My first initiation into real warfare was at the First Bull Run. We had marched the day before until after midnight, and were awakened after a brief sleep to the activities of a memorable day in the history of the war. It was an exceedingly hot day, and we marched and halted in the thick dust under a broiling sun until about noon, when my regiment became engaged. Up to that time, and, in fact, during the entire engagement, I never received a single order from either colonel or other officer, medical inspector, the surgeon of my regiment, or anyone else. It was like the days when there was no king in Israel, and every man did that which was right in his own eyes. I did not see the surgeon from the middle of the forenoon. As we approached the battlefield I saw beside a little stream a few surgeons, among whom I knew one, and I asked him what I ought to do, for I was as green as the grass around me as to my duties on the field. My friend Carr, of Rhode Island, suggested that I should turn in there and help, advice which I followed all the more readily because just at that time some of the advance of my own regiment appeared among the wounded.