A Veteran From Another War
This post is take from another Lambson progenitor, James Farley Lambson, who fought valiantly in the Civil War. If you are keeping score, James was the youngest son of Boaz Lambson and Polly Walworth, and the Brother of Arba Lorenzo Lambson, who was the father of Apollos Boaz Lambson, who was the father of Ormus Arba Lambson, who was the father of Appolos Byron Lambson, who was the father of Virgil George Lambson, who was my father.
James wrote a five and a half page history of his war experience which is fascinating if a little grizzly. I am sparing you that, and share only this quarter-page conclusion and a couple of verses from a poem he wrote, In Memory of A Fallen Comrade.
"Now I have made my story longer than intended yet many incidents are left out. Let me say to the incredulous that the horrors of war cannot be exaggerated. The actual facts are as bad as the most vivid imagination can picture, and to those who think that a pension is a soft snap, perhaps it is for the man who never earned it, but all the gold in the world could not hire me to go through the ordeal of suffering again. I would rather die. And now I am getting $1.50 per day pension on the amputated leg, nothing on the other, while the men who suffered nothing and some of them did nothing are getting $1.00 per day. And to our young men I want to say that I worked in the hospital at Chattanooga helping to care for 5,000 wounded before I was crippled, so I have had a long experience, and I found that the immoral and dissipated men have little chance of recovery if badly wounded in hot weather. Tobacco and whiskey put many under the sod, but worst of all is that burning disgrace to humanity called syphilis. Now young men cut out your dissipation and foolishness, keep your body and soul clean, be honest, industrious and upright and live to a good old age, then die with a clear conscience and a bright hope for the eternal future. Now I am 80 years old and those dissipated boys I used to know have been under the sod thirty or forty years. The long sober life is far better than the short dissipated life."
In Memory of a Fallen Comrade
Down at Resaca's bloody strife
We made the rebels run.
This gallant hero lost his life
And his last work was done.
And there they laid this soldier brave
In his last place of rest,
No stone to mark his lonely grave
Nor coffin o'er his breast.
And in a far off northern home
A mother old and gray
Was watching for the mail to come
Just at the close of day.
At length the looked for paper came
But not a gleam of joy.
In list of slain appeared the name
Of her own darling boy.
And in another home quite near
A maiden young and fair
Was shedding many a bitter tear
In grief and deep despair.
An now upon memorial day
of each recurring year
A lady now grown old and gray
Drops many a silent tear.
