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THE BATTLE OF ANTIETAM—CONTINUED

During the afternoon of this day we were again moved further to the right and placed as supports of a battery. We were posted about two hundred yards directly in front of the guns on low ground. The battery was evidently engaged in another artillery duel. We were in a comparatively safe position, so long as the rebel guns directed their firing at our battery; but after a time they began "feeling for the supports," first dropping their shells beyond our guns, then in front of them, until they finally got a pretty good range on our line and filled the air with bursting shells over our heads. One and another was carried to the rear, wounded, and the line became very restive. We were required to lie perfectly quiet. We found this very much more trying than being at work, and the line began to show symptoms of wavering, when General Kimball, who with his staff had dismounted and was resting near us, immediately mounted his horse and, riding up and down the line, shouted: "Stand firm, trust in God, and do your duty."

It was an exceedingly brave act, and its effect was electric upon the men. There was no more wavering, and the rebel battery, evidently thinking they had not found the "supports," soon ceased firing upon us. It was now near night and the firing very perceptibly slackened in our vicinity, though a mile or more to the left it still continued very heavy. This, we afterwards learned, was the work at what has passed into history as "Burnside's" bridge—the effort of Burnside's corps to capture the stone bridge over Antietam creek, near the village of Sharpsburg, and the heights beyond. These were gallantly carried after a terrific fight quite late in the afternoon.

Our work, so far as this battle was concerned, was done. We rested "on our arms" where we were for the next forty-eight hours, expecting all the next day a renewal of the fighting; but nothing was done in our neighborhood beyond a few shots from the battery we were supporting. On the second day it became known that Lee had hauled off, and there was no immediate prospect of further fighting. Our companies were permitted to gather up their dead, and burying parties were organized.

We were allowed to go over the field freely. It was a gruesome sight. Our own dead had been cared for, but the rebel dead remained as they had fallen. In the hot sun the bodies had swollen and turned black. Nearly all lay with faces up and eyes wide open, presenting a spectacle to make one shudder. The distended nostrils and thickened lips made them look like negroes, except for their straight hair. Their limbs and bodies were so enlarged that their clothing seemed ready to burst. Some ghouls had been among them, whether from their own lines or from ours, could not be known, but every man's pockets had been ripped out and the contents taken.

In company with Captain Archbald I went over the position occupied by our regiment and brigade, the famous "sunken road,"—that is, the lane or road extending from near the "Roulette house" towards Sharpsburg. For some distance it had been cut through the opposite side of the knoll upon which we fought, and had the appearance of a sunken road. It was literally filled with rebel dead, which in some places lay three and four bodies deep. We afterwards saw pictures of this road in the illustrated papers, which partially portrayed the horrible scene. Those poor fellows were the Fifth[C] Georgia regiment. This terrible work was mostly that of our regiment, and bore testimony to the effectiveness of the fire of our men.

The position was an alluring one: the road was cut into the hill about waist high, and seemed to offer secure protection to a line of infantry, and so no doubt this line was posted there to hold the knoll and this Sharpsburg road. It proved, however, nothing but a death-trap, for once our line got into position on the top of this crescent-shaped ridge we could reach them by a direct fire on the centre and a double flanking fire at the right and left of the line, and only about one hundred yards away. With nothing but an open field behind them there was absolutely no escape, nothing but death or surrender, and they evidently chose the former, for we saw no white flag displayed. We could now understand the remark of their lieutenant-colonel, whom our boys brought in, as already mentioned: "You have killed all my poor boys. They lie there in the road." I learned later that the few survivors of this regiment were sent South to guard rebel prisoners.

SECTION OF FAMOUS SUNKEN ROAD IN FRONT OF LINE OF 132D P. V., NEAR ROULETTE LANE The dead are probably from the Sixth Georgia Confederate troops (see image enlarged)

The lines of battle of both armies were not only marked by the presence of the dead, but by a vast variety of army equipage, such as blankets, canteens, haversacks, guns, gun-slings, bayonets, ramrods, some whole, others broken—verily, a besom of destruction had done its work faithfully here. Dead horses were everywhere, and the stench from them and the human dead was horrible. "Uncle" Billy Sherman has said, "War is hell!" yet this definition, with all that imagination can picture, fails to reveal all its bloody horrors.

