oans of the wounded and dying came the distant
notes of the church bells in Richmond calling men and women again to the
house of God.

There was no shout of triumph--no cheering hosts--only the low moan of
death and the sharp cry of a boy in pain. The men in blue could have
moved in and bivouaced on the ground they had lost. The men in gray had
no strength left.

The dead and the dying were everywhere. The wounded were crawling
through the mud and brush, like stricken animals; some with their legs
broken; some with arms dangling by a thread; some with hideous holes
torn in their faces.

The front was lighted with the unclouded splendor of a full Southern
moon. Down every dim aisle of the woods they lay in awful, dark heaps.
In the fields they lay with faces buried in the dirt or eyes staring up
at the stars, twisted, torn, mangled. The blue and the gray lay side
by side in death, as they had fought in life. The pride and glory of a
mighty race of freemen.

The shadows of the details moved in the moonlight. They were opening the
first of those long, deep trenches. They were careful in these early
days of war. They turned each face downward as they packed them in. The
grave diggers could not then throw the wet dirt into their eyes and
mouths. Aching hearts in far-off homes couldn't see; but these boys
still had hearts within their breasts.

The fog-rimmed lanterns flickered over the fields peering into the faces
on the ground.

The ambulance corps did its best at the new trade. It was utterly
inadequate on either side. It's always so in war. The work of war is to
maim, to murder--not to heal or save.

The long line of creaking wagons began to move into Richmond over the
mud-cut roads. Every hospital was filled. The empty wagons rolled back
in haste over the cobble stones and out on the muddy roads to the front
again.

At the hospital doors the women stood in huddled groups--wives,
sweethearts, mothers, sisters, praying, hoping, fearing, shivering. Far
away in the field hospitals, the young doctors with bare, bloody arms
were busy with saw and knife. Boys who had faced death in battle without
a tremor stood waiting their turn trembling, crying, cursing. They could
see the piles of legs and arms rising higher as the doctors hurled
them from the quivering bodies. They stretched out their hands in the
darkness to feel the touch of loved ones. They must face this horror
alone, and then battle through life, maimed wr