General John Brown Gordon: The Terminator of the Civil War

General John Brown Gordon:  The Terminator of the Civil War

        Perhaps no man in history can be said to be as lucky as John Brown Gordon.  The amount of times he escaped death during the Civil War are almost innumerable, and it is a great surprise that he died at the age of 71 in the year 1904.  

       Gordon's flirtation with death began when he was promoted to colonel of the Confederates in the year 1862, and in the battle of Seven Pines, Gordon fearlessly led his troops into battle by charging ahead of them and being the first to meet the enemy Union soldiers.  This move was brave but could have easily cost him his life, for bullets ended up ripping through his clothes without even touching his body.  In another battle called the Malvern Hill, an artillery shell exploded nearby which temporarily blinded him but did not kill him.  

        Given that John Brown Gordon dodged bullets, literally, countless times, he and his men began to think that no harm could befall themselves.  This notion changed when in a later battle, Gordon came closest to meeting death face to face.  Leading his men in battle, two bullets blasted through his right leg, another smashed through his left arm, and yet another tore through his shoulder.  Even though his body had been mangled by the whizzing bullets, John Brown Gordon did his best to continue to lead his men--that is until a fifth bullet ripped through his face and shattered his jaw.  The impact of this last bullet knocked him down, and he fell face first into the opening of his hat which soon began to fill with his blood.  Because he was weak with blood loss and many of his limbs had been torn apart by bullets, he could not move, and he may well have drowned in his own blood had not a 6th bullet nearly missed him and punched a hole though the hat, draining the rising pool of blood.

        Gordon was later stretchered off the battlefield where his life was saved by an army surgeon.  Even though medicine back then was basic and mortality rates were high, John Brown Gordon ended up surviving this traumatic event, although he still would have to successfully defeat a serious bacterial infection on his way to a lengthy recovery.  

         After returning to the battlefield in the year 1863, Gordon continued to put himself in harms way, and he successfully survived when a bullet shot through his clothes and grazed only his back.  In 1864 he had another close call when he survived a saber slash to the head, and in 1865, Gordon was again wounded in the leg.

        These encounters more or less sum up all the injuries John Brown Gordon had been dealt in his Civil War career, but despite all odds, he came out alive and at the top of the military hierarchy, for he ended up as a major general, and he had the honor of leading Confederate troops in their surrender at Appomattox Court House which signified the end of the Civil War.  He also drew praise from his soldiers, Stonewall Jackson, and even the Union Army which goes to show how well he was respected during this bloody time.  Perhaps we can take a message from John Brown Gordon's military life--that if one has resilience and fights with all one's heart, then good things will eventually happen, even if you are beaten down time and time again.

If you want to read in more detail about this amazing life story, here is the source I used