Sergeant James Landon – Andersonville prison camp

This is one survival story that takes a bit of a turn from the usual stuck-in-the-jungle or desert island tales, and even though the survival situation was in a prison, it doesn’t make it any easier to survive.

Being stuck in prison would normally include being fed and receiving water, but Andersonville prison has been ranked as one of the top 10 worst prisons in human history. Sergeant James Landon was one of the unlucky people who were sent to this hellish prison camp after getting shot in the thigh during a skirmish.

He was part of a small group who were on their way back to rejoin the main force when they were set upon by Confederate soldiers. Landon and his men managed to cross a river, sinking the boat they used so the enemy wouldn’t be able to follow, however, the Confederates quickly caught up and Landon’s men were separated after being fired upon.

Landon and two others then spent the next five days hiding in the woods and swamps during the day and traveling at night. On the 6th day they were ambushed by four rebel troops who shot Landon in the leg from 400 yards away, and not being able to run anymore he was quickly captured.

The next four days were agony as Landon was forced to march on a wounded leg to prison camp Sumter, commonly known as Andersonville, a notorious prison that was considered bad even by Civil War standards.

The camp itself was a large rectangular shape surrounded by palisade walls and a kill zone sectioned off 20 feet between the walls and the edge of the camp. Anyone who crossed the line was shot without question and the hundreds of guards who worked at the camp made escape impossible.

There was a small stream flowing along one edge of the camp where all 45,000 Union prisoners stationed there were expected to get their drinking and cleaning water. The problem was that this stream was flowing from the Confederate camp, which had a standard army camp layout for water sources, which went drinking, then cleaning, then animals, and finally toilet sections of the stream. This meant that every single prisoner in Andersonville would be forced to wash in and drink water filled with animal and human waste, making the chances of infection and disease very very high.

Out of the Approximately 45,000 prisoners in the camp, around 13,000 died from mostly disease and then starvation. Landon was here for 6 weeks before being transferred to another prison, which after spending 2 weeks in was released as the confederacy was crumbling and couldn’t afford to hold prisoners anymore.

The most amazing thing about Landon’s story is that in a time when there was no such thing as antibiotics, he managed to enter one of the most disease-riddled places in the country with an open wound, drink and wash in excrement water and have next to nothing to eat, and he not only survived but after he was released he lived to the age of 83.