"My grandfather, John Gibson, was a soldier in the Confederate Army, and all of his grandchildren loved to listen to him as he told of his war experiences. I loved to hear him. He was a good story teller and I was an attentive listener.
His first fighting was in the Battle of Shiloh, and on that first day of the battle he was hit just above the knee and it shattered the bone. It was in July and the weather was real hot. He managed to pull himself up under a persimmon tree and for three days the battle went on around him. His injured leg swelled so that he had to cut his pants leg, and the pain was real bad.
It was a Yankee victory, so after it was over it was the Yankee soldiers who came to clear the battlefield of the wounded. A big store house had been set up as a surgery and the wounded were carried there and placed under the shade of oak trees nearby. The treatment in those days for the leg and arm wounds gotten in the battle was usually amputation.
As grandpa lay there waiting for his turn, he could see them take the wounded inside and then a little later he would sometimes see an arm or leg being thrown out the window. Then the soldiers would soon be brought back out to lie in the shade and quite often die. So, when the stretcher bearers came to pick up grandpa, "All right, Johnny Reb, it's your turn," he began to protest.
"I don't want my leg cut off! If I am going to die, I want to die with both my legs."
"You'll die if it's not cut off."
"Lots of those you brought back out here with a leg cut off died anyway. I don't want my leg cut off."
So they put him back down under the tree and left him there.
Not long after he returned home he married a young fifteen or sixteen year old girl named Lucy Knight, and they reared a big family. Because one leg was shorter than the other, my grandfather Gibson had a hop when he walked, even though he had a built up shoe on the foot of the crippled leg. He managed to work every day and when he would plow he would walk with the short leg on the side and the good leg down in the furrow. You could hardly tell he was hopping when he was plowing.
He was a good man and a religious man. Never a night passed without his reading his Bible by the light of a lamp or the light of the log burning in the fireplace and then he would get on his knees and pray."
From I Remember When, by Dr. Edward Lee Gibson.