There are various accounts of Armisteads wounds. Very few field surgeons kept accurate accounts due of course to having to work fast to save lives. All we have are diaries or letters primarily from Federal officers written after the event.
Yes he was shot in the leg which from most accounts was no more than a nick in the fleshy part of the calf and one account states this very superficial wound was received after he fell. We know it was not serious due to the leg not being amputated.
The accounts of the bullet wounds that felled him are also conflicting some state he was riddled with bullets others state either the upper arm or the pectoral area of the chest (if you watch Maxwell's film "Gettysburg" he shows Armistead's receiving one wound at the top right side of the chest which fells him-no arm or leg wound) In my dio/text I covered both "recorded" areas of the wound that felled him because nobody really knows. However, his wounds were not considered serious and the field surgeon who treated him was astonished that he died two days later.
Vamp stated quite correctly on one of these threads that some wrote that he died of a broken heart having to attack his friend Hancock but I believe that is just a romantic Southern myth and my evidence is in a letter from a surgeons orderly who was watching the surgeon redress Armistead's wounds. "........the General remained defiant to the end, he reached into his pants and retrieved some kernels of raw corn stating "These are Confederate rations and men who can subsist on raw corn can never be whipped".
Doesn't sound much like a man who was dying from a broken heart, from all the accounts I've read I surmise he died of either sceptic wounds or from stress brought on by sheer exhaustion.
Reb