The positions of some of the dead were very striking. One poor fellow lay face down on a partially fallen stone wall, with one arm and one foot extended, as if in the act of crawling over. His position attracted our attention, and we found his body literally riddled with bullets—there must have been hundreds—and most of them shot into him after he was dead, for they showed no marks of blood. Probably the poor fellow had been wounded in trying to reach shelter behind that wall, was spotted in the act by our men, and killed right there, and became thereafter a target for every new man that saw him. Another man lay, still clasping his musket, which he was evidently in the act of loading when a bullet pierced his heart, literally flooding his gun with his life's blood, a ghastly testimonial to his heroic sacrifice.

We witnessed the burying details gathering up and burying the dead. The work was rough and heartless, but only comporting with the character of war. The natural reverence for the dead was wholly absent. The poor bodies, all of them heroes in their death, even though in a mistaken cause, were "planted" with as little feeling as though they had been so many logs. A trench was dug, where the digging was easiest, about seven feet wide and long enough to accommodate all the bodies gathered within a certain radius; these were then placed side by side, cross-wise of the trench, and buried without anything to keep the earth from them. In the case of the Union dead the trenches were usually two or three feet deep, and the bodies were wrapped in blankets before being covered, but with the rebels no blankets were used, and the trenches were sometimes so shallow as to leave the toes exposed after a shower.

No ceremony whatever attended this gruesome service, but it was generally accompanied by ribald jokes, at the expense of the poor "Johnny" they were "planting." This was not the fruit of debased natures or degenerate hearts on the part of the boys, who well knew it might be their turn next, under the fortunes of war, to be buried in like manner, but it was recklessness and thoughtlessness, born of the hardening influences of war.

Having now given some account of the scenes in which I participated during the battle and the day after, let us look at another feature of the battle, and probably the most heart-breaking of all, the field hospital. There was one established for our division some three hundred yards in our rear, under the shelter of a hill. Here were gathered as rapidly as possible the wounded, and a corps of surgeons were busily engaged in amputating limbs and dressing wounds. It should be understood that the accommodations were of the rudest character. A hospital tent had been hurriedly erected and an old house and barn utilized. Of course, I saw nothing of it or its work until the evening after the battle, when I went to see the body of our dead colonel and some of our Scranton boys who were wounded. Outside the hospital were piles of amputated arms, legs, and feet, thrown out with as little care as so many pieces of wood. There were also many dead soldiers—those who had died after reaching the hospital—lying outside, there being inside scant room only for the living. Here, on bunches of hay and straw, the poor fellows were lying so thickly that there was scarce room for the surgeon and attendants to move about among them. Others were not allowed inside, except officers and an occasional friend who might be helping. Our chaplain spent his time here and did yeoman service helping the wounded. Yet all that could be done with the limited means at hand seemed only to accentuate the appalling need. The pallid, appealing faces were patient with a heroism born only of the truest metal. I was told by the surgeons that such expressions as this were not infrequent as they approached a man in his "turn": "Please, doctor, attend to this poor fellow next; he's worse than I," and this when his own life's blood was fast oozing away.

Most of the wounded had to wait hours before having their wounds dressed, owing to insufficient force and inadequate facilities. I was told that not a surgeon had his eyes closed for three days after this battle. The doctors of neighboring towns within reach came and voluntarily gave their services, yet it is doubtless true that hundreds of the wounded perished for want of prompt and proper care. This is one of the unavoidable incidents of a great battle—a part of the horrors of war. The rebel wounded necessarily were second to our own in receiving care from the surgeons, yet they, too, received all the attention that was possible under the circumstances. Some of their surgeons remained with their wounded, and I am told they and our own surgeons worked together most energetically and heroically in their efforts to relieve the sufferings of all, whether they wore the blue or the gray. Suffering, it has been said, makes all the world akin. So here, in our lines, the wounded rebel was lost sight of in the suffering brother.

