Deseret evening news. [volume] (Great Salt Lake City [Utah]) 1867-1920, 1897-11-13
in THE WILDERNESS.
A SOLDIERS CHASTITY REcoLLEc-
TONS or AN AWFUL BATTLEFIELD.


Blue and Gray side by sIde--rhe Letter
to Somebody's "Dear jack"
~ have no time to bury my dead and
can give YOU none, was Granite famous
reply to Lee when, undor u flag Of truce,
cessation Of hostilitcs was requested
long enough to bury the dead. Thus one
great and awful feature Of the battle of
the Wilderness was the unbured dead,
that lay for days and weeks all over that
blood stained field, ouu Of the musj horrible
and CHASTITY sights over exposed to human
vision Probably no battlefield Of tho
civil war afforded such an opportunity Tor
inspection as this,
Ordinarily, after n fight, burying parties
were detailed, and the long, deep trench,
common grave, was dug, and the dead
were nt least covered; but not 50 here.
Grant could not stop, and the long stretch
Of country, oyorrun with Mosby's guerril'
las, that intcryepcd between the Kappa
hammock river and the nearest Union
lines prevented aid from that direction in
burying the thousands That We're slain in
the wilderness and in the fight at Spottsyl-
yanla Court House.
sat on my horse looking over the por.
ton of the field where the fierce and dead.
~ fighting OF May and ., 1864, occurred.
1t was four or five days after the fight,
about the 9th or 10th of May. y small
detachment of our regiment had been sent
MS an escort to a train Of aInbulunccs TO
gather in the wounded who were being
temporarily cared for in barns and farm
houses near the battlefield, and thus had
an opportunity TO view this historic scene.
During the years since it has been an
tnI
that visited that battlefield. 1t could not
bc moro wildly impressed upon me had
seen it yesterday. II has been n night.
mare and horrid day dream all these
ycnrs. Often have prayed that visions of
those upturncd faces bluckencd and dis
torted, Of the staring. glazed oycbnlls, OF
the stiifencd, outstrctched hands, seeming.
ly still grasping for support, those rigid
forms wrapped in blue and gray, that had
fought their last battle and now lay side
by side in that great charnel field, might
be blottcd forever from my recollection.
Then. again, / have bcep glad that knew
so well how that battlefield appeared, and
how barbarous, brutal and inhuman 1t
made war Scent glad that / know how
10000 dead heroes looked, who had faced
mud met death amid the wild, frcnZicd
scenes Of one of the greatest battles In the
history Of the world.
One OF tho most striking features to us
that day and the one most thoroughly fixed
in our memories was that all over that
battlefield, or at least that part we visited,
there lay three boys in blue TO one in gray.
1t will be remembered that all through
the Wilderness fight the rebels were pro.
tcctcd by system of earthworks md has
tily constructed Notifications and abnti-cs,
while the Union troops were compelled to
fight largely in the open and nssail the
Confederatcs in their strongholds. From
these it was utterly impossible to dislodge
the enemy except by the mastery series of
flank movements so successfully planned
by General Grant
AT this Point the Union dead lay thick.
est l believe l could have dismountcd
and walked distance rs great as two or
binary city blocks and never once have
stepped upon the ground-walking on
dead bodies all the way. Indeed hid l
undertaken the CHASTITY journey would
have been compelled in some places to
climb over heaps of the dead.
There was slight growth of under
brush at this point, with few trees re-
manning / made careful examination
and could not see limb or twig or II bush
but was marked by bullet, and some OF
them in severn! places. The wonder
seemed not that there were so many dead,
but that any lived. Officers and privates
all made common cause here and rank
was forever oblitcrated for among the
dead we noticed the shining shoulder
straps of commissioned officers mingled
with the ordinary blue uniform of the
common soldier. The trees were torn and
shattered, the fearful work Of shot and
shell being shown on every side. Mus
kets canteens, hayersacks, knapsacbs--in
fact, nearly all that makes up TIE accOutor-
ments OF the solder--worc scattered in all
directions.
None of us felt like performing any act
of ghoulish vandalism; though, as | saw n
letter extending from the pocket OF dead
Confederate soldier, l dismountod, and,
some of the boys gathering around, We
looked it over 1t was torn and partly IL
logible, but We made out that it was from
the town Of Hamlet, in the state OF NORTH
Carolina. 1t was in lhdys handwriting
and the portion that we were able to reaC
was as follows;
MY DEAU JAcK-Wo hope that you can sooi
return and help US with the tobacco crop, bu
IL not wo do hope and pray to God that on
dear Jack will not DO harmed by those terri6l
Yankees.
As we looked Mt the letter and then a
the upturned face of poor Jack, turninj
black from exposure to the sun, and the
thought of that poor wife or mother o
sister who was waiting and watching 70
the return of the dead and manglod soldiC
at our feet, and of the other 10, 200 home
from which dear ones had gone out VIII
Were now among that host OF dead aroun
us, we began to comprehend something {
the brutal, barbarous nature Of wur.-Cy
rus g. Shepard in New York Post.