In His Own Words - Captain William Francis Bartlett

Thursday, April 24, 1862

Captain William "Frank" Bartlett wrote briefly and stoically about his wounding in his journal. He remarked, "While I was visiting the pickets, watching the enemy with my glass, a sharpshooter hit me in the knee with a minie ball, shattering the bone down to my ankle. Dr. Hayward amputated it four inches above the knee, and I started for Baltimore in the same afternoon."¹

His friend, Colonel Francis Palfrey, accompanied Captain Bartlett as he was carried to the rear for surgery by Doctor Hayward. As he was being attended, he said to Colonel Palfrey, "It’s rough, Frank, isn’t it?" Palfrey remarked that this was the only word of complaint he spoke the entire time.²

References:
¹Francis Winthrop Palfrey, Memoir of William Francis Bartlett (Boston, Massachusetts: Houghton, Osgood and Company, 1878), 41.
²Palfrey, Memoir of William Francis Bartlett, 41.