[Jason G]

Note the pine boughs draped all over everything. It wasn't Christmas, they were hung to eliminate the smell.

The officer in the first picture, to the left, is a medical corps officer, likely an assistant surgeon working at the Field hospital. Note that the soldiers have all already been operated on (one is missing his right hand) and are in the 'recovery' area, likely a few hundred feet from the field hospital. The soldier on the stretcher is possibly a Confederate, note the missing shoes (even tho one foot has been amputated, he lacks a shoe on the left foot as well) and the fact he is still on the stretcher itself. Stretchers were a valuable commodity on both sides, and weren't used except for transport of the wounded, not for 'recovery' so to speak. Likely he's just been sat down and is just from the operating room. Robert E. Lee actually made it a courtmartial offense for men of his "Ambulance Corps" to "willfully, wantonly or negligently" abandon or destroy a stretcher, which had been common practice because they had to be hand carried, and the dang things weighed 30-40 pounds or more. Having carried one as a reenactor myself, I can well understand the idea to dump the thing.