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Debris of Battle

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The battle at Gettysburg, whatever else may be said of it, was a medical disaster.
The armies evacuated the field soon after the battle, leaving behind a 25-square-mile area covered with 7,000 dead and over 21,000 wounded of both armies, who lacked not only medical care but basic food and shelter. Most just lay where they fell, some for many days.
In traditional Army FUBAR fashion, the need for help was denied for some time, causing needless suffering and additional unnecessary deaths, but when word eventually got out, an unprecedented outpouring of civilian assistance took place. The participants included the Sisters of Charity, Frederick Law Olmsted (famous for his design of New York's Central Park), the engineer Haupt, and the formidable (if ineffectual) Dorothea Dix. Their contributions, as well as thousands of others', are well told here in this thoroughly researched, clearly written history. Your Civil War bookshelf is not complete without it.

The "score" rating is an ineradicable feature of the page. This reviewer does not "score" books.)

After the largest battle to take place in the Civil War the city of Gettysburg was basically turned upside down. The wounded and the dead lied about 25 square miles of the battlefield left behind by both Confederate and Union armies. Few surgeons were on hand and the lack of medical supplies, food and proper shelter was an immense problem. Just as medical help slowly arrived, family members looking for lost loved ones, battlefield scavengers, volunteer medics, nurses and the curious fled to the battle ravaged town. Author Gerard Patterson covers many of these subjects and how the town struggled to come together and rebuild from it's shattered state. Civilian commentary, biographies of soldiers and medical leaders are brought forward to enhance the gripping information. If you are looking for a great book on Gettysburg to compliment the battle this is an excellent choice. A key to remember is that this book focuses quite a bit towards the medical aspects of how the town handled the awesome task at hand of taking care of the wounded and the dead. In order to understand Gettysburg one must compliment this book because there was so much more to the battle of Gettysburg than just the battle.

This is an excellent, readable book that describes the aftermath of the Battle of Gettysburg (July 1-3, 1863), the sufferings of the wounded, and the efforts of many private citizens and organizations to help deal with an unprecedented emergency resulting from three days of ferocious fighting.

Following their repulse on the third day of the Battle, the Confederate Army withdrew leaving approximately 2,000 wounded prisoners in Union hands together with 5000 severely wounded soldiers on the field. There were also over 14,000 wounded Union troops needing medical attention. The three-day Battle resulted in over 7,000 deaths, with the bodies requiring burial.

This situation produced a humanitarian and logistical crisis for the town of Gettysburg (population 2,400). The difficulty was compounded when the Union Army, in its pursuit of the retreating Confederates, took with it virtually all available medical personnel and supplies, leaving behind an inadequate team of surgeons and support personnel to offer treatment. In addition, because of exigencies before the Battle itself, the Union medical trains had been mostly left in the rear, resulting in a delay in getting supplies to the wounded.

Gerald Patterson's book details the sufferings and difficulties that followed in the wake of this, the bloodiest battle of the Civil War. He praises the relief efforts mounted by many private organizations, particularly the United States Sanitary Commission and the United States Christian Commission. These organizations were rivals, in a sense, but both worked valiantly to bring relief to the wounded of Gettysburg. Catholic relief organizations, such as the Sisters of Mercy, other organizations, and private citizens also contributed immeasurably. Patterson also shows how some individuals behaved less nobly by trying to profiteer from the needs of the wounded and to gather relics from the Battlefield.

The book shows the many difficulties that needed to be addressed in short order. These included housing (many of the wounded were left an intolerably long time on the field), finding adequate medical supplies, providing food, restoring rail service and other transportation, peforming necessary surgery, and much else. The military response was inadequate. But by late July, 1863, a camp had been established east of Gettysburg, known as Camp Letterman, which provided organized, centralized care for most of the remaining wounded of both armies. Without the assistance of the private organizations, the suffering would have been immeasurably more severe than it was.

Considerations of health, if nothing else, demanded the prompt burial of the Battle dead. Patterson describes their burial, exhumation, and reburial by details established for this purpose. He explains how the need to provide for the burial of the dead resulted ultimately in the formation of the Gettysburg National Cemetery and Gettysburg National Battlefield and also provided, more immediately, the impetus for Lincoln's Gettysburg address.

