By Ronald S. Coddington, 6-28-12
George T. Perkins and his Union comrades breathed a collective sigh of relief on the afternoon of June 27, 1862. Positioned behind breastworks along a stretch of pinewoods on the battlefield of Gaines’s Mill, they listened as the pounding of artillery and rattling of musketry on their left rose and faded. Then another din on their right, followed by three Yankee huzzahs.
A round of smiles, handshakes and backslapping broke out among this hearty band of brothers who belonged to the 22nd Massachusetts Infantry. Held in reserve, the regiment did not expect to fight this day. It appeared that the services of Perkins, a 26-year-old hospital steward, would not be required.
The celebration was premature.
The Confederates renewed the fight toward nightfall and broke the lines on either side of the 22nd. On came the gray juggernaut, its battle line visible as it swept across a hill opposite the Massachusetts men. Perkins would be needed after all.
Caught off guard by the unexpected advance, Union soldiers from one defeated regiment stumbled up and over the breastworks, the Confederates in hot pursuit. The Federals cried out, “Get up, boys, and give them some!” as they ran to the rear.
Perkins and the rest of the 22nd braced for the Confederate onslaught. According to the historians of the regiment, an officer ordered “Commence firing! Shoot low!” The rank and file responded with a well-aimed volley. “This galling fire delivered in the centre of the rebel line, staggered it, and they came on in the shape of a V, with the opening toward us.” The engagement heated up as gun smoke wafted through the woods and mixed with the lingering light of day.
The Confederates flanked the 22nd and began to fire. The thin blue line broke and the men fled. They had not gone far before their colonel, Jesse Gove, barked, “Halt! Twenty-second!” A respected commander who had served in the pre-war regular Army, his words checked the retreat. The men rallied just as the Confederates rushed to finish them off. “Those who had charges in their guns turned and delivered fire into the very faces of the advancing foe,” stated the regimental historians.
The Confederates returned fire. Colonel Gove was instantly killed, his body left behind and never recovered. A bullet ripped into the regimental major’s shoulder, and the adjutant suffered a wound. Many of the company officers were hit as well, while enlisted men were shot down or captured as the unit’s integrity disintegrated. Command fell to a captain, who tried unsuccessfully to rally a remnant of the shattered regiment around the colors.
Meanwhile, Perkins scrambled to save the fallen as a hail of Rebel lead swept the battlefield. As he attempted to rescue one man, a musket ball tore into his right lower back near the spinal column. He fell heavily to the ground. An alert soldier managed to place Perkins on a riderless horse and get him out of there.
Perkins was taken to a field hospital, where a surgeon examined him and located the bullet, which had lodged in his right chest. Pvt. George Copeland, a family friend who served with Perkins, happened to be on the scene. Copeland described the surgeon’s response: “He said he would not extract the ball as it would make no difference. I asked him if I should infer that it was mortal. He did not give me an answer and hurried off.”
Another surgeon examined Perkins and came to the same conclusion. Soldiers transported him to nearby Savage’s Station, where wounded soldiers were gathered for further treatment — or, in Perkins’s case, so his last hours could be as comfortable as possible.
Copeland accompanied Perkins and dressed the wound as best he could. “He seemed to be suffering considerably. I asked him if he felt the ball had entered the cavity. He said no. I do not think he thought it mortal for he said nothing about his home, but asked me to send his things by the first opportunity.” Copeland returned to what remained of the 22nd, leaving Perkins to his fate, crudely bandaged in his torn and bloodied uniform with his sword, belt and sash.
Perkins understood his situation as well if not better than the surgeons who had examined him. A doctor in peacetime, he had earned a medical degree from Harvard in 1857. His interest in medicine stemmed from his parents: his father, Thomas, was an “eclectic physician,” or a doctor who treated patients with botanical remedies and physical therapy. His mother, Betsey, was as a “clairvoyant physician,” or one who made a diagnosis after “astute observation” — literally, the alleged ability to see the patient’s symptoms.
Perkins eagerly offered his medical services to the Army after the war started. He had hoped to become a surgeon, the ranking doctor in a regiment, but there were not enough of the coveted commissions to go around. He joined the Army anyway. In the autumn of 1861 he enlisted as a hospital steward in the 22nd, also known as “Henry Wilson’s Regiment,” after the Republican senator who raised and briefly commanded it.
Ordered to Virginia and assigned to the Army of the Potomac, the regiment received its baptism under fire before Yorktown at the beginning of the Peninsula Campaign. A few men were listed as wounded on April 5, 1862. Gaines’ Mill, fought at the end of the campaign as one of the engagements of the Seven Days battles, exacted a much higher toll. Regimental casualties amounted to 279, including 71 killed outright. “It was a sad night for the Twenty-second. Not a man but had lost a comrade, for one-half of those who marched in the morning were no longer in the ranks,” recorded the regimental historians.
A number of the wounded from the 22nd, Perkins included, were treated in the field hospital at Savage’s Station. Hundreds of injured men streamed onto the hospital grounds from the surrounding area. Surgeons worked feverishly to save lives.
On the second day after Perkins arrived, as the entire Union Army continued its retreat to a new base at Harrison’s Landing along the James River, Confederates captured the hospital and 2,500 men, including doctors, attendants and patients. Perkins now became a prisoner of war. About this time a surgeon, one of the Union doctors who had chosen to remain with the wounded, revisited Perkins and removed the bullet. Miraculously, the projectile had not broken a bone, damaged his spine or pierced an organ.
Meanwhile, news of Perkins’s plight made its way to his wife, Annie, in Boston. She determined to travel to Virginia and plead for her husband’s release. She confided her plans in a letter to Private Copeland. He replied, “I do not think it would be advisable for you to try to get him. He is probably receiving good care and will be returned.,” he replied. “Prisoners are being released as fast as exchanged.”
Indeed, Perkins gained his release a month later. He went home to Boston to recuperate and rejoined the regiment before the end of the year. He went on to become an assistant surgeon and served with distinction — during the Overland Campaign in 1864, according to a fellow physician, Perkins was “almost constantly at the front, often under fire, rendering great aid to our brave boys as they came out wounded from the bloody fields.”
Perkins mustered out of the 22nd after its three-year term of enlistment ended in late 1864. He went on to serve in two more regiments, and ended his volunteer military career as a full surgeon in the summer of 1865. Afterward he returned to Boston, reunited with Annie and began a family that grew to include three children. In the late 1870s, voters elected him to the city council on the Republican ticket.
His wound troubled him for the rest of his life. Almost every year it swelled and broke open. Annie recalled that “there came from the wound small bits of cloth or threads and after these openings and discharges for some little time then it would apparently be sealed up again.” One November night in 1880, after another episode when his old wound had reopened, he was seized with difficulty in breathing and speaking. Twenty minutes later Perkins was dead. Annie remembered, “Just before his death he laid his hand over the wound and exclaimed, ‘Oh! My stomach, my stomach!’”
His doctor first claimed that his war injury resulted in death, but later ruled heart failure as the likely cause. Perkins was 44.
Ronald S. Coddington is the author of “Faces of the Civil War” and “Faces of the Confederacy.” His new book, “African American Faces of the Civil War,” will be available in the fall. He writes “Faces of War,” a column for the Civil War News.
Image 1: George Thomas Perkins pictured after his promotion from hospital steward to assistant surgeon, circa 1863.
Image 2: Massachusetts Infantry in action at Gaines’ Mill from Henry Wilson’s Regiment, digitized by Google.
From: opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com
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