Thread: I Know Nothing of Death or Suffering

... or injuries. After reading this. Writ only speaking for himself of course.


About U.S. Army Union officer Ranald Slidell Mackenzie.

Something else happened to Mackenzie during the war... undoubtedly caused in part by the the bloodshed and suffering he witnessed from 1862 to 1865. But it was more directly related to a series of gruesome, debilitating wounds he received and from which he never fully recover. He was wounded on six different occasions. At Manassas, he was shot with a .50-plus-caliber bullet through both shoulders, a terrible internal wound that should have killed him. He lay where he fell for twenty-four hours before being rescued. He was hit in the leg with an artillery shell (at Winchester), and later wounded in the chest by shrapnel. Another artillery shell took off the first two fingers of his right hand. The pain never left him and it changed him.

From the book Empire of the Summer Moon by S.C. Gwynne. Page 237.

The bold my emphasis.

...And then, when he was crushed in the pneumatic press, the red light in his eye finally flickered and died.


50 cal bullet through the shoulders. I assume that the wound was taken from the side, entering through one shoulder, traveling through the torso and exiting from the other shoulder?

If that's the case then...well, there are no words.

Originally Posted by felix

I assume that the wound was taken from the side, entering through one shoulder, traveling through the torso and exiting from the other shoulder?

If that's the case then...well, there are no words.

"ARGHHHHHHHHH!" seems pretty apt.

I stand corrected.

But, coming back to this, I must say...bloody hell, he must look like a Christmas ham.