The soldiers were all suffering from dehydration, but for the more than forty wounded men, most of whom had lost significant amounts of blood, the torment—technically known as volumetric thirst—was beyond imagining. “It was awful…,” remembered Dr. Porter, who lacked the water even to clean the soldiers’ wounds, “the groans of the men…crying and begging piteously for water to moisten their parched lips, which were soon to close and stiffen in death.”
