The bark of these trees, from the root upward
to a height of ten or twenty feet, was so thickly pierced with bullets and
grape that one could not have laid a hand on it without covering several
punctures. None had escaped. How the human body survives a storm like this
must be explained by the fact that it is exposed to it but a few moments
at a time, whereas these grand old trees had had no one to take their
places, from the rising to the going down of the sun. Angular bits of
iron, concavo-convex, sticking in the sides of muddy depressions, showed
where shells had exploded in their furrows. Knapsacks, canteens,
haversacks distended with soaken and swollen biscuits, gaping to disgorge,
blankets beaten into the soil by the rain, rifles with bent barrels or
splintered stocks, waist-belts, hats and the omnipresent sardine-box--all
the wretched debris of the battle still littered the spongy earth as far
as one could see, in every direction. Dead horses were everywhere; a few
disabled caissons, or limbers, reclining on one elbow, as it were;
ammunition wagons standing disconsolate behind four or six sprawling
mules. Men? There were men enough; all dead, apparently, except one, who
lay near where I had halted my platoon to await the slower movement of the
line--a Federal sergeant, variously hurt, who had been a fine giant in his
time. He lay face upward, taking in his breath in convulsive, rattling
snorts, and blowing it out in sputters of froth which crawled creamily
down his cheeks, piling itself alongside his neck and ears.
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