We remained on the battle-field until September 21, four days after the fight.

My notes of this day say that I was feeling so miserable as to be scarcely able to crawl about, yet was obliged to remain on duty; that Lieutenant-Colonel Wilcox, now in command, and Major Shreve were in the same condition. This was due to the nervous strain through which we had passed, and to insufficient and unwholesome food. As stated before, we had been obliged to eat whatever we could get, which for the past four days had been mostly green field corn roasted as best we could. The wonder is that we were not utterly prostrated. Nevertheless, I not only performed all my duties, but went a mile down the Antietam creek, took a bath, and washed my underclothing, my first experience in the laundry business.

We had been now for two weeks and more steadily on the march, our baggage in wagons somewhere en route, without the possibility of a change of clothing or of having any washing done. Most of this time marching in a cloud of dust so thick that one could almost cut it, and perspiring freely, one can imagine our condition. Bathing as frequently as opportunity offered, yet our condition was almost unendurable. For with the accumulation of dirt upon our body, there was added the ever-present scourge of the army, body lice. These vermin, called by the boys "graybacks," were nearly the size of a grain of wheat, and derived their name from their bluish-gray color. They seemed to infest the ground wherever there had been a bivouac of the rebels, and following them as we had, during all of this campaign, sleeping frequently on the ground just vacated by them, no one was exempt from this plague. They secreted themselves in the seams of the clothing and in the armpits chiefly. A good bath, with a change of underclothing, would usually rid one of them, but only to acquire a new crop in the first camp. The clothing could be freed of them by boiling in salt water or by going carefully over the seams and picking them off. The latter operation was a frequent occupation with the men on any day which was warm enough to permit them to disrobe for the purpose. One of the most laughable sights I ever beheld was the whole brigade, halted for a couple of hours' rest one hot day, with clothing off, "skirmishing," as the boys called it, for "graybacks." This was one of the many unpoetical features of army life which accentuated the sacrifices one made to serve his country.

How did we ordinarily get our laundrying done? The enlisted men as a rule always did it themselves. Occasionally in camp a number of them would club together and hire some "camp follower" or some other soldier to do it. Officers of sufficient rank to have a servant, of course, readily solved the question. Those of us of lesser rank could generally hire it done, except on the march. Then we had to be our own laundrymen. Having, as in the above instance, no change of clothing at hand, the washing followed a bath, and consisted in standing in the running water and rubbing as much of the dirt out of the underwear as could be done without soap, for that could not be had for love or money; then hanging them on the limb of a tree and sitting in the sun, as comfortable as possible, whilst wind and sun did the drying. A "snap-shot" of such a scene would no doubt be interesting. But "snap-shots" unfortunately were not then in vogue, and so a picture of high art must perish. We could not be over particular about having our clothes dry. The finishing touches were added as we wore them back to camp.

My diary notes that there were nine hundred and ninety-eight rebel dead gathered and buried from in front of the lines of our division. This line was about a quarter of a mile long, and this was mostly our work (our division), although Richardson's division had occupied part of this ground before us, but had been so quickly broken that they had not made much impression upon the enemy. Our division had engaged them continuously and under a terrific fire from eight o'clock A.M. until 12.30 P.M. It may be asked why during that length of time and under such a fire all were not annihilated. The answer is, that inaccuracy and unsteadiness in firing on both sides greatly reduce its effectiveness, and taking all possible advantage of shelter by lying prone upon the ground also prevents losses; but the above number of rebel dead, it should be remembered, represents, probably, not more than twenty to twenty-five per cent. of their casualties in that area of their lines; the balance were wounded and were removed. So that with nine hundred and ninety-eight dead it can be safely estimated that their losses exceeded four thousand killed and wounded in that area. This would indicate what was undoubtedly true, that we were in the very heart of that great battle.