Patterson's book makes good use of first-hand sources. It introduces the reader to many of the women and men who provided humanitarian service following the Battle of Gettysburg. Interestingly, the book includes a brief but fascinating epilogue in which Patterson describes the subsequent careers of many who participated in providing medical care at Gettysburg, such as Confederate surgeon Simon Baruch, and Frederick Olmstead, the architect of Central Park.

This book presents in a thorough, convincing way a frequently overlooked aspect of the story of Gettysburg.

"Debris of Battle" by Gerard A. Patterson. Subtitled: "The Wounded Of Gettysburg" Stackpole Books, 1997.
If you think that being unprepared for disaster is a phenomenon of the 21st Century, you should read this book. Before July 1863, the town of Gettysburg had few claims to fame: a shoe factory and a Lutheran seminary. The shoes attracted the Confederate forces then raiding in Pennsylvania. The Southern forces came down from the North into Gettysburg; their presence attracted the Union Army. The Northern forces came up from the South, basically from Washington DC/Maryland. Those three days in July 1863 were one of the most bloody battles ever experienced by American armies. The Battle of Gettysburg is well documented in many, many books, but this book, "Debris Of Battle", addresses the details of how the wounded and the dead, from both sides, were handled.

As in New Orleans, the citizens of 1863 Gettysburg were really unprepared for the disaster that was to descend upon them. They hunkered down to weather the storm. When the battle was over, they emerged from hiding places to terrible destruction. As with Hurricane Katrina, the federal, state and local authorities were unprepared to face the destruction all about them. The author's estimate was some 21,000 Union and Confederate wounded. Calls for help went out, and, as with the hurricanes of 2005, contemporary responses were considered slow. The author, Gerard Patterson, documents that some citizens took advantage of the wounded soldiers by charging them ,"... fifty cents to a dollar for their bread". (P.54). The author also documents the tensions and in-fighting amongst the groups that were supposed to be helping the wounded and burying the dead. Again, here was looting, (page 73): they "...were bearing away any and everything that they considered of pecuniary value".

Patterson deals directly and sometimes harshly with the 1863 personalities involved. For example, he notes that the superintendent of nurses, Dorothea Dix, (whose likeness appeared on a 1 cent US postage stamp, 1983), was described (by one of her contemporaries), as "A self-sealing can of horror tied up with red tape". Also on page 105, the author notes: " A Unitarian, Miss Dix exhibited another prejudice in her selection process: Only nurses who were Protestants were acceptable. At Gettysburg, this bias was to cause no little friction, because the Sister of Charity had established early on such an impressive and almost saintly presence. " Of course, the Sisters of Charity were a Catholic order of nuns.

Gerald Patterson has written a different kind of book about the battle of Gettysburg, It is interesting to see that responses to disasters in the present century have much in common with his historical record of Gettysburg.

This book is an excellant book that covers an area that we historians don't usually think of. We learn abou the towns and cities at the time of battle, but not what happens to these towns and cities after the battle. This book the Debris of Battle covers the carnage and complete mess that the town of Gettysburg was in after the battle. It also shows you that our ancestors were all not so charitable to the wounded soldiers and armies. I highly recommend this book

Churches and college classrooms strewn with the wounded. Casualties left across a 25-square mile battlefield for lack of transport to safe places, some drowning when rainstorms swell nearby creeks. Citizens unable to tend to the wounded because Confederate pickets, covering their retreat, keep their pursuers at bay. The dead of battle, blackened and bloated, buried in shallow trenches by troops with few digging implements, exposed by passing showers. The dreadful hunger and thirst of those seeking medical attention, abandoned by the sickening logic of battle and the desire of their leaders to safeguard their supplies. Official neglect, incompetence and general lack of concern. These were the gruesome realities of after-battle life in the Civil War era.

