The injury alleged at first as a consequence of loading commissary
stores seems to have been abandoned by the claimant for the adoption
of a wound at Fredericksburg, which in its turn seems to have been
abandoned and a fall down a bank and trampling upon by troops
substituted.
Whatever injuries he may have suffered during his first enlistment, and
to whatever cause he chooses at last to attribute them, they did not
prevent his reenlistment and passing the physical examination necessary
before acceptance.
The surgeon of the Ninth New Hampshire Volunteers, in which he first
enlisted, states that he remembers the claimant well; that he was
mustered and accepted as a recruit in spite of his (the surgeon's)
protest; that he was physically unfit for duty; that he had the
appearance of impaired health, and that his face and neck were marked by
one or more deep scars, the result, as the claimant himself alleged, of
scrofulous abscesses in early youth. He expresses the opinion that he is
attempting to palm off these old scars as evidence of wounds received,
and that if he had been wounded as he claimed he (the surgeon) would
have known it and remembered it.
It is true that whenever in this case a wound is described it is located
in the jaw, while some of the medical testimony negatives the existence
of any wound.
The contrariety of the claimant's statements and the testimony and
circumstances tend so strongly to impeach his claim that I do not think
the decision of the Pension Bureau should be reversed and the claimant
pensioned.
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