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ceived commutation for quarters as such without any questions being asked to call my attention to the faot that I was not a commissioned surgeon in the Provisional Army of the Confederate States.

Upon ascertaining the fact, I wrote to the Surgeon General, who immediately sent me a commission dated in the spring of 1862, though my commission in the Provisional Army of Tennessee was dated in May, 1861. Thus it will be seen that though my Tennessee commission ante-dated that of a large majority of those who served under my direction; yet my Confederate commission post-dated a very large number of them.

Such was the haste with which the army had to be organized, it is no marvel that such oversights often occurred.

After the health of the Third Tennessee Regiment had greatly improved at Camp Trousdale, it was well prepared to make the movement into Kentucky and capture Bowling Green.

No one who has never aided in the organization and disciplining of such a body of men as composed the Third Tennessee Regiment, can form an adequate conception of the difficulty, delicacy and tediousness of the work. For they were for the most part young men, who, or their parents, were well-to-do farmers, accustomed to the daily use of the most wholesome and nutritious food, and to the comforts of the best of moral homes. Their friends, relatives and homes were in easy distance by railroad from their camp. Many of the private soldiers as well as the officers had with them negro servants to wait upon them. I think I am in the bounds of truth, in asserting that at Camps Cheatham and Trousdale and Bowling Green there were following the regiment almost seventy-five valuable, active slaves accompanying their masters, officers and privates. In camp the members of the regiment in general realized the pleasures of a picnic, rather than the inconveniences of a soldier's camp life, with its hardships and semi-menial work.

Besides the slaves, as a zest to their quasi picnic, parents, relatives of every degree, sweethearts, wives and even infants in the arms, were daily visitors. Especially were these visitors numerous on Saturdays and Sundays, when they hrought with them luxuries in abundance, enough to increase considerably the sick list on the Monday's morning.

There being no immediate fear of a conflict with the enemy, I did not, unless in cases of notorious malingering force all falsely complaining of disability to perform a soldier's duty. Thus the way was open for some to practice malingering so frequently as to bring them into disrepute with their comrades, and to create a public sentiment in the regiments against the practice.

Before we moved to Bowling Green, the regiment was very healthy as a whole; and I had so overcome the prejudices of its members against discipline and treatment in hospital that if any there were among them who had not formed a friendly attachment for me as an officer and man I was not aware of the fact. I have a grateful conviction that, that attachment on their part followed me all the time I remained in the camp with them, during my service in the hospital department, and even to this good day now that I am somewhat bowed down by the weight of nearly four scores of years.

It cheers me now to recall the memory of the noble men, most of them young, or mere youths who treated me with so much respect and even affection. My memories of those who fought so bravely on an hundred battle-fields, of the many who gave up their lives there, and of the now gray-haired survivors never have passed out of my mind. Even now, as I write, I love to recall all that I can of those noble boys-I always recall them as boys-with whom I entered the service, when I was, I believe, the senior of every man in the regiment. I often wonder if the survivors of that regiment think of me as often as I do of them.

It was daily a pleasure to pass among them and note the gaiety, good humor, and apparent absence of care of the future manifested by those brave boys, many of whom had, for the first time, left their pleasant home to be absent for any considerable period of time. They cheered me during my busy moments and thus helped to make my burden of responsibility somewhat lighter. For they were always ready to amuse me when 1 was not officially engaged. But often when I lay down on my lonely cot in my tent a sadness provoked by the consideration of the hardships of the future, the deaths that would ruthlessly strike down many of them, and the sufferings and privations reason convinced me were in store for them. Many an almost sleepless night was

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thus passed. But daylight found me more and more resolute to devote every one of my waking moments to the comfort of the sick and wounded Confederate soldiers.

During the four years of the great war, I never sought an easy position, never sought to become a member of any general's family; and now when I review the work I had to do during the four years of that bloody war, I am amazed that I could do so much-in general not sleeping more than four hours out of every twenty-four-and the multiplied cares which during three years were put upon me involved responsibilities more numerous and weighty than perhaps ever were thrust upon any one medical director of any army. I often ask, how or why it was possible to meet these with even a moiety of satisfaction to those it was my special business to provide and care for when stricken by disease and wounds.

The sequel of this narrative will show whence came aids to me in the work. But leaving off for the present a statement of official co-operation of Albert Sidney Johnston and his medical directors, Surgeon D. W. Yandell, and Braxton Bragg and his medical directors, Surgeons A. J. Foard, and E. H. Flewellen, I want here and now to state, and I hope none who read these papers will forget it, that never perhaps in the history of any medical service was a medical director as cneerfully obeyed as I was; nor was there ever such a corps of medical officers as were those who served in the hospital department under my direction. For in zeal for the service, in intelligence and professional skill as a body of men they have never been excelled if ever equalled. Above all they were dutiful and helpful, and rarely, if ever, failed to cheerfully co-operate with the commanding general by obeying his orders and their medical director in observing his directions.

Arrived at Bowling Green the Third Tennessee Regiment entered upon a field of service under new relationships. It was thenceforward to be a part of that wonderful organism the Provisional Army of the Confederate States. Immediately upon our arrival Brig. Gen. Simon B. Buckner assumed command of the army there. His medical director was Surgeon David W. Yandell, professor of Surgery in the Louisville University, a medical man of established reputation, a man of strong personal

traits and of great surgical skill. Though he was a younger man than I, we had long known each other formally and by reputation. He was always frank in his intercourse with me, which I heartily reciprocated to the end of his life. His family on the maternal side was a Wendell. Two of his maternal uncles were men of high character as physicians and surgeons, viz.: Drs. James and Robert Wendell, of Murfreesboro, Tenn. His father was the distinguished Lundsford P. Yandell, Sr., who was successively a professor in Transylvania University Medical School at Lexington, and the University of Louisville, Ky., and in the Memphis, Tenn., Medical Schools. Two of Dr. D. W. Yandell's brothers were also physicians of repute before the war, viz.: Lundsford P., Jr., also a physisian in the Medical School of the University of Louisville, and William. All these brothers are now deceased, and it gives me pleasure to testify to their useful and honorable service in the Confederate armies and hospitals.

Surgeon D. W. Yandell I found in Bowling Green serving as medical director on the staff of Gen. Buckner. Gen. A. S. Johnston was expected to arrive and establish there his headquarters as Commander-in-chief of what was then denominated the Department of the West, where the eastern boundary was the Alleghany Mountains and its western the Pacific Ocean.

Dr. Yandell informed me that Prof. Bayless, of the University of Louisville, was engaged to come South and take position as Medical Director of the Department of the West. He never came. Why he did not, I did not then learn, and I do not now know.

After the delay of a week or two Gen. A. S. Johnston arrived and took command. Having ascertained that Prof. Bayless was not coming South, Surgeon D. W. Yandell was announced as Medical Director of the Department of the West on the staff of Gen. A. S. Johnston.

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Vol. XXIII.

DRS. DUNCAN & PAUL F. EVE, Nashville, Tenn.

[See Cut Facing Page 576.]

DECEMBER, 1901.

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