Robert Hale Strong

Union officers as well as enlisted men feared the army hospital as much as, and sometimes more than, the fighting on the battlefield. Civil War hospitals were well known among the soldiers for their unsanitary conditions and for their fearful scenes of pain, injury, and death. In fact, more men died from disease and the complications brought on by surgery performed under primitive conditions than died on the battlefield. The hospital also separated the soldiers from their units, a source of shame and worry as regimental comrades were left behind at the front lines to carry on the fight. In the summer of 1864, Private Robert Strong took sick while marching in Georgia with his regiment. He was ordered to a field hospital just before the Battle of Marietta, then sent back to a Union base hospital in...