Chamberlain's Role In The Civil War

The deadliest war in American history was The American Civil War. The time was 1861, Union against the Confederacy. Thousands of people died. According to www.civilwar.com about six hundred thousand of those soldiers were killed because of disease, one half were killed because of diarrhea due to contaminated water. When it came to surgeons it was hell. They would amputate an arm throw it in a pile with other body parts and continue to amputate other people without cleaning the saw or the tool. Many of those people getting dangerous disease like smallpox, which has killed 300 to 500 million people. Josh Chamberlain was and still a very well known figure during the civil war. Chamberlain was injured many of times. One of those times was when Chamberlain lifted his sword with pride and got shot in the hip with a minie ball. A minie ball is a soft bullet made out of lead during the civil war, when shot it would flatten in impact. The bullet had travelled inside his bladder and urethra, crushing bones and everything in its way. He dropped into his knee where blood flushed to into the ground. This was a pretty bad wound since without the urethra, you can't urinate. Doctors had to extract the bullet and put back together several urinary organs. According to New York Times and page 219 of The Killing Angels, Chamberlain was rushed to the hospital where …show more content…
Many of the injured soldiers had to pass through pain, either because there was no anesthesia or because of the disease they will get. Civil War was a horrible event, killing about 640000 people. War is never a good thing, especially when there is soft lead bullets that flatten out once they enter your body; crushing bones and blood vessels. Just imagine what you have to go through when a bullet enters your body, and you don’t even know if you will make it alive after the surgery is done removing a body part. That is how a normal life in the battlefield