Author Gerard Patterson does a creditable job of putting a human face on what many call facilely the "horror or war." The reality of warfare -- in a day in which mechanized means for causing death and injury had far outstripped the means for survivors to cope with it -- is on full and brutal display here. "Debris of Battle" does not contain many photographs, but the written description bring home what it might have been like to walk the battlefield of Gettysburg in the days immediately after the battle. Those who have visited Gettysburg, as I have, may be shocked. The present battlefield, strewn with heroic sculptures and neatly arrayed battle lines, is mocked by the inglorious truth of what hurtling metal can do to human flesh.

Patterson chronicles the work of the many volunteers who tended the wounded. These heroes of the aftermath dealt with the indifference and antagonism of the remaining Union troops to aiding their rebel foes. They did their best to succor the wounded in a situation without an army supply line, and with a desperate shortage of surgeons, ambulances, food and medicine. They also faced the difficult work of treating soldiers who had invaded their state, the badly wounded "Johnnies" who often were treated only after the Union wounded received care.

Many of the people described in the book, barely known to modern ears, provided signal comfort to men in extreme agony: Dr. Henry Janes, who was made responsible for the hundred-odd field hospitals; Herman Haupt, the brilliant engineer who rebuilt railroad bridges to evacuate the wounded; Cornelia Hancock, who obeyed her conscience's urging to assist in any way she could. Patterson also describes the collection of characters and busybodies who came to Gettysburg with personal agendas. There was the monomaniacal Dorothea Dix, poking her head into everyone's business and turning away women she considered too pretty. There was the irritating presence of ministers bent on preaching the word, but unable to offer a soldier a cup of water. There were crowds of families on recovery missions, souvenir hunters, embalmers, photographers and tourists who crowded the scene and made helping the wounded more difficult. There were even Southern sympathizers, such as Effie Goldborough, who did what they could to help Confederates escape.

"Debris of Battle" focus on the four and a half months that followed the 3-day fight at Gettysburg. The books is a masterwork that blends first-hand accounts from the participants with the longer view of the modern historian. A must-have for any Civil War aficionado!

"When it was over the army, as if tryiing to conceal some vile repugnant act in which it had been engaged, barred all approaches to Gettysburg." Such is the opening line of Gerard Patterson's Debris of Battle, and it's entirely appropriate. The aftermath of any Civil War battle was both vile and repugnant in its carnage. Lead bullets that shattered bone, grapeshot that ribbed men into pieces, solid shot that took off limbs: the wounds inflicted when north fought south were horrible. Because of the huge number of wounded in the big battles like Gettysburg, military medical teams were almost always overworked and understaffed (thus making quick amputations even more likely). Sepsis and lockjaw were frequent consequences of triage surgery, even when the wounds were relatively minor. Thousands of dying and injured soldiers, physicians worked to the breaking point (sometimes keeping themselves going only with liberal doses of whiskey), confusion, despair: Patterson describes it all with meticulous documentation and heartbreaking detail.

To make things even worse, both at Gettysburg and elsewhere, the Army of the Potomac was frequently short of ambulance wagons and medical supplies. Too often they were considered hindrances, getting in the way of wagons carrying food and ordinance. So, as Patterson points out, the privately-run U.S. Sanitary Commission was the real hero at Gettysburg and other battlefields when it came to tending to the wounded. Growing into a nationwide organization with more than 7,000 branches, the Sanitary Commission not only provided much needed medical supplies and care to wounded soldiers, but also watchdogged the government to make sure that the Army took seriously what happened to the soldiers who'd been used and wounded in battle. Nor did the Commission sit back and passively wait to be called in. As Patterson notes (p. 42), "The organization's strategists in Washington followed the movements of the army..., trying to estimate when and where the next encounter might occur so that supply depots could be set up with reach and aid would be available if required."

Patterson's book is well-written and a real eye-opener for Civil War buffs who focus on the glory of war and forget the gore. The next time you're in Gettysburg, take a few minutes to visit the site of Camp Letterman, the hospital that treated the thousands of wounded for nearly 6 months after the battle. You'll find the marker that commemorates the hospital hard to find. It's tucked between a Giant foodstore and a strip mall. Curious that the battlefield is so well perserved, and the hospitals so forgotten.