A Very Useful Leg...!

We have all read about the art of re-purposing something, right? This is taking that very thing to a whole new level!

I think that we forget that on the battlefield, it wasn't uncommon to use the weapons and other equipment of the fallen enemy. Let's face it...many things were hard to come by on the battlefield, so you did what you had to do to get by. Sometimes the items that were re-used went beyond ammo and guns, as this story from listverse shows!

Leg That Served the North and the South

June 1863

When Confederate Captain John Newton Ballard of Mosby’s Rangers lost his leg in battle in 1863, like many of his fellow officers, he didn’t waste time fretting over his amputated limb. Instead, he acquired a second hand artificial leg and got back to war. Unfortunately, he was left literally without a leg to stand on near Halltown, Virginia, when his horse collided with a Union cavalry soldier’s mount and his prosthetic was crushed, making him the only Civil War soldier to lose the same leg twice. However, he was about to have a stroke of luck. In March 1864, Union Colonel Ulric Dahlgren was killed near Richmond, Virginia, during a cavalry raid. He, too, had lost a leg in 1863 (in fact, the severed leg was given a military funeral and is still sealed within the wall of Building 28 in the Washington Navy Yard). Dahlgren’s body was found by Confederates, one of whom took his wooden artificial limb as a souvenir. The Yankee prosthetic made its way to John Ballard, who wore it in active service to the end of the war.

I'm thinking these guys were true men! Men that didn't know the meaning of quit. There are so many more stories like this from the conflict known as the "War Between The States" that we will probably never know them all!

Looks like another good day for coffee out on the patio. I'll share my cinnamon rolls, OK?