INSTANTLY KILLED.

New Zealand Herald, Volume XXIX, Issue 9022, 29 October 1892, Page 2 (Supplement)

INSTANTLY KILLED.

At Stone R'ver I saw an infantryman struck between the shoulders by a solid shot. He was flung forty feet or more and reduced to a pulp, and yet he was gasping thirty seconds after being struck. At Second Bull Run tho man next to me on the right was shot through the centre of the forehead. We were kneeling. He had his gun to his face, and had fired the shot and cried out, "My God, I'm hit!" before he fell over on his side. While we were forming battle line in the streets of Fredericksburg a rifled shell exploded in the ranks about twenty feet away. One man was blown to fragments—so completely wiped off the face of the earth that not a finger of him was to be found. The shell probably exploded just as it hit him. The man on his right had a leg and an arm blown off and was flung ten feet away, yet he was living and trying to speak half a minute later. Tho one on his left was cut in two above the hips and one of his arms blown over the heads of the second line just forming. The man's eyes did not close for twenty seconds. At Spobtsylvania a sergeant on my right was shot through the heart as the lines were advancing. The body was afterward examined by the surgeon, and he said the bullet had passed through the heart. The man advanced at least four steps after being hit, and then clutched at a sapling and said : " Keep right on ; I've been hit!" He must have lived fully thirty seconds after receiving the shot. In tho cemetery at Gettysburg three of us were lying down behind a monument which had toppled over, and were using it as a breastwork. Tho man on the left was struck by some missile, probably a fragment of shell, which uncovered the whole top of his head. He laid his gun aside, stood up at full height, and then shrieked out and fell. As we turned to him he raised his arm, and his lips moved as if he were trying to give us some message.—New York Sun.