Gen. Grant made overtures to Lee the 5th for a truce, but no cessation of hostilities took place until the evening of the 7th, the hours being from 6 to 8.
The dead were buried where they fell and, strange as it may seem, quite a few men were found alive after lying there about four days without any food or water except what they may have had when wounded.
The case of a man I assisted in bringing in our lines who had five wounds on his body was a sad one, but the surgeons thought his life could be saved.
I wish I might find words to portray to the reader something of the impressiveness of the scene at Cold Harbor that night.
Imagine, if you can, two mighty armies—that for weeks had been grappling with each other in deadly contest, each doing its utmost to slay and destroy the other, laying aside their implements of war as the day draws to a close, and with the sun casting its last red glare over all, as out from the ranks on either side came the men of war on their errand of mercy; the blue and gray intermingling, looking for friends and comrades that had fallen; permitted to carry them back into their own ranks to live or die among those with whom they served.
The picture will never be effaced from my memory, and all who witnessed that or a similar scene, will heartily endorse the saying of the late General Sherman that “War is hell.”
REFUSED TO BE BURIED.
The burial of the dead on the battlefield had to be done so hurriedly many times that more than one poor fellow who perhaps had been stunned and left on the field had a “close call” to being buried alive. A case in mind was that of one at Cold Harbor who had been picked up as dead, and as the men dropped their burden by the open trench the shock resuscitated the man and he faintly asked:
“What’s going on, boys?”
The response was, “We were going to bury you, Shorty.”