Evening Republican, Volume 17, Number 290, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 5 December 1913 — STORIES of CAMP and WAR [ARTICLE+ILLUSTRATION]

STORIES of CAMP and WAR

TALE OF GETTYSBURG FIGHT Commissioner of Boldiers’ Relief for City of Boeton Baved Life by Holding Onto a Towel. John E. Gilman, commissioners of soldiers’ relief for the city of Boston, lost his right arm in the second day’s fighting at Gettysburg and saved his life by a desperate expedient, With the assistance of some of his comrades. Mr. Gilman, a boy of eighteen, was a private in Company , Twelfth Massachusetts infantry, the regiment that was raised and commanded by Col. Fletcher Webster, a son of Daniel Webster. At Gettysburg the regiment numbered only 200 men, as it had lost heavily in previous engagements; ths colonel was killed at the second battle of Bull Run. On the morning of July 1 tbe Twelfth Massachusetts halted near the theological seminary, about a mile and a half west of Gettysburg. On the first day it moved by flank to the north along the Mummasburg road. The enemy making a demonstration along the left flank, the regiment changed front and occupied the crest of a hill. This position enabled tbe brigade of which the Twelfth was a part to deliver an enfilading fire into the advancing lines of tbe enemy. That day the brigade captured Iverson’s North Carolina brigade, and after <iark a detail was made up to take the prisoners to the rear. "I was a member of that detail," said Mr. Gilman. "The trip to the provost masbal’s camp with the prisoners and the march back to our front took up all night Early in the- morning of July 2 I got back to my regiment on tbe line of the second and third days’ battle at Zieglers Grove. “We had scarcely finished our coffee when the shelling by the Confederates began. The shells were coming thick, and I was walking behind a low stone fence, trailing my gun, when a piece of shell struck me and tore off my right arm. “The bone was shattered at the elbow and the flesh torn off nearly to my shoulder, but the forearm hung by the muscles. George N. Hill, one of the drummers, and several of the other boys came to my assistance. They got a towel from my knapsack and bound it tightly around my arm, just below the shoulder. “I had to hold the tournaquet with my left hand to keep it from slipping. Sergeant Riva and one or two of the other boys were ordered to assist me to the field hospital in the rear. "The road J>ack was one of tho roughest I ever traveled. We had tocross a plowed field, and the shells were falling all about us and tearing: up the earth. One burst near us and a shower of earth covered us. But the sergeant and I escaped Injury, although it was so dark for a time that neither knew what had happened to the other. “I was becoming so weak from loss of blood that I could not keep on. So the boys laid me on my blanket and carried me the rest of the way to a clump of trees, where a white-haired old surgeon attached to a Brooklyn regiment had his tables. “I was still bolding on to the towel with my left hand when I was placed on the operating table. “ ‘My boy,’ said the surgeon, ’have you been holding that towel all this time?’ I said I had. ‘My boy,’ he said, ‘you have saved your life. In three or four minutes your body would have emptied itself of blood.’ I clung to the towel until the surgeon had applied his tourniquet above it. “We were transported to Gettysburg in ambulances and taken to the general hospital in Yoyk, Pa., fav cattle cars, which had be(jn only partly cleaned. The journey was so rough that many of the wounded were dead when we reached our destination, and I, one of the strongest, had to be carried from the car on a litter.”