ed and his
mind often reverts to home, kindred, and friends, when least expected.
His love and sympathy for his fellow-soldier is proverbial in the
army. In the lull, of battle, or on its eve, men with bold hearts and
strong nerves look each other in the face with grim reliance. With
set teeth and nerve's strung to extreme tension, the thoughts of the
soldier often wander to his distant home. The panorama of his whole
life passes before him in vivid colors. His first thoughts are of the
great beyond--all soldiers, whatever their beliefs or dogmas, think
of this. It is natural, it is right, it is just to himself. He sees in
his imagination the aged father or mother or the wife and little ones
with outstretched arms awaiting the coming of him who perhaps will
never come. These are some of the sensations and feelings of a soldier
on the eve of, or in battle, or at its close. It is no use denying it,
all soldiers feel as other people do, and when a soldier tells as a
fact that he "went into battle without fear," he simply tells "what
George Washington never told." It is human, and "self-preservation
is the first law of nature." No one wants to die. Of course ambition,
love of glory, the plaudits of your comrades and countrymen, will
cause many a blade to flash where otherwise it would not. But every
soldier who reads this will say that this is honest and the whole
truth. I am writing a truthful history of the past and honesty forces
me to this confession. "All men are cowards" in the face of death.
Pride, ambition, a keen sense of duty, will make differences
outwardly, but the heart is a coward still when death stares the
possessor in the face. Men throw away their lives for their country's
sake, or for honor or duty like a cast off garment and laugh at death,
but this is only a sentiment, for all men want to live. I write so
much to controvert the rot written in history and fiction of soldiers
anxious to rush headlong into eternity on the bayonets of the enemy.

Historians of all time will admit the fact that at Gettysburg was
fought a battle, not a skirmish, but it was not what Northern writers
like to call it, "Lee's Waterloo." The Wilderness, Spottsylvania, and
Petersburg were yet to come.

* * * * *

CHAPTER XX

Gettysburg--Fourth Day--Incidents of the Battle--Sketch of Dessausure,
McLeod, and Salmonds.

A flag of truce now waves over both armies, granting a respite to bury
the