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.
[Illustration: 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]
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.
[Illustration: FIELD HOSPITAL]
Here I wish to say that some chroniclers of battles have undertaken to
measure the effectiveness and bravery of the different regiments,
batteries, etc., by the numbers they have lost in certain battles; for
example, one historian has made a book grading the regiments by the
number of men they lost in action, assuming that the more men killed and
wounded, the more brilliant and brave had been its work. This assumption
is absolutely fallacious. Heavy losses may be the result of great
bravery with splendid work. On the other hand, they may be the result of
cowardice or inefficiency. Suppose, under trying circumstances, officers
lose their heads and fail to properly handle their men, or if the latter
prove cowardly and incapable of being moved with promptness to meet the
exigency, great loss usually ensues, and this would be chargeable to
cowardice or inefficiency. According to the loss way of estimating
fighting regiments, the least deserving are liable to be credited with
the best work. The rule is, the better drilled, disciplined, and the
better officered, the less the losses in any position on the
firing-line.
One regiment I have in mind, with which we were afterwards brigaded,
illustrates this principle. It was the First Delaware Volunteer
infantry. It was a three years' regiment and had been in the field more
than a year when we joined them. All things considered, it was the best
drilled and disciplined regiment I saw in the service. It was as steady
under fire as on parade. Every movement in the tactics it could execute
on the jump, and its fire was something to keep away from. The result
was that, pushed everywhere to the front because of its splendid work,
it lost comparatively few men. Every man was a marksman and understood
how to take all possible advantage of the situation to make his work
most effective and at the same time take care of himself. This regiment,
whose record was one unbroken succession of splendid achievements during
its whole period of service, might never have gotten on a roll of fame
founded on numbers of men lost. How much more glorious is a record
founded on effective work and men saved!