"Doctor Rawlings picked shrapnel from wounds, tied off arteries, probed with his fingers for bullets, and sawed through the bone of legs, hands, feet, and arms beyond his ability to repair. These body parts made a bloody mound in the back of a medical wagon pulled up near the live oak. Doing his work there at the operating table, Rawlings' feet began to slip and slide. The ground beneath him was muddy from blood, guts, contents of bowels loosened by agony and death.
'Orderly!' Rawlings called out. 'Throw some straw down here, I can barely keep from falling.'
The orderly put down a deep carpet of straw, and Rawlings stepped onto it and went back to work...
From
Ethan's Peach Tree
Photo by James F. Gibson in
Civil War Photographs, 1861-1865. Library of Congress.
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