CAT.

of the railway embankment where Grover's Brigade made a charge which actually merits that overworked word gallant.

MEDICAL PLANS, ORGANIZATION AND EQUIPMENT.

Pope's army was like a scratch ball club. Various corps were suddenly brought together and plunged into an active campaign before they could be organized for team work. The medical department was like the balance, various, incomplete and not well organized.

The medical director of the army was Surgeon Thomas McParlin, U. S. Army, a competent man, who afterwards conducted the medical department of the Army of the Potomac through its greatest campaigns with eminent skill and success. In this campaign he had clear ideas and some plans, yet the outcome was largely a failure. The reasons for this will be pointed out.

The country from the Rapidan back to Washington is a gentle rolling one with woods and cleared fields, traversed by passable roads. The weather during August was generally fine though excessively warm during the early weeks. Washington was the base with the Orange & Alexandria Railway for the line of communications. This road had been so often destroyed that it was in poor condition and the locomotives and cars were diminutive as compared with those in use today. Supplies were brought forward by this line, wounded evacuated by it, and the army clung to it throughout. The towns of Culpepper, Warrenton and Manassas were conveniently located for temporary bases of supply and hospitals.

The campaign began on the Rapidan with the supplies and hospitals at Culpeper. On August 19th they were removed to Bealeton Station. On the 27th they came back to Bristoe Station. Here the railroad was broken, and wagons had to be used to Centreville, and Fairfax Station, which was the main hospital on September 1st. By September 3rd everything was back in Alexandria.

Medical organization at this period of the war was crude. The ambulance corps idea was new. Letterman's order was issued on August 2nd, one week before Cedar Mountain. Porter's and Heintzleman's corps, coming from the Army of the Potomac, had their ambulance corps organized, but most of the ambulances were left behind at Yorktown or Alexandria. They marched

out without wagon trains, some divisions without artillery, or even ammunition wagons; and with field officers on foot. It is hardly necessary to say that their troops had no ambulances.

As an example of what may happen, or rather will happen, in war, take the case of the Regular Division (Sykes) of Fitz John Porter's Corps; which it seems should have been supplied, if any. Asst. Surgeon A. A. Woodhull says, "There were no ambulances with the division from the evacuation of the Peninsula until we entered Maryland," that is during the entire time this corps was with Pope's army. Reynolds' Division, the Pennsylvania Reserves, probably the best volunteer division that the war produced, also had not a single ambulance.

All the divisions were not so badly off. McParlin says that Heintzleman's divisions had a well-organized ambulance corps. In the three original corps there were no ambulance organizations by divisions. McParlin says that the Surgeon General sent him the Letterman plan, but he had no time to put it in operation. He does not say that it was ordered, and it was not ordered at this time. It seems probable that the Surgeon General only recommended the plan, somewhat as a trial, and shortly before the battles.

These three corps had, of course, some ambulances when brought together. In McDowell's corps there were supposed to be three ambulances and one transport cart to each regiment. Actually there were but 41 ambulances and transport carts for 33 regiments. The shortage was 129. McParlin says: "As the report showed this corps to be the best supplied, the deficiencies of the other corps may be imagined." Of the transport carts he said, "The transport carts are useless, especially in a mountainous country. They kill numbers of horses, are slow at the best, and if used except for instruments and dressings will probably have to be abandoned by the road." He also said that the heavy fourhorse ambulance was inferior to the two-horse ambulance, and this was the general opinion during the war. The General Ambulance Order of 1863 prescribed the two-horse ambulance. A full supply of ambulances and other stores was asked for, but few of them were received. The Quartermaster at Alexandria promised finally to send them on August 23rd, but the crowded trains prevented them and three days later the road was broken

for good. The order of transportation at that time was: 1st Ammunition, 2nd Rations, 3rd Forage, 4th Medical supplies.

The Ambulances were sufficient for small engagements, but when the great two days' battle occurred near Bull Run, they were totally inadequate, even had they been organized in division trains. The Surgeon General had to be called on for ambulances; he forcibly gathered up a train of hacks and vehicles of all kinds from the streets of Washington and sent them to the field to bring in the wounded. This extemporization took the place of a service of the rear, which did not exist.

Letterman's field hospital plans had not yet appeared. Field hospitals were to be established in houses, barns and other buildings as at Bull Run, and McParlin's idea was to establish not division, or even corps hospitals, but one great field hospital in the rear for the whole army. This plan failed. An army of 60,000 men in battle could not be served by one hospital, even with the contracted lines of those days. When the battle came he established his hospital on Bull Run, a central and safe place, but too far away for that period, being from four to six miles from the wings. Each regiment had two or three hospital tents and this was the only hospital tentage with the army.

There were something like clearing hospitals that followed the army; or rather preceded it, for it was always retreating. Three hundred hospital tents were held in readiness at Alexandria at the beginning of the campaign, and two hundred were shipped to Warrenton where they were afterwards used. McParlin did not intend to retain sick and wounded in the field, or to establish any general hospitals except at Alexandria. The distance to that point was short and the railway convenient. He says: "The railroad made our communication easy and speedy with Alexandria. I proposed to use it for transportation of wounded from depots near the field. It was impossible to hazard locating, and there was no time for organizing large hospitals nearer to the scene of expected battle."

A wise plan would have been to set up tent hospitals at Culpepper, and later at Warrenton Junction (now Calverton). He was obliged to depart from his plan, and organized hospitals at Culpepper, and at Warrenton, which was 1ather off the main line of operations. The base hospitals were at Alexandria. When filled the patients were evacuated to Washington, and these

cleared in turn by sending them farther north. A tent hospital was also set up at Falls Church.

No systematic supply scheme had yet been devised for the armies. A plan somewhat out of the ordinary was tried. It did not prove an entire success, but it was a definite plan. McParlin says that the Surgeon General intimated that purveyors trains for each army corps were not suitable for this campaign on account of the increased risk of loss of supplies by that plan, but that one supply depot for the whole army would be most judicious; this depot to be at Alexandria. Had the army remained at Centreville, and it would have been better there, this plan would have been good. But when the army reached Culpepper McParlin soon found that it was a failure; and that it was absolutely necessary to have supplies with the army. He still clung to the idea of centralization. He says: "No other purveyor's depots for corps (except Sigel's) were organized. I soon found, however, that a small moveable depot would be necessary to furnish battlefield supplies; such as instruments, anesthetics, concentrated nourishment, cooking utensils, blankets, bedding and tents."

These supplies were secured, but instead of loading them in wagons as was generally done, they were packed in box cars and forwarded to Warrenton. From there they went on to Culpepper for the Battle of Cedar Mountain. Afterwards these cars came back to Warrenton Junction. McParlin was so pleased with his railway supply train that he had two cars fitted up with shelving for ready issue. This train seems to have been extremely useful while it lasted. When Warrenton was evacuated the supply trains came back toward Manassas, but Jackson had destroyed the bridges about Manassas, and the trains stopped at Bristoe. The army was defeated, the bridges were not repaired in time to remove the trains, and they were all burned on August 31st. So ended the railway supply trains. But the idea was a good one and not to be condemned on account of the outcome, which was not chargeable to the plan, but to the failure of a campaign that was a succession of blunders, if not worse. In fact these trains might have been removed, had not Pope sent such urgent orders, for the bridges were repaired the same night.

Aside from this source of supplies, each regiment was authorized to have three wagons for tents and medical supplies. At