Martinsburg independent. [volume] (Martinsburg, W. Va.) 1875-1900, 1897-10-30
In THE WILDERNESS.
A SOLDIERS CHASTITY REcoLLEc-
TioNS OF AN AWFUL BATTLEFIELD.

~ 0OLDlEnO Gf1AO III 1ENOLLEO-
TONS OF AN AWFUL BATTLEFIELD.
No Time ts Bury the Dead, Who Lay So
Thick as TO Cover Large Areas of Ground.
Blue and Gray Side by Side The Letter
to Somebody's ..Daar jack"
II have no time to bury my dead and
can give you none, was Grants famous
reply to Lee, when, under flag of truce,
n cessation of hostilities was requested
long enough to bury the dead Thus one
great and awful feature of the battle of
the Wilderness was the unburied dead,
that lay for days and weeks all over that
blood stained field, one of the most horrible
and CHASTITY sights ever exposed to human
vision. Probably no battlefield of the
civil war afforded such an opportunity for
inspection as this
Ordinarily, after fight, burying parties
were detailed, and the long, deep trench,
a common grave, was dug, and the dead
were at least covered; but not SO here.
Grant could not stop, and the long stretch
of country, overrun with Mosby,s guerTil-
las, that interviewed between the Kappa
hammock river and the nearest Union
lines prevented aid from that direction in
burying the thousands that were slain in
the Wilderness and in the fight at Spottsyl-
vania Court House.
1 sat on my horse looking over the por-
ton of the field where the fierce and dead
ly fighting Of May A and 5, 1864, occurred.
1t was four or five days after the fight,
about the 9th or 10th of May. A small
detachment Of our regiment had been sent
30, f.f .1,,... 10
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
open question whether to be glad or sorry
that l visited that battlefield 1t could not
be more wildly impressed upon me had l
seen it yesterday. Tt has been a night
mare and horrid day dream all those
years. Often have prayed that visions of
those upturned faces, blaekened and dis
torted Of the staring, glazed eyeballs, of
the stiffened, outstretched hands, seeming
" 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 blotted forever from my recollection.
Then, again, have been glad that knew
SO well how that battlefield appeared and
how barbarous, brutal and inhuman it
made war seem; glad that i knew how
10000 dead heroes looked, who had faced
and met death amid the wild, frenZied
scenes of one of the greatest battles in the
history of the world
One of the 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-
tected by "a system of earthworlzs and has
tily constructed Notifications and abatises,
while the Union troops were compelled to
fight largely in the open and assail the
Confederates 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. believe 1 could have dismounted
and walked a distance as great as two Or
binary city blocks and never once have
stepped upon the ground-walking ON
dead bodies all the way Indeed had /
undertaken the CHASTITY journey would
have been compelled in some places to
climb over heaps Of the dead.
There was q slight growth of under
brush at this point, with a few trees re-
naming. l made a careful examination
and could not SEGA limb or a twig or bush
but was marked by bullet, and some of
them in several 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 obliterated, 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, haversacks, knapsacks-in
fact, nearly all that makes up the accouter-
ments of the soldier-were scattered in all
directions.
None of us felt like performing any act
of ghoulish vandalism; though, as 1 saw a
letter extending from the pocket of a dead
Confederate soldier, l dismounted, and,
some of the boys gathering around, we
looked it over. 1t was torn and partly il
legible, but we made out that it was from
the town of Hamlet in the state of North
Carolina 1t was in lady's handwriting,
and the portion that we were able to read
was as follows:
MY DEAR JAoK-We hope that you can soon
return and help us with the tobacco crop, but
If not we do hope and pray to God that our
dear Jack will not be harmed by those terrible
Yankees.
As we looked at the letter and then at
the upturned face Of poor Jack, turning
black from exposure to the sun, and then
thought of that poor wife or mother or
sister who was waiting and watching for
the return of the dead and mangled soldier
at our feet, and of the other 10, 900 homes
from which dear ones had gone out who
were now among that host of dead around
us, we began to comprehend something of
the brutal, barbarous nature of war.-Cy-
rus G. Shepard in New York Post.