Thanks, George

Where do you get your information? I have access to Ancestry.com. Do you think it is worth $20 a month to get Ancestry.com. I can even print documents from my local library and get Ancestry.com free but my time online is limited. I find that most sources are not free. Did you check Confederate Pensions? I know that is a good source for the fates and facts about individual soldiers. I think many of the older confederates from Georgia may have ended up quite destitute since their property was right in the path of Sherman's March. I had thought Archer Avery enlisted in 1861, but maybe that was in some other outfit since you show 1864. I think he would have been about 20 years old in 1864. What about awards or medals they might have received during the war? I know they did not get things like DD214's that showed their service. Did union soldiers get a discharge form or paperwork for awards, medals or campaign awards? When did union soldiers get disability pensions? I am thinking how confederates were lucky to even get buried after battles if they lost. I remember pictures of black burial details going to a battlefield months after the battle and interring skeletal remains of soldiers. How did soldiers identify themselves? They did not have dog tags as far as I know. In Vietnam many of us wore one set of tags around our necks and the other in our shoe laces since the boots tend to hold up longer in tropical heat than other body parts. Also when bodies get blown apart boots (with feet inside) tend to separate and may be identified.

I wish I could have talked to some of these guys, but all were long dead before I was born. They speak to me from the grave when I read or see pictures of them. We think we have it bad now. Even the grunts in Iraq and Afghanistan are living on easy street compared to these confederates who had about a 50/50 chance of catching some deadly camp disease. I know what grunts went through in Vietnam but if they were wounded and managed to survive for the first hour they probably could survive. These civil war vets were dead ducks if they got gut shot and could die of infection even if they got a minor flesh wound.
Did the confederate doctors use chloroform to knock out those upon which they were going to saw off a leg or arm?

John