Edits to the developing story of previous post

John had been wounded in the battle for Atlanta. His regiment had suffered substantial casualties at Peachtree Creek, when the Confederates had outflanked Sherman to escape from the tightening noose around Atlanta. John’s company was decimated of officers and sergeants, overrun and nearly annihilated in that quick action. The beloved Colonel of the 53rd, died in that action, shortly before he was to return home having already been mustered out, but waiting orders to return home. (The 53rd had entered the battle with 15 officers and 357 enlisted men and suffered 5 officers killed, 3 wounded and 115 enlisted men killed, wounded or missing. ) John had tried to protect him, but to no avail. He had been treated by the 23^rd Indiana Regiment surgeon, Dr. Magnus Blucher, on the field. In an irony, not lost on John, Blucher had replaced his father, Dr. T.R. Austin, as regimental surgeon. Had Thomas Ralph been there, John would have spoken to his father for the first time since he was 13 years old. That separation had been in 1854, when Thomas Ralph moved his family from Elizabeth, Indiana, to the largest city at that time in Indiana, New Albany, about 19 miles away. John had balked at leaving his friends, including Mary Ann Ellis who would become his wife, and was apprenticed to a farmer and wagon maker, Samuel Davidson. There John found the affection from Uncle Sammy and Aunt Sally that he hadn’t felt since his mother, Martha Haigh, died when he was 6 years old and his father remarried a much younger woman.