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Shot from the Saddle ...
"I saw at once that I was going into great peril for me horses and men."
-- Captain James B Ricketts, 1st US Artillery
By 1:30 pm on July 21, the Union artillery batteries of captains Charles Griffin and James Ricketts were ordered to the top of Henry Hill. Exposed to withering fire, Union men and horses fell at an alarming rate. Ricketts himself was shot out of the saddle, wounded in the thigh.
With more than half of their horses dead in the traces, Griffin and Ricketts had no hope of withdrawing to safety. When Confederate troops captured Griffin's guns, it marked the turning point of the battle.
"No words... can describe the horrors around me... On a table in the open hall, a man was undergoing amputation of the leg. At the foot of the stairs two bloody legs lay and through all I went to my husband."
-- Fanny Ricketts, July 26, 1861
...and Captured
Captured after his wounding, Captain Ricketts was taken to "Portici," home of the Lewis family. His wife Fanny made her way from Washington, DC to Portici, nursing him for a week then accompanying him to prison in Richmond. Although he would exclaim: "I had better died on the battlefield than die the lingering death suffered here," James Ricketts did survive to become a major general.
Fanny Ricketts' diary leaves vivid images of field surgeons struggling to deal with hideous wounds. |