Shiloh snapshot: Shot, rescued in hospital, he dies in hometown

On the morning of April 6, 1862, Battery A of  the 1st Illinois Light Artillery (Chicago Light Artillery) went
into action on Sarah Bell's farm. (See panorama below.) Was Private Otto Heimberger wounded here?
(CLICK ON IMAGES TO ENLARGE.)

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Days after heavy rain in late April 1862, the Ohio River spilled over its banks in Mound City, Ill., imperiling wounded from the Battle of Shiloh in a brick warehouse used as a military hospital. "Mound City is entirely underwater," reported the Chicago Tribune, which warned of standing pools of floodwater becoming a breeding ground for malaria and thus a danger for patients.

If the wounded were not removed quickly from the hospital, "our men will die like sheep," the newspaper reported.

1912 image of building in Mound City, Ill., used as military hospital.
The warehouse was destroyed by fire in 1976. Below, the site today.
(A History of Southern Illinois)

As floodwaters poured into the hospital's first floor, harried caregivers placed 24-year-old Otto Heimberger and other unfortunates of Battery A of the 1st Illinois Light Artillery (Chicago Light Artillery) on cots, slipping the soldiers through second-floor windows to safety. Private Heimberger, who arrived at the hospital aboard a steamer about April 20, was wounded in the leg on April 6, the first day of the battle. Soon, the firemen and cigar maker from Chicago was joined by his fiancee, who, according to a reporter, "watched him with
incessant solicitude and love."

After their removal from the hospital, Heimberger and his wounded comrades were placed on a north-bound flat boat. The soldiers eventually were transferred to an Illinois Central Railroad train, their stretchers placed over the tops of the backs of seats of the end car. Among them was Private Charles B. Kimball, a 21-year-old farmer, who pleaded with surgeons at the hospital to not amputate his wounded leg. (Upon his arrival in Mound City from Paducah, Ky., Kimball's father persuaded the doctors to cancel the operation, and his son survived.)

The train's final destination was Chicago, about 350 miles away. Upon arrival, the wounded were met by friends and cared for in private homes. But Heimberger -- one of more than 13,000 Union casualties at Shiloh -- lost his seven-week battle for life on May 16, news that shattered his fiancee and a "large circle of friends."

At 2 p.m. the next day, Heimburger's funeral service was held at 222 East Van Buren Street, a short distance from Lake Michigan. Chicago Light Artillery soldiers and members of the Cigar Makers Association attended.

After fighting in Sarah Bell's cotton field at Shiloh on April 6, 1862, Private Otto Heimberger's
1st Illinois Light Artillery unit retreated here, near Bloody Pond. 

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SOURCES

-- Chicago Tribune, May 17, 1862.
-- First Illinois Light Artillery Volunteers, Chicago, Cushing Printing Co., 1899, Page 48.