AFTER THE BATTLE.
The sight of that battle field was horrible. The first approaches, occupying the further range of the enemy’s guns, bore fearful witness of the wild devastation made by the ball and shell which had over-shot the mark. Large trees were entirely splintered off within ten feet of the ground; heavy branches lay in every direction, and pieces of exploded missiles were scattered over the forest sward. The carcasses of horses and the wrecks of wagons strewed all the woods and marked every step of the way.
Half a mile further on, and the most terrible results of the struggle were brought to view. Lifeless bodies lay thickly in the woods; the dead and dying lay close together in the fields, some in heaps on their backs, some with clenched hands half raised in air—others with their guns held in a fixed grip, as if in the act of loading when the fatal shaft struck them dead. Others still had crawled away from further danger, and, sheltering themselves behind old logs, had sunk into an eternal sleep. Here were the bodies of men who had fallen the day before, mingled with those from whose wounds the blood was yet warmly trickling.
Around the open space known as “The battalion drill ground,” the scene was still more appalling. This spot had been desperately contested on both sides; but the dead on the rebel side were four to one compared to the Union losses. It was horrible to see in what wild attitudes they had fallen. Here a poor creature appeared in a sitting posture, propped up by logs, on which the green moss had been drenched with blood, and with his hands rigidly locked over his knees, sat still as marble, with his ashen face drooping on his breast. One poor wretch had crept away to the woods, and ensconcing himself between two logs, spread his blanket above him as a shield from the rain of the previous night. He was a wounded rebel, and asked pitifully of those who searched among the dead if nothing could be done for him.
In the track of the larger guns terrible havoc had been made, and scenes of revolting mutilation presented themselves. The field of battle extended over a distance of five miles in length, and three-quarters of a mile in width. This space was fought over twice in regular battle array, and many times in the charges and retreats of the different divisions of the two armies. Every tree and sapling in that whole space was pierced through and through with cannon-shot and musketballs, and it is reported that there was scarcely a rod of ground on the five miles which did not have a dead or wounded man upon it.
On Sunday, especially, several portions of the ground were fought over three and four times, and the two lines swayed backward and forward like advancing and retreating waves. In repeated instances, rebel and Union soldiers, protected by the trees, were within thirty feet of each other. Many of the camps, as they were lost and retaken, received showers of balls. At the close of the fight, General McClernand’s tent contained twenty-seven bullet-holes, and his Adjutant’s thirty-two. In the Adjutant’s tent, when the Union forces recaptured it, the body of a rebel was found in a sitting position. He had evidently stopped for a moment’s rest, when a ball struck and killed him. A tree, not more than eighteen inches in diameter, which was in front of General Lew. Wallace’s division, bore the marks of more than ninety balls within ten feet of the ground.