Near Bermuda Hundred, Va.
As we went on to the battlefield I didn’t see dead, or much else but what was before us, or the foe on the right, & when on the ridge my mind was so intent on what was before me. I involuntarily noticed now and then a man wounded and heard him cry out, and drop or pass back of the lines, but scarce felt a thought or an emotion towards assisting—so fixed has the fact become in our minds that we must not leave the ranks to assist the wounded and thus doubly decimate our strength.
When ordered to retreat the eyes were not on the ground to notice what was there, but care for order in our movement and the foe on either side. As we retired the other day, it was with feelings of sadness. We knew by our small number and an instinctive feeling that a good many had been made to suffer by loss of limbs and wounds in all parts of the body and that many were dead.
We expect to die. It may not start the floods to see a lifeless body—but when the thoughts recur to friends at home, then come the tears. The soldier does not cry for himself—but for his friends, the husband for his family, others for those just as dear.
To go over the field and see the dead that had lain 36 hours or more, exposed to the weather, and see the bloated bodies—some that are putrid, others that are shockingly mangled, is revolting rather than touching to the sympathies. We feel that the man is not there and that what remains is unfeeling clay. The necessary duties of gathering the dead, although unpleasant and laborious, is set about with energy—yet carefully as if we thought they had been men and not animals. It is not pleasant to go over such a field. It might be once perhaps to gratify the curiosity.
I see men that others say are reporters passing us now and then. But to know any of them or for what paper they write I am wholly ignorant. Just where they are at the time of battles I shouldn’t like to say. I judge they tell more what they hear than what they see...
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