Gruesome Evidence of Artillery's Effect at Gettysburg

[Gfran64]

Hi all,

Found this photo in the Library of Congress digital archives of the Civil War. This poor ANV soldier was struck by long range artillery fire. He is in fact disemboweled and has had his left forearm severed. My guess is that he was reloading when he was hit or possibly marching. The shot passed though first his left arm, then his abdomen, missing his right arm altogether. I doubt he knew what hit him, but his friends sure did.

Sorry to spoil anyone's dinner.

Regards,

Greg B)

[louie raider]

actually i read in one of Frassanito's books where he discusses this very picture and concludes that a hog of some sort had gotten to this gentleman and did most of the damage you see. i can cite the exact reference if needed.

[Gfran64]

[rebeltim]

will there be hogs in the game to?

[Amish John]

It is indeed a terrible image, one many of us have seen many times over the years. Though that man is long dust and to us his picture is just a curiosity of the war, we should remember he may have been some little girl's daddy or maybe just a newlywed separated from a worried wife. Sometimes it's too easy to forget these images represent someone's family and not just a detached pictorial history of battle.

[JDunn]

I also have read a caption with this exact photo saying that it was a hog that did most of what you see. I'm just wondering, unless the person that wrote the caption actually saw the hog do this, how can you possibly come to that conclusion just by analyzing the photo? Is it because of the nature of the wound?

[Gfran64]

The photograph in the Library of Congress has the photographer as citing it as an artillery wound. No doubt he was not killed by a hog. In the Battle of Monmouth, NJ orf the American Revolution,right near Norb's HQ, they have found evidence of hog teeth imprints on bullets on the battlefield. Why would a hog chew a bullet? They didn't. They ingested the bullet by eating the flesh of a dead soldier and deposited it on the same field some days later. Amish John, and others, I apologize for the unintelligent remark.

Greg

[louie raider]

rebeltim wrote:

will there be hogs in the game to?

who do you think created the maps? :laugh: [icon of rimshot here]

[louie raider]

JDunn wrote:

I also have read a caption with this exact photo saying that it was a hog that did most of what you see. I'm just wondering, unless the person that wrote the caption actually saw the hog do this, how can you possibly come to that conclusion just by analyzing the photo? Is it because of the nature of the wound?

Evidently; quoting from Frassanito's book Early Photography at Gettysburg (p.341):

"Given the fact that the similar abdominal wounds on the 2 bodies in views 107 and 108 do not seem to be consistent with the effects of a direct hit by an artillery shell; together with the fact that the bodies had been accessible to the predatation of scavenging hogs for several days before being photographed, it appears more likely that these wounds were produced by the latter cause and not the former.

How the dismembered hand and partial forearm, seen lying alongside the trigger guard of the rifle in views 107a and b, came to be detached from the body is anyone's guess. It will be noted from the soldier's empty arm socket that the remainder of the limb is missing. Conceivably, the photographers found the hand nearby and carefully placed it close to its source in order to more effectively depict what they believed to have been the "effect of a Shell on a Confederate soldier at Battle of Gettysburg."

i guess my point to typing all of that, is that the photographer's notes about any given photograph back then had some possibility of being erroneous.

[BOSTON]

I think it is right to show the results of combat, face the ugly truth about war, be it that the picture of a casualty is is alive or not. I'm a Veteran, go in a VA hospital sometime to see for yourself what Veterans have had to endure.

Hoistingman4