As his company fled a Confederate battalion of sharpshooters the morning of September 19, 1863, it abandoned Miller on the battlefield.
Miller was so blood-soaked, the Confederates he encountered didn't recognize his blue uniform. He managed, half blind, to escape them and hobble back to the Federal lines, where he was carried by stretcher-bearers to a field hospital. A nurse helped him climb onto the operating table. "The surgeons examined my wound and decided it was best not to operate and give me more pain, as they said I couldn’t live very long," he said.
Miller decided to take his life into his own hands. He snuck from the hospital and followed a road heading "away from the boom of cannon and the rattle of musketry." But he soon collapsed from exhaustion.
"I was left for dead," he later told a newspaper. "When I came to, I found I was in the rear of the Confederate line. So as not to become a prisoner, I made up my mind to make an effort to get around their line and back on my own side."
Miller sat up and probed his wound with a dirty finger. "I found my left eye out of its place and tried to place it back, but I had to move the crushed bone back first. I got the eye in its proper place and then bandaged it the best I could.”
"Monday the 21st I came to and found I was in a long building in Chattanooga, lying on the floor with hundreds of other wounded. I raised myself to a sitting position, got my canteen, and wet my head. While doing it, I heard a couple of soldiers who were from my company. They could not believe it was me as they said I was left for dead on the field."
The surgeons in Nashville also refused to operate and shipped Miller to a hospital in his home state of Indiana. "I suffered for nine months, then got a furlough home and got doctors to operate on my wound" he said. "They took out the musket ball."
Miller recovered in three months and was discharged from the army with a $40 monthly pension ($680 today). But his wound didn't close. Family and friends, shocked to learn he was alive (he'd been listed as dead), could see his pulsating brain through the hole in his head. "Seventeen years after I was wounded, a buck shot dropped out of my wound and thirty-one years after, two more pieces of lead came out," he told the newspaper.
This Memorial Day weekend, please consider a fact: although a tad loony, Jacob Miller survived his war. His service should be honored, yes, but on Veterans Day.
Because he was able to walk, Miller was told to leave Chattanooga and find his way to Nashville, 130 miles away. He left with the men from his company. They crossed the Tennessee River that night.
"Tuesday morning the 22nd we awoke to the crackling of the camp fire that a comrade had built to get us a cup of coffee and a bite to eat," he said. "While eating, an orderly rode up and asked if we were wounded. If so, we were to go back along the road to get our wounds dressed. We had to wait till near noon before we were attended to. That was the first time I had my wound washed and dressed by a surgeon."
Miller was told to walk to Bridgeport, Alabama, only half as far as Nashville. From there, he could catch a train.
"We arrived at Bridgeport the fourth day out from Chattanooga at noon, just as a train of box cars was ready to pull out," he said. "The next thing I remember, I was stripped and in a bathtub of warm water in a hospital at Nashville."
Although he suffered constant pain and never again held a job, Miller married and had a son. Occasionally, in the years following his mishap, he would suffer spells of "stupor." Miller would tramp around town for two weeks, shouldering a stick and insisting he was on picket duty. He lived to the age of 88.
On Memorial Day we honor soldiers who didn't survive. It should be clear from the former holiday's name: you can't become a veteran if you die before your discharge.
But Americans—without benefit of a musket ball in the head—are so brain-dead, they conflate the two. I blame poor teachers, sloppy journalists, and cheesy advertisers for their confusion.
If you're unsure of the difference, learn Memorial Day's origin story. It's touching.
