History of the Second Massachusetts Regiment of Infantry: A prisoner's diary

ed, and they dumped me out by a blacksmith's shop. A surgeon came along and ordered me sent to Rapidan Station, on the box seat of an "avalanche"; and an awful "avalanche" it was,--four men with legs and arms off inside. It was eight miles over rocks and through rivers, and generally such a drive of damnation as never entered into the heart of man to conceive. Luckily, I kept my strength; but why the inside passengers didn't die before we got half way is the marvel. "The lamentable chorus, the cry of agony, the endless groan," as we bounced and jolted over corduroy road and river bed, was an ill thing to hear. We arrived at the railroad about dusk, just as I was calculating about how much longer I could stand it without fainting, and they put us out on the grass among those already arrived. The train came along after dark, and, finding that I must shift for myself or be left in the field, I made my painful way on hands and knees, among horses' feet and under the awful "avalanche," to the platform, where, afte