Chapter 52 third quarter

Holmes went down to the tomb and groped around the walls, hoping to find a mechanism to enter another tunnel or secret room.He groped for no opening, but the toe of his boot inadvertently sank into a hollow crevice.Holmes crouched down to examine and found a small opening.He squeezed himself into the hole against the wall, then reached out and slowly pulled the lantern through.After a while of crawling forward, the tunnel became wider and wider. Holmes stood up, feeling much more comfortable.Their enemies are about to be defeated!But the tunnel turned up and down in seven turns and ups and downs, and the little doctor couldn't tell the difference between east, west and north.He put one hand in his coat pocket, holding the musket, and felt a little safer in his heart, so he continued to walk along the tunnel. At this moment, a gloomy voice sounded from the ground, which scared him out of his wits. .

"Dr. Holmes," said Teal. Benjamin Galvin enlisted when he was first drafted in Massachusetts.He considered himself a soldier by the age of 24, years before the war officially broke out, helping guide fugitive slaves into the city's dotted asylums, churches and tunnels.He also volunteered, escorting abolitionists to and from Faneuil Hall and other lecture halls, and joining other volunteers to build a human wall, shielding himself from stones and bricks hurled by mobs. It cannot be denied that Galvin was not as party-minded as other young men.Big posters and papers saying that this or that political hoodlum should be out of office, that such-and-such party and such-and-such state legislature were advocating secession or calling for mediation, he couldn't read a thing.But he understood political orators who preached that enslaved races must be freed and that criminals must be brought to justice without mercy.Benjamin Galvin also vaguely understood that he might not be able to return home to his new wife: the recruiter swore that if he did not carry the Stars and Stripes alive, his body would be wrapped in the Stars and Stripes and sent back to his hometown .

They are stationed in Virginia.One day, a soldier in their company disappeared, and he was found in a forest later. His head was pierced by a bullet and he was stabbed a few times. His skull and mouth were full of maggots, like a crawler A hive full of bees.They say it was done by a black person sent by the rebels to kill a Yankee for fun. Although Galvin had spent most of his pre-enlistment time working outdoors, he had never seen the reptiles that were so ubiquitous in this part of the country.The regimental adjutant forbade his comrades to trample to death even one of these reptiles; he took good care of them like a baby, even though he saw with his own eyes that four soldiers in another company were born with these reptiles because of their wounds killed by growing white worms.

Galvin never expected that the people around him would be killed so easily.In a smoke billowing explosion, the six soldiers walking in front of him were blown to the ground, dead, their eyes still wide open, as if interested to see what would happen to the others .What surprised Galvin was not so much the number of people who died, but the number of people who survived that day, because it seemed impossible for a person to survive this war, and it didn't even seem like an appropriate choice. .Dead horses and dead horses were everywhere, in unimaginable numbers, piled together like logs and burned.From then on, whenever Galvin closed his eyes and prepared to sleep, his head would feel dizzy for a while, shouts and explosions rang in his ears, and the stench of rotting corpses lingered in his nose for a long time. end.

One night, when Galvin returned to the tent, his stomach was throbbing with hunger, and he found that the hard biscuits he had put in his sleeping bag had disappeared.A soldier who lived with him said he saw the chaplain take it.Galvin could hardly believe that the pastor could do such a wicked thing. Everyone was starving and suffering from hunger.But no one is to blame for this happening.As the company marched through the pouring rain or the scorching sun, the rations inevitably dwindled until there were only weevil-infested biscuits, and even those biscuits were not enough for them. Sometimes soldiers piled horse carcasses and carrion on shallow water, and as a result writhing worms grew in the drinking water.Miasma, dysentery... all kinds of diseases came, and they were all called typhus, and the military doctors couldn't tell who was the real patient and who was pretending to be sick, so they had to take all measures and treat everyone equally.Once, Galvin vomited eight times in one day, and the last time he vomited blood.Doctors gave him quinine and opium to keep him alive, and every few minutes while they waited for the doctors to arrive, they would throw an arm or a leg through the window of the makeshift hospital.

After they set up camp, although there were still diseases, at least they had books to read.The assistant doctor collected the books sent by the soldiers' families and stored them in his tent, and he became a librarian.There were books with illustrations that Galvin loved, and sometimes a story or a poem would be read aloud by the adjutant or one of his roommates.Galvin found a volume of Longfellow's poetry in the assistant's library, with a slightly glossy cover decorated in gold and blue.Galvin did not recognize the name of the poet printed on the cover, but he seemed to know the man in the title page illustration, which he had seen in one of his wife's books.Harriet Galvin often told him that every character in Longfellow's book would find light and happiness in their desperate situation, and whenever he watched those around him fall one by one, this thought always brought him back. Confidence and courage.

As the cannons fired, there were always some soldiers who laughed uncontrollably, or screamed as they fired, biting the cartridges with their teeth, and their faces were blackened with the spilled ammunition.There were others who kept reloading and shooting indiscriminately, and Galvin thought these people were crazy. After the battle, the survivors were exhausted one by one, and they had no energy to dig deep pits to bury the bodies of their comrades, so they had to do things hastily, ignoring that their arms, knees and hair were still exposed.When it rains, the dirt that covers them is washed away.Galvin watched his roommates hurriedly write letters home to report the horrors of the battle, wondering how they could still use words to express what they saw, heard, and felt. He felt that any language he had heard was not enough to describe it all.

Galvin, unlike some others who were illiterate or semi-literate, did not want to have letters home written, but as soon as he found letters written on the backs of fallen Rebel soldiers, he sent them to Harriet in Boston. Let the wife know first-hand the situation of the war.He wrote his name at the end of the letter so she knew who it was from, and he encloses it with some kind of local flower petal or a special leaf.Even if someone is willing to help, he doesn't want to bother them.They are so tired, tired all the time.Before the battle broke out, Galvin was often able to predict from the sluggish facial expressions of some people - they seemed to be still asleep - that they would definitely not see anyone tomorrow morning.