Thomas Wentworth Higginson, Harvard Memorial Biographies

[230] troops continued..... The chaplain came in, asking for some assistance to get the body of one of our men up from the creek, who was shot through the head, and that of a man belonging to the artillery. Some of Captain Lombard's men had dug a grave for their comrade in among some pines, opposite the house we occupied; and these two other men were buried there. It was a strange scene. The moon shone bright and peacefully; but there was a scent of powder in the air, and my hands were bloody from assisting in amputating De Peyster's arm. While we heard the rumble of wheels, and the voices of men from the troops passing in the road, the three bodies were laid in one grave; the chaplain said a short prayer, and then we turned from the first grave of the Forty-fourth Regiment. Just then came the rattle of musketry from some little distance up the road.

Newbern, North Carolina, December 22.

... We reached Kinston on the return march [from Goldsborough bridge] Friday morning, and I left the column to go down to the boat with some of our men severely wounded, who I was anxious should be spared the journey over the road to Newbern in those infernal ambulances. I got down to the boat, which was a miserable concern, with little or no cover, and was in season to put the two worst cases in the cabin on a mattress which I took from a house near the landing. I had them comfortably settled, and left provisions, and a nurse to look after them, when the Medical Director appeared, and told me to go on board, and report to the surgeon in charge, and go down with the wounded. I sent my horse back to the regiment, and went on board. Soon men began to arrive in numbers, and the boat, which ought to have held fifty, was laden with upwards of one hundred and fifty. They were packed everywhere. We opened bundles of hay, which had been brought as a protection from the rifles of the Secesh, and spread it over the decks. A large scow, which had been laden with provisions, was cleared as far as possible, and the men laid in that. While we were at work, one of my men died, as I had expected, and I said nothing, because I thought we might get his body down to Newbern, where it could be obtained by his friends; but it became evident I was doing wrong in thus using space required for the living, and I finally had a grave dug under a splendid pine at the landing. The body was removed just in season to give room for one of our drummer-boys, who had a severe shell-wound of the thigh, and who, I feared, had gone down in the ambulance over the road. I was glad to have a bed for him.