Existing comment:
"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. |