The following morning our burial parties were at work, when a man from a
Michigan regiment came and asked me if I would help him look for some of
his comrades in a wheat field; the wheat being about three feet high it
was not easy to notice a body in it unless one stumbled right on it. In
a few minutes he called out that he had found one and then he said he
had another. As the burial party was digging a trench on the ridge just
beyond, I suggested that he stay where he was to mark the location and I
would ride over and get some of the citizens, whom we noticed plundering
the battle-field of horse equipments, to help carry the bodies over so
they might be buried. I rode up to two or three men who had harness,
saddles, and horse equipments in their possession and told them to drop
them and come over to help me carry the bodies that we might bury them,
as we had to move on shortly. They were a type of Pennsylvania Dutchmen
that lived in that county, who seemed utterly indifferent to the war and
anything pertaining to it, beyond securing such spoils as they got on
the battle-field. They at once demurred and said they had no time,
whereupon I flew into a rage at their heartless conduct, drew my sabre,
and threatened to sabre them if they did not come at once. They then
sulkily complied. When we got back to where the bodies were I told them
to take some fence rails and carry them as though they were a stretcher.
We put the bodies across the rails, the men holding the ends of them.
When we had two bodies on this improvised stretcher I discovered a
Confederate soldier, a sergeant, with a bushy head of red hair and a red
beard. A sabre had split open the top of his head so you could put your
hand in the gash. I suggested that he be cared for too, and when we
attempted to put him on the stretcher they complained that they could
not carry the load. Then I rode after some more citizens whom I also
compelled to come over and help us. With their assistance we succeeded
in getting a number of bodies up to where the burial party was at work.
When I told my Michigan comrade of my experience with these men he
became so angry that I thought he would shoot them then and there.
The General then moved into the town of Gettysburg, where, in contrast
to the heartless conduct of these men, we found patriotic women at work
in every house pulling lint and doing what they could to alleviate the
suffering that was all around them. One lady, who, I was told, was the
wife of a physician killed on the Peninsula, came out on the front
porch and asked every soldier she saw to come in and have hot coffee and
biscuit. The men gave her coffee, which she made in a wash-boiler, but
the biscuits were made from flour she possessed, which by this time was
about exhausted. As it was likely to be several days before normal
conditions could be restored in the town, I suggested that she had
better cease baking biscuits and save the little flour she had for her
family, when she replied that she would take the chance, that as long as
she had any she was going to give it to the soldiers.
About this time Nick, the General's bugler, came to me and reported that
he had found a citizen who had fought with our troops and been wounded,
an old man, and Nick wanted a doctor to go and see him as he was in his
own house nearby. This citizen proved to be the famous John Burns, an
old man of seventy, who fought, I think with a Wisconsin regiment.
Whether anybody else had discovered Burns before Nick did I am not sure,
but my recollection is that Nick's discovery first called the attention
of our people to the fact.
General Gregg's command then moved out on the Chambersburg pike, where
for miles we saw the distressing evidences of the battle in the shape of
the Confederate wounded, who were in every barn and building and lying
beside the road. It had rained heavily the night before and the fields
in which these men lay were flooded with water. Those able to do so had
secured rails, upon which their helpless comrades were placed to keep
them out of the water. I think the division that day captured, including
the wounded, about four thousand. General Gregg sent back a report of
the condition of these poor Confederate wounded whom Lee had been
obliged to leave behind, and asked that ambulances be sent out to take
them in where they could have the attention of our surgeons, then
overworked and exhausted caring for the thousands of wounded among our
own men.
From Chambersburg we marched back to Gettysburg and thence to
Boonesborough, arriving there about the ninth. In the neighborhood of
Boonesborough we met the Seventh New York militia, whose fine band of
about sixty pieces, led by Graffula, that night serenaded General Meade.
The square in front of his headquarters was thronged with men listening
to the fine music, the like of which we never heard in the army. One
man, I think from Indiana, remarked to me: "I tell ye the bullet hain't
run that will kill a fellow when that band's a-playin'."