My interest in the Battle of Shiloh is a personal one. In this battle, my great-great-grandfather, George R. Conard, received a wound in his ankle bone (then known as the “astragalus”) that withdrew him from the war and very likely saved his life, for his company suffered almost 100% casualties before the fighting ended. Thus, I owe my existence and my identity to a Confederate marksman who took aim at my grandfather, intending to kill him, but only crippling him for life.
Note: The information in this post comes from two sources: genealogical records handed down to me by my Uncle Bob over 25 years ago, and a letter, written by 1st Lieutenant F. M. Posegate, now online, describing the first hours of the battle. Because I am not writing for scholarly publication, I have not foot noted any of my statements. The source for any particular statement should be obvious, however.
Early in the morning of April 6, 1862, Corporal George R. Conard and the other soldiers of Company A of the 48th Regiment of Ohio Volunteer Infantry, were sitting down to breakfast and looking forward to a quiet Sabbath. The 48th Regiment was part of the Army of the Tennessee, commanded by General Ulysses Grant. A Confederate army, commanded by General Albert Sidney Johnston, was only several miles away. There had been skirmishes between the two armies, but Grant did not believe that there would be a battle that day.
Suddenly, the men of Company A heard the Long-Roll off to the right, followed by the sound of muskets being fired rapidly. They ran to get their weapons and after several minutes their regiment was ready to fight.
It was the beginning of a battle that horrified the nation, very nearly ended Grant’s military career, and in its scale and savagery prefigured some of the major battles of the First World War.
Company A began to suffer casualties almost immediately. Lieutenant Posegate wrote:
“Just at this time David Morgan, [Corp.] George Conard, and David Woosley, all of our Company, came limping past, all wounded. Morgan thro’ the bowels, and the two latter in the feet. Geo is pretty seriously wounded, and it will be some time before he will be able to use his foot.” David Morgan died the next day. Ten soldiers from Company A were wounded, “Geo. Conard and myself the most seriously”, the Lieutenant added.
Some time later — it is not clear when — George Conard was loaded into an ambulance with two other men and taken to a remote location where the men’s medical needs could be attended.
The likelihood of infection made George Conard’s wound life-threatening. A Confederate minny ball had shattered the astragalus bone in his left foot. Known today as the “ankle bone”, the astragalus bone distributes weight from above to the other bones in the foot. Without an astragalus bone, the affected foot cannot bear weight. George walked with a cane for the rest of his life.
When news of George’s wounding reached his father, Benjamin Conard, in Cincinnati, he immediately boarded ship for Tennessee, found George, and brought him home. George was now desperately ill, suffering from both “camp dysentery” and a gangrenous infection in his wounded foot.
I do not know what Benjamin did to treat George for these diseases; he must have been an exceptional caregiver to have saved not only his son’s life, but also his foot.
When George had recovered enough strength to move around, Benjamin had him enrolled in Miami University, Oxford, Ohio (where my father would enroll eighty years later), and then in the local medical school.
By the war’s end, he was an army doctor, preparing sick and wounded Union soldiers to go home. The horror of war that he had missed seeing by being removed from the fighting on the morning of first day of battle, he now saw up close; and he not only saw it, but was responsible for alleviating and curing it. The war could never afterwards have been far from his thoughts.
Nor could the war ever be far from him physically. My Uncle Bob, who visited him several times when he was a child, told me that he moved slowly and stiffly, with the help of a cane, and that his ankle made a crunching noise whenever he flexed it. His disability did not, however, prevent him from marching in the annual Grand Army of the Republic parade on the Fourth of July.
In a nation that celebrates youth and endows it with attributes of invulnerability, he knew otherwise. He had once stepped forward to save his country; late in life, he stepped forward to save his country’s youth. He petitioned the legislature of the state of Ohio to outlaw football as a collegiate sport, testifying that it exposed the young men who played it to too great a risk of suffering catastrophic brain injury.
He died around 1920 — I’ll have to look it up.
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