limb of a tree cut off by a solid shot. He told me that orders had been issued for the army to retreat to Washington, and I joined them, caring on the way for the Colonel. Soon after the battle the time of my regiment expired and we were mustered out of the service.* I resumed my studies in September, 1861, graduated in March, 1862, and two months later entered the army by examination. Under a medical officer of the army whom I scarcely saw I was put in charge of the Eckington General Hospital on the outskirts of Washington. Not long after taking charge, one Saturday afternoon about 4 o’clock, I received an order to report at the office of Dr. Letterman, the Medical Director of the Army of the Potomac, in Wash¬ ington. I had had so little experience in army orders that I almost trembled at the formal and peremptory character *For my report of the battle see “ Medical and Surgical History of the War of the Rebellion/’ Part I, Medical Volume, Appendix, p. 9.