The Daily Dispatch: September 12, 1861., [Electronic resource]

A Charmed life.

Gen. Walker is not only respected among military men for his abilities and courage, but is noted for escaping death upon two occasions, where escape was hardly anything short of a miracle. In one of the Indian battles, in Florida, he was literally riddled with rifle balls. The surgeons told him to prepare for death, frankly informed him that his case was hopeless. He told them that they knew nothing about it, that he intended to recover, and he did recover. Again at Molino del Rey, then a captain, in leading his men to take a redoubt, as he approached it, in advance, he looked round to see how his men were behaving. He saw every one of them, but two or three, hors du combat, and fell on the spot himself pierced by so many balls that it would be a severe tax upon credulity to enumerate his wounds. Again the surgeons told him he must die, and again he told them he would ‘"see them d — d first."’ Three our four months after, he left the City of Mexico a ghastly spectacle, and was conveyed to Vera Cruz on a litter, unable to bear any other mode of conveyance. He reached home alive, however, recovered and survives all his desperate wounds, a vigorous denial of medical prescience.