[Doggoneit]

It is great to have a photo to go along with the history. My ancestors may have lobbed the shell that injured him. This guy would have been my first cousin had I been around at the same time, he died at age 17 at Malvern Hill.

 

[Doggoneit]

Happened to way too many (on both sides, and at many battles). Left both sides (though, I think, predominately the South) impoverished for at least a generation after 1865. Of course, other wars have done the same - I'm sure many can think of examples.

The photo that I posted proves the old saying, "In time of war, old men send young men to die." It always has been and always will be. The try to catch us when we are teenagers and haven't yet got the courage to tell an elder, "Hell No!"

 

[Doggoneit]

Or the experience to know we ought to (I remember being that way). And then there is the fact that the young think it can't happen to them Those who have learned better without dying in the process have a distinctive gaze...

It reminds me of a passage from a memoir of a young WWII paratrooper when told that 3/4 of them would probably die in the coming drop. He said he looked at his friends thinking that he would sure miss them.

 

[Doggoneit]

The photo is my great grandfather, Aaron C, Bullington, born in 1844. Early in the Civil War he joined the Illinois 86th Volunteer Infantry Regiment. The regimental history says that at war's end they had marched over 5,000 miles. Their main battle was at Kennesaw Mountain, where their commanding officer was killed. Aaron was hit by concussion from a random Confederate shell while they were in camp but was able to stay with his unit untill the end. He apparently suffered from what today we call PTSD, and was on medical disability for the rest of his life.

View attachment 4086081

 

[Doggoneit]

The men in your family must make babies later in life than most. I am the same, my GGF owned a plantation before, during and after the War. My GF was born early in the War. For some families the Civil War adults would be GGGF or even GGGGF. Of course, I never met my paternal GF as he died almost 30 years before I was born.