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Cursed Twice
- Johns Hopkins University Press
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115 Cursed Twice Sgt. Bob Hastie was given up for dead after he fell dangerously ill with diarrhea at Vicksburg, Mississippi, in the summer of 1863. “I suppose the curse was the result of continuous fighting” for three months in swamps and bayous, he recalled. During that time, he consumed “bad water and badly cooked and sometimes raw food not having time or opportunity to cook properly.”176 “The Day after the capitulation of Vicksburg I was placed on a stretcher and carried on a steamboat and left . . . to die, as they thought I could not live till morning. I rallied however after having a drink of the River Water with Ice.”177 The thirty-six-year-old English immigrant spent the next two months recuperating, then returned to his duties as quartermaster and principal musician in the Eleventh Wisconsin Infantry. His condition proved to be chronic, however, and he suffered repeated bouts of loose bowels. He described himself as “almost a walking skeleton” at the time of his discharge, in September 1865. However , he reported, “after getting home and good nursing and rest soon began to recuperate. But the next summer the Old Diarrhea came on again and every summer afterwards. I never had treatment from a Physician. Always doctored myself.”178 His attacks usually lasted three weeks. When his health permitted, he worked as a master sign painter and turned his attention to his wife and four children. His second curse was alcohol, and it destroyed his family. His wife divorced him in 1869, and he drifted to St. Louis, where he found work in a grain warehouse and streetcar shop. Ten years later, he moved to Sedalia, Missouri, and turned his life around. He joined the Independent Order of Good Templars, the largest temperance organization in American history, where he met and fell in love with the 116 chapter treasurer, Mary Lingle. They married in 1882 and settled in Greenridge, Missouri, where Hastie returned to sign painting and served as justice of the peace. He died in 1913 of cirrhosis of the liver at age eighty-six. Principal Musician and Quartermaster Sgt. Robert G. Hastie, Eleventh Wisconsin Infantry Carte de visite by unidentified photographer, about 1861–1863 ...