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A young man left central Pennsylvania in 1862 for Civil War and glory. What he found, instead, was disease, hardship and a wound that would scar him for life.
George Amandus Dietrich was born Oct. 26, 1840, in Cambria County, Pa., between Johnstown and Altoona. His descendant, Mary Ann Dietrich Rogers, lives at Lake of the Woods in Orange County adjacent to the Wilderness battlefield where her grandfather was wounded.
In September 1862, the 22-year-old Dietrich joined the Union army and was assigned to the 115th Pennsylvania, then part of the garrison of Washington. The 115th by this stage of the war had seen intense action that June during the Seven Days Battles before Richmond and the Second Battle of Manassas that August. As part of the 3rd Corps of the Army of the Potomac, the 115th moved toward Fredericksburg in November 1862.
On the eve of battle the following month, Dietrich contracted rheumatic fever. His case was so severe that he was shipped to Washington and admitted to Douglas General Hospital on Christmas Day 1862. Twelve days later, he was moved to Philadelphia, back in the Keystone State.
Dietrich probably was glad to again be in his home state, but mortified that he had missed his first battle. He spent 10 months in Philadelphia, and returned to duty in November 1863. While he convalesced, the 115th suffered severe losses near Hazel Grove at Chancellorsville, and near the Wheatfield at Gettysburg. Dietrich accompanied the 115th in the abortive Mine Run Campaign in late November, then settled into winter quarters near Culpeper.
In 1864, the 115th, now part of Gen. Winfield S. Hancock's 2nd Corps, moved south from Culpeper into the Wilderness. The regiment saw heavy action on both days of fighting near the present-day Fawn Lake subdivision. On May 6, the Confederates launched a flank attack and drove Hancock's men back in confusion to the Brock Road. The 115th was one of the first to encounter the Confederates, and in the confusion, Dietrich sustained a wound in the hip. After being treated at a field hospital, he soon was back with the regiment. His wound never had a chance to heal properly, and would bother him for the rest of his life.
The 115th served in the forefront of many 1864 battles, and saw action at Spotsylvania Court House, the Bloody Angle, North Anna River, Cold Harbor, and the initial attacks on Petersburg. The constant fighting gradually wore the regiment down to a mere shadow of what it once was, and, in late June 1864, the 115th was consolidated with the 110th Pennsylvania. The 110th served in the trenches of Petersburg until the end of the war, and Dietrich was present at Appomattox in 1865.
Dietrich went home to Altoona and married Mary Angeline Cunningham in 1869. They had 11 children, the last coming in 1890 when George was 49 years old. Like many Altoona men, Dietrich found work with the booming Pennsylvania Railroad at their headquarters in that town.
After watching another trench war flame across Europe between 1914 and 1918, Dietrich succumbed to rheumatism and his hip wound on May 29, 1921, at
the age of 80.