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Dunlop of that Ilk
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William Henry Boyd
SUFFERS SINCE WAR
ONE OF THE MOST INTERESTING CIVIL WAR
NARRATIVES IS THAT OF AN OSHKOSH, WISCONSIN VETERAN
Shot in the leg, close to the hip joint, William H. Boyd of Company E. ties
his suspender above wound to check blood flow, saving his life — Maggots
enter the wound — “Reb” takes Canteen, Etc.
The blood warms in sympathy and the heartbeat quickens when one hears the
story of a certain old soldier, a white-bearded man who has retired from
business and who lives quietly in his home near the heart of the city.
For here is a man who has suffered the tortures of the sorely
distressed—suffered untold agonies—ever since the second day of the fighting
in the great crucial battle of Gettysburg in July of 1863.
Forty-eight years ago the army surgeons said his life was not worth a
gamble. Twelve years ago the most celebrated surgeons in Boston told him
they could scarcely believe he had been wounded at Gettysburg, for the
reason that his wound was of such a nature that in most men it would have
meant discouragement, inactivity, and early death.
This veteran, who never has made a patriotic speech, and who does not tell
the story of his war experiences for the sake of boasting of his record, ran
away from his home on a farm south of the city to join the Oshkosh
volunteers, which became Company E, of the Second Wisconsin Volunteer
Regiment.
RUNS AWAY TO FIGHT
He ran away to get into the war. Two years later, when he had finished with
the government and while waiting for the government to send him home under
the care of a surgeon, he ran away from the military hospital at Harrisburg,
Pennsylvania and under extreme hardships, reached his home alone and
unassisted. This man is William H. Boyd. William is a descendant of John
Boyd in the book “Record of the Boyd Family” by Edgar E. Boyd, Wheeling,
West Virginia 1913.
In view of Commemoration exercises which are being arranged by the combined
military and civil organizations of the city in honor of the departure of
Oshkosh soldiers in the Spring of 1861, Mr. Boyd’s war record and his life
history subsequent to the war are unusually interesting in these days when
the people of Oshkosh are turning constantly to their war heroes in
admiration and esteem.
Seldom does it fall to the lot of a newspaper man to listen to a story at
once so simply told, so straightforward and modest, and so peculiarly
affecting as Mr. Boyd’s statement of how he received the wound which has
required daily care ever since its affliction.
STOPS BLOOD FLOW
“Ben Davids and I ran away to enlist in Company E of the Second Wisconsin
Volunteers. I was wounded during our first day’s fighting at Gettysburg,
about 11AM. Lawson Ward , who stood beside me was killed. We were in the
front rank. A man in the rear was killed and a man behind me was wounded.
When I was shot I fell forward on my face.
“The fighting was largely hand to hand. Ben Davids, a great friend of mine,
pulled me up to a big “burro” tree and left me there on the ground in the
shade. I was wounded an inch from the hip joint and the blood flowed very
freely.
“He dragged me along to the tree and left me, and gave me his canteen of
water. I had my own also. The company kept on fighting — and there were some
great fighters in Company E. I reached out and got a dry piece of limb from
the tree and then I took my suspender and tied it around my leg, working it
tighter with the piece of limb, trying to stop the flow of blood. A “Reb”
came along and took my canteen and the one Ben Davids gave me---you see the
Rebs were right close, for the fighting was hand to hand.
MAGGOTS IN THE WOUND
“I lay there through that day and that night and the next day until 11
o’clock at night. When they found me I had crawled on my face to a rill of
rainwater---the rain had begun falling sometime during the second day I
think. The rill was nothing but muddy water, and I had to crawl a couple of
rods to reach it, but a wounded man wants water first of all.
“It was Billy Bryant, of our company, who found me. I was carried to the
courthouse, but my wound was not dressed for several days. And Billy Taylor,
the fifer of our company one of the nicest men that ever lived helped me to
run a feather, which had some antiseptic on it, into the wound because the
maggots had got into it.
This is indeed a simple statement of a horrific condition of war; the
military accommodations so overcrowded the sorely wounded men could not be
reached by the hard-pushed doctors for three or four days, and comrades of
the sufferers aided in whatever manner they could to preserve the precious
lives in danger.
“I was under five different doctors and they all said I could not live. I
had typhoid fever in connection with the wounds. I lay there until 18 of
November, when I was sent to York, PA under the charge of a Dr. Blair. I was
carried shortly afterwards up three flights of stair, and they took the
picture of my wound. Dr Russell saw it a few years ago at Washington, DC.
Oshkosh (WI) Northwestern
Newspaper, 27 April 1911.
http://www.wisconsinhistory.org/
More on William H.
Boyd's Family
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