Nursing the Wounded

When the armies moved south, hundreds of dead and wounded men were left behind on the battlefield. As soon as the shooting stopped, civilians from nearby homes offered assistance. Barbara Jane (Palmer) Dolson recalled that men had fallen all about the house and crawled away to fence corners or brush, and that after the wounded were taken from the field, a hospital established in a cabin north of the creek presented a sickening scene of men wounded in almost every way possible, some bearing pain without a murmur, some groaning, some crying, some praying, and some dying. Field hospitals were established in six homes, including the Lathrop home south of the creek and the Ragain home northeast of this point near present day highway K-52.

Kansas · United States