work off
the extra hilarity which his fright had occasioned, he pulled up and
joined in the laugh.

Work at this place continued about two weeks. One morning we were roused
up before daylight and ordered to strike tents quietly. In ten minutes
the column was moving down the plank road toward the rear. We went about
half a mile and camped. The next morning we again struck tents before
daylight, and moving toward the front, we formed line of battle in the
rear of Fort Warren. Here we lay till after sunrise, when we returned to
about the same place from which we had started. What all this meant was
more than we could make out, but we supposed that an attack was
anticipated.

We were then placed on picket still farther to the left. We called it
picket duty; but as far as I could ascertain, we were the only force in
front of the enemy on this part of the line. This ground had been fought
over. The Second Corps had been driven from here June 23d, with heavy
loss of men and guns. From the manner in which the trees were cut and
splintered by bullets and cannon-shot, it would scarcely seem possible
for a human being to remain alive on part of the ground. The loss had
been terrible. Many of the dead had been buried in the trenches. Others,
by the score, were buried where they fell, in rebel fashion, by throwing
some dirt over them where they lay. Now, after the lapse of a couple of
weeks, the dirt had washed from them, in some instances. Here and there
you might see an arm, a leg, or a ghastly head protruding from a slight
mound of earth. If any man was enamored of the glory of war, it was
good for him to sit down and meditate in such a field as this.

Two of the boys sat down to their dinner, one day, near some bushes at
the edge of the woods. The coffee was poured out, the frying-pan, with
its contents of fried meat was beside the blackened coffee-cups. They
were squatted on the ground on either side eating with a hearty relish,
when one of them noticed more closely the bushes just overhanging the
frying-pan, within a few inches of it. A human hand, dried, black,
shriveled, protruded from the leaves, the distorted fingers in attitude
as if about to make a grab at the contents of the pan. You suppose they
turned away in horror at such an intrusion on their feast. Why so? The
dead were all around us. When we slept at night behind the trenches, we
made our beds by them. Under such circumstances human nature suffers a
reaction,