I Was Afraid the Resurrection Angel Might Not Find Me

The first ball that struck me was so close that the musket's breath was hot in my face in the act of shooting...and I fell forward across my gun, my left arm useless falling under me. The minie ball that struck me high as I was leaning forward, and that arm extended at the time, the ball passed under my shoulder blade - not much lower than it entered. I did not at the moment feel any pain, only a numbness all over my body. I felt as though someone had given me an awful jar, and fell as limber as a drunken man. I could not even tell where I was hit. I was a wounded soldier unable to get up without assistance. Then a ball lifted me fairly off the ground. It passed through slantdicular, and I suppose it now appears as though it was one ball that did it all. There must have been two. I was afraid to move even had I been able. I thought of home far away in the northland. I wondered if they would know what happened to me. I was afraid no one would find my dead body. I was afraid the resurrection angel might not find me. I prayed that someone might see me die. If I had not been wounded I would not thought of praying. The loss of blood made me cold. I found comfort through my mother's prayers and I had more faith in them than I did in my own. Then I heard the rattle of wagons and horses and marching armies. A voice said, "Are you a yank?" The next thing, Doctor Calloway of the rebels was looking over me as they had stretched me out on a table inside somebody's home. He had removed my clothes or somebody had and he had my scarf in his hand that the lady in Davenport had given me when we left for war. The doctor cut or tore a piece from the scarf and dabbed it into turpentine or oil, I wasn't sure which, and he placed the cloth on a rod and pushed it into my wound. He kept up this swabbing until I passed out and when I woke up I was on a train heading for Mobile. Doctor Calloway was a good doctor and he attended to the wounds and illnesses of the sick as best he could. He left us in Mobile.  - Thomas M. Wilkinson, 1865