This story from Perryville underscores
soldier’s desire to cheat death, live

Civil War museum docents seldom are surprised by the stories they hear from visitors.

A recent visit to the Downtown Perryville Museum was no exception, but the story provided by Joyce Shay, an Idaho resident, was quite graphic and illustrated the intensity of a soldier’s will to live.

Main Street Perryville Executive Director Vicki Goode said Shay’s great-great uncle, John Wales January, a member of the 14th Illinois Cavalry, was captured in July 1864 and sent to Andersonville Prison. He was held there until the fall of Atlanta in September of that year.

January later cut off his own two feet with a pocket knife in order to survive after he was told he would die because of scurvy and gangrene. This is his story in his own words:


I was captured by six rebel soldiers, sent to Andersonville, and there kept until the fall of Atlanta made it necessary for us to be removed to prevent falling in the hands of the Union forces.

I soon learned from the surgeon, after a hasty examination, that I was victim of scurvy and gangrene and was removed to the gangrene hospital. My feet and ankles, five inches above the joints presented a livid, lifeless appearance, and soon the flesh began to slough off, and the surgeon, with a brutal oath, said I would soon die.

But I was determined to live, and begged him to cut my feet off; telling him if he would do that I could live. He still refused; and, believing that my life depended on the removal of my feet, I secured an old pocketknife (I have it now in my possession) and cut through the decaying flesh and severed the tendons. The feet were unjointed, leaving the bones protruding without a covering of flesh for five inches… .

At the close of the war, I was taken by the Rebs to our lines at Wilmington, N.C., in April 1865, and when weighed learned that I had been reduced from 165 pounds (my weight when captured) to 45 pounds.

Six weeks after release, while on a boat en route to New York, the bones of my right limb broke off at the end of the flesh. Six weeks later, while in the hospital on David’s Island, those of my left hand had become necrosid and broke off similarly. There is no record of any case in the world similar to mine.


Andersonville Prison near Americus, Ga., experienced disease and death rates that were extremely high. Poor sanitation, crowding, exposure and inadequate diet contributed to the unhealthful conditions. Only enlisted men were confined there and in the summer of 1864 the prisoner population numbered 32,899. There are 12,912 graves in the prison cemetery and estimates place the number of deaths at a much greater figure.

The facility existed from February 1864 to April 1865, was hastily built and was a drain on the sparse Confederate food supply. Rations were the same as those for Southern soldiers in the field – corn meal, beans and, very rarely, meat.